Civil Rights

Racist stickers affixed to signs in Johnston, police are investigating

Racist stickers have been affixed to street signs along Greenville Avenue in the Town of Johnston, Rhode Island. Joseph Razza, Deputy Chief of Police at the Johnston Police Department wrote, “The Town of Johnston does not tolerate matters of this kind and we will investigate this matter to the fullest extent possible.” Warning: The images below contain racist, Islamophobic, white

Rhode Island News: Racist stickers affixed to signs in Johnston, police are investigating

December 3, 2018, 11:05 am

By Steve Ahlquist

Racist stickers have been affixed to street signs along Greenville Avenue in the Town of Johnston, Rhode Island.

Joseph Razza, Deputy Chief of Police at the Johnston Police Department wrote, “The Town of Johnston does not tolerate matters of this kind and we will investigate this matter to the fullest extent possible.”


Warning: The images below contain racist, Islamophobic, white supremacist and anti-Semitic messages and images.


At least four signs have been marked with the racist stickers in Johnston:

-The first sticker is affixed to an advertisement for snow removal, and was located on on Greenville Avenue, while approaching the intersection of Greenville Avenue (on the right) and George Waterman Road (on the left). I was unable to locate this sign when I went to the site, but was provided the picture below by a reader. The sticker says, “It’s okay to be white.” This may seem innocuous, and more ignorant than racist, but it is a meme with deeply racist overtones. See here.

-The second two stickers are affixed to an Emergency Evacuation Route sign at the intersection of Greenville Avenue and George Waterman Road. Here is a repeat of the “It’s okay to be white” sticker as well as a sticker depicting the white supremacist version of the Celtic Cross, which the Anti-Defamation League calls “one of the most important and commonly used white supremacist symbols.”

(Detail)

-The next sign defaced with racist hate is affixed to a telephone pole at the corner of Greenville Avenue and George Street, right under the sign for George Street. This sticker depicts a hand with an extended middle finger over the word “ISLAM.”

-The last sign defaced, and the most disturbing, is on the corner of Greenville Avenue and Blain Street. On this RIPTA sign were several stickers. Here we see a repeat of the middle finger over the word Islam, a sticker that says “White Lives Matter,” a sticker with the image of Fascist German Dictator Adolph Hitler saying, “Next time… No more Mr. Nice Guy,” and a sticker showing a black man and a white woman holding hands over which the international symbol for prohibition has been placed.


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