NAACP hopes to ‘break the hate’ in Rochester through community event

ROCHESTER — On Saturday afternoon, community members and local leaders gathered to "break the hate" in Rochester during an event put on by the local branch of the NAACP.

The event, titled "Break the Hate – A Community Forum to Create Unity and Activate Change in the Face of Hate," included speakers and a panel discussion to discuss the recent racist activities in the Rochester community and what can be done to prevent them.

Among the people invited was Christian Picciolini, a former extremist who has since dedicated his life to preventing more hate. He spoke about his time in a white supremacy group and the activities he participated in while a part of this organization. He also spoke about what led him down that path.

"I was desperate for a sense of identity, community, and purpose, something that we're all looking for in life," Picciolini said. "Every single one of us, at some point in our life, we are searching for a sense of identity, community and purpose and in that group, which happened to be America's first white supremacist skinhead group in the 1980s, I found those three things."

He said it's important to help young people find a sense of identity, community and purpose at an early age.

During his many years of being associated with a white supremacy group, it became his sole identity. He was even making a living off of this group and the propaganda around it. His job was to create chaos and things like that are happening in Rochester, pointing to an incident earlier this year when a pedestrian bridge near Century High School was vandalized with a racial slur. The Rochester Police Department later identified four teenagers responsible for the act, but Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem said his office opted not to charge the teens.

"... There are two things that extremists love," Picciolini said. "They love silence and they love violence. When it comes to a response from you, they come to our communities to elicit those two things, either we say nothing and do nothing and they continue, or we're violent to them, and they get exactly what they want because they become the victims."

Picciolini was joined by five other people who answered questions about the community after his speech. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, William "Bud" Whitehorn, Manal Abbadi Whitfield, Dr. Vera Ndumbe and Ani Roy tackled the attendees' questions about what can be done to promote positive change in the community.

Rochester Public Schools Superintendent Kent Pekel spoke about the measures being taken to start conversations about race in schools.

"We do not know who those students are, and that's actually a good thing," Pekel said. "We want a division between the juvenile justice system and the education system."

Pekel said RPS had conversations with "every single student" about why the district does not tolerate actions like that.

"Some of those conversations were really powerful and very well done and some show the journey that we actually have to make," he said.

The bridge incident was not the only hate-related crime in the last year. Recently, Rep. Kim Hicks, a first-term DFL member of the Minnesota House, had her home in Rochester vandalized with hate speech and swastikas.

Hicks and many other elected officials were present to support the NAACP's efforts, but one panelist, Whitfield, hopes to see them at more events, not just during election season.

"If you want change it starts legislatively," Whitfield said. "You need to start voting for the people that care about the issues that you're passionate about. All of it comes down to legislation, and there's a lot of people in this room that are elected officials, they'll show up right now because it's election season."

The event also helped promote two of the NAACP's campaigns in Rochester. The "Not in Our Town" and the "Love Wins" campaigns were launched in response to the rise in documented incidents of racism, bullying, harassment, hate crimes and violence against Black people, multiracial families and people of color, according to an NAACP press release.

The hope is to motivate and inspire people in the area to educate themselves and fight back against hate. The core principles of these campaigns are:

The NAACP is planning more campaigns and events to help bring everyone in the community together.