Defacement of  BLM Sign - Copake/Ancram - June 2, 2021

Report from local resident: "Someone put up this altered BLM poster on Route 7A on the road between Copake and Ancram.  It is not just defaced.  It was taken, then altered by painting over the "black", letting it dry, and then painting "white" over it, then taken and nailed up by the side of the road."

“White Lives Matter” is a white supremacist phrase that originated in early 2015 as a racist response to the Black Lives Matter movement, which arose to protest against police brutality against African-Americans.

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Since 2015, white supremacists in several states, especially members of the Texas-based white supremacist group Aryan Renaissance Society, have promoted the slogan “White Lives Matter” with flyers and protests, forming a loose campaign to popularize the phrase. - Anti-Defamation League

Q-anon (?) sign along Niverville Road - March 6, 2021

Is it Q-anon?  

"donate-your-organs-in-Wuhan" or

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Is it anti-immigration?  

"getha-phuk-outa-r-country"

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Or, is it just to be obnoxious and hateful?

In the past year, this and similar signs have been nailed to trees around Chatham Center, Malden Bridge and Old Chatham. 

And, along CR 21 going west from Valatie - April 4, 2021

B.C.L.D.D.

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BIDEN CHINA LOVERS

and DEMOCRATS for the DEVIL

Patriot Front stickers in Chatham, Philmont & Germantown

Town of Germantown - July 3, 2021

Palatine Park

photo - left

Read LOCAL NEWS about PATRIOT FRONT recruitment efforts - including placing stickers and posters throughout the Hudson Valley.

Village of Chatham - February 17, 2021

Park Row in front of the old Masonic Lodge

scan of sticker - left

Village of Philmont - February  2021

Two Patriot Front stickers along Main Street

Statewide Leadership & Local Membership  (2009-2021)

Just four years ago - in 2017 - Columbia County was home to the leadership of the New York Oath Keepers.

At that time, the leader of the New York Oath Keepers was Town of Chatham resident, the late John Wallace, who was also the Chair of the Town of Chatham Republican Committee.

Oath Keepers Rally for Hudson City Police -  August 2016

"Chief, even though you participated and are thanking the attendees, I'm glad to hear you are not endorsing the Oathkeeper rally and the political rhetoric behind it."

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"It would have been easy to mistake your behavior as supporting the organization and the text that the event organizers publicly posted." - Michael Chameides, Supervisor 3rd Ward 

Far-Right Militancy in County Sheriff Departments

The movement formed around an organization called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association is a phenomenon rarely, if ever, seen in the United States - a concerted, long-term effort to recruit law enforcement officers into the broader anti-government Patriot movement.

 - Southern Poverty Law Center -