Uptown Communities Rally After White Supremacist Display

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS-INWOOD, NY — The Washington Heights and Inwood communities came out in force Tuesday night to reclaim a neighborhood park tarnished by a white supremacist display over the weekend.

People gathered on Fort Tryon Park's Billings Lawn — steps from where a banner reading "end the invasion, stop immigration" was hung Saturday by white nationalist group Identity Evropa — to reject the message of hate. The vigil was organized by Congressman Adriano Espaillat with the help of other neighborhood elected officials and advocacy groups within 24 hours after news reports of the weekend's demonstration broke.

Espaillat said he wouldn't dignify the white supremacist group who came to Forty Tryon Park on Saturday, but instead celebrate the people "from all walks of life" who make Uptown Manhattan their home.

"Just in 24 hours all of you came together, because you know that we live next to each other and that we love each other and that whatever differences we have are not big enough to pull us apart," Espaillat said Tuesday. "In fact, it is moments like this that push us together."

Other politicians who spoke at Tuesday night's rally were not as diplomatic, and decided to take the fight to Identity Evropa and other like-minded groups. Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul said the group "just picked a fight with 20 million New Yorkers,” and City Councilman said the people of Uptown Manhattan have "confronted much bigger challenges than a band of 20 coward who come up to hang a sign at Fort Tryon Park."

Many people who spoke at Tuesday's rally blamed President Donald Trump for empowering white supremacist groups like Identity Evropa through anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric. Behind the speakers, people representing organizations such as the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights and NYC Socialists held signs reading "no human is illegal, "the alt-right is very wrong" and "hate has no home here."

At one point in the rally, the crowd started an "abolish ICE" chant, of which some elected officials joined.

Uptown resident Denise Rickles, who's lived in the area for 27 years, said she was taken aback when she heard of Identity Evropa's weekend demonstration.

"It absolutely amazed me, I was taken by total surprise," Rickles, who was participating in a block party to oppose a city plan to rezone Inwood at the time of the demonstration, said. "When the community was out working and having fun at our block party this was happening."

Identity Evropa has been designated a white supremacist group by both the Anti Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group popularized the slogan "you will not replace us" during the deadly August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to the ADL. The group was founded in 2016 and has been "at the forefront of the racist 'alt-right's' effort to recruit white, college-aged men and transform them into the fashionable new face of white nationalism," according to the SPLC.

Photos by Brendan Krisel/Patch