A Burlington city councilor has accused six of his colleagues of voting against a resolution he introduced because he is black.
Ali Dieng (D/P-Ward 7) fired off the accusation in a tweet around midnight Tuesday, shortly after his proposal to provide increased support to the city’s Neighborhood Planning Assemblies failed in a 6-6 vote.
“Thank you to all the councilors that voted to support the motion calling for an open process to strengthen our NPAs,” Dieng wrote. “The motion failed 6-6 because it came from @diengali the only back [sic] councilor in #BTV.”
The resolution, cosponsored by Dieng, Max Tracy (P-Ward 2), Brian Pine (P-Ward 3) and Dave Hartnett (D-North District), asked the city to work with the NPAs to identify the support and money they need to operate more effectively. Four Democrats, Adam Roof (I-Ward 8) and Council President Kurt Wright (R-Ward 4) voted against the measure, saying that some of the local neighborhood groups opposed the resolution and others hadn’t had time to weigh in.
After Dieng tweeted, Councilor Joan Shannon (D-South District) immediately pushed back.
“I don’t think we have an obligation to vote yes based on the skin color of the maker of the motion,” she wrote in response. “My NPAs didn’t know where it came from when they came out in opposition.”
“Your statement is untrue and I take great offense to it, as anyone would,” Shannon added in a follow-up tweet.
Wright said he contacted Dieng on Tuesday and asked to meet with him and Curtiss Reed Jr., executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, to iron out the issue. Reed, who is black, has led implicit bias training for the city in the past, according to Wright.
Dieng, who was first elected in 2017, declined the invitation. “I don’t know what is the purpose” of the meeting, he told Seven Days. “What can Curtiss Reed tell me that I don’t already know and understand? What is Kurt Wright going to tell me that I don’t already know and understand?”
Wright called the tweet “troubling” and noted that several councilors had emailed him to voice their frustrations about the accusation. “It is really creating a divisive issue for the council, for councilors who think they really made clear to Ali why they were going to vote against the resolution,” Wright said.
The council president added that NPA leaders also disagreed with Dieng’s proposal. “I would like to have the opportunity to sit down with Ali and understand why he is saying these things,” Wright said.
In an interview Wednesday, Dieng said he stood by what he’d posted online. “I’m not backing up from that statement,” he said. “I made my conclusion this was a good and wonderful resolution and the people did not vote for it because it comes from me.”
He acknowledged the possibility that councilors voted against the measure because of political differences. But because he earned endorsements from both Democrats and Progressives in the past, he contended that it had at least something to do with his skin color.
The councilors who opposed his NPA resolution also campaigned against him earlier this year in the run-up to the March election, Dieng said. The failure of his recent resolution is more of the same, he added: “You don’t want to give Ali a win.”
Correction, December 13, 2018: A previous version of this story misidentified the party affiliation of one councilor who voted against the resolution.
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The councilors all make votes based on classism why is it so hard to believe theyd all vote based on internalized racism too? Coincidence none of them seem interested in people of color and marginalized voices having meaningful oversight of our police department while our police pull over and arrest black people at higher and higher rates? So few of them have publicly acknowledged that Black Lives Matter?
Where are the facts to support this claim? If you are going to accuse someone you better have solid ground to stand on and offer something more than just your opinion.
Ali Dieng’s shallow comment was obviously childish, puerile, and bitter. But it’s amusing to see Joan Shannon (who once tweeted that all Trump supporters are racists) getting a taste of her own medicine.
And there you have it! This narrative that has been created by leftists is now biting them on the ass. They’re too stupid to see it and I’m too tired to explain it. Onwards!
I trust that when Ali Dieng says what he says, is not a throw away comment. No one makes statements like this lightly, particularly folks like Ali who lead with integrity, intelligence and wisdom. Like women can feel the energy of sexism in a room, a situation, a conversation, a look, folks of color know when racism is in the room. Ali knows. We need to listen, not be defensive, listen, check ourselves… and learn.
I will only state that non-white folks in the US usually have a much better understanding of how racism works in this country than white folks. I’ll go with Dieng on this one.
Bless Ali Dieng, a thoughtful, intelligent individual… and a man I once called
the blackest man in Vermont… (with love) Strength to all struggling in the
#maybenotasliberalasithinksitisNorth
Mr. Dieng, do you suppose it’s possible many of us appreciate the talent and power of the millions of black people who make America a better place, and just think you really suck?
