3/21/25 A Black man says officials in Howell, Michigan, targeted him after he confronted white supremacists

At the 2/24/25 City Council meeting Howell City Manager, Erv Suida, doubled down on his smear campaign taking it further by publicly blaming a Black Howell resident for bringing the white supramcist to town. He stated that “WLM was not coming to the theater event” if it weren't for this person. That is despite the Howell Police Department knowing that WLM did a “warm up” demonstration in Howell four days prior to the film event where the neo-Nazis posted on social media that they were preparing for the “real confrontation”

Why is all this time and energy from City leaders and law enforcement being spent on justifying blaming our marginalized community for its white supremacy problem? Video here of Jeff Amayo speaking out at the 2/24/25 County Commissioners meeting.

“Officials in Howell have denounced white supremacy groups that have demonstrated there for a half century, and they recently hired a public relations firm to scrub the city’s image. But at a February City Council meeting, even as they criticized protestors who waved swastika flags and yelled “white power” – labeling them as outside agitators – they have castigated local residents who have stood up to racism. 

One of those residents is now pushing back against the city, too.

Jeff Amayo, who is Black, filed a complaint March 11 with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, naming both the city and its police department. 

The complaint followed a Feb. 24 presentation during a City Council meeting outlining the city’s response to a showdown earlier that month between white supremecist demonstrators and counterprotestors that included Amayo outside the Howell Theater.

The presentation from Howell City Manager Erv Suida which also included Police Chief Michael Dunn, named Amayo as having “antagonized, challenged and taunted” one of the white supremacists during the Feb. 6 event. Suida equated the actions of Amayo and Stand Against Extremism Livingston County, or SAGE which was showing a documentary and hosting a community discussion about white supremacy that evening – with those of White Lives Matter, which staged a protest outside the event. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified White Lives Matter, also known as WLM, as a neo-Nazi group. . .

While the city’s presentation indicated Amayo sparked the confrontation, he told the Michigan Advance that it was Cooper who came to the event with the obvious intent of disrupting it. “He did the Nazi salute and just something clicked in my brain,” Amayo said. “I never touched him, but I just let him know that,‘Your behavior is not tolerated. What you represent is not tolerated. And here’s a Black man in your face. What are you going to do about it?’” . .

The presentation to the City Council followed a city press release after the white supremacist protest in which the city asserted that while WLM was “a small group of morally misguided individuals.”  But city officials also “strongly” denounced SAGE for bringing what it said were untrained armed security guards to the event. 

SAGE has said they did have several people attend who were legally carrying firearms to serve as a community safety team following online threats by extremist groups intent on disrupting the gathering.

But Amayo said he was the only counterprotester who was patted down by Howell police officers that night after they accused him of being armed. 

Amayo told the Advance he never had a weapon that night as he is prohibited from doing so following a 2015 assault conviction in Livingston County Circuit Court for which he served time behind bars.

“I have a record,” said Amayo. “I’m not stupid. I have too much to lose. I don’t even own a gun, but they assumed that I had a gun, right? But where’s the surveillance of Eric Cooper and these other four Nazis?”

Suida’s City Council presentation includes dash cam video from Howell patrol vehicles the night of Feb. 6. Video showed multiple units were providing surveillance on the confrontation, although none of the officers left their vehicles. 

That point was emphasized by SAGE, who posted a video from that night showing the WLM protestors harassing a Latina resident, calling her ethnic slurs and her husband a “race traitor” before telling her to “go back to your country,” despite her telling them she is a U.S. citizen.

“This is ethnic intimidation, it can not be normalized,” said SAGE. “Law enforcement is protecting the rights of white supremacists over the rights of our most vulnerable and allowing them to continuously terrorize our community.” Link to full article.