After the New York Post published a video of an artist named Shellyne Rodriguez holding what appeared to be a machete up to a reporter, she was detained on Thursday.
On Thursday morning, Rodriguez was detained at the Bronx’s 43rd Precinct but was later released. The incident happened on Tuesday, and according to the New York Police Department, Rodriguez has been charged with misdemeanour counts of menacing and harassment.
Rodriguez lost her position as an adjunct lecturer in the art department at Manhattan’s Hunter College on the same day. In a statement, Hunter stated that the institution “strongly condemns the unacceptable actions of Shellyne Rodriguez.”
Courtesy: ARTnews
After right-wing publications picked up the story, Rodriguez issued a statement in which she claimed that the school had “capitulated” to “racists, white nationalists, and misogynists.”
She had also served as an adjunct lecturer at the School of Visual Arts, which on Friday “made the decision not to renew Shellyne Rodriguez’s contract,” the institution said in a statement to ARTnews.
Right-wing media groups like Breitbart and Fox News had earlier in the week reported on another incident involving Rodriguez at Hunter. Rodriguez appeared to be confronting students who had a booth with literature for Students for Life of America, a nonprofit organisation that calls itself “one of the leading pro-life advocacy organisations in the world,” in a video that was widely shared online.
You’re doing shit for education. Rodriguez appeared to tell the students, “This is fucking propaganda,” before hurling what she subsequently described as “postcards and [a] metal container of rubber foetuses.” The students didn’t seem injured based on the video.
In a piece published on Tuesday, the New York Post said that Rodriguez had confronted reporter Reuven Fenton, who had a byline on the story, with a machete. A spokesperson for Rodriguez later refuted The Post’s claim that Fenton identified himself when he went to Rodriguez’s Bronx apartment, where she later emerged brandishing a knife. She claimed that Fenton and a cameraperson “did not use the intercom to gain access, and appear to have been trespassing inside the building when they pounded on her door and started yelling at her through the door.”
There were no known injuries, according to the NYPD, who stated that “a 42-year-old male was threatened with a machete after a verbal altercation.” The department stated that an investigation was continuing.
Source: ARTnews
