A Manhattan City Council candidate running against New York Councilmember Mark Levine for the City Council’s District 7 seat is publicly displaying some of the most vitriolic and vicious anti-Semitic hatred in recent memory – and still being welcomed to Democratic Party organization events.
Thomas Lopez-Pierre, 48, first tried for the Council seat in 2013, but even in 2012 he sent a series of emails calling Levine a “White/ Jewish candidate” and accusing him of trying “to sneak into office like a thief in the night.” By January 2013, Lopez-Pierre was emailing Brian Benjamin, a Democratic fundraiser who is black and supported Levine’s 2013 run. Lopez-Pierre wrote that Benjamin was an “uncle Tom [n-word] bitch,” for supporting Levine, adding, “[Harlem residents] know that you are a weak, little short man who sucks White/ Jewish cock.”
As recently as this past August, Lopez-Pierre sent out an email reading “Greedy Landlords and NYC Council Member Mark Levine are working together to push Black and Hispanic tenants out of Harlem!”
Although Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Comptroller Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Letitia James, and Congressmember Jerrold Nadler all demanded that Lopez-Pierre apologize, he refused, telling Manhattan Express, “I don’t see it as anti-Semitic, I’m not going to be ashamed to be committed to the political and economic empowerment of the black community. Levine has no business representing a black community on the City Council.”
Even with his record of hatred, Lopez-Pierre joined Levine and a third District 7 candidate, Matthew Gros-Werter, at the Three Parks Independent Democratic Club on April 12, where he fulminated that “Jewish landlords” threatened communities of color while promising to “stop ethnic cleansing of black/ Hispanic tenants” in the district. He added, “For almost 15 to 20 years, these Jewish landlords have been at the forefront at pushing black and Latino people out,” he said. “I think it’s hypocritical for the Jewish community and Jewish leaders to look the other way while black and Latino people are being pushed out of their communities to make room for white people.”
Then he compared black and Latino tenants’ problems to the Holocaust, saying, “This is how I would make it simple for Jewish people. If there was a candidate that was taking money from the construction managers that built concentration camps, the Jews would not look favorably upon that candidate.”
Lopez-Pierre wasn’t through:
Lopez-Pierre’s profile on Twitter reads: “Jewish landlords OWN 80% of private rental buildings in Upper Manhattan; GUILTY of GREED for pushing Black/Hispanic tenants out. Democrat: 7th Council District.”
