Residents, officials take public stand against hate

By Jay Turner

Last Tuesday evening at the Canton Public Library, a group of concerned local citizens, united by their shared values and a deep and abiding terror over a Donald Trump-led White House, gathered to discuss ways that they could support their fellow residents and help ensure that the Canton community remains “safe for diversity.”

“We’re a group dedicated to making every family in Canton feel safe,” explained the promotional flyer prepared by the group’s founder, Kathleen “KK” Howley, a former senior reporter for Bloomberg News. “We want to know if our neighbors need help, and we want to stand with them.”

Diversity dog — the unofficial mascot of Not in Our Town

Calling themselves “Not in Our Town” and planning to align with a national movement of the same name, the group has pledged to be a voice and a supportive shoulder to those who may feel marginalized or threatened in the current political and social climate — groups including immigrants and children of immigrants, minorities, and gay families, among others.

“It’s just startling,” said Howley, citing the recent uptick in hateful harassment and intimidation in the country since the November 8 election. “A lot of people don’t feel safe anymore.”

All in all, Howley said it was a productive first meeting for Not in Our Town, with a total of seven people in attendance, including one woman who brought her two daughters to witness the dialogue. What’s more, it happened to take place on the same night and around the same time that the town’s own chief executive, the Board of Selectmen, took its own public stand against discrimination with the formal adoption of its “Standing Together” declaration.

While the timing of the declaration and the launch of Not in Our Town were entirely coincidental, the message behind the two are mostly the same: intolerance will not be tolerated here.

Specifically, the BOS declaration, which was proposed by Selectman Victor Del Vecchio and modeled after the principles contained in the Pledge of Allegiance, condemns all forms of “religious intolerance, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, racism and bullying, cyber or otherwise.”

It also condemns “any acts of violence targeted at police officers or first responders” and asks that all citizens, regardless of political party affiliation, work together to ensure that Canton and the nation as a whole “remain peaceful and proud places to live and work.”

According to Del Vecchio, the “Standing Together” declaration was neither politically motivated nor was it based on any singular event, including Trump’s victory last month. Rather, it was an acknowledgment of the “divisiveness and distrust that currently polarizes the country.”

“It is partly reflective of the campaign and the election, but it is not singularly caused by them,” he explained. “There does appear to be a profound disagreement between and among people, but that disagreement seems to pre-date this election and the campaign.”

“This was, pure and simple, an affirmation of civility, and we were taking a leadership role in declaring that,” he said.

Del Vecchio said selectmen are also pleased that there have been no documented cases of discrimination in Canton since the election and they are “hoping to keep it that way.”

Then again, as Howley was quick to point out, not every instance of harassment or bigotry gets reported, and it will be the goal of Not in Our Town to reach out to those victims who are suffering in silence.

As a proud gay woman who is married with one daughter, Howley considers herself fortunate to live in a predominately liberal state such as Massachusetts. However, she too has been the recipient of hateful speech throughout her lifetime. “I have been called a dyke. I’ve had horrible things yelled at me,” she said. “Fortunately it has only happened a couple of times, but it’s devastating.”

And while some are hesitant to fault the president-elect for the actions of an ignorant few, Howley is an unabashed critic who blames him personally and wholeheartedly for the recent surge in hate crimes and acts of discrimination.

“You only call him a ‘divisive’ candidate if you’re white and straight; otherwise you call him a bigot,” she said. “And to find out we have so many bigots in this country and people who are willing to vote for a bigot — there’s not much of a distinction in my mind; if you’re willing to vote for one, then you become a part of that.”

“This is a man who has vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices to fight marriage equality,” she added. “My little 4 year old could have legal rights taken away from her; even though we pay taxes, we won’t get the same protections.”

At the same time, Howley said that gay couples and families are “lower on the list” of groups that stand to be negatively impacted by a Trump presidency, as they are at least not worried about “getting kicked out of the country.”

In fact, Howley said it was a Boston Globe headline indicating Trump’s plans to “immediately deport” millions of undocumented immigrants after his inauguration that spurred her to action. Too upset to read or watch any news in the weeks following the election, Howley said she glanced at the headline while at the corner store and her reaction scared her daughter, who asked Howley if they were going to have to move.

Eventually Howley started consuming news again and found herself drawn to stories about children of immigrants and their fears of deportation. She recalled one particularly heartbreaking instance in which students at a predominately Hispanic elementary school in California — where someone had spray-painted “Build the wall higher” — spoke to a reporter about their fears following a Trump victory, and one boy shared how the kids in his neighborhood would no longer play with him since “Trump is president” and he is a “different color.”

Meanwhile, incidents such as these have also occurred closer to home. The Southern Poverty Law Center documented 867 instances of “hateful harassment” in the days following the election, and Massachusetts had the fifth highest total with 42. In one such instance, a middle school teacher observed a white student asking students of color if they were “legal,” while another told his black classmate to “go back to Haiti because this is our country now.”

“Even in this ‘blue state’ the bigotry is still rearing its ugly head,” lamented Howley.

And that is why she has started a support group: to hammer home the message that bigotry and hatred is not welcome in Canton — “not in our town.”

She stressed that the group is still just taking shape and would welcome any assistance and suggestions that they can get. In the meantime, they plan to reach out to the school system via the Canton Families Embracing Diversity parent group and to be a resource for any resident who may feel scared or targeted.

“The goal is to let you know that we’re here for you,” she said, “so that if something does happen, there can be a response very quickly, if only to go and sit in somebody’s kitchen or to do some sort of more public display. There are things that decent people can do to say, ‘I am not going to be a part of this.’”

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