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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (47846)	9/29/2002 1:32:41 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

File under the heading, Sure, it's just criticism of Sharon's policies: New Jersey Laureate Refuses to Resign Over Poem By MATTHEW PURDY A month after Amiri Baraka became the poet laureate of New Jersey, Gov. James E. McGreevey asked the writer and political activist to resign yesterday because a poem he read at a recent poetry festival implies that Israel knew about the Sept. 11 attack in advance. But Mr. Baraka said he would not resign, creating an unusual political quandary. Aides to the governor said he did not have the power to remove Mr. Baraka because Mr. McGreevey had not directly selected him. And a member of the committee of poets and cultural officials who chose Mr. Baraka said that group had no power to remove him either. "I'm not resigning," Mr. Baraka said at his home in Newark, vowing to fight removal. "Let's see if they can do that." The governor asked for the resignation because of a poem titled "Somebody Blew Up America," which Mr. Baraka recited a week ago at the renowned Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, N.J. Most of the poem concerns massacres, murders and oppression by the powerful against blacks, Jews and others, but it also asks: Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day Why did Sharon stay away? Mr. Baraka's poem repeats a persistent yet widely discredited story that has circulated on the Internet since the terror attacks. "Everything said about Israel in the poem is easily researched," Mr. Baraka said. "If you criticize Israel, they hide behind the religion and call you anti-Semitic." Mr. Baraka, 67, whose original name was LeRoi Jones, was a central figure in the Black Arts Movement in the 1960's, and has been an outspoken critic of both white and black leaders of Newark. His writing has won him many awards and fellowships, but some of his early work has been criticized as anti-white and anti-Semitic. nytimes.com Background on Bakara from The New Republic: powells.com