A South Philadelphia resident reports being chased by men who hurled beer bottles and antigay slurs at him last week.
Peter Andrew Danzig was walking home near 10th Street and Oregon Avenue last Thursday night when he encountered a group of visibly intoxicated men, he told Philadelphia Magazine. The men were participating in a birthday celebration for the U.S. Marines at nearby Cookie’s Tavern. One man reportedly asked Danzig where the closest “titty bar” was, and when Danzig replied he didn’t know, the group began harassing him.
According to a report police provided to PGN, as Danzig walked away, someone in the group threw a beer bottle at his right leg. He turned toward them and, when several of the men started approaching him, he started running, the report said. Another beer bottle was thrown in his direction, which broke in the street.
The report said that, as Danzig was running, he heard the men “begin to yell derogatory names at him” in regard to his sexual orientation.
According to the police report, Danzig did not sustain any injuries.
He told Philadelphia Magazine he eventually lost the group as he ran down Oregon Avenue.
According to the police report, the three suspects are all white men of unknown ages. The first had brown hair and a brown beard and was wearing a red-checkered button-up shirt. Another had blonde hair in a buzz cut and was wearing a gray sweatshirt. The third had brown hair and was wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt.
Danzig did not respond to a request for comment.
He told Philadelphia Magazine it wasn’t clear if the attack was in any way related to last week’s controversial presidential election.
Mayor Jim Kenney issued a statement after the incident that read in part, “It is difficult to express the full extent of the devastation and anger I felt upon learning of this hate crime. To the victim, you have my sincerest apologies, both as the mayor of this city and as someone who resided in South Philadelphia for most of my life. I will do everything I can to ensure that neither you nor any other Philadelphian feels unsafe because of who they love.
“Now more than ever we must be focused finding unity and common ground with our fellow Philadelphians, not letting hate divide us,” Kenney continued, seemingly alluding to the national division stemming from the election of Donald Trump as president.
Within the first three days after Trump was named president-elect, Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 200 incidents of “election-related harassment and intimidation across the country,” including several in the Philadelphia region. By the end of this week, that number had grown to 437.
Rue Landau, executive director of Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations said her agency has noticed a definite increase in calls since the election.
“Yes, we have seen a significant uptick in the crimes and incidents reported to us,” Landau said. “Some of them are LGBT-related, others are based on race, national origin and religion and sex.”
Landau said PCHR officials have been in touch with police regarding the attack on Danzig and are working to connect with the victim as well.
Landau explained that the agency accepts formal complaints regarding violations of the Fair Practices Ordinance, the city’s nondiscrimination law, as well as fields informal calls regarding bias incidents in the community. In the latter instance, the agency typically follows up with the police department about its investigation and dispatches its community-relations team to work with the affected communities.
“We’ll send out a member of our community-relations division who gathers information from all affected parties and enacts a response,” Landau said. “That could be facilitated community discussions, mediation or a larger response of partnering with law enforcement, civic organizations and other community leaders to quell the tensions in the neighborhood.”
Last week, PCHR set up a hotline for people to notify the agency of any instances of discrimination, apart from filing a formal complaint. Landau said the effort had already been in the works but was jumpstarted by the aftermath of the election.
She noted that the agency also sees the hotline as a tool to address instances of racism and discrimination in Gayborhood bars.
The hotline is 215-686-2856; reports can be made anonymously, Landau said.
“I urge everybody to report anything to us,” she said. “It’s important that we track and monitor any bias or hate-related incidents in the city so we can see trends and make sure we have the proper response to what’s happening in each neighborhood.”
The morning after the election, two swastikas were found graffitied on a South Philadelphia storefront. One had the sign incorporated as the “T” in “Trump,” and the other included the words: “Sieg Heil 2016.” Also in South Philadelphia, a woman had “Black B****” spraypainted onto her car. While on the way into work Wednesday, a PGN staffer was harassed by a man on a bicycle who yelled, “Trump won. F*** all of you Latinos.”
Incidents were also reported at local college and high-school campuses.
At Villanova University, a black woman reported being knocked to the ground by a group of white men who yelled “Trump” repeatedly. African-American freshmen at University of Pennsylvania were added to an online group chat that advocated for their lynching and used racial epithets. That incident was eventually traced to students at University of Oklahoma.
Racist graffiti was found at Lebanon Valley College’s Women’s Services and Gender Resource Center, a residence for women of color.
A Drexel University professor had her car, which had Hillary Clinton signs on it, keyed in South Philadelphia with the words, “It’s our p**** now, b****,” seemingly referring to Trump’s now-infamous quote about sexually assaulting women.
At Council Rock North High School in Newtown, there were a number of reported acts of vandalism and threats, including graffiti targeting LGBT and Latinx people. Council Rock administrators issued a letter to parents last week with details about the incidents and held a community meeting on Monday.
At York County School of Technology, several students carried Trump signs in the hallway and chanted “white power.” Several students were subsequently suspended.
In a statement, Gov. Tom Wolf said he directed the state Department of Education to dispatch resources to the school and any others where such incidents occur. PDE deployed a crisis-management team to the school and is working with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the school on a plan to address racism and harassment, Wolf added.
Trump told Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” that he hadn’t heard about any such incidents other than “one or two instances.”
When pressed about the issue, Trump said, “If it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.”
Trump was criticized by opponents for not issuing a formal statement about the seeming uptick in hate-crime incidents in the last week, though he has Tweeted criticizing those protesting the results of the election.
Protests have continued almost every night in Philadelphia since the election.