Is Joe Kelly Levasseur Facebook Post Racist or Merely Incoherent?
Joe Kelly Levasseur Seems to Blame Mayor Joyce Craig & Democrats for Crime Committed by Blacks — OPINION
MANCHESTER, NH — Joe Kelly Levasseur posted remarks about a crime perpetrated by “young black males” on his personal Facebook page that seemingly blames their criminal behavior on Mayor Joyce Craig and “anti-school choice Democrats.”
A political meme that has been floated by the Manchester City GOP is that opposition to school vouchers (vouchers being tagged with the euphemism “school choice”) is racist. According to the Republican reckoning, being against school choice has the effect of preventing black children and children of color from escaping the racist Manchester School District and going to private schools where they can receive a better education.
And that is racist.
Anchoring the Republican rhetoric is the GOP “factoid” that Manchester’s Board of the School Committee, dominated by “anti-choice Democrats” according to Alderman Levasseur, officially declared the Manchester school system “racist” — according to Republicans.
So they say.
Of course, the Republicans making this argument would never criticize what many reasonable people feel is the overt racism of a Levasseur or a Rich Girard.
Many others would argue that recognizing racial inequities in the past and present, and vowing to do something to rectify them hardly equates to a declaration the Manchester School District is racist. But that’s politics. Something for everybody.
A screenshot of the Levasseur post later was posted to a Facebook group, where it elicited comments declaring the sentiments expressed by Alderman-at-Large Levasseur to be racist, or incoherent, or both.
The Board of Mayor and Alderman, which censured Levasseur in February 2014 after a New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office report held that his charges against the Manchester Police Department and then-Police Chief David Mara were unfounded, has in the seven years since, refused to discipline JKL over his antics.
However, this is Manchester, New Hampshire. If you hold your breath waiting for the BMA to do the right thing, you’ll turn as blue as the color of the party that JKL bashed the other day on Facebook. He can insult, deman and lie about the aldermen, and they do — nothing.
It’s as if they have Stockholm Syndrome.
Even allegedly “racist” Levasseur Facebook posts that brought on calls for his resignation from Mayor Craig and some of the more sentient aldermen and a rally at City Hall Plaza didn’t move the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to do anything about JKL.
So, in accordance with the expressed wish of a majority of BMA members, it remains the duty of the voters to determine whether Alderman Levasseur’s comments are racist, incoherent, or both.
In accordance with the wishes or fears or cowardice or whatever drives the thinking and actions of a majority of aldermen, it is the duty of the voters, if they so choose, to deprive JKL another term on the Board. A Board that many feel licenses JKL’s bad boy errant behavior by failing to get up off its collective ass and do something to stop it.
There’s little doubt in my mind, or anyone else’s, for that matter, that Joe Kelly Levasseur will be reelected in November.
