A group in Evansville spent part of last week chalking rainbows, flowers and messages of love on the sidewalk outside their town hall. Their aim was to cover up hateful symbols that had showed up in the same spot the day before.
According to the Casper Star-Tribune, a local man covered the sidewalks outside the Evansville Municipal Building with chalk swastikas around the time of the town council’s June 9 meeting.
The man, Jeremy Brown, was angry about the town hall displaying pride flags. Those flags had been donated by Casper Pride, a nonprofit that coordinates Pride Month events every June in the Oil City.
A couple dozen residents responded the next day, bringing pizza, sidewalk chalk, friends and children for an impromptu Pride Month party. They covered the swastikas with colorful symbols of hearts, kites and rainbow flags, adding messages like, "Love wins."
Elliott Hinkle was one of the residents at the impromptu gathering. He said it "felt pretty powerful" to see such a response from the community.
"What a peaceful way to respond to such hate, to literally just cover it in chalk and make beautiful images," he said. "By the end, the whole front sidewalk was covered in different images and phrases, like, 'Hate's not allowed here.' 'No Nazis in Evansville,' I think was one of them," Hinkle said.
The man behind the swastikas told the town council that he was not a Nazi himself but would continue to use Nazi symbols to protest the presence of any "ideology" on government property.
"When there's an ideology [that] the council or certain members of the council, that they like, it takes precedence over everyone else," Brown said during his public comment June 9. "Who cares about the religious views of the people in Evansville who don't agree with pride, whether they be Muslims, Catholics, Christians, or even the people who just downright don't agree with it at all?"
Brown said he had ordered Nazi flags online and would plant them outside if the Pride flags weren't removed.
Hinkle said comparing Pride flags with Nazi flags sets up a false equivalence. While the former represents acceptance for a marginalized group, the latter represents a fascist regime that targeted and murdered LGBTQ+ individuals.
"[The pride flag] is a symbol of acceptance and freedom to be yourself, and beauty and diversity and not excluding people because of who they are," Hinkle said. "Nothing about those flags brought violence to Evansville. His response brought violence and threats to people's lives with this hate message."
