Bill de Blasio once went to a bat for a teacher at his daughter’s school who was arrested protesting Israel’s policies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Newly available documents from de Blasio’s years as a City Councilman show the Democratic mayoral frontrunner intervened with the Manhattan District Attorney in 2004 to help first-grade teacher Steve Quester avoid jail time after he and 15 other protesters were charged with blocking traffic and disorderly conduct during a 2003 protest.
“I want to personally call the D.A.,” de Blasio wrote in an email to a top aide in April, 2004, the documents show.
It’s not clear if de Blasio knew about Quester’s controversial views on Israel.
The teacher, who worked at Public School 372 where de Blasio’s daughter Chiara was a student at the time, was quoted in a 2002 Associated Press article calling suicide bombers “desperate and hopeless” and adding that “all the heartbreak flows directly from Israel's policy” of occupying the Palestinian territories.
After Quester’s arrest in 2004, de Blasio sent a letter to then-District Attorney Robert Morgenthau calling jailtime for the arrested protesters “extreme and unjust for participation in a peaceful political protest.”
He also penned a note to the Manhattan judge overseeing the case asking for leniency.
“Mr. Quester upholds the school’s high standards each time he steps into the classroom,” de Blasio wrote in a letter to Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Robert Stolz in May, 2004. “I hope you will take his praiseworthy character and his extraordinary contributions to his community into account.”
Via: NYDN
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