Pity the poor political hack that is tasked with the job of turning what would be great news for literally any other candidate into something that looks bad.

Still, the reactions further exposed the race and class tensions in this gentrifying slice of Queens. “These people were coming from near, far — but they weren’t from Queensbridge,” the tenant association president, April Simpson, told a reporter for Patch. “That rally wasn’t for us.”

Ms. Simpson, who did not respond to requests from The Times for comment, told Patch that the Sanders campaign reached out only on Friday, and that the time of the rally conflicted with a tenants association meeting.

...

Bishop Mitchell Taylor, a community leader, said the people in the park looked “like tourists.” In the Patch article, he called the event “a pretty white rally.”

Wait, I thought Bernie supporters are "too urban".

Now they are back to being too white?

But the underlying problem here is that the crowd was too big!

If only Bernie was more considerate and had smaller rallies, then people that didn't support him wouldn't have to complain.

“I was a little, I wouldn't say the word ‘upset,’ I was just a little discouraged because I found out the day before,” Simpson told Gothamist....

Simpson added, “I like Mr. Sanders. I've never met him. As far as my voting capacity he's just not the one for me. However, he knows about public housing.”

Bishop Mitchell Taylor, another community leader who lives near Queensbridge Park, said he did not receive any notice about the rally either. “If you're going to come to someone's backyard you should at least invite the people who live in the yard, instead of using their yard as a prop,” he said. (Simpson and Taylor were both vocal supporters of Amazon’s failed proposal to build a headquarters in Long Island City, a move that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez opposed.)

So everyone else in NYC knew about the rally except for the people living there. Does that sound right?



Ray Normandeau, who runs the Queensbridge-focused website Normandeau Newswire, told Gothamist that he attended the rally, and posted information on his site roughly a week ahead of time. He estimated that a few hundred of his neighbors attended. "It was on the Queensbridge website for a full week with big graphics," Normandeau told Gothamist. "I can't see how people could say they don't know about it. It has been said there were no flyers. There was a tenant association meeting on Saturday as well. There were no flyers about that."

...

To live in Queensbridge Houses and not know about the rally, Mr. Normandeau said, “sounds specious.” He added: “Obviously, if 25,000 people showed up, it wasn’t kept a secret.”

Right-wing political hacks have it easier. They can be more direct with their smears.