People should ask him for his papers


Many readers would have seen the viral video of a man in a restaurant who raged against employees who were speaking Spanish and “threatened to report the Spanish speaking workers to immigration authorities, saying he assumed they were probably undocumented. He also complained that they were on welfare and his tax dollars are supporting them.”

Journalists easily tracked him down and found that he is Aaron Schlossberg, a lawyer and a fervent Trump supporter, and that his behavior did not surprise many of his former classmates in college and law school. Shaun King reports that “Several Muslim leaders across the city told me that he has randomly stalked and harassed them over the past few years and they just didn’t know who he was.”

Another reporter, the lead editor at A Plus, says he recognized the man from a video last year. Based on that video, Isaac Saul says the same man was screaming at Jews saying they weren’t Jewish. He describes him as “a die hard Trumper.”

I wouldn’t soon forget him. Had that crazy look in his eyes. Was a die hard Trumper and pretty unreasonably upset there were Jews supporting Palestine around.

More videos of Schlossberg have surfaced and he is finding out that his behavior hasn’t endeared him to the people at his workplace.

What I would like to see with some of these xenophobes is for someone to ask them to show papers proving that they have documents proving that they are in the country legally. They seem to feel that since they are white, their right should be taken for granted when that need not be the case. It would be nice to see their reaction when challenged to prove their citizenship.

Comments

  1. jazzlet says

    Especially if they were asked to provide the three peices of evidence for every year back to 1973 like the Windrush generation were being asked to provide to the Home Office in the UK.

  2. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Thanks for this, Mano! I was considering writing about it myself, now I don’t have to. I will, however, add something that struck me as important: he advertises himself as a member of the NY State Bar, but he is not, in fact, a member of the bar. It is not yet clear to me if he is or isn’t licensed to practice law in NY, but it’s certainly possible that either his license has lapsed or he never had one (probably relying instead on an out-of-state license).

    It is common to go to law school in a state other than where you intend to practice. It is not common to practice in a particular state without a license in that state. This can be HUUUUGE trouble, and even the simpler, more innocent mistake of advertising yourself as a bar member without being a bar member is fairly serious. It says even more about the state of this man’s ethics.

  3. blf says

    New Yorkers respond to lawyer’s racist rant with ‘Latin party’ outside his house :

    […]
    There is a street party happening in New York this evening. There will be taco trucks, Jarritos margaritas and a mariachi band […]

    Festivities are taking place outside the Manhattan apartment of Aaron Schlossberg, the lawyer who was filmed being irate and abusive towards Hispanic restaurant workers this week. […]

    […]

    A mariachi band, organised through a GoFundMe page that has raised over $1,000, will also be playing.

    The party was originally going to be outside Schlossberg’s place of work but since he’s been kicked out of his office building, it will take place outside his apartment, and extra funds have been allocated to food, free drinks and props.

    The event has been organised in the four days since Schlossberg was seen ranting at staff in a midtown salad bar. […]

    […]

    Since the video was made public, two elected New York representatives, the congressman Adriano Espaillat and the Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr, have made formal complaints to the New York court system, although it’s unlikely Schlossberg will be disbarred for the incident. New York’s mayor, Bill De Blasio, indirectly commented on the incident, tweeting that 8.6 million people speak 200 different languages in New York. “They’re all New Yorkers and they’re all welcome here,” he wrote.

    [… One of the organisers, Moumita Ahmed,] says the event isn’t going to turn nasty. “We’re not coming outside his apartment with pitchforks and knives. If anything we’d like him to come out, apologise and join us.”

  4. fledanow says

    to Crip Dyke @ 3,

    If I read the reports correctly, he claimed to be a member of the NY Bar Association, a voluntary group, while not being a member of it. I gather this is different than the Bar itself.

  5. blf says

    (A slightly-edited crosspost from PZ ‘s current Political Madness All the Time thread.)

    Apparently that possibly-not-really-a-lawyer lawyer eejit isn’t. Isn’t what isn’t clear. He just isn’t, ‘I am not a racist,’ says lawyer behind racist New York cafe rant:

    […]
    It’s a dance as old as time. First comes the racist outburst filmed by a passerby and shared across the world, then comes the sheepish Twitter apology and the promise that a piece of unedited footage doesn’t reflect the ‘real me’.

    Aaron Schlossberg, who became the most villainous man in New York last week after he verbally abused workers for speaking Spanish in a midtown Manhattan restaurant, has finally commented on his outburst.

    Following the current trend to make public statements by taking a screengrab of a word document, Schlossberg apologised to the people he insulted, and said that he moved to New York ‘because of the remarkable diversity offered in this wonderful city’.

    NYC is very diverse but I don’t believe this loon for a second — and neither do the commentators at the cited not-pology (link embedded in above excerpt). Nor does the Grauniad:

    Inevitably, he assured people that his outburst was ‘not the person I am’, and the video ‘did not convey the real me’, bolding up the word ‘not’ for extra contrition points. Presumably the string of other occasions that Schlossberg has been accused of racially abusing strangers, including being filmed calling a man on the street ‘an ugly fucking foreigner’ also aren’t the real him.

    […]

    Schlossberg did not say whether his week-late apology was motivated by people leaving negative Yelp reviews for his law firm and numerous complaints made against him by elected officials to the New York court system.

    He isn’t. Isn’t what? At the least, he isn’t believed.

    (I now see Mano has just put up a typically-thoughtful post, If this is not who you are, then how could this happen?, on this same not-pology.)

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