RALLY FOR KATHY
McBride condemns Blakeley for ‘misogynistic’ ‘crackhead prostitute comment, rally tur >>
TRENTON >> It was supposed to be a pro-Kathy McBride rally to chasten councilman Jerell Blakeley for calling the “community mother” an “illiterate crackhead prostitute” on a coronavirus call last year.
Dozens of the council president’s supporters absorbed withering cold to hold up signs on the steps of City Hall Friday, calling for Blakeley’s employer, the New Jersey Education Association, to hold him accountable for making the hurtful comments and initially lying about them.
The rally, organized with the help of McBride’s son, Cory, was billed as a gathering to denounce violence against women. But it took a turn for the worse when one of the speakers, Divine Allah, made several hateful comments in an impassioned defense of McBride.
Allah, an influential member of the New Black Panther Party and a friend of McBride’s slain son, Kenneth, assailed members of the Jewish community as the “true enemy” and called the city’s openly gay mayor, Reed Gusciora, a “white boy” and a “little fa**ot.”
He accused Blakeley of acting as a puppet for the administration to attack one of Trenton’s beloved leaders. And he and other speakers made remarks that Blakeley interpreted as threatening and made him consider going to the police.
“We were here a few months ago when this white-boy mayor, this little fa**ot ... disrespected our sister. We came and it died out,” Allah said, alluding to Gusciora’s infamous tangle with Robin Vaughn during a separate coronavirus call. “Here we are again, and now it’s our brother going up against our mother, not just a Black woman.”
McBride, who faced calls for her ouster in 2019 after she was caught on tape making anti-Semitic remarks during executive session, distanced herself from Allah’s hate-filled remarks while trying to keep the focus on Blakeley.
Cory, McBride’s son, primed the crowd calling Blakeley’s comments about his mother “very disrespectful” for a woman who has spent her life dedicated to Trentonians.
“Women of color are heavily criticized and scrutinized more than most people and face enormous amounts of disrespect as shown through history,” he said. “His words were a direct reflect of his character. And I will not stand by and watch him or anyone continue these attacks against my mother or any other woman.”
Speaking on the steps outside City Hall for the first time since news broke of the city’s latest flap, McBride read from a statement calling out Blakeley for the “misogynistic” attack of her during on April 6 coronavirus briefing.
Rousing up the crowd up, the council president, who has a passionate base of supporters and was top vote-getting in the last election, suggested Blakeley should expect “very grim” problems if he continues attacking her.
“If you want to apologize to me, then you meet me right out here in the public, where your statement lingers,” she told the crowd. “Meet me in the street amongst the people and apologize because that’s where your words are, they’re in the streets now. They’re in every corner of this city now. You can’t tell me that you didn’t mean it and your continuously repeat it.”
Blakeley lied to The Trentonian when confronted this week with a transcript of the slur he directed at McBride, which came after she called him a “piece of sh*t.”
The transcript was among dozens that a judge ordered turned over to the newspaper after it sued the city for violating the Open Public Meetings Act by holding secret briefings involving a quorum of legislators.
Blakeley threatened to sue the newspaper for publishing his comment, but backtracked and admitted the “illiterate crackhead prostitute” slur.
He claimed he called to apologize to McBride after last year’s meeting.
McBride called that assertion an “outright lie,” providing a transcript of a Jan. 6 text-message exchange in which Blakeley repeated similar language deriding her as a “semi-illiterate embarrassment.”
McBride pointed to another dig that Blakeley made at her when he mentioned someone named “Happy Carmichael,” an apparent reference to a pimp, when she accused the atlarge councilman of biting the “hand that fed” him.
“I’ll say this: Get a high [sic] diploma and then talk to me,” Blakeley said in the text exchange. “And I’ll end with this, remember Happy Carmichael?”
Blakeley refused to tell The Trentonian who he was discussing when reached Friday night.
Turning her focus at the rally, McBride blamed local media and Gusciora’s administration for fueling the feud between two prominent Black leaders.
“Do you understand what they have done to you my brother?” McBride said. “They have allowed you to carry their water against me and now they have thrown you under the bus. Now they have taken you and put you on the front page of the newspaper to end your career. And I’m gonna tell you this, councilman Blakeley. I am not here to ruin your career because you’re doing a good job of it yourself.
“What I’m saying to you is look around you, brother. These people are not your friends. Every time you leak an article to The Trentonian, do you think those people at The Trentonian are your friends? ... And they use me to do it. So they say, ‘Hey, we’ll get two in one. We’re gonna take both of
them down together. We’re finished with him. He no longer serves our purpose. So we’re gonna get rid of him, too.’
“They know this: If you go against Kathy McBride in the city of Trenton, you are going up against a force. And let me tell you this, they know that force will call for his resignation. They know that I have 125 cousins, and I didn’t even bother to get involved in this today.”
McBride said she did not didn’t want to see Blakeley lose his six-figure job as a lobbyist for the NJEA, which did not respond to a request for comment.
The council president during her speech addressed controversy that nearly cost her a political future.
