Anyone who calls Nashua home, regardless of their political beliefs or party affiliation, should be outraged at what’s happening in our city right now.

As many of you know, I’ve been working with various coalition partners to organize protests in solidarity with our Board of Education. We’ve been gathering at their public meetings to show support for truth, science and anti-racist education. Each time, we have been met by extremists: anti-maskers, transphobic agitators and self-proclaimed Proud Boys.

Last night, NSC-131 – the local group of Neo-Nazis that defaced our Positive Street Art murals downtown, unraveled a “White Lives Matter” banner in front of our City Hall and targeted our State Rep. Manny Espitia online – marched onto Nashua High School North’s campus and demonstrated for nearly 2 full hours. They yelled racist, homophobic and anti-semitic slurs at our crowd of allies. They were physically violent at times. When I asked Nashua police officers to protect our group from their threats, they told me that there were “hateful, ignorant things being said on both sides.”

To be clear, our supporters were chanting “Go home fascists” while the Nazis yelled back homophobic slurs and screamed about white power. No rational person would equate the two.

White supremacist groups are targeting our community for a reason. Their actions are strategic, not coincidental. They’ve chosen to protest our board of education based on a lie about critical race theory being taught in our schools, and many of the politicians in our state who perpetuated anti-“divisive concepts” rhetoric must take responsibility for the monster they’ve helped create.

Nashua is the most diverse community in New Hampshire, and our BIPOC residents deserve to feel safe in their homes. Our students and educators deserve to feel safe in their schools.

If you have been a silent community member, the time to speak up is right now. Join us at the next Board of Educating meeting, and every Board of Education meeting after that. If we say that this isn’t who we are, then we have to show up and prove it.