Manhattan Beach: Racist Words, Hackers Invade Online Presentation

MANHATTAN BEACH, CA — Racism made its way into an online Zoom forum called "Past, Present and Future of Public Safety in MB" last Friday when racist words began to appear letter by letter for all tuned in to see. As the words "f***ing nig***" were being spelled out on the screen, the tech team for the presenters successfully managed to get rid of the hackers and the presenters carried on, no longer able to access their presentation slides due to the hackers.

"Essentially, about 15 minutes into our Zoom presentation, the slides started glitching and we could no longer share our slides," said Manhattan Beach resident Ronald Clinton, one of the presenters who leads the MBUSD Community Panel for Equity. "Then, someone wrote 'f***ing nig***' on the screen multiple times until we kicked them out of the panel. For the rest of the presentation, we had to operate without being able to show our slides."

The presentation, hosted by the local group Anti-Racist Movement (ARMs) South Bay L.A., offered three panelists who addressed different topic areas. Janelle Scales of ARMs, Jamie Danis, who has compiled data on the "disproportionate rate of Black arrests in Manhattan Beach" for her group MB for Justice, and Clinton.

"The main thing we were trying to propose," said Clinton, "was that some of the police budget could be used towards providing affordable housing in MB, make MBUSD [Manhattan Beach Unified School District] more equitable and inclusive, and support mental health and therapy resources in our community."

The event was publicized through various social media platforms, especially Instagram and Facebook, and "was open to anyone who wanted to attend, regardless of whether they lived in Manhattan Beach or not. We welcomed all," he noted.

The team involved in the presentation had just gone "over all the technical aspects of the presentation right before the forum began, so when the slides stopped working, we knew something unusual was going on," Clinton said.

"The words were written on the screen using one of the 'writing utensils' available through Zoom. Everyone could see the words the hackers were writing. I can’t recall them writing anything else besides what I shared with you. However, the n-word was written three different times in different fonts, making me think that there were multiple hackers involved."

Scales, who was presenting on the history of policing in the United States, was caught by surprise and didn't realize what was going on when the racist words started to be spelled out on screen. Her husband and young children were watching the forum from another room. He came in to see how she was doing. "It was hard," she told Manhattan Beach Patch. "I was watching this happen live and trying to assess everything [as she was presenting]. We'd anticipated abusive comments and so all comments were being filtered.

"I thought perhaps it was a hiccup or one of the moderator's kids was innocently interfering with the presentation," she said. "It wasn't until I saw the slurs that I processed what was happening. Then I just tried to gather myself and address the audience."

The trio—Scales, Danis and Clinton—received high marks of praise from others who watched the racist invasion on screen and saw the presenters deal with the attack and move on. Despite not having their slides available to share, they still delivered their presentations.

As for speculation on who could have hacked them and shown such racism, Clinton said he has "no idea" since he wasn’t the tech person or coordinator for the forum. And he also doesn't know "how we found out who we needed to remove from the Zoom. As a panelist, I wasn’t involved in any of this," he explained.

Scales told Manhattan Beach Patch one of the hackers had the name "black lives don't matter." "We have reported the hate incident to the LA County human relations commission and reported the three abusive accounts," she said.

The presentation is currently being put together so it can be made available to the public. When asked if he'd reported the situation to police, Clinton said, "I personally haven’t reported anything to the MBPD, but I think it’s something our police department should know about, especially because it happened during a forum on the role of policing in our community."

The forum attracted about 80 people but once the hackers went live and were kicked off, new people trying to access the Zoom could not unless they were able to contact Scales personally and she approved their admission. After the hacking, she had about 5 people she knows attempting to get online to join the forum. "We had to individually admit people."

"It [racist slurs] can catch you by surprise," said Scales, even though she and the forum organizers had anticipated some bad actors. "I'm learning to live with being caught by surprise. We were nervous we'd have some infiltrators," she noted. She just hadn't expected the outright in-your-face racist slurs.

"It's hard for me to prepare for something I don't understand. I'm not abusive so I don't know how and what a racist bigot full of hatred is going to do. You have to go out of your way to plan to do something like that."