Bronx Latino Residents Protest Muslim Takeover

This is what colonization looks like.

Muslim settler colonialism has spun out of control in the Bronx borough of New York City. The scandal went national when the Mamdani regime decided to list ‘immigrant neighborhoods’ heavily slanted towards Muslims while ignoring Little Italy and Irish and Jewish areas in the city.

‘Little Palestine’, ‘Little Pakistan’, ‘Little Yemen’, ‘Little Albania’ and ‘Little Egypt’ appeared on the map.

Basically a few Muslims open some bodegas in a neighborhood, a mosque pops up to service them and suddenly a community with a lot of history gets dubbed ‘Little Yemen’ whether or not its residents agree. And the residents, in this case, are Latino, and they’re outraged at being colonized and replaced by Mamdani’s boys.

Members of the Van Nest community clashed with their local community board Thursday over its support for a bill that would designate a four-block area of the neighborhood as a Yemeni cultural district…

Sharlene Jackson Mendez, vice president of the Van Nest Neighborhood Alliance, said the organization first learned about the proposed cultural district in March, after the legislation had already been introduced.

“We’ve been trying to get someone to say, ‘Hey, you can’t do this and change the identity of an entire 134-year community, and they have no say in it. We have not been invited to the table ever, and that’s wrong,” Mendez said.

The Alliance also opposed the 2021 renaming of a section of White Plains Road as Ibrahim Al-Hamdi Way, honoring the former Yemeni president who was assassinated in 1977. Mendez said the organization viewed that process as another example of residents’ concerns not being considered.

The organization, and other community members, questioned whether the Yemeni-American community has made sufficient cultural contributions to Van Nest to warrant the designation, an argument included in a petition circulated by the Alliance.

Mendez said cultural contributions should not be measured solely by the economic impact of Yemeni-owned businesses.

“There is no way you can compare their contributions to [El Barrio],” Mendez said. “They don’t get that because they are not aware of our history, and our politicians don’t show leadership.”

“We believe that this designation is misleading, lacking in inclusivity, and disrespectful of those individuals that built and maintained Van Nest,” said Van Nest Neighborhood Alliance secretary Marion Manfredi. “Fairness also matters in a diverse community.”

Former Bronx Community Board 11 chair Yahay Obeid defended the designation at Thursday’s meeting, saying it would highlight not only the Yemeni community but Van Nest and the Bronx as a whole.

By that he meant ‘appropriate’ the Bronx as a whole. This is what colonization looks like. And people are getting sick of it.

Mamdani’s ‘endorsements’ has meant Muslim politicians displacing black and Latino ones and people are starting to notice what’s going on.

AUTHOR