After a man raised a flag adorned with a swastika outside his Fruita home last week, a group of protesters rallied against the symbol associated with Nazism and white supremacy Sunday.

The protest was organized by local community members and assisted by the Grand Junction branch of Black Lives Matter, said Jon Williams, the chapter’s co-founder.

“I wanted to make sure that they knew that Nazis are not welcome on the Western Slope,” Williams said.

The protesters gathered in Reed Park in Fruita and marched to the home around 4:30 p.m., Williams said. Due to neighborhood regulations, the group had to stay mobile while on the sidewalk, but a woman invited them on to her lawn, which was directly across the street from the swastika and Confederate flag-bearing home.

Six Fruita police officers lined the street, separating the protesters from a small group of men in the front lawn of the home with the flags. The men were carrying firearms and taunted the group, calling them “ignorant,” Williams said.

The protesters carried signs that read “Black Lives Matter” and chanted, “no Nazis, no KKK, no fascist USA,” according to a Facebook Live video posted of the event.

The video does not show the crowd in its entirety, making it difficult to estimate the size. Nick Peck, a lieutenant with the Fruita Police Department, estimated around 50 people attended the protest.

“Both sides were very cooperative and easy to work with,” Peck said. He added that there were no injuries or arrests made during the protest and everything went smoothly.

The flag was first spotted on Election Day to the shock of many in the neighborhood. The house sits a block away from an elementary school on North Mesa Street.

Rob Norris had just picked up his daughter from school when he saw the red-and-white flag emblazoned with a swastika.

“I literally stopped dead in the street,” he told The Denver Post on Thursday.

Flying flags is constitutionally protected as free speech and the Fruita Police Department could not take any action against the man, police said. The man told local television news stations on Tuesday he did not intent to take it down.

On Sunday, a friend of the homeowner approached the protesters and offered to take the flag with the swastika down if it meant the protest would stop. While the Nazi flag was taken down, the Confederate flag remained, Williams said.

“I don’t consider it a victory,” Williams said after the protest.

Williams was disappointed that some left the protest after the swastika flag was taken down, even though he and a few others remained after dark to continue protesting the Confederate flag.

“This one aspect of hatred was taken down but this other seems acceptable,” he said.

This incident comes near the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht and as hate imagery and symbols are on the rise across Colorado. Swastikas, anti-Semitic graffiti and other white nationalist symbols have been spotted from mountain towns to Colorado campuses.

The Anti-Defamation League has documented at least 17 times when swastikas were drawn on Colorado property since 2016. The organization has also documented 50 times where white supremacists have posted propaganda in the Front Range as of September. In 2017, the group counted 22, and in 2016, it counted three

The trend is not isolated to Colorado.

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