MONTVALE—The Diversity and Inclusion Committee is calling for Mayor Michael Ghassali’s apology for his unilateral banning of an award-winning filmmaker they’d scheduled with the public library to read a respected picture book next week in honor of Black History Month.
Ghassali, meanwhile, said he was concerned the guest speaker was not an appropriate reader to local kids given unrelated “inappropriate statements and imagery” in a brief, Peabody Award-winning film he helped create based on a spoken word poem reacting to police violence and its roots in the United States.
Ghassali has invited 11-year-old Anastasia Tetteh-Briggs, last year’s “Mayor For A Day,” to replace the filmmaker, Timothy Ware-Hill, without the support of Montvale’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee.
The reading — of “A Sweet Smell of Roses” (2007), by Coretta Scott King Award winners Angela Johnson and illustrator Eric Velasquez, for kids 5–8 — is Tuesday, Feb. 22 at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom.
The commmittee members say they’ve now decided now to “disassociate” from the borough’s appointed Diversity and Inclusion Committee “until significant changes have been made and a public apology is issued to Mr. Ware-Hill.”
‘Our community was robbed of this opportunity’
The Diversity and Inclusion Committee said it had invited Ware-Hill “to read a book about the civil rights movement in honor of Black History Month as an opportunity to invite a successful, award-winning, Black man to read a book to help educate the children and adults of our small community about a very important moment in American history.”
It said “It deeply saddens us that our community was robbed of this opportunity due to an assumption that Mr. Ware-Hill hates police officers based on an award-winning piece of art that addresses the national prevalence of police brutality and racial bias.”
It alleged, “We have been subjected to constant criticism, threats of cancellations of our events, threats of disbandment and defunding of our committee, and assumption of malintent.”
Moreover, it said, “We do not support actions that are taken in haste, when one’s opinion (or assumption) is deemed priority over another without the proper investigation, conversation, or forum to express such an opinion. How can we help create a safe and welcoming environment for all if people are being silenced?”
Meanwhile, PBA Local 303, which Ware-Hill says Ghassali said informed his decision, issued a strong statement saying that it did not. Its president, P.O. Brian Lamendola, on Feb. 16, said his organization “did not do any research or express any opinion to the mayor, nor anyone else, about Mr. Ware-Hill reading at the library, as confirmed in the mayor’s recent statement. In fact, the Montvale PBA supports all aspects of diversity, and wholeheartedly supports Mr. Ware-Hill’s participation in any of our community events.”
Lamendola said, “This police union is built on professionalism that aims to recognize all people equally.”
In contrast, Montvale Police Chief Joseph Sanfilippo said he had no comment on the mayor’s decision and his subsequent statements defending it.
‘An unnecessary distraction’
On Feb. 16, after NBC News picked up this story from a podcast Ware-Hill recorded the day before, excoriating Ghassali and the police union, Ghassali sent an e-blast to residents giving more of his statement than the news picked up.
He said in part, “The Borough has decided that Mr. Ware-Hill’s participation would be an unnecessary distraction from what should be an otherwise non-controversial children’s Storytime event. The Borough looks forward to bringing Storytime to the community on Feb. 22 as originally planned, as an important part of its Black History Month celebration.”
Acknowledging Ware-Hill’s prominence and qualifications, he added, “The borough would like to invite Mr. Ware-Hill to discuss these important issues, along with other individuals with varying viewpoints, to a forum that is more appropriate for such a discussion.”
Ghassali’s cancellation of Ware-Hill’s reading came abruptly, apparently following community opposition, which Ware-Hill alleged Ghassali told him came from the police union and several community members.
He said Ghassali texted him Feb. 11 to cancel the event and told him he has to “take care of both sides.”
In nixing Ware-Hill’s role, Ghassali said he and others in the borough took exception to a moment from a 2020 animated short of Ware-Hill’s, “Cops and Robbers,” which won a Peabody Award in 2021 and is promoted on Netflix as “animation and activism unite in the multi-media spoken word response to police brutality and racial injustice” in the wake of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old Black jogger, who was chased and gunned down in his Georgia neighborhood.
Ghassali told Pascack Press Feb. 16 that he’d watched Ware-Hill’s film and said he could not comment further than his public statement.
He did tell Pascack Press, however, that when he watched the film, “Cops and Robbers,” he specifically took exception to one image, which for about a second shows the words “F*** the Police” while Ware-Hill’s narration states, “F*** the System!”
Ghassali told Pascack Press that the retracted invitation to Ware-Hill was “very sensitive.”
Pressed to describe where the pressure to rescind Ware-Hill’s invite came from, he asked a reporter if he had watched “Cops and Robbers.” He texted the reporter a screenshot of a film frame where the offending language was used: The message is used once in the film, and in passing, as part of a quick montage.
