City Council speaker hopeful accused of putting curse on rival’s house

BARBARA ROSS AND CORKY SIEMASZKO nydailynews.com A decapitated chicken is coming home to roost for wanna-be City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. A former primary opponent is suing the Manhattan city councilwoman for $1 million claiming she had a threatening mural bearing the image of the butchered bird painted on the side of her East Harlem building. “In the Caribbean culture, this constituted a curse and a death threat,” Gwen Goodwin charged in court papers. “As a swastika or a noose would symbolize typically to many Jews or African Americans, respectively.” City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, a City Council hopeful, is being sued for $1 million by a former primary rival who accuses her of having a curse painted on her building. 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 Sept. 1 — less than two weeks before the primary. “Upon information and belief,” Goodwin claims Mark-Viverito raided her campaign coffers — and used matched funds, as well — to fund “The Walls Speak” by artist Don Rimx. But Goodwin said Mark-Viverito’s mural wasn’t aimed at winning votes. Gwen Goodwin told the Daily News her rival funneled campaign and discretionary funds to the El Museo del Barrio, which in turn paid for the mural. “The intentional purpose of the subject mural was to inflict emotional distress on the Plaintiff,” the papers state. to read more: nydailynews.com