A white supremacist group may have set its sights on a small Burlington County town, according to the town’s mayor.
Stickers carrying messages deemed racist and sexist were discovered on Main Street in Bordentown City on Aug. 8. The stickers also have the website for the New Jersey European Heritage Association printed on them.
“They picked the wrong town,” says Mayor James Lynch. “You're entitled to your freedom of speech, but don't let a sticker control your life to the degree that you won't talk to your neighbor or you try and split the town. And maybe that's what they're trying to do I don't know.”
Lynch says that his residents are united against messages of hate.
“You don't have to shoot each other. You don't have to curse each other. You don't have to hate each other, right? You have to work together and our town works together…This is small-town America. You're looking at it,” Lynch says.
The New Jersey European Heritage Association has been deemed a white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL says that the group promotes racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance. Police are investigating and have notified the Department of Homeland Security.
“We're not a prejudiced town. We have every diverse everything here. You name it we have it,” says Lynch.
A sticker saying ‘Feminism is Cancer’ was found outside the store Broomstick Betty's. Owner Jacquie Lavin, a self-proclaimed witch, says customers have asked if she thinks the stickers were targeting her.
“I don't think it matters. I think hate is hate. And I don't feel personally attacked. I feel just as a human being I'm offended," Lavin says.
Residents say the group's message won't resonate in Bordentown City.
"It's Nazi speech. This is going backward in time to have the mentality that we should all be loving our race only and saving our race only,” says Lavin.
Mayor Lynch, who also serves as police commissioner, says whoever put up the stickers could only be written a summons for vandalism.