Cambridge City Councilor E. Denise Simmons used to display a Zimbabwe flag on her desk during council meetings, contrary to US law for several weeks. She ignored my letters complaining, as did the veteran's department of the city. It was ignored under the rubric of free expression. But it was not protected speech in so far as it violated a federal statute.
[From article]
Charles Barron famously hosted Zimbabwe’s repressive President Robert Mugabe at City Hall as a freshman councilman in 2002–and said yesterday he would like to repeat the performance in his first term at the state capital.
In an exclusive interview with the Observer, Mr. Barron, who won a Democratic primary for an open Assembly seat last week and is very likely to crush his GOP rival, expressed hope that he could persuade the foreign official to visit Albany.
“I would love for him to come to Albany. I would love for him to come anywhere in the United States, really,” Mr. Barron said in an interview at his former campaign office in East New York, Brooklyn. “I think he’s a shining example of an African leader on the African continent.”
[. . .]
“He was one of the few African leaders who had the courage to take the land back from the settlers,” said Mr. Barron, comparing him favorably to the late South African leader Nelson Mandela, who he argued allowed whites to retain too much property.
[. . .]
He seized control of the nation in 1983, after initiating an ethnic cleansing campaign against a minority tribe that led to between 10,000 and 20,000 deaths.
In 1987, he was declared president and instituted martial law. He also enacted draconian laws against homosexuals, whom he has described as “worse than dogs and pigs” and demanded be arrested on sight.
He has been repeatedly re-elected in referendums marred by the use of military force against rival political parties.
[. . .]
“All my heroes were America’s enemies,” Mr. Barron said.
Mr. Barron was term-limited out of the City Council last year, but voters in his home neighborhood of East New York elected him last week to succeed his wife, Inez Barron, in the state legislature. Ms. Barron had stepped down from the Assembly to take her husband’s Council seat.
http://observer.com/2014/09/charles-barron-wants-robert-mugabe-to-visit-albany/
Charles Barron Wants Robert Mugabe to Visit Albany
By Will Bredderman
09/18/14 9:23am
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