In a video released last week by a local resident, newly appointed New Paltz town council member Edgar Rodriguez can be seen and heard expressing support for violent acts committed by Hamas members on October 7, 2023. Rodriguez was recently appointed to the board to fill the next few months of the term from which Dan Torres resigned last August. Rodriguez is expected to be running in November to complete the final year of that term.
While acknowledging that the filmed exchange did occur, Rodriguez asserts that the “mocking and sarcastic” remarks were part of an exchange with Joey Garcia, who according to Rodriguez, was “goading the Jewish community and anti-genocide protesters into feeling unsafe and having conflict” at a May 4, 2024 protest of the Women in Black for Peace and Justice, a group that has been standing in front of Elting Memorial Library weekly, stretching back at least to 2001. Other video footage does corroborate that the interaction between the two escalated over a period of time, but at least one witness is not convinced that Rodriguez’s remarks were intentionally over the top.
May 4 was the first Women in Black event in town since SUNY New Paltz students and others were rousted from a protest encampment on campus two days earlier, using police tactics which have resulted in criticism of the university’s president, Darrell P. Wheeler, by many faculty members and others in the broader community. These weekly vigils in front of Elting are sometimes attended by only a handful of people, but that day the number appeared to be well over a hundred. There was also a counter-protest across the street. It was also not the quiet affair typical of the Women in Black; the intersection was rife with chanting and general noise.
Rodriguez, who was among the many protestors on that day, has resided in New Paltz for some 50 years, and has been active in a variety of social justice movements, as well as having been elected as a trustee on the school board. Part of the work Rodriguez described when being interviewed for the town council position is providing support to undocumented residents who do not speak English. Rodriguez frequently denounces systemic racism, and calls for more efforts to be made to dismantle it locally. At times those conversations have grown heated, including during one 2009 school board meeting from which Rodriguez walked out, after advising the other trustees that attending a retreat with them would not be an option until they all took the “Undoing Racism” class to become more educated about these issues.
Differing opinions
Garcia said he was driving through New Paltz on May 4 and saw a large group assembled so he decided to stop and check out what was going on. “I was recording everything I saw,” he said in an email. “When I saw Edgar Rodriguez, I asked him if he supported what happened on October 7 and he clearly said he did.”
As Rodriguez recalls the exchange, Garcia “was filming protestors while walking up and down the blacktop near the curb of Main Street in front of the Elting Library, which had a line of many protestors on the sidewalk including myself.” Their conversation escalated, as Garcia “quickly started shouting” to ask “if I supported the killing of Israeli babies,” and that Garcia later “shouted that I supported this killing. I tried to reason with him, but it was impossible. I then got angry and animated at the intimidation, goading and verbal assault and lost my patience.”
Garcia countered by saying, “There was no escalation or screaming at him, and no attempts to intimidate him in any way. I just asked a question. Mr. Rodriguez’s statement that I was goading the Jewish community and the anti-genocide protestors into feeling unsafe and having conflict is false,” said Garcia. “Has he or anyone provided any proof of this accusation? I challenge anyone to produce any evidence that I had any interactions with anyone goading them into violence or me making threats to anyone. They haven’t produced that because I didn’t do that. I have the entire interaction on video. You do not hear us screaming at each other angrily, you do not see any escalation.” Garcia said that he and Rodriguez spoke in elevated tones due to the loud screaming, chanting and shouting coming from the pro-Palestine side and there were many times in the conversation that they were actually smiling. “I simply asked him if he supported the massacre in Israel on October 7 and he said and I quote, ‘of course I do’. I responded by saying ‘wow you support the killing of babies?’ He responded by saying they did what they had to do. Then he asked me if I supported innocent Palestinians being killed and I said I don’t support any innocent people being killed.”
Rodriguez fears that now the tape may mislead a viewer to believe “the preposterous idea that I agree with the killing of Israeli babies. What was captured was a small part of a heated exchange; it is a segment of that exchange where I simply drew a parallel with his justification of Israeli soldiers killing more than 30,000 mostly Palestinian women and children as opposed to 1200 Israeli victims.”
Rodriguez recalls at one point saying to Garcia that “an eye for an eye makes everyone blind, and that no children of any nationality should be killed.
The part of the interaction that was captured in the most inflammatory video segment was witnessed by Butch “Leon” Dener, who has likewise lived in New Paltz for over 50 years, and who admits to having had past conflicts with Rodriguez during that time. Dener’s perspective is one that is informed by experiences of antisemitism, as Rodriguez’s is by racism. Both came of age in a time when these types of discrimination were more blatant than they are today.
Dener’s opinion of Rodriguez’s motives is entirely subjective, which is true regarding most experiences that feel like sexism, racism, antisemitism, or another form of oppression. “You can always tell who the real haters are, by the way they look at you,” Dener said. A proud and unapologetic Zionist who has been part of the pro-Israel counter-protest every week since this incident, Dener does not believe that most of those who proclaim support of Palestinians wish harm upon the Jewish people. Some, however, strike a different chord. In Dener’s experience, Rodriguez carries that “hater” quality, which is perhaps impossible to define or quantify. “We have a deputy mayor supporting Hamas, and all the mayor does is hang a ‘BLM’ flag. Now we have [Rodriguez] on the town board. It gets to a point where you don’t feel welcome.”
Fit for office?
It remains to be seen if this incident will be understood as one individual being goaded by another as a political stunt, or if others will join Garcia, who feels that some people do question Rodriguez’s fitness for office due to his spoken words.
“I suggest to all parties concerned about this video not to give credibility to this agitator and denounce his surveillance actions as spreading fear and misleading messages that will create community conflict,” Rodriguez wrote in a statement. “Anti-genocide protesting should not be interpreted as antisemitism. Logically, confusing the two would make people feel unsafe and weaponizes antisemitism to the detriment of the safety for all community members.
“I hope that this clarification and my history of social justice efforts in New Paltz for 50 years alleviates and redirects any concerns with the video recording. It is the anti-protestor’s divisive and malicious intention that is at the root of what makes the community feel unsafe.”
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