City Council Speaker Julie Menin is facing increasing pressure to take action against a Republican council member with a history of making inflammatory and baseless claims about Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Muslims, after community leaders said her recent online activity could endanger Muslims in New York.<\/p>\n
The council member, Inna Vernikov, was elected by the Council\u2019s Jewish Caucus in January to lead its antisemitism task force, a choice that drew outrage given her past description of the mayor as a \u201cterrorist lover\u201d who wanted to see Jews \u201cburn in an oven.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Ms. Menin had publicly vowed to push for Ms. Vernikov\u2019s removal from the task force if she continued making anti-Muslim statements. But on Friday, she said she would not follow through on that pledge, despite a widely shared social media post Ms. Vernikov made last month that questioned whether Muslims were praying near a Jewish school in Brooklyn as an \u201cintentional\u201d act of intimidation.<\/p>\n Through a spokesman, Ms. Menin said the Jewish Caucus, of which she is a nonvoting member<\/a>, bore ultimate responsibility for Ms. Vernikov\u2019s future on the task force.<\/p>\n \u201cSpeaker Menin relayed her concerns to the co-chairs of the Jewish Caucus when the tweet was first posted,\u201d the spokesman, Henry Robins, said in a statement. \u201cShe and Council Member Yusef Salaam met with Muslim community leaders this week, and she\u2019s working to broker a meeting between them and Council Member Vernikov in the belief that dialogue is the best path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n At a rally outside City Hall on Friday, faith leaders representing Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Sikh communities said Ms. Menin\u2019s response to the outcry over Ms. Vernikov demonstrated a double standard in how city leaders respond to hate speech when it targets Muslims versus members of other faith groups.<\/p>\n As they spoke, a truck with screens showing Ms. Vernikov\u2019s photo and a message calling on her to resign was driven past City Hall.<\/p>\n Mr. Robins said on Friday that Ms. Menin had \u201ca decades-long record of standing against Islamophobia,\u201d dating back to her support almost two decades ago for the construction of an Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan that critics derisively referred to as the \u201cground zero mosque.\u201d (The cultural center was never built.)<\/p>\n \u201cAs speaker, she has visited mosques, advocated for protections for Islamic schools and houses of worship, and believes that all forms of hate must be confronted consistently and that all New Yorkers deserve equal protection,\u201d Mr. Robins said.<\/p>\n Ms. Vernikov, who represents several neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn, sought to defend herself in an interview on Friday, saying she had posted a video of the men praying in response to \u201cconcerns raised by my constituents regarding a large gathering of men outside an all girls\u2019 school.\u201d The video has been viewed nearly 3 million times on X since Ms. Vernikov posted it last month.<\/p>\n \u201cIt had nothing to do with religion, and I would have expressed the same concerns had the individuals involved been Jewish, Christian or members of any other faith,\u201d she added. \u201cI am always open to dialogue and have offered to meet with the Imam of the congregation as well as the groups who raised concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n The coalition of faith leaders gathered in front of City Hall on Friday said that city leadership had not done enough to protect the city\u2019s Muslims, especially in the aftermath of an attack last month in San Diego, where two gunmen with anti-Muslim writings<\/a> in their vehicle killed three people at a mosque.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is she waiting for? What are we in the back of this building waiting for?\u201d said Yasser Salem of Ms. Menin. He chairs the OneNYC PAC, which was founded to support Mr. Mamdani and allied candidates. \u201cWe will not wait until San Diego happens in New York City to move,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ms. Vernikov was elected to the City Council in 2021 and has long been a controversial figure in New York City politics.<\/p>\n In addition to her many comments attacking the mayor, she was arrested in 2023<\/a> for bringing a gun to observe a pro-Palestinian protest at Brooklyn College, but was not charged<\/a> after the weapon was found to be inoperable.<\/p>\n