Sometimes Antisocial - Always Antifascist
With the Covid-19 crisis taking almost all the national and local attention, and rightfully so, it can be difficult to speak about struggles that began long before the crisis and that will likely continue after the crises abates. Within the Champlain Valley DSA, we are certainly strongly responding to Covid-19, with an adjunct working group created specifically for this crisis. However, we can't forget about the other struggles, and in this case, I want to talk specifically about the need for continued vigilance in the fight against creeping fascism.
The BTV Clean Up Crew began as an idea in August 2019, when I was looking for a clever way of removing fascist propaganda that had been cropping up in Burlington. At the time, I had just come across a large poster for the neo-Nazi group the Patriot Front, plastered on the window of Memorial Auditorium, urging Burlington residents to call ICE on their immigrant neighbors. I was disgusted, and I was worried that the poster had stayed up there longer than it had any right to. I immediately started thinking about a project that could focus on removing propaganda like this before anybody else can see it. That same weekend, I went on a short hike on the Riverside Trail, and I couldn't help but notice the build-up of roadside garbage. I decided that I would go out every weekend and pick-up roadside trash, and at the same time, ensure that any fascist propaganda is removed. When I announced the idea to some of my friends in the DSA, the response was very positive, and a small group of us began regularly going on "clean-up" sessions.
After about two of these sessions, a neo-Nazi rally happened in Portland, Oregon that I was following closely on social media. At that rally, the Portland group "Popular Mobilization" came up with a strategy to prevent future rallies from happening. They asked their supporters to pledge a donation to a local immigrant rights organization for every fascist that shows up to the rally. The group ended up raising $30,000 for Causa Oregon, and I was blown away by the success of the idea. I knew that we had to adapt the concept to the situation in Burlington. InBurlington, we were luckily not having any physical fascist rallies, but the sticker problem was growing more and more. I adapted the idea so that we would ask people to pledge a donation for every sticker or poster we remove, and at that point, the BTV Clean Up Crew in its current form was born.
Over the last eight months, I have been grateful and humbled by the response we have received. We got covered in Seven Days. We have raised nearly $2,000 for amazing local organizations like Migrant Justice, Outright Vermont, and Black Lives Matter of Greater Burlington. And we have ensured that fascist propaganda gets removed quickly, before any media can cover it or targeted groups have to see it. We've built community resiliency to racism and discrimination that was intended to terrify the most vulnerable members of our community, and we've effectively stood up for our neighbors.
With the Covid-19 crisis currently occupying nearly all of our time, the Clean Up Crew has had to adapt our tactics. We don't go out in groups anymore, and clean up sessions have become solitary events. However, I think it is important that we don't let our guard down, despite the need for social distancing. Fascists in other parts of the country have taken advantage of the empty streets to spread more propaganda, and we need to make sure that this doesn't happen here. Keep reporting any stickers you see, and keep following our page on Facebook and Twitter. Keep your eyes peeled when you are out, and keep the streets safe for everybody who lives here. There was a joke post on Tumblr that spread fairly quickly after the fascist attack in Charlottesville in August of 2017. It read, "Sometimes antisocial - always antifascist." In these times, this has become less of a joke and more of a call to action.
Let's keep the work going.