(Editor’s note: We are not printing the screenshot here, believing the reader is better served by watching the entire work, which provides the artist’s context and keeps that moment in perspective.)
Much of the film — narrated by Ware-Hill — talks about his experiences as a Black man, and about friends, the police, and social justice as well as positive feelings, people, and thoughts in a rap-style animated stream of images. Its audience is not the same as that of the Storytime reading from which Ware-Hill was disinvited.
Ware-Hill told NBC, “I wasn’t asked to give a political speech or give my stance on my personal beliefs or Black Lives Matter. I felt like my name was being slandered because all of a sudden now I have a town saying that I hate cops when there is no evidence of that. I’ve never said those words, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe those words. I don’t hate cops.”
He said “A Sweet Smell of Roses” has “nothing to do with politics, has nothing to do with cops and has nothing to do with any films I’ve done in the past or plan to do in the present or future. It was just me literally reading the words from this children’s book … so that the little Black kids in that community can see and hear a person that looks like them.”
Ghassali is an immigrant from Syria, a former Republican candidate for U.S. Congress, and has expressed great pride in the borough’s wealth of nationalities — some 44 countries of origin are represented here, he’s told visitors.
Ware-Hill, who has relatives in Montvale, originally is from Montgomery, Ala. On Facebook he says he lives in New York, is an actor at Kinky Boots on Broadway, is a former actor at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and Portland Center Stage, and studied MFA in Professional Screenwriting at National University and acting at UCLA.
Clash with D&I Committee at Pride in the Park
This isn’t the mayor’s first clash with the Montvale Diversity and Inclusion Committee. In summer 2021, during the borough’s inaugural LGBTQ+ Pride in the Park celebration, Ghassali got into a heated exchange with committee vice chair — and then-councilwoman — Elizabeth Gloeggler, over a speaker he’d inserted into the program, and a minor protest that followed, and stripped her of her committee post. (See “Clash with senator leads to ouster, but Pride event otherwise celebrates,” Pascack Press, June 28, 2021.)
Ghassali told Pascack Press at the time, “It’s unfortunate that the Diversity and Inclusion Committee function turned political at our first Pride event. We have good-intentioned committee members from different nations who want to showcase and celebrate their cultures, music, food, traditional costumes and share their story with us.”
D&I Committee statement
On Feb. 16, the Montvale Diversity and Inclusion Committee said that within 24 hours of its Ware-Hill reading flier being posted on the borough’s social media pages, Ghassali informed the committee he was “getting a lot of messages on this and this will cause a problem. I don’t know him but getting messages about this and it will cause a problem we don’t need. It’s all quite [sic] and nice now.’”
The committee said, “All fliers were then removed from official borough pages without the committee’s knowledge or consent and prior to any discussion with the committee.”
It said its chair, Amaka Auer, and vice chair, Lam Pieroni, met virtually with the mayor and council liaison Tim Lane to discuss these concerns “and were told that it was brought to the mayor’s attention from some residents that Mr. Ware-Hill was believed to hate the police, based on a recent animated short film…”
The committee said, “[W]e were told the police union was upset by the reader selection, that some residents wanted to protest the event outside Borough Hall, and some Borough Council members threatened to pull funding for the committee if Mr. Ware-Hill participated in the event.”
After Ware-Hill released a podcast episode bringing this to light, the committee said, “It was later clarified, by Mayor Ghassali to the committee, that the police union did not have an issue with the event or Mr. Ware-Hill but rather it was a few police officers who live in Montvale that expressed their concerns.”
According to the D&I committee, its members met with Lamendola “and it was confirmed the PBA had not expressed any opinions regarding Mr. Ware-Hill and/or the event to the mayor.”
It said, “Since the creation of this committee, Montvale has received praise and acknowledgement for the events that the committee and our volunteers have organized, and we are proud of the work we have produced and the impact we have made. However, we have continuously faced challenges and disruption from Mayor Ghassali specifically for events that touch upon true diversity and inclusion work (i.e. inviting the LGBTQ+ community to PRIDE in the Park and the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month).”
It also said, “We believe changes need to be made within the Mayor and Council and our community for the work of diversity and inclusion to be fully supported and embraced. We are open to discussion with the mayor and council to create a committee and environment that allows for two-way conversation, respectful disagreements, and true partnership/allyship.”
The committee thanked community members and organizations that have reached out in support. “Thank you to our allies for your continued dedication and support. We will find a way to continue advancing our mission of creating a safe, welcoming, and inclusive environment for all.”
The statement is signed by Amaka Auer, Cindy Lam Pieroni, Hannah Baskin, Maria Victoria Dickson, Maria Jose Fitzgerald, Alexandra Fisher, and Steve Frischer.
— With John Snyder