Eight white city councilors, led by Joan Shannon and Kurt Wright, voted to keep up the white supremacist Marketplace mural just two months ago and now they resent that they’re being called racist. That resolution was also sponsored by Ali Dieng. White racists always deny their racism much like Bernie Sanders did when leaders of communities of color in Vermont called him out over his “progressive” conference and their exclusion from it
Deng is dealing from the bottom of the Race Card deck
Its terrible that white people think they could vote against a proposal from a person of color…White privilege at its worst. Maybe we could send them to a re-education camp to help them recognize their internalized racism?
Gee. Maybe 6 councilors didn’t support this proposal because they didn’t like it on its merits. Calling people racists because you didn’t get your way on an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with race, is shameful.
And someone from Mr. Petrarca’s family needs to take him home and make him comfortable and tell him that he’s the President and here’s a cookie and ‘night night.
Ali is a threat to establishment members of City Council, and they don’t want him to have a win for the NPAs. The NPAs are grassroots democracy, and they are a natural base for Ali. As for opposition from NPAs, I saw negative remarks from the usual sources (either political opponents of Ali in Ward 7, or Shannon/Paul’s South End NPAs that like a cozy relationship with the establishment). I don’t know who the six nay votes were, but suspect they are the mayor’s block. This mayor wants to keep the grassroots powerless. Developers don’t like citizen participation. The mayor led a discussion of a book by Edward Glaeser who’s no fan of community involvement in the planning process.
Ali Dieng is starting to sound a lot like that old Harlem shake-down artist, Rev. Al Sharpton. Tawana Brawley, anyone?
If you write a resolution that involves the NPAs and don’t involve the NPAs in creating it or bother getting feedback until a few days before it’s supposed to go before city council, and then you fight back against feedback the NPAs give until a few hours before the city council meeting starts, racism isn’t the reason the resolution is voted down.
Just based on the likes and dislikes on these comments its blatantly clear that racism is at work here.
Only in Burlington.
@leaterhune, based on anyone who has observed Burlington politics the last 10 years, your explanation for the vote makes the most sense. Mr. Dieng theoretically has some excellent arguments in support of his proposal based solely on the merits. About empowering NPAs and increasing citizen participation in local government via same (including with respect to development decisions).
Unfortunately as illiberal tendencies have grown stronger and stronger on the left over the last 4 or 5 years, there too often seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to immediately descend into identity politics instead of making the case based on the merits. President Clinton certainly made his mistakes (and a few decisions that even look terrible in retrospect) but he generally did a good job trying to explain his decisions and policies. Gaining him the nick-name, “Explainer-in-Chief.” Hopefully Mr. Dieng and the Progressives can go more in that direction because it is ultimately necessary to persuade as a first step in politics, especially to expand one’s coalition and support.
Ali thank you for staying involved, working for the people in our city, speaking the truth. Its not easy but you are doing it. Thank you.
So basically “The correctness of my ideas is so inherently self evident that only those who are racist would dare oppose me”?
How about other people have opinions that differ from your own for perfectly valid reasons. Maybe try listening to why that is instead of trying to bully them into compliance by screeching about “racism” or any other “-ism” to get your way.
“It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I’m a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me… You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” – Joseph Welch
So, white man Kurt Wright, who once said it was “racist” to call the racist war on drugs racist, is now going to pick the appropriate black man to teach black councilor Ali Dieng how to act as a black man on council?
Do the people commenting here who, as the writer Dorothy Parker said “have minds so pure that no idea can penetrate it”, also feel that all the #metoo activists are playing the “woman card”?
Haven’t Caucasians been playing the “white card” for centuries?
For Arthur: “I have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. . . . .
He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted, warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of honesty and decency in government.” – Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950
Just because you don’t get your way!!!! What bullshit!!!!
I don’t live in Burlington anymore, and I don’t know anything about this resolution, but I know Ali and I know he is a very good man with a very good heart who has worked very hard to make sure the underrepresented have a voice. Based on this, I believe if he is calling foul there is something foul.
Old white Petrarca is a parody of himself and he doesnt even know it.
In the name of anti-racism, he should be out there now painting all the white sidewalks in Burlington black! Why are sidewalks white?! Who said concrete should be white?! White sidewalks are proof that Mayor Weinberger is racist!
OMG, why does the Mayors office order WHITE paper for writing and printing at City Hall?! Thats so racist! In solidarity, Burlington should be using only black paper!
Why does the City allow anything to be white?! The police cars shouldnt be black and white! They should just be black! Or Hispanic! Having any white on a police car is racist!
Why does the city allow any houses to be painted white?! Why do we allow the municipal parking garages to be made of white concrete?! Why do we allow City Market to sell white bread and white sugar and white flour and vanilla ice cream and white cottage cheese and white yogurt?!
Please go find a white public toilet to clog as a protest.