Viral anti-racist tweet by former Chilliwack man makes BuzzFeed headlines

2018A former Chilliwack man whose anti-racist tweet went viral in 2018 has made BuzzFeed headlines.

Nick Cooper shared a tweet on Aug. 3, 2018 showing photos of him painting over racist graffiti in Chilliwack with the message: “Goodbye racist graffiti not in my town thank you.”

The tweet was one of several pictures shared by BuzzFeed on March 5 with the headline “26 Pictures that will warm your cold, dead heart.”

Other images BuzzFeed shared include an image of a school bus driver buying a shopping basket full of valentines for the kids he drives to school, a hand-crocheted doll made for a young boy whose grandfather passed away (the doll looks exactly like the boy’s grandfather who is even holding a fish he caught), and a 93-year-old man who made 300 wooden toys for kids at Christmas.

Cooper’s tweet had three images: one of the graffiti, one of him holding up a bucket of paint, and one of the covered-up graffiti wall.

Back when Cooper first shared the tweet, it received a whopping 350,000 likes in four days.

READ MORE: Chilliwack man’s Tweet about painting over racist graffiti goes viral

The irony about Cooper’s message is he is a former right-wing extremist.

Cooper was involved in a white supremacist organization near London, England in the 1990s, but a change of heart by way of a maternity ward conversion flipped his ideas on their head. When his wife and daughter’s life were saved by a doctor of Indian descent and a nurse who was Afro-Caribbean during an emergency C-section, Cooper suddenly recognized the insanity of his extremist worldview.

He decided to change his ways.

During the 13 years he lived in Chilliwack, he fed the homeless, taught love and acceptance, and joined Facebook group Inclusion Chilliwack.

Despite him being a changed man, on Nov. 5, 2018, the Canada Border Services Agency ordered Cooper out of Canada by Nov. 30 of that same year.

READ MORE: Reformed right-wing extremist from England loses battle to stay in Canada

A petition to keep Cooper in Canada was started by Anne-Marie Sjoden in 2018. She has since updated the petition and renamed it “Let’s bring Nick Cooper back to Canada.”

With files from Paul Henderson.