As she made her way down her driveway in Sparks Glencoe to wait for her son to be dropped off from school last week, Lauren Durfey spotted a Ziploc bag.
It was colorful, she noticed. She picked it up and looked closer, and saw a flyer displaying antisemitic propaganda inside, accompanied by something that looked like animal food.
“I was shocked and disgusted to see something like that,” Durfey said.
But she was glad she’d spotted it before her son, who stepped off the bus just minutes later. When the 7-year-old asked Durfey what it was, she told him it was trash.
“It’s just disturbing to have something hit that close to home where my son could have seen it and read it,” she said. “And that’s the last thing I want.”
Over the last few months, other residents in areas of north Baltimore County — and more recently, parts of the city — have encountered antisemitic, white supremacist or anti-LGBTQ+ flyers.
Since January, Baltimore County Police have received at least eight reports related to antisemitic propaganda, a spokesperson said. The Anti-Defamation League has received around six reports since late May of antisemitic flyers in areas of the county including Timonium, Sparks, Baldwin and Monkton, according to Meredith Weisel, regional director of the ADL’s D.C. office, which oversees Maryland, Virginia, D.C. and North Carolina.
The flyers were put in Ziploc bags, and Weisel said the group that is believed to have distributed them often adds corn, rocks, pebbles or anything heavy enough to weigh them down.
Recently, flyers with anti-LGBTQ+ messages have also turned up in Baltimore City. On Wednesday morning, Baltimore Police responded to the 6200 block of Sycamore Road in Cedarcroft for “papers scattered throughout the neighborhood” that were linked to a hate group, a spokesperson said.
The incident is being investigated as a hate crime, according to the spokesperson.
The story continues at the Baltimore Banner: Residents report hateful flyers being distributed in Baltimore City and County
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