Dozens of homeowners in Coral Gables and Miami awoke Tuesday to plastic bags filled with candy corn and pictures of Disney characters on their front lawns.
But the package wasn’t meant as a gift. It was a blatant antisemitic affront, with the candy serving as weights to hold down paper pictures of the characters — six Disney World executives with blue Stars of David stamped into their foreheads and the word “Jewish” in capital letters written under their names.
“Every single aspect of Disney’s child grooming is Jewish,” the pamphlets said. “Protect your children.”
Coral Gables residents said the flyers landed on the lawns of dozens of homes throughout the city, from Granada Boulevard to Capri and Cordova streets. Only a couple were found in Miami, one on a porch near Southwest Fourth Avenue and 21st Street and the other on a lawn down the road.
Similar antisemitic flyers focusing on other topics like gun control and immigration were also dropped on lawns overnight. One says: “Every single aspect of mass immigration is Jewish,” and another, with pictures of lawmakers, says the same about gun control.
Law enforcement sources said similar flyers showed up overnight at homes from Fort Pierce to Orlando to Jacksonville. It wasn’t immediately clear how the antisemitic attacks were coordinated. The Miami Herald has chosen not to publish or show the material due to its offensive nature.
Daniela Torrealba, a supervisor in Miami-Dade’s public defender’s office said she and her husband awoke to the gun control flyer Tuesday morning on the couple’s Alberca Street lawn in the Gables. Torrealba said she put on gloves and carefully placed the plastic bag in another bag and brought it inside her home, before calling police.
“It’s sick and sad to say this is the situation we’re in, but I was initially glad everyone got it. I was initially worried that we were targeted,” she said.
Torrealba said she didn’t hear anything overnight and the only clue she has come across was from a poster on her Nextdoor app who claimed to see someone in a light-colored car toss something on a lawn at about 3:30 a.m.
The Fusion Center, an umbrella task force made up of law enforcement from many municipal agencies in Miami-Dade County, was looking into the material.
“We have very little information,” said Miami police spokeswoman Kenia Fallat. “We’re seeing how we can piece the puzzle together.”
Coral Gables police spokeswoman Kelly Denham said the flyers were left on lawns between the time residents went to bed Monday night and awoke Tuesday morning.
“Our detectives are out there looking into Ring cameras,” she said.
FBI Public Affairs Specialist James Marshall said his agency was aware of the pamphlets and has been in contact with local authorities. Calls to Walt Disney World officials were not immediately returned Tuesday.
Similar incidents happened in several sections of California in February, according to a story from the Jewish News of Northern California. The news site reported that similar flyers blaming COVID on Jews appeared in towns throughout Northern California and into Colorado and Texas. It blamed the antisemitic material on a “loose network of men known as the Goyim Defense League” who gained attention with similar stunts that included hanging banners on highway overpasses.
The pamphlets in the Miami area Tuesday included the same address for an antisemitic website that was used in the February incidents in Northern California.
The bigoted literature comes at a heightened time for Jews around the nation, where antisemitic incidents were up 34% in 2021 and up more than 50% in Florida, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League.
Disney became a hot-button cultural issue in March when Chief Executive Bob Chapek spoke out against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Parents’ Rights in Education Law, and decided to halt political donations. The law, known as the "Don’t say gay bill," prohibits classroom instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity up until third grade. The announcement angered DeSantis, who pushed through a bill that has since stripped Disney of its special taxing rights.
At one point, the debate became so heated that DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, tweeted: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.”
Chapek is first Disney executive shown on the flier.
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(Miami Herald staff writer Omar Rodriguez Ortiz contributed to this report.)
