The Newtown Rotary Club Board unanimously and unequivocally condemns the activities of any individual or group that spreads racism, intolerance, and division in our town.

For the second time in less than two weeks, I have been subjected to the abominable experience of having to listen to the racist hatemongering of people infiltrating a Zoom meeting. Two weeks ago, I took part in a Zoom town hall with our Congresswoman Jahana Hayes. The vitriol directed at our congresswoman last week made me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed that she was subjected to such an attack in our town. To her credit she kept her composure and carried on with the meeting. I left Hayes’ meeting feeling like we should have addressed what happened and wondered how could any person say such things to such an exceptionally accomplished person, or any person, for that matter. Most depressingly, how could this have happened in Newtown, a place that I have called home for the past 27 years and raised my four children — it felt intolerable to have this happen here. After the town hall I promised myself that if that would ever happen again, I would not remain silent. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would happen again so soon.

Last week, while attending the Non Profit Council as a co-representative for the Rotary Club, it happened again. This time I spoke up because I recognized in the attendants what I had seen and personally experienced during the Hayes town hall — disbelief, discomfort and a reflexive need for avoidance. As I looked at the screen in front of me, seeing the same perplexed looks and the obvious discomfort, I suddenly realized that we were going to finish our meeting and avoid what had just happened, so I did the uncomfortable thing: I spoke up. We can no longer avoid the discussion, as uncomfortable as it is; we need to identify this as a reality in our town and denounce it whenever and wherever we come across it. This occurrence is not an anomaly. It is part of a pattern that seems to be gaining a foothold in our town.

For instance, this past year:

*a synagogue was defaced with anti Semitic slurs;

*white supremacist propaganda was found stuck on light posts in downtown Sandy Hook;

*our high school students of color shared their painful experiences in Newtown during the Black Lives Matter rallies;

*some of the misinformed and apathetic responses [appeared] in The Bee to the BLM movement;

*there was a racial incident during a virtual meeting of 9th graders at Newtown High School, just last week.

The act of hacking a meeting to spread a message of racism and hatred is troubling but curable via safety measures in our Zoom meetings. We need to address the spirit that elicits this type of behavior. It is simply just not tolerable. As divided as we are in this country and even in our town, this hatred is something that any decent person, regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation can agree on as being intolerable. We need to face the fact that we do not live in a bubble and we are not immune to the hatred and intolerance working its way into Newtown. We need to recognize it, confront it, and work in unison to stifle it whenever and wherever it manifests itself. We cannot remain silent, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes us, for doing so is implicitly condoning and fostering hate and intolerance.

I write this as a member and representative of the Newtown Rotary Club. We welcome any other individual or organizations to work toward condemning and arresting this type of behavior. At the end of the day, we cannot be a “Nicer [In] Newtown” by just saying it; we need to first take care of one another, work in unison to find ways to fight the hatred, and support inclusiveness to earn the sobriquet “Nicer [In] Newtown.”