In 2019, she was called on to resign for suggesting city attorneys were able to “Jew down” a woman who filed a lawsuit against the city after being injured.
Blakeley demanded McBride’s ouster as council president over the comment.
McBride apologized for the remark and said she attended sensitivity training, but admitted the slur follows her “like the scarlet letter A no matter how much I apologize.”
She regretted shifting the focus off of Vivian Soto, who settled with the city for $22,500 after injuring her ankle.
“We should have been talking about the young lady,” she said.
The focus shifted again from the rally when Allah attacked Blakeley for going after the city’s “community mother” and defended her anti-Semitic slur.
“When our sister said something about ‘Jewing somebody down,’ we know it as a figure of speech,” Allah said. “But there were people from the outside who watch and say, ‘Oh, no, get somebody to say something about her.’ And the brother came out and said she should resign.
“But three weeks later, he’s on the front page of the paper with the Jew boy, smiling because he’s invited to a bar mitzvah for their son.’ You see how this works. Discredit your own and gain favor with us, the true enemy.
“See, I can talk like this. I’m not associated with no politics,” Allah continued. “That’s my mother. That’s my sister. That’s my aunt. That’s my cousin. That’s my close friend. To hell with the politics. If it was any other situation, and I mean, truth be told, he’d have his head knocked off.”
Allah lambasted the Howard University-educated Blakeley for thinking he’s better than constituents and urged city officials to check their actions.
“Keep the media out of it,” he said. “I see some of ya’ll out here. Stop being used as pawns, Trentonian, Trenton Times, if ya’ll really care. Where you at there, [L.A.] Parker? You been around long enough, man. Stop allowing these outside forces, these crackas that still run counterintelligence program, using the media to talk against our people.
“They use ya’ll as scribes to talk against who you know have good hearts. Jerell might have a good heart, but he’s young. He’s not grounded yet. We ain’t got to him yet. The movement ain’t snatch him up yet … and put that fire to his consciousness. It looks good wearing a suit. It looks good having his plaque on the door. That’s cute stuff. But that ain’t work.”
Ron McMullen, president of AFSCME New Jersey Council 63, the union representing city workers, said he was disappointed in Blakeley for going after a “Black sister.”
“You don’t criticize; you correct,” he said, adding McBride was a candidate who has the “potential to run the godd*mn city” given her advocacy for residents to have jobs and lower taxes, and for the administration to approve a new contract for city employees.
He claimed officials wanted union leadership filled with “all Europeans.”
“I want to lessen those numbers, what do I got to do? I got to assassinate that character. I got to say she disrespected Jews when she ain’t disrespect not one Jew,” McMullen said. “I got to say she got warrants in different parts of towns and she needs to be arrested. I got to call her a ‘crackhead.’ I gotta call her a ‘prostitute.’
“That is why this woman is feared. They fear the political and economic ability that she has that affects the people of the city of Trenton.”
City employee and union official Paul Bethea defended McBride as a “wonderful” woman who he’s marched with through the streets of Trenton.
He menacingly told Blakeley “check up from the neck up.”
“He better watch what he said because he could be waking people up that he don’t know who he’s waking up,” Bethea said. “I’mma tell you something because the brothers will pay him a visit.
“When he go reach for that door knob, his hand might not be there cause he opened up his mouth. I hope he realize stop trying to make a public figure out of yourself in the newspaper. Cause the only thing that newspaper wanna do is sell newspapers.”
Blakeley released a statement on Facebook condemning Allah and other speakers for encouraging violence against him.
He told The Trentonian in a phone interview that he was considering filing a police report.
“I am very disappointed in the fact that her rally today included totally irrelevant homophobic attacks against our mayor, clearcut threats of violence towards me, and wild and hateful anti-Semitic and anti-white conspiracy theories that I am controlled by the Jews and white people,” Blakeley said.
McBride denied in an interview afterward knowing that Allah was going to traffick in homophobic slurs and anti-Semitic tropes during his speech.
A Trentonian photographer saw McBride give Allah the throat slash hand motion from the crowd, commonly known to mean “stop.”
“Small things hurt people, and the brother spoke and I didn’t like that,” McBride said, adding she was shocked by Allah’s homophobic slur. “You know I really didn’t have a clue . ... He’s an activist on the militant side. He’s a Black Panther. That wasn’t my message; that was his.”
Gusciora, who was elected in 2018 as the city’s first openly gay mayor, said he was appalled by Allah’s hate speech.
“They’re having a press conference condemning hate with more hate, on City Hall steps. Can’t make this stuff up,” the mayor said.
The rhetoric boomed through the microphone as a crew readied City Hall to shoot scenes for Ways & Means, a CBS pilot and political drama starring Patrick Dempsey. A representative for CBS declined to comment.
“We’re trying to open the city up for development and for people to invest in our city, and we’re holding ourselves out as a bunch of haters,” Gusciora said. “That no outsiders needs apply, including gays and Jews. It’s just unfortunate and shouldn’t be representative of our city.”