NYC Synagogue Vandalism Suspect Is Former City Hall Anti-Hate Crime Intern
Luke Rosiak
Investigative Reporter
* The suspect in a synagogue vandalism act that forced the cancellation of a Democratic event is reportedly a former City Hall employee who worked on anti-hate crime issues and is a Democratic activist, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
* The New York Times and a Jewish couple helped the impoverished gay black man attend college where he studied African American studies, according to The Times.
* He resented New York liberals as patronizing, and railed against Israel and cultural appropriation, according to his Facebook profile.
* Before knowing his identity, politicians said the vandalism demonstrated why voting Democratic was needed and highlighted government programs to combat such incidents.
The suspect in the vandalism of a New York synagogue was a Democratic activist and former City Hall intern who worked on anti-hate crime issues, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
He is a “queer” black man informally adopted by a Jewish couple, and The New York Times’ charity, the Neediest Cases, helped pay for him to go to college where his focus was African American studies, according to a 2017 New York Times profile.
A political event with two Democratic candidates at the Union Temple of Brooklyn was canceled Friday after attendees found graffiti saying “Die Jew Rats” and “Hitler,” which one of the candidates said highlighted the need to vote out “hate.” Police arrested 26-year old James Polite later that night based on surveillance footage.
A year ago, The New York Times profiled Polite, noting that he was an LGBT foster youth who “could defy the statistics” after becoming the “adopted child of the Quinn administration,” as Christine Quinn, then the speaker of the New York city council, put it. “And it wasn’t just me. It was the entire City Council staff.”
In the 2017 profile, The New York Times said Polite, who requested to join the foster care system after his mother provided “unsanitary” conditions for him, “interned with Ms. Quinn, a Manhattan Democrat, for several years, working on initiatives to combat hate crime, sexual assault and domestic violence. He also took part in her re-election campaign in 2009 and returned to help with her unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2013.”
His Facebook profile, reviewed by TheDCNF, shows that on Nov. 1, a day before the synagogue vandalism, he posted “A dream with eyes wide open. civil war is here. Nobody gotta die. Mexico, latin America, carribean vs. Jew nigger pigs. One person touch me this whole shit a smoking.”
At 3:46 a.m. on Nov. 1, Polite posted a cell-phone picture of a burning American flag, with the caption “Sometimes things take a lil heat to grow.” Police suspect him of setting fires at “seven shuls and yeshivas in Williamsburg” that same night, before the temple vandalism. Security footage captured that, too.
The Facebook profile’s pictures and biographical information reveal that it is the same man in The New York Times’ profile. Its URL includes James Polite, but he changed his online name to Abraham Aali.
The Times profile said that the New York councilwoman helped Polite get into college:
Ms. Quinn wrote Mr. Polite a letter of recommendation to Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and followed up with a call to its president. Council staff members even drove him there on move-in day.
“We did everything that was stepping over the line,” Ms. Quinn said. “But I didn’t care. He had worked so hard all his life, and he needed a break.”
Mr. Polite said his experiences working with Ms. Quinn and on the presidential campaign changed his trajectory. Otherwise, he said, “I would probably have not gone to college.”
Read more: https://www.dailycaller.com/2018/11/03/nyc-synagogue-vandalism-suspect/
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