A Brooklyn park dedicated to the Beastie Boys’ late member Adam Yauch was vandalized with graffiti of swastikas and pro–Donald Trump slogans on Friday, November 18.
The offensive, anti-Semitic tagging was spotted on children’s playground equipment at the Brooklyn Heights park. Upon hearing of the defacement, City Councilman Brad Lander tweeted a photo along with a number of impassioned tweets.
“Yet more hatred & anti-Semitism from Trump supporters,” he wrote Friday. “Swastikas on the playground equipment in Adam Yauch Park in BK Heights. #NeverIsNow. Adam Yauch is weeping for our country. Mom was Jewish. Practiced Buddhism. Spoke out against Islamophobia. Apologized for homophobic lyrics.”
Yauch, better known by his stage name, MCA, died of cancer in May 2012 after a three-year battle with the disease. He was 47.
All three members of the Beastie Boys — including Mike “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz — were Jewish.
Later on in the evening, facing attacks online by Trump supporters, Lander again took to Twitter to clarify that though no suspect has been apprehended in the case of vandalism, “the hate & anti-Semitism from trolls in my Twitter-stream is unmistakable.”
“Trump took time to condemn the thoughtful plea of the @HamiltonMusical cast,” he pointed out on Saturday, November 19. “But not the swastikas in his name in a Brooklyn playground.”
Friday’s graffiti incident is just the latest in a string of racist and anti-Semitic sentiments that have been bubbling up across the nation since Trump won the presidential election on Tuesday, November 8.
See how Twitter is responding to this latest attack:
.@beastieboys Adam Yauch Park in Brooklyn Heights was left defaced with ugly symbols of hate today. This cannot be the new normal! pic.twitter.com/xWjS7HLNyG
— Karen Wang (@kw492) November 18, 2016
-Racist attacks on the rise
WHITES: Huh
-Swastikas on temples & mosques
WHITES: Hm
-Adam Yauch Park defaced
WHITES: AW HELL NO NOT AD-ROCK— Glen Weldon (@ghweldon) November 19, 2016
Adam Yauch to America: “Stop Racism Towards Muslims” https://t.co/WYD1HhkyEG
— Ted Hand ? (@t3dy) November 19, 2016
Swastikas on a children’s playground in a park named for Adam Yauch. This hits so many disgust buttons I don’t even know what to say. https://t.co/jJLWbvZZoP
— Andrew Barker (@barkerrant) November 18, 2016