East Rockers Reckon With Neo-Nazi Demonstration

City police have connected the nine neo-Nazi agitators who showed up on State Street earlier this month to two white supremacist regional groups — based on social media posts revealing that those organizations had specifically targeted Never Ending Books for being ​“pro-communist.”

Those were a few of the revelations to emerge Wednesday night at a community meeting led by East Rock/Downtown Alder Eli Sabin and city police Sgt. Jarrell Lowery. 

The meeting took place at Michelina’s Apizza and Ristorante at 858 State St., and saw 30 East Rock residents and State Street corridor business owners turn out to publicly reckon with the Feb. 8 incident.

As recounted by Never Ending Books Co-Chair Elena Augusewicz, that was when nine neo-Nazis, donning black masks and khaki pants, descended on State Street. They threw up Nazi salutes, shouting homophobic slurs and chanting, ​“Whose streets? Our streets!” and ​“NSC-131” — an abbreviation for the white supremacist cell ​“Nationalist Social Club” that operates throughout New England. After police arrived and told the agitators to disperse, and community residents made it clear there was no place for that hate, they disappeared down the road, further into East Rock.

After Augusewicz’s remarks, Lowery read the police report from the incident, which pulled information from social media posts by the two neo-Nazi groups — NSC-131 and the New Jersey-based Atlantic Nationalist Club.

“They had been posting on social media that they were gonna come, and they wanted to target Never Ending Books, because supposedly the store is pro-communist,” Lowery said. ​“So they were coming to basically disrupt operations at Never Ending Books.”

Responding to the ​“pro-communist” label, Augusewicz told the crowd that the bookstore lets local groups host events at the space for free using a first come, first served policy, and that among many organizations cycling through is the ​“Communist Conversation” reading group as well as members of the New Haven Branch of the Revolutionary Communists of America.

The all-volunteer free bookstore (recently reincarnated as a nonprofit art and performance space) has been operating out of the storefront at 810 State St. since 1991 without incident, and the New Haven Police Department has not yet determined how exactly the groups decided to trek there from other corners of New England and New Jersey. Two weekends ago when the neo-Nazi clubs showed up, Augusewicz said, the bookstore was hosting an avant-garde jazz night. 

Attendees at Wednesday’s community meeting had their theories. Chris Garaffa, president of the community program Trans Haven, speculated that the white supremacist groups had picked the bookstore out of a hat by searching ​“communists New Haven.” ​“Maybe that was the first thing they found but that’s not why they targeted,” said Garaffa. ​“They targeted because they were searching for something to target […] and they knew that New Haven is full of people from diverse backgrounds, from varying political positions and orientations and histories and full of this rich culture here.” 

Mike York, a U.S. Army veteran and masters student at Yale, said that the whole thing was a ​“cowardly” publicity stunt to drum up exposure for the white supremacist groups in an effort to boost their numbers. ​“The people who yelled mottos and slogans in masks are cowards, period,” York said. ​“They have video of this event pinned on their Twitter account, and they filmed everything, and they filmed them across the street, actually. So this was a staged event. It’s currency for social media. They’re trying to get new recruits.” But, he added, the groups didn’t stick around long enough to escalate things or do physical damage. Once the cops came, they scattered. 

Still, many at the meeting worried that something like the incident on Feb. 8 could transpire again in the area and escalate even further the next time, hurting community life and business on the commercial strip. Alison DeRenzi, the owner of L’Orcio, the Italian restaurant at 806 State St., said that when the neo-Nazi groups started chanting down the block two weekends ago, she locked down the restaurant and called the police. ​“I had to stop some guests from going out to yell and scream [at the neo-Nazi demonstrators], because that compromised the safety of everyone in my building,” she said.

DeRenzi said that she’s ​“never really had any issues” in the past 22 years of sharing the block with Never Ending Books and had donated to them in the past, but the incident made her question whether the store’s decision to host ​“any sort of radical organization” would attract future confrontations. 

She was especially concerned by the fact that other mask-clad counter demonstrators from the Revolutionary Communists of America showed up on the night of Feb. 8 to face off with the neo-Nazi groups, adding to the possibility of street violence. Never Ending’s Augusewicz said in response that most of the groups that meet at the bookstore are musicians, artists, and LGBTQ organizations, without explicitly political bents, and that the bookstore wasn’t the one who called in the counter demonstrators two weekends ago. 

Wrapping up the meeting, attendees discussed how best to move forward. In the wake of the incident, the NHPD has been increasing patrols in the area and monitoring the neo-Nazi groups’ social media accounts. So far, police have not been able to identify any of the participants in the demonstration by name, face, or license plate. As the police monitoring continues, the East Rock neighbors and business owners who showed up to Michelina’s on Wednesday now plan to create a WhatsApp group to keep everyone apprised of what’s going on in the Upper State Street section. And Augusewicz said that the bookstore hasn’t been deterred by the neo-Nazi chants and salutes. More people showed up to Never Ending’s board game night this week than ever before, she said, to applause.

“I think it’s really important that we not shy away from our values and we continue to stand up for what we believe in, but I also think it’s important that we trust the police department to de-escalate situations,” said Sabin to close the night. ​“And so I think it could be worth a conversation with some of the folks who were there that night to make sure that people have the right understanding about how to approach these issues, because our absolute number one priority is to make sure that nobody gets hurt.”