From Fairfax County Democratic Committee Executive Director Jack Kiraly:
“At the July 28th meeting of the Fairfax County Public Library Board of Trustees, Phil Rosenthal (Springfield District Representative) went on a Trump-style attack on our libraries and inclusivity in education.
This kind of hate and bigotry has no place in Fairfax County. It’s time to #ResignRosenthal”
Check out the video, below, in which Mr. Rosenthal – who was appointed by Fairfax County (Springfield District) Supervisor Pat Herrity (right-wing Republican) in 2018 – says the following:
- He starts out by emphasizing that “65% of my employees are African American…my IT department has African Americans, so I’m not a racist.” Yeah, so glad he cleared *that* up at the outset of his rant, lol.
- But, having said that, Rosenthal adds, “I went on the library website and I looked at the catalog of the books…as a trustee, I’m appalled at what we are presenting to the public...”
- For instance, Rosenthal wonders why the library is “highlighting the Muslim writers” – “why don’t we have books by Catholic writers or Mormon writers or Jewish writers or Baptist writers?”
- “The thing that most upsets me is ‘dismantling systemic racism’ is the title…we have this new word ‘systemic racism,’ I’m not sure anybody knows what it means…”
- “We’re changing the history of America here…”
- “Black lives documentaries – why don’t we have some white lives documentaries?”
- “We have rainbow reads for teens, why don’t we have the [flip?] side of rainbow books for teens...we have rainbow books for young readers, I don’t know what we’re going to encourage our young readers to do.”
- “Those types of titles, highlighted, are offensive to many many citizens of Fairfax County – they’re offensive to the Catholic community, they’re offensive to the Baptist community, they’re offensive to the Mormon community…”
- Rosenthal concludes that Black Lives Matter people “are communists, they’re Marxists.”
As FCDC Executive Director Jack Kiraly says, “This kind of hate and bigotry has no place in Fairfax County. It’s time to #ResignRosenthal”
********************************************************
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
