A radical activist group announced plans Monday for a vigil invoking one of New York City’s darkest episodes of racial and antisemitic violence – the deadly 1991 Crown Heights riots.
The group, calling itself Crown Heights Bites Back, issued a statement accusing Chabad-Lubavitch of “brutally killing” Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old boy who died in a car accident in 1991 involving the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s motorcade. The group called the incident as “vehicular manslaughter by a motorcade of Jewish supremacists” and demanded “justice” for Cato. The crash, which also injured Cato’s cousin, ignited days of rioting in which mobs targeted Jewish residents, looted businesses, and murdered Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Lubavitch chossid.
The vigil is set for Tuesday at Utica Avenue and President Street, just blocks from Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway — the same intersection where the 1991 accident occurred.
“They are attempting to reignite tensions by exploiting the tragic car accident that claimed the life of Gavin Cato — an event that led to the Crown Heights riots and the antisemitic murder of Yankel Rosenbaum,” the Jewish Future Alliance, a neighborhood advocacy group, warned in a statement.
“This is a dangerous pattern,” the group added. “While this fringe minority may not represent the broader community, history has shown that rhetoric like this fuels hatred and leads to real violence. It must be unequivocally condemned.”
The planned vigil comes amid a series of recent flare-ups in the neighborhood. In April, Crown Heights Bites Back staged a protest that featured explicitly racial messaging, with speakers invoking the 1991 riots and accusing Jews of running over Black children. That demonstration followed a string of tensions, including a widely circulated video of a street altercation between a Jewish man and a Black man in a wheelchair, and a visit by far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben Gvir that drew anti-Israel demonstrators to Chabad’s headquarters.
The NYPD said it is aware of Tuesday’s planned vigil. Jewish leaders are urging officials to ensure that hate-fueled rhetoric does not spill over into violence once again.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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3 Responses
They know full and well that mamdani is coming which means there will be a no bag limit on Jews so they are sharpening their knives. Under mamdani Jews will be killed in their beds. It will be Yankel Rosenbaum and Ari halberstam on steroids.
Those black activists will never rest, continuing to stir up trouble. They ignore, or are oblivious to the fact that the driver of the car that knocked the car in the motorcade onto the sidewalk and into the children was driven by a black man who started driving before the light turned green for him. Causing the accident.
now would be a good time to challenge the decent members of the black community, who don’t identify with these hateful racists, to step up and be counted.