A tenants’ rights Zoom call organized by City Life Vida Urbana was intercepted and interrupted by online trolls on Tuesday evening. The organizing call ended early as a result, as organizers could not hold the meeting effectively amidst the turmoil.

The Tuesday evening call, hosted on remote call platform Zoom, was ‘Zoom bombed’ by trolls hurling racist language and support for President Donald Trump. The interlopers both spammed the chat and talked over people by unmuting their mics during the call.

The call began relatively promptly around 6:30pm. Objectives for the call included gauging effectiveness of the City Life Vida Urbana hotline and providing updates on evictions during the month of March.

Around 6:55pm, unclear feedback was heard over the call audio. Within the next five minutes, the call was mobbed by spoken racial slurs, screaming, and the message ‘TRUMP 2020’ spammed in the chat.

A spate of other such ‘Zoom bombings’ has been going around in the past several days. USA Today reported that aside from organizing calls, school lectures have been the targets of such malfeasance as well. (WBUR reported on this same topic this week as well.)

The source of these trolls is unknown. The details of the Zoom call were posted publicly onto a Facebook event hosted by City Life Vida Urbana’s page.

Before ending the call, City Life Vida Urbana organizers calmly stated that the even though the call would have to end, it would not stop the ‘strong and resilient’ movement overall.