20 | JUNE 1 • 2023 

N

ovi law enforcement 
officials are investi-
gating the appearance 
of antisemitic flyers that were 
strewn from a passing car and 
found on various driveways 
along Meadowbrook Road 
Sunday morning, May 21.
The flyers accuse Jews of 
being responsible for occupying 
high positions of power at the 
Disney Corporation to groom 
children for pedophilia, that 
the ADL was formed to protect 
Jewish pedophiles and there-
fore is not qualified to monitor 
online hate speech, and that 
Jewish people have a large 
role in promoting the LGBTQ 
movement. Identical flyers 
have been appearing for years 
in cities across the country, 
most recently in the suburbs of 
Atlanta. 
According to Novi 
Police Commander 
Jason Meier, in the 
overnight hours of 
Saturday to Sunday, 
a car drove along 
Meadowbrook Road 
in Novi and threw 
about a half dozen 
such pamphlets ran-
domly into resident driveways 
in the Village Oaks neighbor-
hood. Meier said it does not 
appear that Jewish homes were 
targeted. The car and driver 
have not been identified. 
Meier said the flyers could be 
easily downloaded and printed 
from the hate group’s website 

gtvflyers.com. Meier said the 
police will still investigate but 
have no leads at this point. 
Novi resident Jeff Lewis, 
51, was about to head out to 
Flower Days at the Eastern 
Market in Detroit on Sunday 
morning when he noticed a 
strange Ziploc bag filled with 
the flyers weighed down with 
corn in his driveway. Fearful 
that someone had thrown 
drugs out a window, or the bag 
could be containing toxic sub-
stances, he approached the bag 
wearing disposable gloves. 
“Inside there were four 
pages, front and back,
” said 
Lewis, who graduated from 
West Bloomfield High School. 
“It is vile and laughably wrong. 
One of the blessings I consider 
in my life was growing up with 
Jewish friends in West 
Bloomfield who I 
consider family. [State 
Attorney General] 
Dana Nessel was two 
grades behind me. 
I got to understand 
Judaism and Jewish 
people and what 
Judaism is and what 
it is not. And this is 
why, though I am not Jewish, 
this flyer offended me to my 
core.
” 
At first glance, Lewis thought 
it was odd to see the logo of 
the ADL on a flyer in the plas-
tic bag and knew this was not 
“normal” information or an ask 
for a donation from the organi-

zation, but 
a printed piece of propaganda. 
Fearing that the packet had 
been laced with poison, he han-
dled the flyer wearing gloves.
One flyer alleges that the 
ADL was created back in 1913 
to protect Leo Frank from 
pedophilia and murder charges. 
In the most notorious example 
of antisemitism in American 
history, Frank, who managed a 
factory in Atlanta, was accused 
of the 1913 rape and murder of 
a teen girl who was the daugh-
ter of migrant farm workers 
and worked at the factory. He 
was falsely accused and con-
victed of the crimes in a trial 
full of antisemitic tropes. 
In 1915, after multiple 
attempts and failures to appeal 
Frank’s case all the way up to 
the Supreme Court, the gover-
nor of Georgia changed Frank’s 
sentence from capital punish-
ment to life in prison. Enraged 
by the decision, a mob then 
broke into the prison where 
he was being held, removed 
him from his cell and lynched 
him. Frank’s story is the basis 
of the 1988 musical Parade, 
which is currently running on 
Broadway. 
Lewis, who said he loves 
the diverse nature of his Novi 
neighborhood, said he took 
action to report the flyer not 

only to local law enforce-
ment but to the ADL, the 
National Association for the 
Advancement of Colored 
People and the Federal Bureau 
of Investigation. 
Police say Lewis was the only 
resident to file a report with the 
police about the flyers. The JN 
reached out to several Jewish 
families in Novi, who had no 
other knowledge of the incident 
outside of a brief report that 
was filed May 22 on WDIV-TV
. 
“The only way that this level 
of hatred can be overcome is 
if we expose it,
” Lewis said. “I 
don’t want that hatred in my 
community. I want them to 
feel uncomfortable about ever 
thinking about doing some-
thing like this again. I want the 
police looking for that person. 
I don’t want them to get away 
with it.
” 

ADL Michigan Regional 
Director Carolyn Normandin 
commended Lewis’ actions and 
said he did just the right thing. 
Collecting data on organiza-
tions like this, Normandin said, 
is the way to stop them “with a 
thousand tiny cuts.
” 
“In 2022, this organization 
was reported to have commit-
ted over 450 incidents, and 
these flyers have appeared in 42 
states,
” Normandin said. “This 
group’s main cause is to bring 
hatred upon Jews. They are vile 
propagandists and their cam-
paigns target Jews from every-
thing from the COVID pan-
demic to pedophilia. They exist 
for one reason — to spread lies 
and myths about Jews. These 
flyers — and the main intention 
of them — is to spread hate and 
discord against Jews. 
“The most important thing 
people can do when they 
encounter this propaganda is 
to first call the police and then 
contact the ADL.
” 

A Vile Driveway 
Surprise

OUR COMMUNITY

Novi man finds antisemitic flyer 
and decides to take action.

STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Jeff 
Lewis

