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“Inform me the place I have to be and I’m there,” one member of a Proud Boys group in Wisconsin wrote final month about protests of masks mandates. “I can drive 5-6 hours in any course.”“Assume native, act native,” wrote one other member.At some native conferences the place the Proud Boys have proven up, they’ve spoken and threatened group leaders, in keeping with information studies. At others, they’ve merely stood silently and watched. Within the Telegram teams, some boasted that they’d handed out their cellphone numbers to these fascinated by becoming a member of them.Whereas the Proud Boys’ membership will not be public, Mr. Holt mentioned the group gave the impression to be rising in small cities and counties.Usually, their presence has been sufficient to disrupt occasions. Final month, the college board in Beloit, Wis., mentioned it canceled lessons as a result of among the Proud Boys have been at a neighborhood protest over masks necessities. In Orange County, Calif., the college board mentioned in September that it might set up steel detectors and rent further safety after a number of Proud Boys attended a gathering and threatened its members.In New Hanover County, N.C., which has roughly 220,000 folks and is 2 hours southeast of Charlotte, Stefanie Adams, the college board president, mentioned she had learn in regards to the group’s rising appearances and started monitoring the studies intently.Ms. Adams mentioned she had an inkling that the Proud Boys would possibly present up in her college district, which has 25,000 college students. As a result of North Carolina regulation requires the county college board to vote on whether or not to proceed a masks mandate for college kids every month, the district had dealt with many contentious conferences over the difficulty, she mentioned.“I figured we have been on their radar, and that we is perhaps subsequent,” Ms. Adams mentioned. “We knew we needed to put together for them coming to our city, too.”
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