From Caribbean360

The losing candidate says her opponent targeted her East Harlem building as the canvas for a five-storey image of a bodiless rooster atop wooden poles.

NEW YORK, United States, Monday January 6, 2014, CMC – A politician who lost the New York Democratic Primary elections to the front-runner for the City Council speaker has filed a million-dollar lawsuit against the front-runner, claiming she put a “Caribbean hex” on her during the bitter campaign.

Gwen Goodwin, 52, who lost the Democratic primary to New York City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito in September, says her nemesis targeted her East Harlem building as the canvas for a five-storey image of a bodiless rooster atop wooden poles.

The head is just below the window of the apartment where Goodwin has lived since 1997. Mark-Viverito is expect¬ed to be voted in as the next New York City Council speaker on Thursday, according to the New York Post.

“According to neighbours, in the Caribbean culture, this constituted a curse and a death threat, as a swastika or a noose would symbolize typically to many Jews or African-Americans,” said Goodwin in the lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday.

Goodwin, who ran unsuccessfully against the East Harlem Democrat in 2009, claims the mural, which wrapped around the exterior wall of her fifth-floor apartment, was unveiled on September 1, less than two weeks before the primary.

“This intimidated me and caused me fear. I’m a Christian,” Goodwin continued. “I don’t believe outside my religion, but strange things were happening.”

She said she suddenly got a blood clot in her foot and that a close friend began “acting crazy” right after the mural was posted.

But Mark-Viverito, through her spokesman, Eric Koch, has dismissed the lawsuit.

“These desperate and ¬ridiculous allegations by a failed political opponent of Melissa are false, absurd and a waste of the court’s precious time,” he said in a statement.

“It’s sad but expected that Melissa’s ¬opponents are resorting to these kinds of tactics,” he added.

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