Highland Park water tower defaced with racist graffiti

Highland Park’s water tower, which looms over two major highways in Detroit, has been defaced with white supremacist propaganda.

It’s just the latest in a series of racist messages being posted across metro Detroit.

Motorists say the messages are at least several days old and still have not been removed by Highland Park, a predominantly Black city.

Both messages are painted in red and blue lettering and are scrawled over previous graffiti that read, “Free Palestine.”

One of the messages reads, “Patriot Front,” which is a racist hate group that advocates the formation of a white ethnostate. The Patriot Front has increased its presence in metro Detroit, posting racist propaganda on light poles in the area.

The other message reads, “America First,” which is one of Donald Trump’s favorite slogans. The phrase became a popular racist, antisemitic slogan after World War I and was frequently used by the KKK.

These slogans have been increasingly popping up in metro Detroit. One of the groups spreading the hateful messages is the Great Lakes Active Club, a Michigan-based neofascist group whose members are committed to becoming “white warriors.” The group is increasing its presence in metro Detroit by holding mixed-martial arts training, burning anti-fascist flags, and spreading hateful propaganda in the form of banners, stickers, and graffiti.

In October, the group posted photos on social media showing its members placing a banner above a freeway in Commerce Township that read, “America First.”

In May 2023, the Great Lakes Active Club held a “joint training session” with Patriot Front.

The water tower, which is owned by Highland Park but is located in Detroit, hovers over I-75 and the Davison freeway, with tens of thousands of cars passing it every day.

Highland Park Mayor Glenda McDonald says Detroit usually removes graffiti from the water tower, but she plans to ensure the messages are cleared, saying she won’t tolerate hate.

“It will be taken care of,” McDonald tells Metro Times. “We are going to try to put some cameras up to see if we can catch the people doing it.”

Highland Park Councilman Khursheed Ash-Shafii says the vandals picked the wrong city to provoke with hatred.

“The city of Highland Park is committed to diversity and inclusiveness, but there is no place in this city whatsoever for bigotry, hatred, and racism,” Ash-Shafii tells Metro Times. “These outdated terms have no place in America; thus they have no place in the great city of Highland Park.”

On Adolf Hitler’s birthday in April, another neo-Nazi group, White Lives Matter Michigan, purchased several racist messages on at least three digital billboards in metro Detroit. The billboard companies apologized, saying they didn’t realize what the messages meant.