Supremacist meeting is canceled

The event, entitled Patriot Action, organized by the East Coast White Unity group and Volksfront, was to have been held at the VFW hall on Ellery Street at 2 p.m., but hall organizers pulled the plug on the gathering.

The Boston Anti-Racist Coalition, a loosely organized group of activists that was organized around the beginning of the year in response to the scheduled VFW event, claimed credit yesterday for the cancellation, said Ian Curtis, a member of the group.

"We don't know how much the VFW knew about the nature of the event," Curtis said in a telephone interview. "Obviously, they're embarrassed that they were about to let white-supremacist, racist groups and bands come into their hall."

Dot Joyce, spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said she had not heard about the event but would look into it.

The Boston Police Department was contacted last night by a member of the East Coast White Unity group, who said that the group believed their reservation at the hall was canceled due to pressure from the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Officer Joe Zanoli, a police spokesman.

Zanoli said police did not influence the VFW decision and he could not speak for the FBI.

On its website, the VFW said it canceled the event after discovering the meeting's nature, saying it "conflicts with the ideals and values of the VFW Post 6536." A representative for the VFW did not return calls for comment last night.

City Councilor Bill Linehan, in whose South Boston district the VFW is located, said he did not know about the meeting and would learn more today.

Curtis said his group could not reach the VFW directly, but instead launched an e-mail and phone campaign to publicly get the word out about the meeting.

Michael F. Flaherty Jr., a councilor at large and candidate for mayor, said he also had no knowledge of the event before last night, and commended the VFW for canceling it.

"I'd be offended if it came to any neighborhood in the City of Boston. Boston is a city that embraces diversity," Flaherty said.

Billy Roper, who leads the White Revolution, a white nationalist organization based in Arkansas, was scheduled to speak at the meeting. Roper said the event could draw as many as 150 supporters, and he said the meeting will go on, regardless of the cancellation, at an undisclosed location.

Roper will be joined by a handful of other white supremacist and white nationalist leaders, who were advertised on a flier as keynote speakers.

Robert Trestan, a civil rights counselor for the Anti-Defamation League, said neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups cluster events in April around Adolf Hitler's birthday, April 20.

"Right now there is no confirmed location, and we don't know who will end up coming," Trestan said. "Sometimes meetings like this don't always end up being as grand as the organizers intend them."