SILENT Reverend El-Yateem Just Woke Up…..a Week Later
Four United States House of Representatives members from Brooklyn want street signs at Fort Hamilton Army Base because they believe they are offensive to thousands of Brooklyn residents, military and families members of slaves that General Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson fought to hold as slaves.
The Four Politicians are: Yvette Clarke, Hakeem Jeffries, Jerrold Nadler and Nydia Velázquez. A letter dated July 20, 2017 was shared in the news and on social media on August 7th. In 2015, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams also asked for these signs to be removed.
Last Monday, August 7th, the Army Base responded with a letter that they were not changing the name of the Army Base. We read it and we were surprised that it wasn’t a topic of discussion on social media. We thought the signs should be removed because there are military who live on the Army Base who are offended by the signs and so are their children (although this might not affect you, this is important to people who live there). A week went by and Reverend El-Yateem didn’t speak out for them.
Let’s say that El-Yateem missed the August 7th local news. On August 8th, it was on the cover of the news.
Still El-Yateem said nothing. He didn’t even retweet any of the news about the four politicians who were interested in renaming streets. He didn’t agree with any of them or support them publicly. In June 2017, Justin Brannan discussed his thoughts on the topic in the New Yorker. Brannan is also running for city council in D43 and has never backed away from controversial topics. Like El-Yateem, the other candidates have been silent.
Then #Charlottesville happened this weekend (August 12th) and Reverend El-Yateem work up.
Here is Reverend El-Yateem’s first mention of Fort Hamilton on Monday August 14th at 8:10 AM:
This afternoon, El-Yateem tweeted invited people to a press release he is holding tomorrow on 101st Street to see him use the weekend’s events to get some publicity for him doing nothing but standing around tomorrow. THIS IS NOT LEADERSHIP – THIS IS A POLITICIAN PLAYING POLITICS in our community.
Where was El-Yateem last week?
El-Yateem put up a selfie, changed his Facebook picture to one that glorified him more and talked about how he was 100% backed by Planned Parenthood (he forgot to mention that other candidates were as well).
Why wasn’t Reverend Khader El-Yateem upset and outraged last Monday when the Fort Hamilton Army Base letter came out and stated they would not remove the signs? Why did it take him a week to respond to racism? El-Yateems two Facebook pages and his Twitter account have nothing about it Fort Hamilton on them until today.
This is not the first time I have seen El-Yateem be silent in Bay Ridge.
And this isn’t the first time we have seen politicians not do anything until cameras are involved.
Hugs,
marlene
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