Residents of a small Pennsylvania borough are urging the mayor to quit after he made a series of inflammatory and racist Facebook posts, including a meme suggesting that President Barack Obama should be lynched.
The image, posted by West York Mayor Charles Wasko, showed Clint Eastwood from the film “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” and a noose. The caption read: “Barry, this rope is for you. You wanna bring that empty chair over here!”
Wasko also reposted an image of orangutans in a wheelbarrow with the caption “Moving day at the White House.”
After the images appeared online, several members of the West York borough council called on Wasko to step down.
“I would punch him in the mouth if I could get away with it,” councilwoman Shelley Metzler told the York Daily Record. “(T)his man needs to resign.”
“I almost don’t know what to say,” council president Shawn Mauck told the York Dispatch. “I kind of want to throw up.”
As mayor, Wasko had some oversight over the community’s police department, The Dispatch reported.
“With those types of thoughts in your mind, how can you oversee the police department?” councilman Brian Wilson, who also called on the mayor to quit, told the newspaper. “We can’t have anybody being racist or bigoted ... especially an elected official.”
The Dispatch and Daily Record both reported that the council didn’t have the power to force the mayor’s resignation, but they planned to introduce a resolution censuring him.
Wasko, whose Facebook page was full of right-wing memes, was unapologetic, claiming he “will not be politically correct” and there was “more to come.”
Located about 100 miles west of Philadelphia, West York has a population of 4,617, and is 82 percent white, 8.5 percent black and 9 percent Hispanic as of the 2010 census.
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