BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

MASSENA -- Members of the public who spoke against embattled legislator Rita Curran at Monday’s county board meeting pointed to the @ElectCurran2018 Twitter account as evidence that her controversial share was not an isolated incident. The account was deleted from Twitter on Tuesday.

Among them were two people who identified themselves as members of the Muslim community and said they hope Curran learns from the debacle.

The controversy started when Curran on April 25 shared an image from a page called Empire State Conservatives to her Facebook page. It shows an airplane flying into the burning World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. It is accompanied by the text “Every time a Muslim stand [sic] up in Congress and tells us they are going to change the Constitution, impeach our president, or vote for socialism, remember you swore you would never forget. They swore they would destroy us from within.” She deleted it the next day after the St. Lawrence County Democrats released a statement condemning the post and calling for her to resign.

About 50 people gathered at St. Lawrence University and marched to the meeting to show their opposition to the statement Curran shared and some called for her to step down.

"May peace, blessings, and mercy of Allah be upon you all,” Mon Hadzovic said as he took the podium, identifying himself as a member of the North Country Muslim community.

"You did something wrong. Own up to it. Everybody has faults,” he told Curran. ”To be honest it doesn't matter if you resign or not. What matters is you learn from your mistake and you have to earn that respect back from the people.”[img_assist|nid=257964|title=Above are protest organizers Sehar Delawar and Nick Filaninno of Canton, and Madeline Thibault of Massena.|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=400|height=188]

Hadzovic entered the courthouse along with a protest of about 50 people carrying a sign that said “We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, patience creates unity” with the hash tag #IAMMUSLIM.

Hammi, a St. Lawrence University student who does not use a surname, said "every single person in this room cares about terrorism and cares about Jihadism” however “most people up here talking about Islam do not understand Islam.”

"It is easy to use hate in order to get votes ... this room is a clear example of what that looks like,” he said. "If you stay in your position, I hope you can learn from this. If you don't, I'm sorry, there are better people for the job.”

Organizers of the SLU protest also spoke out against Curran’s shared message.

"Are you happy about energizing these voices in our county telling us Muslims are out to get us and the followers of Mohammed are out to get us and waiting in every crevice? I think it's disgusting,” said Nicholas Filaninno, one of the student organizers. He was referring to speakers who supported Curran including one who claimed that Muslims are inclined to use violence rather than missionary work to bring followers who have strayed back into the fold.

"Hate speech, Islamophobia and racism are some thing I and many others here tonight cannot and will not stand for,” said student organizer Madeline Thibault of Massena. She presented the board with a petition that had over 300 signatures supporting Curran’s resignation. ”Your shared post on Facebook was in fact Islamophobic, no matter what you may say.”

"Your rhetoric comes from a place of fear and misunderstanding,” SLU student organizer Sahar Delawar of Canton said. "Your lack of remorse for your actions and failure to take responsibility is why you should resign your position.”

Earlier on Monday, Delawar and Thibault in a phone interview said opposition to Curran’s remarks is bipartisan among their campus community.

"It's a non-partisan issue. It's hate speech,” Delawar said. “We’ve had support from SLU Republicans ... they're very much against Islamophobia.”

They also pointed to numerous posts on Curran’s @ElectCurran2018 Twitter feed, which was deleted sometime on Tuesday, but many remained up through at least Monday evening. Screenshots are at the bottom of this story.

"This is not an isolated incident. This has been repeated. She has been tweeting about people who are not born here, should not be here and the like. This is not okay and we are not standing for it,” Thibault said.

The Twitter account appears to have been created around the time Curran launched her candidacy. The account has retweeted posts that make anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant statement, along with conspiracy theories. It includes a post written from the account that reads “It’s horrible and anti-American to let illegal people into your country so that we can live in a Third World garbage dump.”

Another, posted Sept. 11, 2018, shows the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center 17 years earlier to the day with the caption “How did we go from this to being afraid of offending Muslims?”

And a third is a retweet post that shows a headshot of Rep. Ilham Omar, D-Minnesota, accompanied by the test “So Obama imports 70K Somali immigrants & parks them in Minnesota, where almost all cluster in a single area, specifically the 5th congressional district. It’s been I.D.’d as the terrorist recruitment capital & is represented by Ilhan Omar who is DISSOLVING Homeland Security.” The original post was by an account called @KatTheHammer1.

On Tuesday morning, the account's profile picture had been changed to a magazine cover depicting a woman with her mouth taped shut. It is accompanied by the text "To destroy the Second Amendment, politicians must first crush the first."

Curran refused to discuss the controversy or the Twitter account.

"All that stuff ended last night, but have a good day," she said when reached by phone on Tuesday afternoon and promptly hung up.

Below are screenshots from the now-deleted @ElectCurran2018 Twitter account that drew criticisms from protesters.

[img_assist|nid=257963|title=|desc=|link=none|align=|width=554|height=900]