AB School Committee Members Targeted Again With Hate Speech

ACTON, MA — On Thursday, racist hate speech once again breached the virtual walls of a public Acton-Boxborough School Committee meeting and targeted the committee's only two Black members.

During the meeting on Jan. 7, a man who gave the presumably fake name of John, played an audio recording during the public comment portion of the meeting that contained the N-word. The comment was directed toward Kyra Wilson-Cook and Evelyn Abayaah-Issah — the only Black members on the committee.

Wilson-Cook addressed the community during the meeting, after the harassment and said, "I want to be clear for those who are here that somebody chose to call two public servants in this town the N-word," she said. "Bear witness to the abuse."

Wilson-Cook and Abayaah-Issah were targeted in December during another School Committee meeting. Vulgar and hateful, racist messages were sent to the School Committee members in December through the Zoom chat option — the messages were not seen by the public "due to the correctly configured security and privacy settings," but they were seen by the committee members.

After December's incident, the Acton Police Department opened an investigation. The days after the public harassment in December, the Board of Selectmen called an emergency meeting to discuss the incidents. The meeting itself drew criticism as Wilson-Cook and Abayaah-Issah were not consulted in advance about it.

In a statement from the Acton Diversity Equity and Inclusion Commission, members call for the response to this second harassment incident to be different from the first and for the Board of Selectmen to learn from its first mistake and include the members in its discussions.

The Acton Diversity Equity and Inclusion Commission statement reads in part:

"We are seeing the roll-out of cumulative traumatic impacts to individuals and whole segments of our communities. These acts are vile and violent. They impact in real time those who serve and work for the greater good, and the communities of color they represent, our children and our families they work on behalf of. These events affect our children and our feelings of safety and belonging. These events have shifted the narrative from 'racism doesn’t live here to 'it lives and breathes."

Another Board of Selectmen emergency meeting is scheduled for Monday.

Acton Town Manager John S. Mangiaratti said he stands with Wilson-Cook and Abayaah-Issah and the School Committee in denouncing the harassment and hate speech.

"There should be zero tolerance for racially motivated -- and inherently personal -- attacks on members of our community like the ones that have now targeted Kyra Wilson-Cook and Evelyn Abayaah-Issah on multiple occasions," he said.