Jewish, Trenton leaders slam council slurs at meeting
TRENTON >> They showed up to uproot the “seed of hate” planted when council president Kathy McBride described a Jewish city attorney’s negotiation tactics by using an anti-Semitic slur during private discussions earlier this month.
Residents, rabbis, past and present political leaders from around the region demanded more from council members George Muschal and Robin Vaughn, who shrugged off McBride’s “Jew her down” comment during a closed-door executive session this month and pressed for answers about how McBride’s comments were leaked to the press.
On Wednesday, at-large councilman Jerell Blakeley called for a town hall meeting, attended by roughly two dozen people, to push back against the “hate speech” used by his colleagues, which has almost universally been condemned and attracted national headlines.
“I don’t want this to be about me,” Blakeley said in opening remarks at the outset of the meeting. “I think condemnation without education is not the way forward. So much of hatred is born in ignorance.”
Blakeley, the youngest member of the legislative body in his first term of office, has become a subplot in the unfolding drama.
He has been the object of opprobrium in some circles over his vociferous, unrelenting push to censure the council president and her supporters for defending McBride’s words at a Sept. 5 executive session closed to the public.
Accusations have been hurled that Blakeley, who political insiders believe is positioning himself for an eventual run for mayor of New Jersey’s capital city, had a hand in the leak of McBride’s slur.
Mayor Reed Gusciora called on McBride to apologize in an email that was obtained by The Trentonian. Blakeley has denied orchestrating the leak.
Nonetheless, three of Blakeley’s colleagues alleged he was only interested in using the McBride antiSemitic soap opera for his own political exploit.
Earlier in the day, he got into a heated argument over the phone with Trentonian columnist L.A. Parker.
Parker asked Blakeley, who is one of three African American council members, if he has ever used the Nword.
The at-large councilman, befuddled over what he perceives as the misdirected mudslinging of the person who did not use the anti-Semitic slur, declined to answer Parker’s “irrelevant” question and dismissed him as a “gossip columnist.”
Blakeley accused Parker, who has written columns praising and criticizing the councilman, of “attempting to deflect and make this story about me” due to Parker’s apparent “fascination with my political career and my aspirations.”
“This isn’t about Jerell Blakeley. This is about standing up to hate, It’s not like there’s a large Jewish
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