CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A Southwest Side alderman said his community needs to speak up against hatred after posters for a white nationalist group were found along the route of Sunday's South Side Irish Parade.
And throughout the day on Tuesday, resisdents did just that.
Ald. Matt O'Shea (19th Ward) said 15-20 posters for the group were found along Western Avenue between 99th and 117th streets.
The posters were for a group called American Identity Movement. Social media posts displayed them on light poles and utility boxes.
Ald. O’Shea calls the posting of, what he calls, the propaganda materials "despicable" and calls people in the group "cowards."
"I think these type of organizations come to a community like ours and spread fear and spread hate and they won’t be successful," he said.
He said this year's South Side Irish Parade was one of the best in the last dozen years. Police said there had been no arrests. O'Shea also points out that the Grand Marshal for the parade was Honor Flight Chicago and the honoree for the parade was the locally started organization, Choose Kind.
David Perry picked up a couple of the posters. He pointed to last year’s congressional election results when more than 24 percent of 19th Ward voters cast ballots for avoid neo-Nazi Arthur Jones. A larger percentage of people from the Mt. Greenwood neighborhood voted for Jones.
McCoy commended Ald. O’Shea for taking the lead in opposition to the white supremacist group.
“I think it has to be him. He has to be the voice of the neighborhood and we all have to speak out about it and let people know this is not okay,” she said.
Sister Pat Mahoney, a retired Catholic nun, said Beverly is “not a neighborhood that hates.” She said it’s a neighborhood that’s been “trying to come together and to work with diversity and inclusion.”
Of the white nationalists, Sister Mahoney said, “I think they’re just a bunch of cowards that have to run around and hide and hang posters rather than trying to change themselves. They’re not going to change us.”
Even though the alderman believes the posters were "little noticed" since no one had called his office or the 22nd Police District, he said it must be called out.
He said Streets and Sanitation crews removed the stickers on Monday and he has asked the Chicago Police and the city's Commission on Human Relations to investigate.