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Pol sued by BK rapper for defamation
BY BEN BRACHFELD
Former City Council candidate
Whitney Hu is being
sued for defamation in State
Supreme Court by a Brooklyn
rapper and activist.
As of this story’s publication,
Hu was the campaign
manager for mayoral candidate
Dianne Morales. She has
since resigned.
Israel Burns, aka Ace
Burns, says in court papers
fi led May 22 that Hu libeled
and slandered him during last
year’s protests against police
brutality in the wake of George
Floyd’s murder, by saying he
was “actively working with
the police” and is a “known
aggressor and abuser.”
Burns presented as evidence
tweets and Instagram
stories notifying followers
when Burns was present at a
protest, and urging them to
maintain caution around him.
Burns was arrested during
the protests last June after
threatening, during a live
interview on Fox News, to set
Manhattan’s Diamond District
ablaze if Governor Andrew
COURIER L 20 IFE, MAY 28-JUNE 3, 2021
Cuomo and Mayor Bill
de Blasio didn’t come to speak
with demonstrators at the Barclays
Center the night of June
6. He was charged with making
“terroristic threats.”
Hu “began her harassment,”
Burns says, on June 8
when she tweeted a picture of
him with the caption “NYC:
this man is actively working
with police. Be careful
marching around him. Don’t
let him guide the movement.
He kept trying to force us to
the bridge.” Burns said in the
lawsuit that he was leading a
march at the time to McCarren
Park, instead of to the
unspecifi ed bridge, and that
he didn’t know Hu nor did he
see her at the protest.
Two days later, he said Hu
tweeted a picture of a man she
claimed to be Burns posing for
a group photo with an NYPD
basketball jersey on, which
she said “confi rmed” him as
an undercover cop. Burns says
that the picture is not of him,
and that the tweet was an “extreme
and outrageous racially
disparaging attack.”
Speaking with Brooklyn Paper,
Hu said that she had not
sent the tweet including the
picture of the NYPD basketball
team, but said that that had been
someone who quote tweeted her
and that she told the person to
take it down, which they did.
The image Burns submitted as
evidence cuts off the avatar and
handle of the poster.
Burns, who is representing
himself in the lawsuit against
Hu, is a former attorney who
changed careers after being
disbarred in 2017, opting to try
his luck at rapping. Burns says
that Hu’s tweets hurt his standing
both as a rapper and as an
activist. He speculates that he
was dropped from a planned
photoshoot for I-D Magazine focusing
on activism against racial
injustice due to the tweets.
He also said that a rally he
organized in remembrance
of Yusef Hawkins, which he
claims “would have drawn
well over 1,000 community
members and activists from
around New York City” in ordinary
circumstances, was attended
by a paltry 50 people, a
fact he also blamed on Hu.
In a statement, Hu said that
she and Nam have been the
target of a harassment campaign
by Burns, including
doxxing and using racist and
sexist epithets, including referring
to her as a “counterrevolutionary
witch” and as a
“Chinese operative sent to destroy
Black leaders.” She is in
the process of fi nding an attorney
to fi ght the suit.
“On the behalf of myself
and Hu’s co-defendant Grace
Nam, we are in the process of
fi nding legal counsel, and currently
not ready to go fully on
record. However, there are a
lot of inaccuracies in this lawsuit
and would like to state
that we acted only to protect
the Black and Brown women
who have been harmed by
Mr. Israel “Ace” Burns,” Hu
told Brooklyn Paper in a statement.
“We have since faced
non-stop harassment from Mr.
Burns but out of our political
beliefs, we have both refused
involvement from law enforcement
and the legal justice system.
We are deeply frustrated
that Mr. Burns has forced us
into a legal process instead
of an accountability and reconciliation
process with the
women he has harmed.”
Hu, founder of South Brooklyn
Mutual Aid, launched her
campaign for City Council District
38, encompassing Sunset
Park, Red Hook, and parts of
South Slope, Borough Park, and
Windsor Terrace, in March of
2020 but quickly suspended the
campaign as the coronavirus
pandemic enveloped New York,
focusing instead on mutual aid.
She relaunched in July and
ran on the race’s left fl ank, but
dropped out in December to focus
on her mutual aid work.
The next month, she became
interim campaign manager
for Morales, who’s running
on the left fl ank of the
mayoral race. From March until
this week, she was the permanent
campaign manager.
The Morales campaign referred
Brooklyn Paper back
to Hu, who noted that she was
not involved with the campaign
during the time period
laid out in the suit.
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