We are less than two hours away from a Sterling Heights City Council meeting where officials will reveal a legal agreement – the proposed settlement of a civil rights lawsuit — reached between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice after Sterling Heights blocked the construction of a mosque in 2015.
In response, agitators within the city are re-igniting the anti-Islamic rhetoric that flourished in the months leading up to the city’s decision to reject the mosque based on some questionable zoning decisions.
Flyers suggesting the feds bowed to the Muslim community have appeared on doorsteps and car windshields in the city for days. The message is: Show up at tonight’s council meeting in protest mode.
Clearly the Islamophobic opposition – though they have no idea what is in the proposed settlement of the Justice Department lawsuit – wants to recreate the atmosphere of the summer of 2015. That’s when the city was shook to its core as anti-Muslim demonstrations occurred near the proposed mosque site and xenophobic declarations were spouted at raucous city council meetings.
A similar atmosphere prevailed that September when a crowd gathered outside City Hall to celebrate the Planning Commission’s unanimous decision to block the “special land-use” needed for the proposed house of worship.
Political activists have spent the past few days using Facebook in an effort to dampen hateful rhetoric in advance of tonight’s council meeting.
Michael Lombardini (who uses the pen name Malcom McEasy), said on Facebook that he fears the fliers are “a clear sign that the crazies will be in full force” at the council session.
“It once again shows people who claim to love America and yet actively fight against everything it stands for. It points to the same evil influence that forced the capitulation in the mosque lawsuits. It is the same wrong-headed liberty-hating pseudo-fascism by people who wish to deny others the rights that they claim to be defending.”
Michael Radtke, who has already declared his candidacy for a council seat in this fall’s elections, urged a rejection of the tone expressed in the fliers.
“I find this flyer being passed out in Sterling Heights disgusting and a perfect example of what our community is not. It’s a continuation of the anti-Muslim prejudice that surfaced in our community last year, and it must stop,” he wrote.
Another frequent commentator on city politics, Geof Gariepy, wrote a lengthy piece on his blog urging calm within the city. Gariepy, a member of the city Planning Commission and, like McEasy, a conservative, expressed dismay that far-right bigotry has taken hold in Sterling Heights.
I find the idea that we would reject any development because of the religion of the developer to be horrifying and contrary to the principles that America was founded upon.
However, if you happen to be running for council this year in opposition to the current council and you align yourself with a certain group of challenger candidates that ran in 2015 (those being Paul Smith, Jazmine Early, Verna Babula, Jackie Ryan, Sanaa Elias and Joe Judnick), you’re not terribly concerned with the principles that America was founded upon.
You’re not above using people’s fear of Muslims for your own personal gain. Your only concern is to get yourself elected to City Council. And if you can do that, in part, by playing upon people’s fears and getting them to show up to oppose something about which you haven’t got any verifiable facts, well, that’s exactly the sort of voters you’re looking for: people who don’t really understand the issues all that well and who are likely to vote based on emotions like fear.
If you can leverage this mosque issue into a coalition that will help get you elected, who cares about freedom of religion, the right to pursue happiness, or the rest? It’s about getting votes!
At the same time, a separate blog that has emerged over the past 18 months routinely engages in racist, xenophobic rhetoric about the city’s Muslim immigrants.
The posts on MacombPolitics.com carry headlines such as “Terrorists in YOUR neighborhood,” and “Hotel Damascus in Sterling Heights.”
Paul Smith and his wife, Moira, at a 2009 tea party rally
It’s unclear who the author is or how much influence the blog has on Sterling Heights residents.
Some political observers suspect the blog is the work of Smith, the former councilman who has engaged in outrageous right-wing rhetoric over the past eight years. Smith was elected in 2011 but quickly ostracized himself from council colleagues, the business community and the city police department. After two years, he lost his re-election.
In 2015, he ran for mayor as the head of the ultraconservative slate mentioned in Gariepy’s blog post. Smith lost that race by a landslide and last November, running as the Republican Party nominee for county sheriff, he failed by similar proportions at the ballot box.
Meanwhile, the information that will be released at tonight’s 7:30 p.m. council session represents the potentially final outcome of the civil rights lawsuit filed against the city in December 2015, centered on accusations of religious discrimination raised by the American Islamic Community Center, based in Madison Heights.
The AICC plan called for construction of a mosque on five adjacent parcels in the area of 15 Mile Road and Mound, adjacent to a residential area.
To be clear, this is not solely a case of white suburbanites rejecting Middle Easterners. A leading element among the protesters consists of the city’s substantial immigrant population of Chaldeans (Iraqi Christians) who continue to strike out against their old adversaries from the homeland — Muslim Arabs.
Still, the Justice Department’s case revolves around the Planning Commission bending to the outcry within the community.
The city planner initially produced a report recommending approval for the mosque. That first report said the proposed facility “met all of the specific standards for residential zones and all of the general standards for Special Approval Land Use,” in compliance with city zoning rules and its master plan.
Other city officials also initially expressed support for the mosque. However, they soon faced a substantial public backlash.
Following the clamor, many officials reversed themselves, according to the government’s complaint. That included the city planner who later “recommended denial based on excessive height relative to the neighborhood, the size of the building relative to the zoning district, insufficient parking on certain occasions, and lack of harmony of the building with the neighborhood,” the DOJ complaint stated.
The Planning Commission eventually denied the permit on Sept. 10, 2015, as the hours counted down toward the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
The planning commissioners cited zoning concerns, particularly the proposed height of the mosque’s minarets.
However, the DOJ pointed out that a number of Sterling Heights churches have even higher spires, as well as other “distinctive features” that are not common in residential areas.
