In a District neighborhood with “Black Lives Matter” and “Immigrants Are Welcome Here” signs displayed proudly on many of its front lawns, the revelation that two avowed Neo-Nazis lived among them has Bloomingdale neighbors reeling.

“It has shocked all of us,” says Dorie Turner Nolt, a Bloomingdale resident since 2013 and communications professional. “My husband and I chose to buy a house in Bloomingdale because it’s diverse and welcoming and progressive, and right in the shadow of Howard University. To learn that there were these two Nazis living around the corner from us … that is deeply troubling and has absolutely made me not want to walk alone in the neighborhood.”

Jeffrey Clark, 30, who allegedly told family members that he was gearing up for a race war, was recently arrested for gun charges after family members reported to the FBI that he fantasized about killing “Jews and blacks,” according to court documents.

He became more outspoken about his beliefs after his younger brother, Edward Clark (who reportedly shared his brother’s beliefs), killed himself right after the fatal Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting, per the affidavit. The elder Clark was connected to the alleged perpetrator of the massacre on social media, and referred to the incident as “a dry run for things to come.” Evidence collected by law enforcement in the Clarks’ Bloomingdale home (where the brothers lived with their sister and father) included Nazi flags and memorabilia, nooses, AR-15 rifle conversion kits and high-capacity AR-15 magazines, and tactical gear. Each brother also had two guns that had been legally registered in D.C.

Local antifascist organizer Lacy MacAuley was well aware of the Clarks before the elder brother’s arrest. Jeffrey Clark had sent her a death threat in July 2017. MacAuley is used to receiving death threats—”So many people in the right wing are very against antifascists,” she says—most of which she ignores. “A few I view as highly credible,” says MacAuley. “His was one of them.” She cites social media posts of Clark’s that showed the brothers training with weapons, and his identifying her by sight at an antifascist event he attended.

A judge denied Clark bail last week, ordering him held until his trial, reports The Huffington Post. MacAuley was relieved by that news, she says. “I asked myself whether I would have to be staying somewhere else besides my home” if Clark had been released.

She worries about Bloomingdale residents, too. “If you go to Bloomingdale you will see a neighborhood that is gentrifying but of course, it is a historically black neighborhood,” MacAuley says. “It’s so disconcerting to know that this white supremacist was probably looking out his window at people he’d like to see dead.”

To Nolt’s recollection, she hasn’t personally interacted with the Clarks. Still, she says that her “biggest fear is to read the news that he has been released on bail, that he ends up back in our neighborhood, or any neighborhood.” While she was concerned by the Clark brothers’ ideology, “it’s not just having the beliefs, right? He had an arsenal in his house. That is deeply disturbing.” Nolt is also a leader with the D.C. chapter of Moms Demand Action, a gun violence prevention advocacy organization.

One former neighbor, Kamau Bilal, told HuffPost that the Clark family moved into Bloomingdale when almost all of the residents were black about a decade ago, and that the brothers had grown increasingly radicalized in the past few years. He told the outlet that he had alerted a D.C. police officer to his suspicions that the Clarks were behind racist flyers that had appeared in the neighborhood, but he hadn’t received any updates from law enforcement.

Nolt is torn about how police should have responded to the Clark brothers. “Of course, I wanted police to act, but what are they going to act on?” she says. “If someone has hateful rhetoric, there’s not much police can do about that. They acted when they knew he was an active threat, and thank god he did not do anything before law enforcement intervened.”

She too believes that the Clark brothers were behind the white supremacist flyers found on Rhode Island Avenue NW, which she and her husband helped clean up. “Those were deeply troubling,” Nolt says. “This sort of hateful belief is not welcome in Bloomingdale.”

Still, the news has Nolt wondering who else might be harboring them. She says it “made me look at all my neighbors in the eye and wonder what other sorts of hateful things are happening in the houses around me.”

Previously:

What We Learned From The Court Documents For The Bloomingdale Neo-Nazi