Lakewood City officials and residents have recently faced a few uproars over misinformation in the form of flyers, city council meeting calls and even propaganda thrown onto lawns in some neighborhoods. The materials are anti-migrant, antisemitic and based solely on falsehoods.
Two different misinformation attacks on Lakewood, same divisive and inciteful purpose
Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom described recent incidents as misinformation, but at two different levels.
“The sanctuary city and housing migrants in the schools rumors are completely unwarranted,” Strom said. “There was no foundation to the rumors at all whatsoever. So, there was that. But then we had the Zoom bombing event that occurred. So that one is also misinformation, but not the same.”
Strom is referring to the Feb. 12 city council meeting where the virtual portion of the public comment part of the meeting was taken over by antisemitic and derogatory calls. Many of the callers quoted anti-migrant and antisemitic misinformation. Wheat Ridge City Council recently experienced a similar “Zoom bombing” incident.
Scott Levin of the Antidefamation League agreed that the antisemitic calls and propaganda are unrelated to the antimigrant flyers and comments. Around Christmas 2023, some Lakewood residents found plastic bags on their lawn that contained crayons, rice and a coloring sheet emblazoned with antisemitic terms and rhetoric.
Levin said both types of incidents are misinformation that can inflame the community and cause some serious problems for communities like Lakewood.
Levin spoke about the Feb. 6 Emergency Citizens’ Town Hall meeting in Lakewood organized by the anonymous group Concerned Citizens of Lakewood. The digital flyers showed up on social media and the app Next Door. The town hall ended up being an inflammatory meeting of anti-migrant rhetoric and misinformation.
Possible political roots to the misinformation
Denver attorney Deep Singh Badhesha wants people to see that the misinformation has broader implications in a presidential election year.
“Jeffco used to be a bellwether voting county in Colorado,” he said. “As Jeffco went, so did the state. The Jeffco Republican Party has now totally gone off the rails promoting misinformation and hate. While this misinformation may fire up the shrinking Republican base, it will continue to turn off Colorado’s high information and educated voters.”
Other news sources have reported the organizers of the Emergency Citizens’ Town Hall were two former Lakewood city council members who are affiliated to the Republican party and the chair of the Colorado Republican Party.
According to Levin, these are also elements that inflame the misinformation.
“The fact that it’s seemingly a secret that’s putting this together sort of adds to some fuel to the fire,” he said. “Yeah, this is just people wanting to spread rumors to get people excited.”
Overburdening and distracting public officials
Strom also described another problem that misinformation creates for her, city council members and city staff.
“I have noticed starkly over the last two, three weeks the direct impact that this has on our community,” Strom said. “It has been an enormous amount of time that I have been to invest in these things, to try to help our residents understand the truth. And what that ultimately means is that I’m not doing the job that 20,000 voters elected me to do.”
Strom believes that it’s important to help each Lakewood resident understand what’s happening.
“I think it’s fundamentally important that we’re working to help people understand what the reality is of what we’re talking about, and what we’re not talking about,” she said. “But you know, it is a disservice to the entire community, when city staff and their elected officials are all spending so much time and energy (on the misinformation).”
Strom wants to get back to the issues that she was elected to tackle like public safety, homelessness and more.
“It really does take away the attention from the things that voters are ultimately asking us to do when they voted,” Strom said.
In addition to distracting city workers and services, Levin explained how the purpose of the anti-migrant misinformation is to inflame and confuse residents.
“It’s important that people really look into actual facts about what is happening on the ground and not fall subject to what looks to be just an attempt to get people anxious and riled up about things that just don’t appear to be true at all,” Levin explained. “We’re at a point in time where everybody’s so divided in this country, over so many different things, that it’s not hard to imagine that if you throw some fuel to the fire, that adds fear to these people, that they’re going to get excited. And it’s unfortunately that nobody is really caring, it appears to know what the real truth.”
Strom is also concerned about the effects of seeding doubt that the misinformation could have.
“It’s inserting doubt on your newly elected people. So that they are not able to do the things that they were elected to do.”
Strom said that derailing staff and elected officials from certain duties seems to be the aim of the misinformation.
Remembering the real lives at stake
No matter the source, Rep. Chris de Gruy Kennedy wants Lakewood residents and all Coloradans to remember the real lives being debated here. However, he agrees with Badhesha about the political roots of the misinformation.
“It is the case that there are a lot of people coming into the Denver Metro area, who are in desperate need of help,” said de Gruy Kennedy. “I do think that we need to talk about helping them and building up those structures to do it. I think what’s really unfortunate about what happened with the (Feb. 6 town hall). It was clearly politically motivated.
“At this point in time, I see the humanitarian issue as the first priority,” de Gruy Kennedy continued. “Regardless of our feelings about whether there should have been a, you know, a way for them to stay and raise their families with safety and some amount of economic security in their home countries.”
Discerning truth from lies and false information
According to Levin, the ultimate goal of misinformation is to make the falsehoods seem normal and therefore true.
“In all these situations, it’s also about trying to normalize the messages,” Levin said. “So if you’re going to blame migrants for crime, or you’re going to blame the Jews for 911, or for causing COVID, or any of the myriad of other things that they say about (Jews and migrants) if you say it, and you see it enough, it does kind of normalize it.”
Levin had a few suggestions for people to discern the misinformation from the truth.
“If the story sounds too good to be true, if the story fits within a narrative too neatly or cleanly, that information is usually not very true,” Levin said. “I often see this, especially in many of the big political and divisive issues of the day where people will find a quote that just justifies whatever their position is. The issue rarely is exactly the way that it’s ever presented in the quote.”
Levin also urges people to check a quote or email or any information with multiple sources.
“They have to look at sources that have been trusted and proven to be correct over time. And not any one source,” Levin explained. “They can go to (Colorado Community Media). They can go to what some would identify as more mainstream media, but they can also search other things.”
Levin’s group, the ADL, has resources as well.
“I think then suddenly, by looking at where all the differences are, between sources, you can try and figure out where the actual truth, lies,” Levin said.
Levin also wants Lakewood residents to remember, “just because you don’t agree with other people’s positions, doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily lying to you, or hiding something.”
He also urges residents to seek out their council members and elected officials for clarification.
What to do when encountering misinformation
Strom also urges people to question information that incites them before acting. She wrote an article in the Denver Post that outlines some questions that will help discern truth from lies.
If you receive misinformation that is inciteful, antisemitic, antimigrant and untrue:
- Call the Lakewood police nonemergency number, 303-980-7300.
- Contact your Lakewood city councilor.
- Report it on the ADL’s website
- Contact Mayor Strom by email at wstrom@lakewood.org or leave a message at 303-987-7040.
Levin urges people to report these incidents because the ADL and the police track them.
Strom wants people to stay aware of the true aim of misinformation: to divide.
“I do feel that the misinformation is being used to create more of a wedge to open a wound that was already there in our community,” she said.