Fort Greene Assemblyman Walter Mosley, who recently signed onto a bill that would have required a monitor over an upstate school district under the control of the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, abruptly took his name off the bill because he didn’t like the “anti-Semitic overtones.”
“I was not raised to have hate,” said Mosley. “The bill had outright anti-Semitic overtones. On the face of the bill at first it looked benign and that’s why I signed on to it, but after talking to people and seeing what people were actually doing for the (school district) budget, I didn’t think it was necessary and I didn’t like the anti-Semitic undertones affiliated with it.”
Mosley said he would not dignify the anti-Semitism involved by going into the specifics of it, and that it was better to move onto more important issues in his district such as criminal justice reform and affordable housing.
Rockland County lawmakers Sen. David Carlucci, and Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffe, both of whom represent the troubled East Ramapo School District, authored the measure after several years of animosity and budget cuts to the public schools – largely attended by black and Hispanics – by the Orthodox Jewish community, which controls the school board.
Complicating the situation is the unusual make-up of the 33,500-student school district, in that only 8,500 attend East Ramapo public schools and 25,000 attend mainly yeshivas and other private Jewish schools.
Brooklyn Jewish leaders were quick to commend Mosley for his principled stand and growing leadership in the sometimes strained relationship between blacks and religious Jews in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant, part of which he represents.
“He stood up for the civil rights of the people and the orthodox community and the entire New York State,” said Gary Schlesinger, Board Chairman of the United Jewish Community Relations and Enrichment (UJCARE). “It shows off a lesson that those people who are only there to rile up against their neighbors because of their race, religion and ethnicity will not be tolerated by elected officials. I commend Walter Mosley greatly for that.”
“Assemblyman Mosley has shown principled leadership by removing his name from this controversial bill. I hope his action will encourage other assembly colleagues to take a closer look at this misguided legislation and bring the concerned parties together and to come to a reasonable and sensible compromise,” said Chaskel Bennett, a well-known Brooklyn Jewish community activist.
But Midwood Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, a Haitian-American, who co-sponsored the bill because of the large percentage of Haitian-Americans attending East Ramapo public schools, said she did not see anything anti-Semitic about the measure and will keep her name on it.
Bichotte said she and the two other Haitian-American assembly members were originally contacted from Creole speaking parents whose children attended the East Ramapo schools, and she plans on going to East Ramapo in the near future to speak with them further about the issue.
“I don’t play politics on the backs of people’s education or their lives,” said Bichotte. “What’s right is right and it is what it is. I spoke to many (Jewish) leaders and they completely understand. Funds in the public schools there are not appropriately allocated and it’s depriving these children of a quality education.”
