Anti-Nazi billboard gets reworked by vandal to read with anti-immigrant message

A billboard with an anti-Nazi message was vandalized last week to read instead with an anti-immigrant statement.

The original billboard message had been installed by Tacoma Against Nazis, a local anti-white supremacist group.

“There are NAZIS in our neighborhood,” the original message read. It was calling attention to alleged white supremacists who operate a business in the area, according to the group.

During the night of July 19-20 someone climbed up the structure at Pacific Avenue and South 72nd Street and pasted over “Nazis” with “Illegal Aliens.” The poster-sized patch of material also included a logo for a white supremacist group.

“It’s clear that we’ve upset the apple cart for the cronies of these white supremacists,” said Cheryl Miller, a member of TAN.

Posters of the same white supremacist group were also plastered around downtown Tacoma as well as on the door of the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender resource center during the night of June 30-July 1. Many of them contained anti-immigrant messaging.

Those posters were quickly removed by TAN members in the light of day. The billboard was similarly undone.

“The billboard company removed the messaging within hours and it will be repaired and good as new this week,” TAN member Hope Teague-Bowling said.

Not everyone in TAN feels the billboard is the best tactic, Miller said.

“There’s varying opinions as to whether this retaliation is creating even unsafer spaces for people of color in our community,” Miller said. “We seeing a response to it, for sure.”

Miller said the group is stepping up efforts by going door to door Sunday morning to let neighborhood residents know about the alleged white supremacists.

This story was originally published July 22, 2018 at 10:04 AM.