A woman was physically assaulted Tuesday, July 21, at People's Market and First United Church, according to BPD. The incident, which is still being investigated, could potentially be classified as a hate crime.
A 46-year-old woman working in the First United Church's greenhouse on Tuesday evening reported to BPD that while she was there, a younger white man began to yell at her and made racist comments toward her, which led to an argument.
People's Market posted on social media Thursday, identifying the woman as one of their co-founders. They described her attacker as a "young 20 something white supremacist," who shouted "racist, MAGA things at her."
The post stated that the market won't let white supremacists stop their goal of feeding the community. The post also announced the cancellation of the July 25 market on Saturday but said that the regular market and volunteer opportunities will return August 1.
“We are committed to the protection of our volunteers & our community,” the social media post caption read.
BPD Officer Ryan Pedigo wrote in an email statement to the Indiana Daily Student that officers responded to the call at IU Health Urgent Care East, where the woman reported the incident. According to the People’s Market post, she is doing alright and had the pepper spray flushed from her eyes at urgent care.
She told police that while arguing, the man threw his backpack on the ground and began pepper spraying her. She proceeded to kick him, knocking the man down as he continued to pepper spray her before running from the scene on a trail that led to a nearby apartment complex.
According to Pedigo, the woman told officers that the same man had "berated other Black members of the church in the past." Police have not yet identified or located a suspect.
People's Market is asking the community to help identify the attacker, and provided a description of him on their social media. They wrote he is a white, skinny man with little muscle mass, around 5 feet 7 inches tall, with short and floppy brown hair. He was wearing a white t-shirt and khaki shorts at the time.
Pedigo also wrote that in Indiana, committing a hate crime is not a separate criminal offense, but that judges have the ability to impose a longer sentence for crimes motivated by bias.
"So law enforcement’s responsibility is to investigate each criminal offense and ensure that the investigation attempts to determine if any offense was motivated by bias, then present the case to the Prosecutor’s Office for charging," Pedigo wrote. "If a judge determines that a crime was motivated by bias, then they can later impose the enhanced sentencing."
Indiana's legislation surrounding hate crimes, which the state refers to as a bias crime, was nonexistent until 2019, when the state legislature passed a bill allowing judges to increase sentences for bias crimes. The legislation was highly criticized for not including gender identity, gender or sex as explicitly protected.
The Indiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote in a December 2025 policy brief that while the law still allows judges to decide what unlisted groups qualify, advocates against the law argue that mandatory sentencing would further deter bias crimes.
The assault was a topic of discussion at Wednesday's Bloomington City Council meeting, where Council President Isak Nti Asare condemned the incident.
"The simple fact of the matter is that someone was attacked based on their identity," Asare said. "And this is something that I think too often we like to act like does not happen in a place like Bloomington."
He drew comparisons between the city's attitude to equity and incidents like the one at People’s Market to that of residents in Laramie, Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was murdered in 1998.
According to The Associated Press, Wyoming and Indiana are two of just five states that have not passed comprehensive hate crime laws focused on victim identity. Asare, who attended high school in Laramie, said during the meeting that both cities often assume such bias crimes don't happen in their communities.
In 2023, Bloomington woman Billie Davis plead guilty to a federal hate crime charge after stabbing an 18-year-old Indiana University student on a Bloomington Transit Bus. Davis told police she targeted the student because she was Asian.
"It's too often that we think that we can rest on our liberal, you know, sort of laurels,” Asare said. “And forget the fact that the very reason why we still have work to do is that if anyone is oppressed, then we all are.”
UPDATED: This story has been updated to include information from the People’s Market’s social media.
