A few years ago Corey Fleischer was driving between jobs in a truck with his power-washing tools when he spotted two swastikas and the letters “KKK” spray-painted on a Montreal food delivery van.
He convinced the owner of the van to let him remove the paint. Ten minutes later, the graffiti was gone.
To one person, it may have been their good deed for their day. For Fleischer, it was the beginning of his life’s work.
Since then, Fleischer has erased thousands of hate-graffiti markings from public view across Montreal.
Two years into his “Erasing Hate” movement, he’s expanding to Toronto.
In an interview with CTV’s Your Morning on Thursday, Fleischer said that he experienced a feeling of euphoria after removing his first hateful graffiti. “I found myself secretly roaming around the city of Montreal for around four to five years, looking to try and erase any hate that I could see scrawled upon walls,” Fleischer said.
After uploading photos to social media, Fleischer said “his whole life changed.
“It went from just me alone, scouring the city, trying to find these hate crimes to now I have tens of thousands of people who are following the Erasing Hate movement,” Fleischer said. “And now they’re my eyes.”
Today, Fleischer said he was to “educate” people, and let them know that there’s a service like this available, free of charge.
“If you see anything that’s demeaning towards any community, any religion, really anybody, you can reach out to me, to my private page on Facebook,” Fleischer said, adding “You see it, they upload the picture and within 24 hours, the hate crime will be removed.”
Fleischer said he doesn’t focus on the people who are defacing property with hateful messages, but rather on raising awareness about the problem in communities.
Every day Fleischer receives hundreds of new messages, he said, from “people trying to push me along, letting me know what this service actually means to them and I’m extremely proud of what Erasing Hate has accomplished in the last two years.”
