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Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Wiener speaks with protestors on Civic Plaza.
Civil rights activists, members of the Democratic Party and others gathered on Albuquerque’s Civic Plaza yesterday, calling for the resignation of a Bernalillo County commissioner who sent an e-mail they say was racist, homophobic, and grossly insensitive. In a surprise move, the commissioner, Michael Wiener showed up and apologized for the email, saying that he regretted sending it—but that he won’t resign.
The e-mail, sent last year to the government e-mail accounts of County Manager Thadeus Lucero and county jail chief Ron Torres, contained a joke implying that the huge majority of African American’s have had sex in the shower while in prison.
“We cannot continue to allow this type of fueling of negativism, of anger, of hate,” League of United Latin American Citizens representative Patricia Roybal Caballero told Wiener in an exchange before the crowd.
“How many people occupy the jails, and who are those people who occupy the jails, if not the majority are people of color? What’s going to happen to them if this continues to be allowed? So the message here is, we’re telling you, this type of action has to stop,” Roybal said.
Wiener asked for forgiveness
Wiener said in response that he isn’t a racist, and that he regrets sending the e-mail.
“I made a mistake, I’ve apologized profusely for that mistake, I’m very sincere, I’ve asked for forgiveness,” he said. “Is there anyone here who’s never made a mistake before? If there is, please raise your hand,” Wiener said.
In an Albuquerque Journal opinion piece yesterday, Alfred Dennis Mathewson, UNM law professor and acting director of the Africana Studies Program at UNM, wrote that the joke painted 100 percent of African Americans as criminal, with only 86 percent being caught, perpetuating negative stereotypes. And, the e-mail made light of the very serious issue of prison rape.
“I cannot accept the disparate incarceration of persons of color in our criminal justice system, the perpetuation of racial stereotypes that Americans voted into extinction, and the prevalence of prison rape as laughing matters for public officials,” Mathewson concluded in his Journal piece.
Relative of beating victim asked Wiener for independent review
Joining the speakers at the rally was James Noland, a relative of Avery Hadley, an African American man who was severely beaten in the county jail last year while a guard looked on. Noland called on Wiener to push for an independent investigation of how the jail operates, and for the removal of Torres, who heads up the jail.
“They haven’t addressed the issue [of how the jail is run],” Noland told The Independent, “and this e-mail fits right in. If this situation had happened to someone of a different race, it would have been addressed.”
Wiener told The Independent he was unaware of the resolution calling for an investigation, but would ask the county manager and the county legal department about it.
(Video: Michael Wiener discusses the issue with LULAC representative Patricia Roybal Caballero and James Noland, relative of Avery Hadley.)
Politics at play—or a pattern for the GOP?
In another exchange at the rally, Wiener told the crowd that there was “an agenda here,” pointing to the Democratic Party as an organizer of the event. The Democratic Party should look at its own problems, he said, which drew him into a heated debate with members of the crowd.
“The fact of the matter is that the Republican Party is defending you on this, and that’s the mistake,” said DPNM activist Victor Raigoza. “The Republican Party should be saying, ‘Commissioner Wiener, we don’t accept this sort of joke forwarding.’”
Wiener is the third New Mexico Republican in recent years to be criticized for acts perceived by some as racist. In 2006, African American community leaders demanded an apology from Republican state treasurer candidate Demesia Padilla and the New Mexico GOP for a campaign mailer that caricatured Padilla’s African-American opponent, James Lewis, as a grinning puppet of Gov. Bill Richardson.
According to an Albuquerque Journal article at the time, State Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton, a Democrat, said the mailer was an example of blatant racism, while the Republican Party said it was “just a cartoon.”
And in 2008, the Chairman of the Bernalillo County Republican party, Fernando C de Baca, resigned after coming under fire for saying that Hispanics wouldn’t vote for a black person.
The New Mexico GOP has not yet responded to a voicemail from The Independent’s asking for comment on the controversy over Commissioner Wiener’s circulation of the e-mail.
