PEARLAND, Texas – One hundred and counting. That’s the number of antisemitic flyers people who live in one Pearland neighborhood say they found littering their yards on Sunday.
People in the Southdown community say they first discovered Ziplock bags filled with nasty flyers on Sunday. Since then, neighbors have been combing the community and found dozens more scattered in driveways.
They say they respect freedom of speech, but this type of hateful rhetoric is not welcome there.
“Whether it’s Neo-Nazis or someone who’s trying to stir something up, either way, it’s disgusting,” said Mitch Canaday.
Canaday said he considers the neighborhood that he’s lived in for about two years “family-oriented” and was appalled by what he found popping up in yards throughout the community yesterday.
“First of all, I wouldn’t want someone else’s kid running across something like that, especially with the really disgusting language some of this has on it,” Canaday said. “I got curious, and I started searching other people’s streets… I think I picked up around 40.”
Another neighbor, who didn’t want to be identified, said he originally found about 25, and then several more right after our interview.
“That’s something that we don’t need in our neighborhood,” Canaday said.
Such flyers popping up are not uncommon, according to Southwest Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Mark Toubin.
“First six months of 2022 in the Houston and San Antonio area we had one - at least one (occurrence) a week,” Toubin said.
He said the perpetrators often use the flyers, or as he’d like to call them, “trash,” as a recruitment tool and a way to stir things up while raising money for their cause.
“The reason that we urge individuals to contact law enforcement, even though there may or may not have been a crime, we want law enforcement to conduct an appropriate investigation to determine if, in fact, there was a crime,” Toubin said.
“There does cross a line when it starts becoming a nuisance. We can at least get the guys for littering,” Canaday said.
Neighbors said the Pearland Police Department has been very receptive to their concerns, arriving within minutes after they got the first report.
Pearland police said anyone who finds antisemitic flyers should give investigators a call at 281-997-4100, report it through Facebook or visit Anti-Defamation League.
