Man wants ‘No Place for Hate’ sign to come down
WATERTOWN, MA – When Ralph Filicchia came across a “No Place for Hate” sign on a pole outside Town Hall, he was, to put it in his own words “offended.”
On Tuesday, he came before the council with a message and a plea to take down the sign and rescind a Town Council proclamation honoring Watertown as a “No Place for Hate” community.
“The proclamation is discriminatory and a violation and infringement upon my civil rights as an American citizen,” he said. “I want the right to speak out without being guilty of a hate crime.”
Within 30 days he wants the sign gone, and the proclamation taken back.
And if it doesn’t happen?
“We might have a problem,” he told the council.According to Filicchia, a Bellevue Road resident and freelance writer, the “No Place for Hate Committee” is a “radical organization” that decides for the town what to do and say when it comes to encouraging diversity and promoting multiculturalism.
“That’s just not going to happen,” he said. “…As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t care if 75 percent of the residents in Watertown were red-headed Irishmen named O’Toole.”
But Will Twombly, a co-chairman of the committee with Watertown Police Sgt. David Sampson, sees it in a completely different light.
In 1999, the “No Place for Hate” program was created by the Anti-Defamation League New England Region, in partnership with the Massachusetts Municipal Association.
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