Highland Police are investigating the identity of the person who snuck a screenshot of a video with a racial epithet through an online meeting platform during the Highland Town Council meeting Monday night.
The Town Council had just sat down after the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer to start the meeting when a person using the name “John Williams” posted the screenshot through the meeting platform’s image sharing feature. In it, a Black recording artist who goes by the name London Yellow is seen staring at the camera behind the epithet; the song itself repeats the epithet many times.
Councilwoman Toya Smith, D-2nd, who is the only Black councilor, noticed the image 10 seconds after it was posted, though people watching the meeting remotely were said to have seen it on their screens immediately. Smith lost the Ward 2 race Nov. 7 to Republican Doug Turich.
“Does that say, ‘I don’t like (N-word)?’ Like, really?” Smith said, stunned. “What?”
The rest of the council and audience members reacted with shock as soon as they realized what the image said. It remained on the screen for a total of 20 seconds as IT Director Ed Dabrowski searched for the button to eliminate it.
“Did someone put that up there through file sharing?” Council Attorney John Reed asked.
“That’s ridiculous,” Councilman Mark Schocke, R-3rd, said.
Smith waited until the meeting’s Comments from the Council portion to respond to the incident.
“I’m so disgusted right now that we cannot get past racism,” the normally soft-spoken Smith said with anger. “I sat there and watched that ‘We don’t like (N-word)’ on that screen for the longest before it was taken down — it wasn’t a second, I watched it — and I was just going to wait and see who was going to say something.
“Well, I want Highland or whoever put it up there to know that this (N-word) will be coming back. I’m not defeated, but it is disgusting. And I want to thank the voters who allowed this (N-word) to make history, to serve, and I’ll be back. But … even in my time, I never thought I’d see something like this, and it’s disgusting it stayed up as long as it did.”
Schocke then said he wanted to show his support for Smith.
“What we saw earlier today was blatant racism,” Schocke said. “It’s despicable. It’s not welcome here, and we shouldn’t tolerate it in any way. Whoever did this, you’re not welcome here, and it’s a shame that in 2023, we’re still dealing with it.”
“Toya, I feel for you. You shouldn’t have to feel that way ever,” Councilman Phil Scheeringa, R-5th, added. “I think everyone up here loves you and knows that wasn’t deserved at all.”
Dabrowski apologized for the delay in getting the image off the screen, saying he’d never had to fully disable the screen-sharing function before because no one had ever used it for nefarious purposes. The function will now remain disabled unless he approves otherwise, he said.
Dabrowski also said he was able to grab enough information to make a request to the software platform to release the person’s identifying information, which he will turn over to Highland Police to handle. Highland Police Chief Ralph Potesta said he’ll file a report and assign a detective to the case.
“Zoom bombing,” where anonymous posters flood public meetings with racist comments and memes, have prompted municipal councils in North Carolina, California, and elsewhere to cancel public comment segment of their meetings.
The town was garnering criticism on Tuesday from employees and the public for leaving unedited video of the meeting up on its Facebook site. In a statement, Dabrowski and Council President Tom Black, R-4th, said the video would be taken down “in due course” but the incident happened during an open-door public session.
“What we will not do is hide this person’s disgusting, racist action by sweeping it under the rug,” the statement read. “For the moment, the video stands as a stark reminder that evil still lives among us, and that we must be vigilant in protecting our society from such heinous acts. The video will be taken down at an appropriate time and has been reported to the proper authorities for investigatory purposes.”
Smith isn’t the only politician of color to experience racism in town. Former Town Council and State Senate candidate Martin Del Rio said he experienced it firsthand when he ran against Schocke in 2019.
“When I ran for town council, I was marching with my supporters in the 4th of July Parade, and several people began yelling ‘Go back to where you came from,’ and calling my 3-year-old son who was with me an ‘anchor baby,’” Del Rio told the Post-Tribune. “Even though I’m a U.S. citizen born in Munster, a combat veteran and my son was only 3 years old at the time, it didn’t stop them. My incident could easily be chalked up to drunk ignorant residents or maybe visitors from out of town. But with Councilwoman Smith, it seems to be more personal because of the fact that it mostly likely came from a resident, so she will never feel comfortable in her own community.”
Smith said after the meeting that while she knows racism is lobbed at people every day, she has never experienced something so direct. She too believes the attack was meant specifically for her, even though she recognizes that would be hard to prove.
“I feel like I was voted in, and now, the council is now back to five White guys. That’s why diversity training is so important,” Smith said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.