Raleigh says it followed procedures in letting extremist group rent Convention Center

The leader of an extremist religious group that’s renting the Raleigh Convention Center this weekend countered claims his organization is a hate group.

The Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge, or ISUPK, is a nonprofit that has chapters across the United States including in North Carolina. The group, using a third-party, rented the Raleigh Convention Center on Saturday for a Passover celebration.

Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said there will be more police downtown than normal this weekend because of several events, including the Dreamville music festival happening in nearby Dorothea Dix Park.

“There will be added security just not because of that group, but because of everything we have going on,” she said Friday.

ISUPK is considered one of the “extremist sects within the Black Hebrew Israelite Movement,” according to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks and fights antisemitism. The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, calls the ISUPK a hate group and one of the most prominent sects within the “Radical Hebrew Israelites” group.

The group governs using military titles, with Commanding General Yahanna Israel as the head of the organization.

“The SPLC calls us a racist because we decide we’re Jews?” Yahanna said in an interview with The News & Observer. “We’re in America in 2023 where if you want to identify as a cat, a dog, a they, a them or whatever you want to identify with it’s acceptable. But I’m a hate group, because I say Blacks in America are the descendants of the original biblical Jews?”

The group has already spent several days in the Triangle, including visiting Black Wall Street in Durham and the Stagville Plantation. They plan to hold their Passover Celebration on Saturday night at the convention center downtown.

“I grew up in New York City in the Bronx, and I never heard of a 50-square-mile plantation called Stagville,” Yahanna said. “I was blown away. I’ve heard of Black Wall Street in Oklahoma and Tulsa. But I never knew that there was a Black Wall Street in Durham, North Carolina, that was systematically destroyed as well. So it’s history like this that gives us a better clarity on why we have suffered and continue to suffer at the racism that America seems to never abate.”

Yahanna said he couldn’t say how many people are members of their organization or how many people will be in the Triangle, because “God said not to number the people, so we don’t number them.”

The Passover event, with multiple days of activities planned, is meant to “bring people back to their identity” and to educate people about their history, Yahanna said.

How Convention Center contract happened

ISUPK used a third-party, New York-based company TGF Solution, to book the convention center. The contract required a $1,500 deposit and for the group to spend at least $27,000 on food and beverages.

In a statement Friday, Assistant City Manager Evan Raleigh said the Raleigh Convention Center staff followed “standard business and operational procedures with respect to the evaluation and booking of an event.”

“This process typically involves confirming the event type and determining if the event meets booking priorities and timelines for RCC,” he said in an email. “In the event it does, further inquiries are made regarding the details of the event and payment and insurance requirements are reviewed with the prospective client. Research is also conducted on the sponsoring organization, which can include reference checks if determined appropriate based on the nature of the event.”

Renting the convention center through a third-party is common, he said.

“At no point before, during or after the booking process did TGF indicate that it was acting on behalf of another organization nor was there any documentation presented which would have suggested that there was any relationship between TGF and the group in question,” Raleigh said. “The association between the two entities came to light only after a recent posting on social media suggested that the group in question might actually be the group hosting and organizing the event.”

ISUPK “never misrepresent ourselves,” Yahanna said, but he said he was not familiar with the conversations that led up to the group renting the convention center. He also said they haven’t had problems at other venues at past events across the nation.

The city did not respond to follow-up questions including what triggers additional research of a group, whether the city asked who TGF was representing or if the city could have denied the rental.

Some Raleigh City Council members, including Baldwin, said denying the group’s rental would raise a First Amendment issue.

“People have First Amendment rights,” she said. “And we also have to balance whether we’re discriminating against certain groups or not. And so that’s something I think the (city) attorney’s office would have to advise us on. But it is a gray area.”

Mayor Pro Tem Corey Branch said he may not like a group, but that doesn’t mean barring them from using city facilities.

“It’s one of those free speech issues,” he said. “I don’t want to see any terrorist, racist group coming in and using our facilities, but we have to be measured in how we approach that because of First Amendment rights.”

‘They publicly harassed people’

But Rabbi Lucy Dinner of Temple Beth Or in Raleigh thinks the City of Raleigh needs to immediately review its policies.

“This group has been identified nationally as a hate group and has publicly made antisemitic statements, anti-LGBTQ statements and statements that clearly are meant to incite violence and hate,” she said. “I don’t think that our public institutions should open themselves to any group that is to incite violence and hatred.”

She and temple members have been targeted by this group when downtown, Dinner said.

“I personally have been harassed by members of this particular group when I was walking downtown and had Jewish garb on,” she said. “And then I feel like they publicly harassed people. And I’ve had my own members mention how uncomfortable that they are downtown, when this group is down there shouting out hateful messages.”

The City of Raleigh is considering a new ordinance that would make harassment a criminal misdemeanor.

Yahanna praised the city for its clear ordinance and said his organization has “strict rules about harassment.”

“If you walk past us on the street, while we’re teaching, we will not engage you at all, unless you engage us,” he said. “And every time we end up in a heated and aggressive engagement with somebody, it is not because we decided that we were going to harass them. It is because they decided they didn’t like what we were saying.”

Baldwin said staff is reviewing policies to see if there are ways of improving the process for using the convention center

“Are there lessons learned? And are there ways that we could improve our onboarding process when we’re taking reservations?” she said. “And I don’t know that there is. But I think that the staff is saying we’ll at least take a look at this.”