Pols hit hate at burial site
City Council members gathered in front of the African Burial Ground Monument Monday to decry racist graffiti found there late last week.
The hateful message — “Kill n-----s“— was found written on an informational sign at the lower Manhattan monument Thursday night. It came the same week as antiSemitic threats were scrawled inside a synagogue in Crown Heights.
Councilman Jumaane Williams blamed both incidents on an “atmosphere that's been created in this country, unfortunately that's coming down to the city and this state.”
“For some reason, these are the kinds of things that are in people's minds right now, and that is because of the kind of atmosphere that has been created,” Williams said. “This is a history of racism and bigotry, that's how this got here.”
Williams cited the spot's history — it was discovered in the 1990s when an office building was to be constructed there, and was preserved as a monument only after the outcry of community groups.
“Cleaning it off doesn't erase the pain,” he said of the prompt removal of the slur. “This is a place where they tried to erase history, and we're at a time when people are trying to erase identities again.”
Several Council members questioned why, at a federal monument across the street from the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, there had not been security footage released of a suspect.
“They should be using all the surveillance here,” Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez said. “That person should be behind bars at this moment.”
Rodney Leon, the architect behind the memorial, noted that it is a national monument — like the Statue of Liberty or Lincoln Memorial.
“So we're standing not only on sacred ground, but also sacred ground that has significance to the African-American community, to all communities, and to all of us as Americans,” Leon said.
The vandalism showed the city was not isolated from the hateful rhetoric seen elsewhere, Leon added.
“It was a cruel reminder that in spite of the diversity of our city, we are not immune from acts of hate and violence being perpetuated with all too common frequency throughout our country in recent days,” he said.
Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo recalled how those acts — pipe bombs, a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, anti-Semitic vandalism at the Union Temple in Brooklyn — had gotten to her last week.
“With each one I became more depressed, more angry, more hopeless. But I saw something that was so powerful. In my district, in Union Temple, I went to the Shabbos service on Friday, and it was packed with people of all races of all religions,” she said.
Cumbo also used the spate of hate to encourage people to vote.
“We have to continue to hold our spaces sacred. We have to continue to hold each other sacred because it often feels like this country is spiraling out of control,” she said. “But if we want to gain all of the progress that we have made back, if we want to continue in a forward-moving trajectory, then you have to come out tomorrow on Nov. 6 and vote.”