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Thin-skinned Big Apple Democrats are having a “block party” with some of their social media followers.
State Sen. Julia Salazar and Councilmen Rafael Salamanca Jr. and Ari Kagan are among elected officials who have blocked constituents and others from their Twitter accounts, presumably because they took issue with what they said.
The Post reported that woke City Councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan blocked an Upper West Side woman this month after she commented on the poor turnout at her vigil for two slain NYPD cops as well as their killer.
A Twitter user named @AlBeachGuy told The Post he also got the ax from Jordan and that Salazar, a socialist representing part of Brooklyn, blocked him last fall from her personal account.
He said the block from Jordan came after he accused her of trying to get attention from the deaths of the police officers and later tweeted about the poor attendance at her vigil. Salazar blocked him after he reminded her of her 2011 arrest stemming from a dispute with the ex-wife of Mets legend Keith Hernandez, he said.
The case against Salazar was dismissed.
“My take is that if they’re going to tweet out their position on government policies and their political opinions on their personal accounts then the public should be able to respond to them,” he said.
A city employee who uses the Twitter handle @KittyCatC_007 said Kagan, a former journalist and immigrant from the former Soviet Union, blocked him in early January shortly after taking office to represent Coney Island and surrounding neighborhoods.
“He in particular should know that you can’t or shouldn’t silence somebody for their point of view,” the Twitter user said.
He said he last tweeted to Kagan’s personal account in November when he mentioned Kagan’s history in the Soviet Union including being a member of the Communist party. Kagan has said he left the party in 1991.
On Thursday, he referred to Kagan as “Comrade General Secretary” in a tweet to Kagan’s official account.
“He’s clearly a troll,” Kagan told The Post. “I should keep this person even on my personal account?”
Katie Fallow, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told The Post that government officials are generally obligated not to block free speech on their official social media accounts or their personal ones if they are used in an official way such as to promote policy.
Kagan’s personal account is mostly retweets from his government one.
Bronx resident Lattina Brown said Salamanca, whom she sought to unseat last year, blocked her this week from his official Facebook page and on a Twitter account labeled as personal. She said the move came after she praised another Bronx pol on Twitter.
“It is his responsibility to hear the concerns from the constituents of what’s going on in the community,” Brown said of Salamanca.
Representatives for Salazar and Salamanca did not immediately return requests for comment.
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