A protest by a radical anti-Chabad group held in Crown Heights on the Tuesday anniversary of a 1991 antisemitic riot was met with defiance by African-American residents and Jewish neighborhood watch groups.
Crown Heights Bites Back organized the rally ostensibly as a vigil for Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old from the Guyanese immigrant community who was killed in a 1991 traffic accident by a driver attempting to follow Chabad leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s motorcade. A three-day riot ensued, in which two people were killed and Jewish homes and stores were attacked.
The radical group claimed on Instagram on Monday that the community had yet to receive justice for the incident, asserting that Cato was “brutally” killed and that his cousin was wounded by “Zionist white supremacists from Chabad.”
A table with candles, flowers, and a picture of Cato was set up at President Street and Utica Avenue, and Chabad-Lubavitch public relations representative Yaacov Behrman shared on X/Twitter that activists distributed pamphlets calling for Haitian, Guyanese, and Jamaican-American residents of Crown Heights to “rise up” and emulate the 1991 riot.
“First, they will come for our children, our elders, our poor and abused brothers and sisters. They will try to kill us, exploit us, raise our rents, and evict us. But we refuse to be powerless,” read a pamphlet shared on social media by Behrman. “We cannot liberate ourselves from white supremacy until we rise up to tear it all down. We must defend each other with our lives. If we remember 1991 and look out for each other, we stand a fighting chance.”
Despite the radical rhetoric, the rally ended without much incident. Behrman, who was present at the site, recounted that a small incident occurred when a Jewish community member sought to light a candle in memory of Cato but was stopped by masked men. Behrman also related how Caribbean-American residents had confronted the masked men, stating they didn’t want them there and that the radicals were trying to inflame tensions with their neighbors.
The Crown Heights Shomrim neighborhood watch group also stated that the “small fringe group spreading antisemitic rhetoric” was “firmly rejected by the local African-American and Jewish residents of our community.”
The group said on social media that while the vigil was “intended to sow division and hate,” it was unsuccessful in part due to the presence of the New York Police Department and the neighborhood watch. The NYPD also said on Wednesday that the demonstration concluded without incident.
Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday condemned attempts to “reopen old wounds.”
“The Crown Heights community has come a long way. Today, they are united against hate,” Adams said on X. “We won’t let a hateful fringe group hijack that unity with antisemitic vitriol, disguising it as activism.”
New York City Council Member Crystal Hudson, State Senator Zellnor Myrie, and Assembly Member Brian Cunningham issued a joint statement on Tuesday slamming the pretense of a vigil for the 1991 tragedies to spread antisemitic rhetoric and sow division among communities.
“Any individual or organization that aims to stoke the flames of division and rewrite history in a blatantly antisemitic fashion has no place in our community,” said the politicians representing Crown Heights. “We must continue our work to ensure that all residents of Crown Heights can thrive in a community with one another.”
A radical antisemitic, anti-Chabad group
In April, Crown Heights Bites Back and affiliated radical groups called to “flood” the streets in front of the Chabad headquarters with protests.
The group described Chabad as “Zionist Nazis” and cast the non-Zionist, apolitical hassidic Jewish movement as an oppressive alien force in the New York neighborhoods. It called for the prioritization of “street justice” in future demonstrations at Chabad HQ and “other Zionist zones.”
“Zionism is an ideology of Jewish exceptionalism and supremacy that structures and positions all Jewish people as entitled to certain privileges, which ostensibly do not apply to other people around them,” CHBB said on Instagram.
“It is the same ideology that justifies the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and displaces our elderly Black neighbors [and] community members in Flatbush and Crown Heights. We must confront all forms of this Nazi ideology in all of its manifestations.”
Jewish and non-Jewish residents, Crown Heights Shomrim, and the NYPD were also out in force during the April protests, which also ended without violence.