Creating a Toxic Work Environment: Peo Edition

I thought it was impossible for Rochester City Council member Jose Peo to hit a new low, but he is always full of surprises. I should have known that when he accused Black leaders of not doing enough to help his Black constituents stay safe during the rise of COVID-19 epidemic, I would not hear the last of him. Since then, during a public online town hall, Peo mocked transgender and non-binary people by setting his pronouns to “they/them.” His ill-fated bid to run for NYS Assembly against incumbent Sarah Clark was laden with sexist dog whistles. Throughout his term, Peo has fervently defended Rochester Police amidst the myriad of misconduct complaints they received throughout the years, but especially during the George Floyd and Daniel Prude protests, when they were beating, pepper spraying, and tear gassing peaceful protesters. His Twitter looks like an RPD propaganda mirror site. His podcast is on the We the People Network, a podcast network founded by former iHeartMedia radio host Kimberly Ray. She and her co-host, Barry Beck, were fired a second time because of Ray’s racist comments on the air in 2020. Incidentally, 2020 was the year that Peo made his aforementioned racist comments about Black leaders in the community. It is on his show “Politically Correcting with Jose Peo” that he reached a new low.

On his January 15^th episode, A lengthy conversation about firearms and gun rights derailed as one of Peo’s co-hosts, Lavelle Lewis posited, “If the ginger went out with me on a date, I guarantee you she’d let me beat it up the same day.” The “ginger” in question is Mary Lupien, Jose Peo’s colleague on Rochester City Council. Instead of reining in the conversation, Peo not only mentioned her first name while laughing, so that there would be no doubt of whom Lewis was speaking, They seemed to pivot to other small subjects and gay jokes, but Lewis continued after Peo egged him on by calling him a “p***y”, wondering aloud if she would keep a face mask on if he were to ejaculate on her face. Peo laughed along with everyone else, and he did nothing to admonish anyone for speaking about his coworker in such a way. “Just men having a conversation over drinks” is the excuse on the air for this talk; I cannot recall which of them said that, and I don’t plan to pollute my ears a second time to find out.

Lupien is rightfully shocked and upset about the amount of disrespect thrown at her during the show. All of it was unwarranted and unnecessary. To degrade her to an object is bad enough, but to continue with it after the subject had changed is malicious, and Peo egged it all on. In general degrading women as sex objects is never a good look, but from the content of their banter, it happens a lot in the fifty recorded episodes of “Politically Correcting.” Peo refuses to apologize. Instead, he said, “I explicitly stated I had no part in the conversation, as Mary and Lavelle have both exchanged words in the past, and I have a working relationship with both of them…Ms. Lupien is perfectly capable of reaching out to Lavelle directly to express her feelings and squash any beef, instead of using her faction on social media, and now in local media, to try and censor a Black man from exercising his First Amendment right on my show.”

Oh, NOW he cares about a Black person’s rights. For the last two years, the only time he has talked about Black people was to demonize them and spew “bootstrap” myths at them, and perhaps get a photo op with them. Also, it is incorrect that he had no part in the conversation, as it was HIS SHOW. HE egged on Lewis to continue. And no one is trying to censor a Black man. He owes Lupien an apology. I am sure Peo would see things differently if someone went on the air and talked about his own wife the way Lewis talked about Lupien. And now on social media, he is hiding behind the fact that his podcast team is “diverse” and they are just men talking to evade any responsibility for what he let happen on his show, punctuated with #ManUp.

“Manning up” would be apologizing to the colleague that he allowed to be denigrated, and making the denigrator apologize to her as well. He likes to hold his constituents in Northwest Rochester responsible for things that are out of their control, and now he is claiming that he could not have done anything. But he could have. If someone is harmed in your house, you are liable for their injury. If someone is doing something you don’t approve of in your house, you don’t say, “Well there is nothing I can do about it.” You say something or kick them out. Peo could have shut Lewis down, cut off his mic, anything but laugh along and egg him on with schoolyard taunts. He carried the toxic environment he cultivated on his podcast to City Council.

City Council President Miguel Melendez is now involved and is investigating the next steps to take, as this type of indirect harassment is uncharted territory for the Office. He plans to foster a restorative process to have the Council move forward with their work. The men in close proximity to Peo in city government need to speak up loudly and take Peo to task for this. That includes Miguel Melendez, Willie Lightfoot, and even Mayor Malik Evans. He should at a minimum be censured, and he finally relented and published some semblance of an apology, but Lewis owes Lupien an apology as well. At this point, the only thing “restorative” that Jose Peo could do is resign and let someone else from his district replace him through a special election He only won his seat by twenty votes, anyway. By his actions, he does not seem to care about his elected position anyway. Nothing Peo has done shows that he has any desire to serve the constituents in his district. By resigning, he can focus on his Wish.com version of the Joe Rogan show, and he will be out of the hair of the people who genuinely care about the progress of the city.

About Chris Thompson