Lukee Forbes speaks during a press conference to highlight National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day outside the Capitol in Albany.

Lukee Forbes

Lukee Forbes

ALBANY — Lukee Forbes is running for Common Council with the backing of the Working Families Party. Safe to say, the party's endorsement has raised a few eyebrows.

"It doesn't make sense to me, and it shouldn't make sense to them," said Common Councilor Joyce Love, who isn't running for reelection and holds the Ward 3 seat sought by Forbes. "You know what he did to that person, right?"

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Forbes, who became a prominent and controversial Black Lives Matter activist after the death of George Floyd, was involved in the brutal beating of Louis Stelling, a University at Albany professor of French who was attacked on his way home from the city's 2010 annual gay pride parade. Stelling was beaten beyond recognition, left for dead and subsequently placed in a medically induced coma.

Forbes, 15 at the time, supplied the tree branch that two other teens used to beat Stelling. Initially convicted of first-degree assault and robbery and sentenced to 3 1/3 to 10 years in prison, Forbes was released in 2018.

Was it a hate crime?

Well, prosecutors determined that the attack near Washington Park seemed motivated by money. And Forbes, in a recent interview, told me the beating "was a random act of violence" that had nothing to do with Stelling's sexuality.........

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