Residents symbolically cleanse Howell after white supremacist march

Participants symbolically cleanse sidewalk at anti-white supremacist counterprotest in downtown Howell. July 28, 2024. Photo by Jon King.

A week after white supremacists marched through downtown Howell chanting “Heil Hitler” and holding signs saying “White Lives Matter,” several dozen counter protesters gathered Sunday to symbolically wash away the racism they say they no longer want to be normalized in their community.

Holding signs with phrases like “Make Racism Wrong Again” and “Kancel Klan Kulture,” the gathering was organized by Stand Against Extremism LivCo (SAGE), whose co-founder is Julie Ohashi.

“I was born and raised here, and it wasn’t any different, I’ll tell you,” she told the gathering. “They were just more in the shadows, because it wasn’t as accepted. But in the culture and the climate that we’re dealing with right now, they’re becoming emboldened. And with that, it’s going to take a big resistance to stand up to it. And that’s going to require allies, because we can’t expect our brown and our Black and our queer community to be coming out here and putting their bodies on the front lines. That is not a fair lift.”

Howell, which lies between Lansing and Detroit, has long had a reputation for extremist activity. It became known as a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) hotspot in the 1970s and 80s when infamous Michigan KKK Grand Dragon Robert Miles held hate rallies and cross burnings at his Cohoctah Township property north of Howell until his death in 1992.

The group of parents, grandparents, teachers, and other community members, later grabbed brooms and mops, as they washed down the sidewalk in front of the historic Livingston County Courthouse, the same place where the approximately dozen white supremacist supporters gathered July 20, before marching through the downtown area.

“Howell is basically a welcoming community, and we were shocked to see these outsiders come and try to stir up hate. So, today is a symbolic cleansing of the area similar to what was done many years ago after a KKK rally,” Howell Mayor Bob Ellis told the Michigan Advance .

Ellis was referring to a scrubbing of the steps of the historic Livingston County Courthouse in 1995 following a KKK rally.

While a joint statement issued last week by the city of Howell, the Livingston Diversity Council and the Howell Chamber of Commerce indicated the white supremacist demonstrators came from “as far away as Saginaw and Macomb counties,” one participant was believed to have come from nearby Fowlerville.

But Ellis said the description of outsiders having orchestrated the march was still an accurate one.

“We were able to find some internet posts that said that (July 20) was actually a day of action for a hate group incorporating members from Michigan as well as Pennsylvania, and some of the witnesses did see a Pennsylvania license plate in the group,” said Ellis. “So, I think the fact that they were only able to recruit 12 people from two states, and one of them may have been from our county? They were casting a wide net and got a very poor turnout.”

In fact, a post on the X social media platform by a group identifying itself as “White Lives Matter Michigan,” does indicate interstate coordination, as it contained a video of the July 20 march and stated,  “White Lives Matter Michigan and Pennsylvania collaborated together and held a demonstration in downtown Howell, Michigan for this month’s day of action.”

July 20 as a “day of action” is reportedly among 12 planned for 2024 by White Lives Matter (WLM), which the website globalextremism.org , identifies as an “international white supremacist movement,” whose supporters “have organized protests across the United States, and in other countries in Europe.”

The website, which is operated by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), says that WLM , along with other extremist groups like the Proud Boys , are using the phrase “White Boy Summer” to “spread propaganda, recruit new members, and facilitate targeted hate campaigns including acts of vandalism and hate incidents.”

On April 20 — Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s birthday — a previous “day of action,” White Lives Matter Michigan was able to “permeate censorship” and briefly display “images of Hitler and a racist message on roadside displays,” according to The Detroit News .

The antisemitic nature of the group was on full display on the July 20 “day of action,” when the group who marched through Howell also made their way to the Latson Road/I-96 overpass in nearby Genoa Township, where they hung Nazi and KKK flags over the side , while a video uploaded by the Livingston Post shows one of the protestors yelling “We love Hitler. We love Trump,” through a loudspeaker.

At Sunday’s counterprotest, Jennifer Stolen related a conversation she had with a young man as she was placing signs for the event, who asked what she thought would be accomplished by the gathering.

“He didn’t think anything was going to change here,” she said. “I am not originally from Livingston County, but I’ve lived here for 20 years now, and I can tell you that things already have changed. And one of the ways that they change is that people show up and they’re visible for events like this so that we know, those of us who know this is wrong, who know that having white supremacist demonstrators on the steps of our courthouse is wrong, know that we’re not alone. Because when I first moved to this county, I felt very alone. I didn’t know that there were any other people, honestly, other than myself and my family who felt the way that we did.”

Ohashi said it’s important to fight back against hate.

“We need everybody in this fight to stand up and say, ‘This isn’t how it’s going to work around here anymore. You can try, but you’re just going to get pushback,’” she said. “We’re going to be putting our bodies out in public spaces and having conversations, and we’re not going to go anywhere.”

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