East Greenwich Residents Troubled by Racist Flyers

If you’re one of the many East Greenwich residents troubled by the racist propaganda distributed across town in the dead of night last week, you’re not alone.

About a dozen residents reported racial propaganda flyers ended up on their driveway or lawns overnight Tuesday to police last week, all contained in plastic bags weighed down with rocks.

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Residents on Grandview, Middle and Overfield Roads; Silverwood and Westwood Drives; and Cora Street reported finding the flyers, according to a police report. They were apparently distributed cowardly overnight and as a result, no resident could provide a description of who left them.

Police said no crime was committed, however ugly the flyers might be, especially after they were delivered in the wake of an admitted racist’s despicable massacre of worshippers in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

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Though East Greenwich is 96 percent white, according to the 2000 Census, few who live here would consider their town to be an intolerant community. That can explain why so many called police to report the flyers, which did not contain any overt threats, police said.

The flyers also used the #whitelivesmatter phrase being used on social media as a counter to the #blacklivesmatter hashtag being used in the ongoing commentary about friction between police and the public. The “white race letter” was also signed by “the renaissance,” which might be a reference to the notorious American Renaissance organization that once published a magazine and is now a hub for white supremacists and proponents of hate and discrimination against non-whites, holocaust deniers, anti-semites and other fringe extremists.

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