New York City Councilmember Erik Bottcher was leaving a synagogue after a menorah lighting ceremony on Monday when he saw that he had missed multiple phone calls from his neighbors. Protesters had shown up at his apartment building, vandalized the sidewalk and managed to make it inside before the building’s superintendent called the police.
Bottcher, who represents parts of Manhattan, arrived home to see anti-gay slurs written on the ground outside his building.
“When I got to the building, I saw on the sidewalk, there were really awful anti-gay messages calling me a pedophile, a sexual predator, and a groomer,” Bottcher told HuffPost.
Protesters had shown up at his district office and made their way to the floor where his office is located earlier on Monday, Bottcher said.
“They were banging on and shaking the door and screaming and yelling disgusting things for around half an hour with all my staff inside,” he said. He also tweeted that the group vandalized the hallway.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) told HuffPost that unidentified people entered the building without permission and graffitied the walls but that no arrests were made.
About two hours later, demonstrators arrived at Bottcher’s apartment building. They wrote homophobic slurs on the sidewalk in front of the building and made their way inside.
“I’ve been targeted on the internet before,” Bottcher said, “but this is the first time something like this has happened.”
The NYPD said two people — Erica Sanchez, 44, and D’Anna Morgan, 27 — were arrested for criminal trespassing.
It’s unclear if the people involved in the incident at Bottcher’s office are the same people who showed up at his home.
For months, far-right demonstrators have targeted drag queen story hours around the U.S., smearing hosts and attendees of these family-friendly events as groomers and pedophiles.
Protesters showed up outside such an event held at a library in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on Saturday. Bottcher, also at the story hour, tweeted a video of some of the protesters.
“They were there harassing and intimidating the families who were trying to go in and out,” he said. “I videotaped them saying really disgusting things and put it online.”
Conservative media pundits and Republican elected officials have largely been behind fearmongering that drag queens are grooming kids and that books with LGBTQ themes are pornographic. Still, Bottcher said he wasn’t surprised that such an incident could happen in an ostensibly liberal place like New York City.
“Even though New York is considered one of the most welcoming and diverse places in the world, we have people here who harbor extreme right-wing views,” he said. “And some of them are unhinged individuals who traffic in right-wing conspiracy theories.”
Bottcher added: “I have no doubt that these people are going to continue trying to silence us and trying to spread lies about our community. But they’re not going to be successful.”
