SWAMPSCOTT — Many of those who participated in a virtual community forum with Select Board member Don Hause still want him to resign or be recalled.
The feeling wasn’t unanimous, however, and others said more effort should be put into making real changes in Swampscott — such as creating more affordable housing — instead of attacking Hause.
Hause was accused of calling the Black Lives Matter movement “liberal bull****” during an overheard dinner conversation at Mission on the Bay, held a virtual community forum Tuesday, in which he answered questions from some of his critics.
The Zoom meeting was held in the midst of an effort by some residents to recall Hause, and people have been standing outside Town Hall and the Swampscott Farmers Market gathering signatures for a recall election.
Hause said the comments attributed to him are inaccurate. Nonetheless, the majority of those who joined the virtual meeting were critical.
“We’re all in different stages of the learning process of becoming anti-racist, and it’s clear you are in the very early stages of the process,” said Swampscott resident Nick Scibelli, who started the effort to recall Hause.
Hause first became embroiled in controversy last month, when Erik Heilman, a former member of the waitstaff at Mission on the Bay, posted on the private community Facebook group Swampscott 01907 that he had overheard Hause calling the Black Lives Matter movement “liberal bull****” and saying white privilege isn’t reality.
Hause did have a couple of supporters at the meeting, including Charles Patsios, who called it the “beat-up-Don-Hause-show,” and said doing things like putting up signs do nothing to help the very small minority of Black people in Swampscott. Patsios said he would rather see more affordable housing created in Swampscott as a way to tangibly help low-income people of all races in town.
“All of us sitting here saying how bad Don Hause is, what have we done to make a difference in a Black life?” Patsios said.
Hause said some of what he said at Mission on the Bay was him “joking about how I don’t fit the profile of white privilege,” having made his own way after being raised by a single mother. He also said he wasn’t talking about the Black Lives Matter movement as a whole, but those “factions” he sees as “a little more focused on anarchy and violence and not support the nuclear family and things like that.”
Mahder Teferra said Hause should try to understand the “frustrations and the riots” he sees as coming from long-oppressed people.
“Black people have never achieved equality over a very, very long time, and they’re tired, they’re over it,” Teferra said.
Hause responded to Teferra and said he “can’t imagine how frustrated a group or a race must be that they have to resort to violence to have their message heard. I have no idea as a white person that anyone can be that frustrated. I understand it. I can’t empathize with it. I have no way of seeing the world through your prism.”
Scibelli, who says he has until July 22 to gather and submit 1,708 signatures, said Hause is unfit to serve on the Select Board because the public lacks faith in his ability to represent people of all races in town. Scibelli also criticized Hause for not originally signing the Select Board’s proclamation condemning the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25. However, Hause was not at the meeting when the proclamation was first read, and he has since signed it.
Another person, a supporter of Hause who did not give her name during the meeting, said she gives Hause “a lot of credit for doing what (he is) doing, for defending the right, maybe not a First Amendment right, but a moral right,” to “say what you feel.” She said Hause had come up with reasonable answers to critics’ questions.
Hause said he would not resign, but “let the process play out.” He also said he does take personally some of the “things that have been said” by Scibelli as “personal affronts.”
“What I’ve found interesting tonight is I’m being criticized for being in the early stage of my learning career, yet I have individuals here in their early 20s who are apparently so well versed and schooled in all issues of race that they’ve seemed to come up with the solutions,” Hause said. “So, I suspect we all have a long way to go, because we haven’t solved the problem in 400 years.”
To watch the full community forum, visit tv.swampscott ma.gov.
