jsteele wrote:Trayon gave a response to the recent controversies today on Facebook Live:
https://www.facebook.com/trayon.white/videos/10100821281203455/
He said that he stayed at the museum the entire time and that is was a lie to report that he left early. He said that he had gone to the museum to learn and then discovered that a reporter had joined the group. He didn't want to have his every move analyzed and reported on, so he and a staffer split off from the group and toured the rest of the museum by themselves.
He defended the donation to the Nation of Islam but said the the doesn't agree with everything Farrakhan on everything.
He said he is not going to resign and not going to back down.
He did a lot of ranting and claimed that the attention is an attempt to prevent him from helping his community.
jsteele wrote:Council Members Brianne Nadeau and Mary Cheh have called for the Council to censure Trayon White.
https://twitter.com/AndrewGiambrone/status/987450697233903618
and
https://twitter.com/AndrewGiambrone/status/987453300927877121
jsteele wrote:Well, this will certainly add fuel to the fire:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-lawmaker-under-fire-for-anti-semitism-donated-to-event-where-farrakhan-denounced-jews/2018/04/20/32bbcc60-440c-11e8-bba2-0976a82b05a2_story.html
White made a $500 donation from his constituent services account to a Nation of Islam event at which Louis Farrakhan spoke. Of course, Farrakhan took the opportunity to denounce Jews.
In this article, White defends the Nation of Islam:
"The Brothers from the Nation are of the few men that show up to help .?.?. us address crime and social ills in Southeast. They also run a feeding program in several public housing communities in ward 8."
White likely broke the law with this donation and could be fined.
Anonymous wrote:I think White left the tour (and lied to his host that he had a meeting in the ward, when he remained outside the museum!) because he (1) grew bored with the topic and can only focus on matters personally relevant to himself; and/or (2) grew up in a Holocaust-denial culture and couldn’t reconcile what he was seeing with what he actually had grown up believing. To the PPs who wished to cut him some slack because it was all too much to take in - nah, he just doesn’t care.