‘I am not a hateful person’: After voicemail, angry caller apologizes to councilor Julia Mejia
“This conversation with you has given me so much hope," the Boston city councilor said.
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The angry caller who left a tirade against Julia Mejia in a voicemail message last week — in which he told her she’s “pushing for a fight” — has apologized to her.
The man lives outside of Boston and told the freshman city councilor that he was embarrassed friends recognized his voice in a recording of the call that Mejia released, The Boston Globe reports.
Throughout the message, the caller said both Mejia and her mother, once an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, are criminals and quipped he was contacting the White House to take action against Mejia.
“All you do is antagonize and provoke,” he said at one point. “You’re a hater. You’re a racist. You’re a bigot.”
In response, Mejia published the call in a Youtube video and asked for those who disagreed with her to meet with her so that they could talk over their differences.
“We’re not calling you out, we’re inviting you in,” she said.
The message was apparently received.
“I am not a hateful person,” the caller told her last week, according to a recording of the conversation played to the Globe.
The man said he believes in the rule of law and explained his feelings stemmed from accounts of violence caused by undocumented immigrants, the newspaper reports.
The call came just days after Mejia, the council’s first foreign-born, Afro-Latina woman, called on the city to look at creating sanctuary safe spaces in places such as public schools, family and youth centers, and libraries to build on Boston’s “sanctuary city” status.
In their conversation, she asked the caller to work with her and find what they have in common in the debate, according to the Globe.
“You have made my week,” she told the man. “This conversation with you has given me so much hope.”
The man, who told Mejia, “You are where you belong, in America,” also asked if she would apologize to her mother on his behalf.
Both Mejia and her mother are naturalized citizens.
“Tell her there’s no animosity,” the caller said. “She came here the hard way and she deserves credit and respect, and I have both of those for her — and you.”
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