Some residents of an East Falls Church neighborhood say they discovered Ku Klux Klan recruitment fliers full of racist and anti-Semitic language this past weekend.
Eliza Thompson says she discovered a flier sitting at the foot of her driveway on Saturday morning (July 21), placed in a small bag and weighed down with birdseed. She says she quickly learned that several of her neighbors along N. Roosevelt Street also received the fliers, which advertise membership in a group dubbed the “Loyal White Knights.”
“I’m a talker, and I couldn’t even talk after we saw those,” Thompson told ARLnow. “Why did they choose our street, our neighborhood? It just doesn’t make much sense.”
The fliers don’t list where the group is based, with most of the space dedicated to screeds about how Jews control the media or how immigrants are destroying the country, but they do list phone numbers with North Carolina area codes. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Loyal White Knights are active in two different parts of that state, as well as in Maryland and Richmond.
Thompson’s discovery comes less than a month after some Lyon Village residents discovered anti-Semitic fliers in their neighborhood, and other KKK fliers, similarly placed in bags and weighed down with birdseed, turned up in Gainesville and Bristow. A flier for a white supremacist group was also found in Clarendon in late May.
“You wouldn’t expect it in Arlington,” Thompson said. “It’s just not the area you’d think the KKK would be recruiting out of.”
Thompson says some of her neighbors reported the incident to county police, but the neighborhood is also planning a larger response to the fliers’ arrival.
Not only has she ordered 10 signs proclaiming “hate has no home here” that she hopes to distribute, but she’s working with some of her neighbors to hand out baggies of their own, filled with candy and messages about diversity and inclusion.
“Simply being outraged isn’t enough,” Thompson said. “This is real, and I think a lot of white people need to realize the racism non-white Americans face on a regular basis in our country. It’s easy if you live in North Arlington not to pay attention to racism. But it’s there all the time.”
