JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (WSVN) — Antisemitic flyers, a recent troubling trend across South Florida, have now reached the northern part of the state, leaving residents angry and hurt.
Bags filled with the messages of hate and corn kernels were found this week in Jacksonville’s Grove Park neighborhood.
“It’s hate, and that kind of stuff needs to stop,” said area resident Tim Wallace. “This is not right.”
Wallace said he found one of the plastic baggies during his morning walk. He said he went home and immediately contacted authorities.
“I called [the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office], had an officer come out and do a report about it,” he said, “and unfortunately, they said they can’t do anything because it’s a form of freedom of speech.”
But even though it’s legally allowed, Wallace said dropping the flyers on their doorsteps is not morally right.
“We don’t want or need that kind of racist, antisemitic stuff in this city,” he said.
Similar menacing messages were sent to people in parts of South Florida in recent weeks. Flyers were tossed in neighborhoods in Parkland, Miami, Coral Gables and Northeast Miami-Dade.
Some of the flyers reference gun control and immigration while showing faces of prominent people with the Star of David on their foreheads. Just like the ones found in Jacksonville, they came in baggies weighed down with corn kernels.
Seeing the flyer was especially painful for a Northeast Miami-Dade woman because her father was a Holocaust survivor.
“To me, it’s troubling. It’s scary,” she said.
Members of the group Stop Antisemitism said that the Goyim Defense League is behind the distribution of the flyers across South Florida.
“We are just absolutely sick of it, as many residents of South Florida are, and we think it’s time that law enforcement put a stop to it,” said a spokesperson for Stop Antisemitism.
In June, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., wrote a letter to the Department of Justice to address antisemitism in several major Florida cities.
Wallace said he hopes that whoever is doing this will eventually be caught.
“I’ll do everything in my power to see that we’ll run you out of Dodge if we have to,” he said.
While leaving the flyers may not be a crime because of freedom of speech, police said, people who receive the messages should still call them as well as the Anti-Defamation League.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.