Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Campaign Volunteer is an Activist Against ‘Greedy Jewish Landlords’

By Joseph A. WulfsohnJun 27th, 2018, 3:25 pm
 

Alexandria Ocasia Cortez pulled a major upset against top ranking House Democrat Joe Crowley in the New York District 14 primary, but it appears a volunteer seen at her campaign event Tuesday night has an anti-Semitic platform.

Twitter user Leo Greenberg first spotted Thomas Lopez-Pierre standing in the crowd behind Ocasio-Cortez as she spoke with a local reporter celebrating her surprise victory.

Well, a quick trip to his personal website lays out his primary objective when he ran for NYC Council: take down “Greedy Jewish Landlords.”

“Jewish landlords own more than 80% of the private multi-family (5 units or more) apartment buildings in Upper Manhattan (and the numbers are similar in other Black and Hispanic communities in NYC),” Lopez-Pierre’s site says. “Jewish landlords are at the forefront – guilty of pushing out Black and Hispanic low income tenants in NYC.”

He clarifies on the site that “most Jewish people in NYC are GOOD PEOPLE” but that they are “just unaware of the unethical and greedy business practices” of what he coined the “Greedy Jewish Landlords.”

His site also says that Lopez-Pierre had planned to use $100,000 public matching funds from the NYC Campaign Finance Board “to help educate Jewish people in NYC about the several decades long economic holocaust inflicted upon the Black and Hispanic community in NYC by ‘Greedy Jewish Landlords.'”

Lopez-Pierre uploaded multiple videos on Youtube in an overt effort to appeal to Jewish voters. One was him attending the NYC Israel Pride parade earlier this month.

“I came here today to celebrate with the Jewish people. Together as one community, we can stop the Greedy Jewish Landlords that are pushing Black and Hispanic tenants out of their apartments,” Lopez-Pierre says to the camera. “If we work together as one community, we can do this.”

He also repeats his un-cited statistic that “over 80% of the real estate in Upper Manhattan” is owned by Jewish landlords.

In another bizarre video uploaded in February of 2018, Lopez-Pierre told his supporters than in an effort to increase his Jewish vote, he sought advice from two Jewish women he was “dating.”

He explained that out of the roughly 3,200 votes he received in 2017, “only about 500” came from the Jewish community.

“I recently asked two Jewish women that I’m dating to help me select a number of books from Barnes and Noble that will help me learn more about the Jewish community and to invite me to their synagogue and to have me visit the Jewish Holocaust Museum by the end of the year.”

Lopez-Pierre then lists some of the books “the two Jewish women” he was supposedly dating recommended, including Capitalism and the Jews by Jerry Z. Miller, Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism edited by Rebecca Kobrin, What Went Wrong? The Creation & Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance by Murray Friedman.

He also defended Joy Reid amid the controversy over offensive posts on her old blog with a dig at the “Jewish media.”

His apparent obsession with “Greedy Jewish Landlords” (a phrase that, as of this writing, is literally in his Twitter bio) was severe enough that he was tweeting about as Ocasio-Cortez was giving her victory speech, though his various tweets from Tuesday were more politically correct as he referred to them as only “Greedy Landlords.”

Mark Levine, the NYC Councilman who defeated Lopez-Pierre in 2017, took to Twitter to give Ocasio-Cortez the benefit of the doubt and is giving her a chance to “denounce him and his brazen anti-Semitism.”

UPDATE –– 4:53 pm ET: Ocasio-Cortez responded todayf by denouncing his hateful statements and saying she has no idea who he is:

[images via screengrabs]

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