By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

The Anti-Defamation League and two legal firms — Paul Weiss and Taft — filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of the city of Springfield, its elected officials, and several residents against the Blood Tribe White supremacist hate group yesterday in Dayton’s U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

According to the ADL, the suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for “the campaign of harassment and intimidation they unleashed against the people and city of Springfield, Ohio beginning in July 2024.”

Specific incidents the lawsuit cites include the Blood Tribe’s Aug. 10, 2024 march in downtown Springfield with its members “waving swastika flags, brandishing weapons at residents, and yelling racial slurs.” It also notes that after the march, the city received at least 33 bomb threats to locations such as elementary schools, hospitals, private homes, and government buildings and that Blood Tribe then targeted Springfield residents who had shown support for Haitians living there.

Blood Tribe’s spate of actions in Springfield came in the wake of negative national media attention focused on the city’s soaring Haitian population — much of it from then Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s stump speech references. Baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, according to NBC News, had already been circulating on right-wing social media platforms.

Both The Dayton Jewish Observer and Columbus Jewish News interviewed an eyewitness to the Aug. 10 march who said that when police were not watching the dozen Blood Tribe marchers, four of them aimed their rifles at her family in their car and at two cars in front of them as the four shouted, “Go the f— back to Africa!”

The lawsuit states that Blood Tribe engaged in and incited a campaign of harassment and intimidation “motivated by ethnic and racial hatred against those who supported Springfield’s Haitian community in the face of Defendants’ racist attacks.”

“It is unacceptable that outside extremists targeted and descended upon this city, sowing fear and attempting to halt the business and lives of an entire community,” said Steve Sheinberg, ADL chief legal officer, in ADL’s Feb. 6 press release about the lawsuit. “Their threats and harassment are not just morally abhorrent, but also a clear interference with community members’ civil rights and the city of Springfield’s necessary work on behalf of its residents. We filed this lawsuit today to hold them accountable for the harm they have caused to this community.”

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, the target of Blood Tribe harassment at his own home, according to the lawsuit, said in the release that the lawsuit sends a clear message “that hate, intimidation, and violence, have no place in our community.”

The negative national attention about Springfield over the summer would come to a head Sept. 10, 2024, when then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump uttered the false assertion during a prime-time presidential debate, “In Springfield they’re eating dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating…the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” Blood Tribe upped its harassment.

The lawsuit states that a dozen Blood Tribe members congregated outside the mayor’s home on Sept. 28, 2024, led by Drake Berentz. Wearing masks and carrying swastika flags, they told Rue to “enjoy your peace now” and walked to City Hall, “where Berentz announced that ‘Springfield is property of Blood Tribe’ and that ‘we are ready to face the enemies of the American people in the streets, until the problem is dealt with.'”

According to the ADL, Blood Tribe is a neo-Nazi group with semi-autonomous chapters in the United States and Canada. It was formed online in 2021 and started showing up at anti-LGBTQ+ events in 2023. Blood Tribe champions “hard-line White supremacist views and openly directs its vitriol at Jews, ‘non-Whites’ and the LGBTQ+ community.”

The lawsuit notes that Blood Tribe identified Springfield residents who supported the Haitian community and sent those residents suspicious packages intended to look like bombs, “left harassing voice mails, sent hateful emails, demeaned the residents and their families on social media platforms, used dating apps to send men looking for drugs and sex to their homes late at night, and publicized their personal information, such as their telephone numbers, email addresses, and home and work addresses, all the while actively encouraging others to harass and intimidate them.”

Those who brought the lawsuit seek a jury trial on nine counts: conspiracy to violate civil rights; failure to prevent interference with civil rights; public nuisance; telecommunications harassment; menace; incitement to violence; ethnic intimidation; conspiracy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The lawsuit names Blood Tribe founder Christopher Alan Pohlhaus, and Blood Tribe leader Drake Berentz, whom Rue ejected from an Aug. 27, 2024 city commission meeting during public comments when Berentz said, “I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing, before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.” The suit identifies Berentz as the leader of the Aug. 10, 2024 march, which Berentz also stated at the city commission meeting.

Also named are seven “John Does” who have harassed Springfield residents.