After a Newark group invited speakers with anti-Semitic history, O’Scanlon wants state to freeze their money

A top Republican lawmaker wants the state to freeze $6.5 million earmarked for Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s Brick City Peace Collective after a program held on Saturday, while Hamas was launching a terrorist attack on Israel featured two speakers with a history of spurting anti-Semitic statements.

State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Little Silver) said the taxpayer-funded event was billed as a celebration of Baraka’s late father, Amiri Baraka, a controversial poet who was removed from his job as New Jersey’s Poet Laureate after writing a poem that blamed Jews for the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

“The misuse of State tax dollars cries out for immediate action by you, especially after the antisemitic terrorism that has unfolded in Israel in recent days,” O’Scanlon told Murphy in a letter. “The antisemitism built into Newark’s event appears to have been funded by state taxpayers.”

One of the panelists at Saturday’s program was Zellie Imani, who was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League last year for calling for the end of Israel’s existence.   Just before the Newark event, Imani used his social media account – and for a few days after – to praise extremists for gaslighting Israel.

Another participant, Minister Abdul Haqq Muhammad of the Nation of Islam’s Newark headquarters, has also been identified as anti-Semitic by the ADL.

Ras Baraka, now serving his third term as mayor, is mulling a bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2025.  His father died in 2014.

After Amiri Baraka first read his poem in September 2002, he faced widespread criticism for expressing anti-Semitic opinions, and Gov. James E. McGreevey called for his resignation:

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?

But since the 1999 law establishing the post had no mechanism for removal, a bi-partisan group of 82 state legislators sponsored a bill abolishing the position.

O’Scanlon wants Murphy to freeze funding to the Brick City Peace Collective “until it is better known how the funds will be used, and there are assurances the funds won’t be used for the same purpose.

As the Senate Republican budget officer, O’Scanlon said Newark’s actions “cries out for corrective action.”

“The bill was needed to prevent state funds from being spent to honor someone who peddled bigoted conspiracy theories — as well as other ‘poetry’ that was homophobic and exalted violence,” O’Scanlon said.  “Sadly, more than 20 years after Amiri Baraka was appropriately stripped of an undeserving State title and a $10,000 taxpayer-funded honorarium, Amri Baraka is once again being put on a pedestal and glorified — with State taxpayer dollars.”