“This is a political vendetta by City officials who are supporters of Elizabeth Warren,” said Ayyadurai, who was born in Bombay, India, tells the Times.
He also posted a video on YouTube calling the city’s attempt to silence him “extortion.”
Ayyadurai has been posting massive campaign signs on the side of a school bus parked in front of a building he owns.
There were no complaints until he posted a sign mocking Warren’s false claims of having Native American ancestry.
Warren’s first made the debunked claim while applying for a teaching position at Harvard University officials hoped to give to a racial minority.
Warren has no Native American ancestry.
“In an April 5 letter, Cambridge building inspector Branden Vigneault said his department had received ‘a series of anonymous complaints’ about the large signs,” the Times reports.
“These signs must be removed immediately,” Vigneault wrote in a letter to Ayyadurai. “Failure to do so may result in fines up to $300.00 dollars per day and legal action.”
Ayyadurai is not complying with the order, which he considers an invalid application of code and an attempt to use government force to censor political speech.
“We will not remove the slogan from our bus,” Ayyadurai tells the Times. “We will defend the First Amendment, and we will fight this egregious attack on the First Amendment, at any cost.”
He notes that not only are the signs on a bus, not a building, making them outside the jurisdiction of building codes, but there was also no attempt to apply building code when the signs did not mention Warren.
Before the “fake Indian” sign, Ayyadurai had posted massive signs reading “Shiva 4 Senate/Be the Light” and “Shiva U.S. Senate/Fight for America.”
AAN Staff
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