A Message to the Senders of Anonymous Missives to Southbury Residents

Eighty-five years after Southbury chased the Nazis from town, some of their descendants have again visited their nastiness on the area. This time, they left white-supremacist literature on doorsteps and a white-supremacist sticker in a portable toilet at a town park. Southbury is the eighth town this year to receive such abuse, according to NBC Connecticut.

Yesterday, we attended the Justice Southbury Rally at Playhouse Corner at 2 p.m., where we learned that the group, the town's selectmen, and citizens put to rest any confusion about where Southbury stands on the matter of white supremacy; they stand where they stood 85 years ago. Southbury is no place for hateful behavior.

I left the rally thinking grand thoughts about democracy and protest and public education. For me it always comes back to public education. The sonnet above is my teacher response to the sorrowful souls with the oatmeal laced letters of hatred and the porta-potty vandals. If white racial purists want to engage the larger world, they'll have to come out of the portable toilet. We're not coming in. We're too busy loving whom we will.

For context, consider the following:

Anonymous flyer left under cover of darkness at a multiracial home, November 2022: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. White lives matter.”

Anonymous sticker in portable potty at a Southbury park, November 2022: “Race mixing is white genocide. Stop killing white people."

Rick Richardson, lawyer, Southbury resident and leader of Justice Southbury, 4 December 2022: “We support any individual or group in our community who experiences social injustice or bullying or any sort of hate. We will show them we have their backs."

Southbury’s Board of Selectmen on 3 December 2022: “It has been brought to our attention that certain areas of our town recently received offensive literature. We stand with our diverse community and strongly against hate and bigotry in all its forms and will work together to ensure that all people feel safe and welcome in Southbury.”