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About a dozen people in masks stood outside Danbury Police Headquarters at Main and East Franklin, held a banner reading “Keep New England White,” chanted “white power,” threw Nazi salutes, and filmed the whole thing as the group, Northeast Action, walked down Main Street on Saturday night.
City spokesperson Erin Henry said police did not know it happened until the group was gone. Chief Patrick Ridenhour later said the department cannot control who uses a public sidewalk, confirmed the video was real, and said he saw no immediate criminality. By Monday, Alves was at a podium in front of headquarters, chief at his side, posting “Hate has no home here!”
If the production looked familiar, it should. In April 2024 the Connecticut Centinal asked whether a fed-style “white supremacist” flash mob had just invaded Greenwich to feed a hate-task-force agenda. The group "Nationalist Social Club" (aka NSC-131) has turned up around New England before, with masks, banners, and a camera crew, then disappeared.
Northeast Action, the group that posted the Danbury video to Telegram, is described by the Counter Extremism Project as running graffiti, banner drops, and small flash-mob demonstrations, and researchers have noted similarities to NSC-131.
Northeast Action’s own Telegram post said the target was Danbury, “where nearly half of the population is Hispanic, many of them illegal,” a mayor “who claims he was ‘undocumented,’” and a council vote “to allow illegal immigrants to become police officers.” Alves championed the City Council change that lets green-card holders and DACA recipients apply to become Danbury police officers. He has said he was undocumented until his 20s and became a citizen in 2017. He opposes ICE and has said so repeatedly.
Alves said that “when American neo-Nazis are against what we’re doing, I know we’re on the right side of history.” A dozen masked outsiders have now become the moral certificate for Danbury's hiring change, the sanctuary posture, and the campaign. Alves called Northeast Action “the present-day KKK” and promised to unmask them. State Sen. Julie Kushner said the salute brought back “all of those memories of the Holocaust” and called the march “an effort to terrorize our community.” Rep. Jahana Hayes called the videos “horrifying” and reached for a quote about people who witness evil and do nothing.
State Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan posted the night of the demonstration, calling the marchers “masked cowards” and the banner white supremacy. He wrote that Danbury, Connecticut, and New England “do not belong to one race,” that hiding behind masks is cowardice, and that public officials have a duty not to “feed it, excuse it, or normalize it.” He closed by thanking Mayor Alves and saying the group does not represent Danbury.
Republican City Council Minority Leader Candace Fay said she would ask the chief for the facts around the October 3 footage, then adopted City Hall’s line: free speech is protected, “menacing” hate speech is not, and “hate has no home here.”
Danbury Republicans condemned the racism and then asked the questions City Hall skipped. When was Alves notified? When did City Hall know? Why did it take roughly 15 hours to address a march outside police headquarters? Why this city, why this week, weeks from an election, with charter changes on the ballot that would give the mayor and other officials four-year terms instead of two, and with Democrats having just voted to open the police department to DACA recipients?
Danbury Democrats answered by calling that “scapegoating” and “political deflection,” and by announcing their post went up minutes after they called Republicans out for silence.
State Rep. Aimee Berger-Girvalo issued a press release today, calling the display “vile, dangerous, and wholly unacceptable,” an attempt to turn hatred into “influence, policy, and power,” and proof that “hate has no home anywhere in our state.” She invoked the First Amendment only to say the demonstrators had told the public exactly what they are, then called for solidarity with Black, Brown, immigrant, Jewish, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ residents.
Weeks before the Northeast Action protest, Alves stood with Gov. Ned Lamont, Sen. Chris Murphy, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and Hayes while Danbury Unites for Immigrants co-founder Juan Fonseca Tapia called ICE Nazis, lectured “you all white people,” and described immigration enforcement as a project for a “white ethnostate” and “ethnic cleansing.” People chanted “F*ck ICE” and "ICE OUT"; the emotions on display were described as “righteous anger.”
Hate has no home in Danbury, unless it is aimed at federal agents or “you all white people.”
By Monday the dozen protesters were used as Alves’s justification for the police hiring change he championed. Yes, the Northeast Action banner was racist. But the double standard on hate belongs to Alves.
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