Ziya Smallens, the Louisville field organizer who was caught in a video tape released by James O’Keefe on Monday saying “You can’t be a statewide politician and condemn coal…You are not going to win,” wrote the Muslim world “preaches peace before anything else” in an article about Islam a year before joining the Grimes campaign.
The Oberlin College student from Westchester County, New York wrote in a 2013 article for a publication called the Global Grind that “Islamophobia is a huge issue in the Western World.”
“The Muslim world,” Smallens wrote, “lays host to a beautiful and loving culture that preaches peace before anything else…. In my family, my mother refers to other members of the Islamic community as my family’s brothers and sisters. Even as an atheist, I see every member of the Muslim world as a brother or sister because Islam teaches us the importance of unity..”
“When somebody claims that a Muslim was responsible for any terrorist attack, they are wrong,” Smallens concluded.
According to a Facebook posting at Kentucky Teamsters Local 783 that has since been taken down, Smallens has conducted get-out-the-vote training for the Grimes campaign at the local’s offices in Louisville.
On Tuesday, Smallens’ Linked In account showed that he has been employed as a field organizer in the Louisville office of Alison for Kentucky, the official name of the Grimes campaign, since June of this year. That employment listing has since been removed.
Breitbart News spoke on the phone with Smallens on Tuesday, who referred us to Charly Norton, press secretary for the Grimes campaign. Norton has not responded to our email request for comment.
A search of Federal Election Commission records shows that Ziya Smallens of Yonkers, New York has been on the payroll of the Kentucky State Democratic Central Executive Committee since July of this year.
You can see Smallens in the O’Keefe video here, beginning at the 1:23 mark:
Image source: Project Veritas Action