One wants the mayor gone while the other wants the Roanoke Rapids city manager gone.

The fallout from social media comments concerning race made by Mayor Emery Doughtie’s wife, Yvonne, continued at Tuesday’s council meeting.

Ephraim Brodsky vowed to continue his attempt to force the mayor to resign while Jim Garrett, a vocal social media advocate for government reform in the city, made his second request for City Manager Kelly Traynham’s resignation.

Brodsky

Beginning his public comment time with a poem by German pastor Martin Niemöller titled First They Came, he told the council, “I am Jewish. And that poem is not history to me. It is a family story.”

He said his mother is named Shifra in honor of her paternal grandmother, who was hanged in the woods near her home in Poland by Nazi sympathizers during World War II. “Her crime was being Jewish. She did not die in a camp. She died close to home, in a place she knew, among people in her community who had decided that she no longer deserved to live.”

Brodsky’s son is named Joseph after Shifra's husband, who survived the Holocaust. “He survived not because the world was just, but because the villagers around him were afraid to come for him,” he said. “He had been a decorated war hero in World War I. He had fought for his country and killed many men. And so they hesitated. That hesitation was the difference between his life and his death.”

He said he carries those names with him every single day. “And because I carry them, I cannot be silent when hate speech is allowed to stand without consequence in this community.”

Adolf Hitler did not begin with the Jews, he said. “The Nazi regime's machinery of persecution and murder was built in stages. It began with people the regime labeled defectives: people with physical and mental disabilities who were subjected to forced sterilization and, ultimately, to systematic killing. It expanded to include gay men, who were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. It swept up Roma people, the Gypsies who were persecuted, deported, and murdered in numbers that Europe is still reckoning with.”

The genocide of European Jews — what is now called the Holocaust — was not the spark. “It was the direct result of a society that had already learned, step by step, to dehumanize people in categories. That is what unchecked rhetoric does. It does not stay where it starts. It teaches cruelty and then it spreads.”

The mayor's wife made racist and xenophobic comments, he said. “She has not apologized. Not once. Not in any form. And Mayor Emery Doughtie, the elected leader of this city, waited a full week before offering a response that, by any honest measure, was too little, too late, and too carefully worded to mean very much at all. That is not leadership. That is damage control. And this community deserves to know the difference.”

He told Doughtie his time is up, and speaking to the council, he said, “Your silence is not neutrality. Silence in the face of racist rhetoric is a choice, and this community sees it. Your combined statement doesn’t mention the mayor’s wife by name or even her comments; it is simply a generic statement that didn’t really let anyone know where you stand on this specific issue.”

When discussions of dissolving the police department came about during budget deliberations earlier this year, Brodsky said, “Each one of you made a point to take an individual stand and make public statements in open session supporting our municipal police force. It is really telling that none of you were brave enough to attach your name to a comment directly condemning the mayor’s wife or the lack of leadership our mayor showed by staying silent for a full week while the national media picked up this story and ran with it, further disgracing our city.”

He asked the council, “Would you handle this the same way if your spouse said what Yvonne Doughtie said? Would you handle this the same way if your spouse had years’ worth of anti-Muslim, xenophobic rhetoric plastered all over her public Facebook profile?”

There is no path forward for Roanoke Rapids with Emery Doughtie as mayor, he said. “A leader who cannot promptly, clearly, and sincerely condemn hate speech — including hate speech from within his own household — has forfeited the trust this office requires.”

Brodsky vowed, “I will be back. I will be back at the next meeting, and the one after that, and every meeting that follows, until Mayor Doughtie resigns or is removed. Because Niemöller's great regret was that he waited. I prefer to live my life without regrets.”

He brought his children to the meeting “to listen to the message because it’s important.”

“It’s important as Jews to stand with everybody. My children are anti-racist as well. When racist rhetoric is spread in their schools and when they hear it, they have the responsibility to speak out and to take action.”

His 11-year-old son “has active instructions to actively go after anybody who says anything racist in front of him. You need to go, Mayor Doughtie.”

Garrett

Garrett’s comments differed drastically from Brodsky’s.

He told the mayor, “I’d like to say congratulations. That was quite a heroic demonstration — you standing up for your wife. I know she’s a private citizen and has no bearing on your job, and I think that’s commendable.”

Instead of asking for the mayor’s resignation, he asked for Traynham to resign. “I see there’s a clear double standard in our leadership.”

Garrett reasserted that the mayor’s wife is a private citizen. “She made comments on Facebook. The city manager issued an official statement about these comments and all of you signed it.”

He said Roanoke Rapids head librarian Leigh Ann Brodsky, Ephraim’s wife, “has entered the same fight” on social media. “She identified herself as the librarian. She criticized the mayor. She said the mayor should give away all of his pay and she supported calls for his resignation.”

Garrett said the city should have a clear policy separating personal politics from city employment. “I’ve not seen any statement distancing yourselves from the comments that Mr. Brodsky’s wife, who I believe is the city librarian, made on Facebook.”

Garrett criticized Traynham for publicly addressing the speech of a private citizen. “Why is there no clear standard when city employees bring their position to the same controversy? The city manager decided to start policing Facebook in her job to hold everyone accountable. The manager has a record of inconsistent leadership. I have lost confidence in the city manager and I’m asking for her resignation or for you all to replace her.”

Traynham had no comment following the meeting.