Racist Fliers Found on Train and in Montauk

Ku Klux Klan fliers, depicting a hooded Klansman and providing a phone number and web address for the “Loyal White Knights of the KKK,” were found on a seat on a Long Island Rail Road train as it pulled into Amagansett on Saturday, while other fliers, for the white supremacist group White New York, were tossed onto driveways on Old Montauk Highway in Montauk over the weekend. 

At the phone number listed on the KKK flier, a recorded male voice begins by saying, “It’s about time we put an end to this massive immigration into our white homeland.” As the speaker continues, he becomes more extreme. He invites callers to leave a number and message, and says, “We will call you back.”

The White New York website uses a logo that mimics New York State’s, but adds the lines “New York State of White Replacement” and “Organizing for Recreation and Whites’ Preservation.” It provides census information about the nationwide ratios of whites and other ethnic groups, saying that “we encourage Whites to oppose pervasive diversity and to challenge attempts to turn Whites into a minority.” (The word white is capitalized.)

“We effort [sic] against European-Americans’ replacement as the U.S. majority,”it says. 

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there has been a significant rise in racist graffiti, hate crimes, and incidents of xenophobic harassment and intimidation of people of color, immigrants, women, Muslims, and the L.G.B.T. community since the presidential election. 

David Duke, a white supremacist and former Klan leader, and the Crusader, an official Klan newspaper, endorsed Donald J. Trump for president early in the campaign, and a North Carolina-based KKK chapter plans an early-December parade to celebrate his victory. Mr. Duke has lauded the choices President-elect Trump is making for cabinet posts, endorsing Steve Bannon, Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, and Senator Jeff Sessions. In July, however, CNN quoted Mr. Trump saying he “rebukes the support of David Duke,” and the Trump campaign later said he had “continued to denounce David Duke and any group or individual associated with a message of hate.” 

In campaign rhetoric and following his win, Mr. Trump has said he would move immediately to deport or imprison as many as three million unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, bar Muslims from entering the country, and require those here to register. 

Last week in Patchogue, which, like East Hampton, has a significant Latino, and in particular, Ecuadorean, population, Ku Klux Klan fliers were found on cars in a parking lot, prompting an anti-KKK rally on Sunday.  It was not the first time Klan literature was distributed in Patchogue, the South Shore town where Mr. Trump attended a fund-raiser in the spring, and where, in 2008, Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant, was murdered by a group of teenagers. 

Klan fliers have also been placed in mailboxes in Hampton Bays and in other Long Island communities, including Shirley, Babylon, and Wantagh, and a woman walking in Hampton Bays with a child in a stroller was recently harassed, allegedly because of the color of her skin.

Carlos Sandoval turned one flier he picked up from a seat of the train in Amagansett to the Long Island Rail Road conductor, and was headed to East Hampton Town Police headquarters on Tuesday with another. He said he had also reported the incident to the New York State Division of Human Rights. He surmised that the fliers were left on the train by a passenger who disembarked in East Hampton. The train was crowded until that stop, Mr. Sandoval said, adding that he did not think the fliers would have gone unnoticed. 

A filmmaker, who lives part time in Amagansett, Mr. Sandoval is the co-producer of “Farmingville,” a documentary that tells the story of the attempted murder of two Mexican day laborers in that Long Island town, and of “The State of Arizona,” a documentary about battles there over illegal immigration. Having been immersed in these projects, Mr. Sandoval said he was keenly aware of racism. “So it’s particularly frightening to see it,” he said of the Klan literature.

 While the primary target of the Klan, founded in 1865 after the Civil War, has been African-Americans, the law center’s website chronicles its attacks on Jews, immigrants, and gays and lesbians. 

Jill Fleming, who found the White New York flier on her Montauk driveway on Saturday, with pebbles to weigh it down stapled into a fold, said she saw the fliers on the driveways of several neighbors. However, she had not heard of other neighborhoods being targeted.

The fractious tone surrounding immigration and other national issues at present appears to have exposed a nerve in the East End community. At a recent service at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk, when Father Steve Grozio, who leads a ministry for Latino members of the church, spoke about the fears of immigrant parishioners in the aftermath of the election, someone attending the service booed. A subsequent discussion of the incident on Facebook involved many community members, some eschewing that response and others complaining about what they viewed as bringing politics into church.

“It just seems like people have been given permission to say what they’ve been thinking for a long time,” Ms. Fleming said on Monday. She said finding the flier was disconcerting. 

While there is nothing illegal about disseminating offensive information, Capt. Chris Anderson of the East Hampton Town Police said yesterday that those who find “postings, fliers, or something that they deem to be suspicious or offensive” should contact the department. Authorities “want to be aware,” he said, and can determine if a group or individual’s activities cross the line into illegality or a hate crime. 

“In view of all this stuff that seems to have started since the election,” East Hampton Town’s long-established Anti-Bias Task Force is actively encouraging anyone with concerns to contact the group, confidentially, by email, at [email protected]. 

“Hate and fearmongering are unacceptable in our community,” Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the East Hampton Town Board’s liaison to the task force, said in an email yesterday. “Our community’s strength is our diversity and the talent acquired from a multicultural society. Indeed, it is America’s strength.”

A state hotline for reporting bias and discrimination, at 888-392-3644, was established after Election Day by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. He also has called on the State Education Department to mandate anti-discrimination training for teachers and students.

“The hate and violence in our country tears at the very fabric of our society,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell wrote on Facebook recently. “We must all be accountable for our words and actions so each of us does not contribute to these destructive forces. Civil discourse and debate is a right we as Americans enjoy and defend. With it comes the responsibility to express our views in a way that promotes peaceful disagreement and respect for one another. We can end this unconscionable hate and violence when all of us and especially our leaders use our words and actions for positive change and end the hateful rhetoric.”

During the campaign, Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote but failed to amass the number of electors necessary to win the election, accused Mr. Trump of “taking hate groups mainstream. His candidacy received support during the campaign not only from the Klan but from other white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and militia supporters, including those affiliated with the American Nazi Party and the Aryan Nation.