The International Action Center (AIC) led a car caravan through a south Buffalo neigborhood last night protesting a racially motivated attack which took place there over the weekend. The cars carried signs which read "Stop Racist Attacks" and "No Tolerance For the KKK" as they drove through the Seneca-Babcock neighborhood where the assault took place.
Art Robinson, a local block club president, says he feels racism is being perpetrated in the area by outsiders, like drug dealers. He told WGRZ, "I want people to know we are all one neighborhood, we should work together." Robinson added, “I don't care if you're black, white, yellow, green, red, it don't matter. We all live here; we should all have a quality of life to live together.”
Not all of Robinson’s neighbors seemed as concerned.
A local resident identified only as Mike told WKBW, “To them, we're the enemy. The signs are wrong. There's no racism here. I'm not KKK, no one here is KKK. I'm an Irish-Catholic. They hate me just as much as they do blacks."
Another local resident, Tristen, said, “Well they are attacking us with this crap that they got on their signs. What kind of crap is that? They say that we're racism (sic) and they're not attacking us? That hurts my feelings when I hear I'm a racist.”
Tristen and Mike were part of a group of locals that verbally clashed with the protesters in the car caravan.
Early Saturday morning, Buffalo police say a hate crime was committed in the Seneca-Babcock neighborhood. Police say five men beat, yelled racial slurs and threw bricks at the home of the victim, Brian Hunt whose family has now moved out of the neighborhood.
But still, many in the neighborhood refer to the attack as “self defense.”
The weekend assault, however, was just the latest incident.
The truth of the matter, according to IAC is, “Over and over in recent months, African-American families in the Seneca-Babcock neighborhood of Buffalo have withstood smashed windows, thrown bricks, screaming threats and name-calling, and now brutal beatings---from gangs of white racist youth. KKK graffiti are defacing the neighborhood.”
IAC’s Beverly Hiestand said,“Bricks going through people's windows, racist slurs to black people walking down the street, people being kept out of the store by youth and so forth because they are people of color. Told if they don't get out of the neighborhood they're going to be killed."
The Buffalo News reports today that police have arrested five white men and charged them in the beating. Charged with felony second-degree assault and misdemeanor criminal possession of a weapon were:
• James P. Tracy, 21, of the first block of Imson Street.
• Henry M. Rytel, 20, of the 200 block of Babcock Street.
• Sean M. Braven, 19, of the first block of Marion Street.
• Matthew J. Helmbrecht, 16, of the 100 block of Orlando Street.
• Richard B. Schutt, 22, of the first block of Stephenson Street, West Seneca.
Sources: WKBW (Buffalo), WGRZ (Buffalo), IMC (Buffalo), Buffalo News
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