A tense Birmingham Public Schools board meeting in Michigan on Tuesday evening about a mask mandate for students was interrupted when an anti-masker performed the Nazi salute and chanted “Heil Hitler.”
After the board and superintendent announced that students, staff, and teachers will be required to wear masks when school begins, the crowd of parents packed into two rooms, some maskless, got furious.
According to the Detroit Metro Times, anti-maskers at the meeting booed and insulted board members and individuals who spoke up in favor of mandating masks for school children in the district.
When a Black woman and a Jewish woman got up to speak during the public comments portion of the meeting, a man in the audience flashed the Nazi salute and repeated “Heil Hitler.” Two men behind him reportedly joined in.
The man was immediately removed from the meeting and questioned. Police are investigating to determine whether he committed a hate crime.
“Birmingham Public Schools denounces and will not tolerate any act of racism, disrespect, violence, and/or inequitable treatment of any person, including actions and statements made at Board of Education meetings. It is in situations when people feel strongly about a matter, and emotions run high, that we most need to model appropriate behaviors for our students,” Superintendent Embekka Roberson said in a statement. “Last night’s meeting did not consistently display the behaviors that we expect from our students and community.”
Two Democratic state lawmakers also condemned the use of the Nazi salute and the phrase.
Rep. Mari Manoogian, D-Birmingham, said, “I am shocked and appalled to see the use of racist, Nazi language and imagery in our community, particularly by parents attending a school board meeting. Let me be clear: racism, anti-Semitism, and any other forms of bigotry and hate have no room in our discourse or our community, and I forcefully condemn the use of this phrase and gesture at yesterday’s Board of Education meeting…. the use of Nazi phrases and gestures is beyond the pale in any context; it disrespects the memory of those murdered in the Holocaust and dishonors the values of our community.”
“The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored persecution and annihilation of European Jews and others,” State Sen. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, said. “As someone with family members who suffered heinous and violent deaths at the hands of Nazis, I can assure this BPS community member that the Holocaust is not a school board meeting.”
Shocking as it is, this is not the first time an anti-masker flashed the Nazi salute at a board meeting. Earlier this month a Pittsburgh man performed the Nazi salute after board members approved a universal mask mandate.
