By: Rusty Brooks
The rivalry between New York City and Boston heated up over Christmas.
The New York Post has an exclusive report of New York City a tenants’ rights lawyer, Leah Goodridge and one of 13 members of the City Planning Commission, fired off a midnight tweet at Boston urban planner Sandy Johnston.
“Engaging in defamation might seem cute on Twitter. It’s not cute in the courtroom though,” Goodridge sniped.
Melissa Klein, of The New York Post writes, “Goodridge earlier tweeted that anyone whose approach to urban planning was to “reclaim” cities so new white residents could move back to them from the suburbs was engaging in “white supremacy at its finest.”
The tweets came in the middle of a woke discussion among several users about NIMBYism and pro-development YIMBYism, as described by the NY Post
They were first reported by The Real Deal.
Goodridge’s Christmas Eve meltdown came as she took offense to an earlier tweet from Johnston when he referred to her as “a supposedly leftist planning commissioner” and said that Goodridge” ‘just asking questions’ about what it would be like if we could establish a hukou system is really grounds for rebooting the whole system.”
Many immediately condemned Goodridge for abusing her power with an alleged threat –and for misunderstanding the law.
“Without an understanding of fundamental concepts like defamation, a person is not fit to serve in such an important role,” Councilman Robert Holden, D-Queens said. “Maybe she should sue herself.”
First Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn tweeted to Goodridge, “Are you sure you’re an attorney?”
“You know what’s not cute? Throwing your weight around as a government official to try to stifle free speech and use litigation as a cudgel! This is literally what the First Amendment was written to protect against and members of both parties need to knock this s–t off,” tweeted Liz Mair, a political consultant, in response.
According to her bio, Goodridge, who has a law degree from UCLA, is the managing attorney for housing policy at the nonprofit Mobilization for Justice in Manhattan. Goodridge was appointed to the Planning Commission in 2021 by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. She was previously a tenant representative on the city’s Rent Guidelines Board having been named by former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“No comment,” Goodridge said when called by The New York Post.
Goodridge recenbtly made news when she published award-winning UCLA Law Review essay that has received a lot of traction online when she wrote about professionalism as a racial construct, note the left wing buzzword “construct”
She told a Forbes writer when asked about her motivation for the essay:
“I was moved to write it after a bunch of experiences where I realized that professionalism is a one-way street and I started to question what the purpose of professionalism was for and for who. For example, I’m a lawyer…I’m a Black woman and many times when I enter court, my opposing counsel is white and sometimes they may yell, berate me, and do all sorts of things that are unprofessional, and the judge might not…the judge won’t act. The judge will never admonish them. But if I had done the same behavior, it’s clear that the same would not be true. And so, I realized that there are two different standards of professionalism”.
