ATLANTA — Someone spread messages of hate across an Atlanta neighborhood, leaving residents alarmed and appalled, and vowing to stand together against whomever is responsible.
Residents of the Riverside community of northwest Atlanta started finding hate flyers on their front yards over the weekend and on Monday, from a group claiming to be the Ku Klux Klan.
At this time, Atlanta Police are investigating and said they are attempting to determine if the flyers were an act meant to intimidate the community.
“It’s crazy, it’s crazy,” said one woman who found one of the flyers in her front yard.
The flyer was folded inside a small, plastic bag, which also contained a small, rock weight.
As she unfolded the flyer and read it, “I was like, oh my goodness, are we serious? In 2022?”
The Riverside neighborhood is known for its diversity.
“It’s very diverse,” the woman, who is Black, said, asking not to be identified until police catch those responsible. “We have all type of nationalities over hear, Blacks, whites, mixed couples, LGBTQ community,” which is what the message in the flyer opposes.
“That’s incredibly alarming and, honestly, pretty sad,” another Riverside resident, Noel Goff, added
Goff, who is white, said he and his neighbors are standing together with their own message of who they are as a community.
“I feel like this neighborhood is all walks of life, all types of people,” he said. “That’s kind of what’s so great about this neighborhood, is that it feels like anybody’s welcome. We keep this neighborhood going in the path that it’s on, which is just diversity. Everybody’s welcome, and there’s zero room or space for any sort of hate group whatsoever.”
There was an email address on the flyer for people supposedly to be able to contact the group that printed and distributed the flyer. As of Monday night, that email address was invalid and messages sent to it bounced back as undeliverable.