Wednesday, March 20, 2024

City Hall to Shut Down Public Phone-in Comments in Reaction to Nazis

 At City Hall, It's Nazis, 1, the Council, 0

Opinion

Emeryville City Manager
Paul Buddenhagen

Democracy must suffer in order to
go after Nazis or men with cameras.

The Nazis are back!  The same group of five Florida based residents are once again phoning in their special brand of hate to our Council Chambers.  Tuesday night, hoping to make a bigger impact, they kept rotating between themselves, using different names and trying to disguise their voices so they could turn the five of them into 15 commenters.  Mayor Courtney Welch kept playing 'wack-a-mole', cutting their mics at the first whiff of disruptive hate speech but a new one would simply take his place albeit with a new improvised voice pattern.  This childishness flummoxed the Mayor who kept allowing the “new” ones to speak, even though it was obvious it was the same five, taking turns over and over. 

After the theatrics finally died down, the City Manager Paul Buddenhagen made a hair-on-fire announcement: all citizen phone-in comments are to be curtailed at council, planning commission and committee meetings “for the foreseeable future” he said.  Take that, Nazis!

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way.  The popular phone-in option at City meetings started in 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic and was continued on afterward, constituting what came to be known as “hybrid” meetings, meaning in-person comments and phone-in comments are both available to the public.   After City Hall noted a substantial uptick in citizen participation, the hybrid meeting format became settled and permanent Emeryville policy by Council fiat.  The idea was that a much greater number of people would attend meetings if they were made more convenient.  And it worked. 

But then the Nazis came to town.

The Emeryville City Council is right to disallow disruptive hate speech and they should cut the mic of anyone doing it.  Racist hate or any speech targeting people for who they are is not public meeting free speech but profanity IS Constitutionally guaranteed free speech.  But City Hall is now taking that out too.  Perhaps seeing the Nazi ‘crisis’ as an opportunity, the delicate Emeryville City government is now also stoping the use of profanity for citizens, so perturbed they are over these four letter word using Nazis.  This is another panic driven over-reaction and we will challenge this.

To react like the City Council is doing is to put the Nazis in the driver’s seat.  With the harsh anti-democratic prohibitions in place, it can fairly be said these Nazis are now driving public policy in Emeryville.  This kind of over the top reactionary response from City Hall is just what the haters want.  The Council needs to calm the fuck down.  The use of profanity is a Constitutional right.  Racists and fascists are everywhere in America now.  We’re not going to let Nazis destroy our city and we’re not going to let the City Council destroy our city (in order to save it).  We’re going to continue on with democratic governance here, just as we always have.  

So City Council, reel in your City Manager and let the Nazis phone-in and speak.  And let the democracy loving people phone-in and speak and let them all use Constitutionally supported free speech.  When the Trump crowd spews their meeting disrupting hate filled venom, cut their mics.  Don’t make Emeryville residents suffer a major loss of access in order to try to strike a blow against Nazis. Nazism should not be on par with our Emeryville government.  We’re supposed to be better than them.    

9 comments:

  1. Why didn't you post the video of the meeting so we can see for ourselves like you did last time? I don't condone hate speech but we should be able to see what happened.

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    1. If you've seen one Nazi, you've seen them all. That and I already offered the video of the first Nazi meeting crash in the March 7th story. Seriously, there's nothing newsworthy in what the Nazis said in the second meeting....just more hate. What's newsworthy is City Hall's reaction to the Nazis. If you really want to see the depravity, go to the City of Emeryville website and you can watch it for yourself.

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  2. DO NOT GIVE IN It is a crying shame there are American-born people with the intent to display their racism and hate at every option. If we give in to these vicious Florida bullies, then the freedom for all begins to fail. The Mayor and City Council should keep the open forum at the end of the meeting only and speakers can send in their registered phone numbers before opening the mic (assuming this is a way to track the calls) to check call-ins for relevance. Someone else besides the Mayor should be in charge of the mic cut-off as it keeps the position of the Mayor less flustered and reactionary. The people in Florida behind this should be reported to state and local authorities in Emeryville and Florida ( I assume we know who they are by now).
    The Council also needs to encourage a return of citizens coming in person to meetings like we did pre-COVID. DO NOT GIVE IN ~ Elisabeth Montgomery

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  3. Isn't it a violation of the Brown Act to cut off phone-in comments from the public? The law guarantees the public’s right to attend and
    participate in City Council meetings. At the very least, the public is entitled to speak on agendized items.

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    1. I don't know if it is a violation of the Brown Act per se. But it IS a violation at least in the spirit of the Brown Act. Like our new Trump created Supreme Court, Emeryville is now taking away rights from us.
      Listening to City Hall, I guess we must accept their dictum: As we move forward into the future, Emeryville must get worse.

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  4. I remember a popular song from WWII: "When the Fuhrer says he's of the master race, then you heil (Bronx cheer) right in the Fuhrer's face.

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    1. From a 1942 Disney cartoon featuring Donald Duck (with thick German accent):
      Ven Der Fuehrer says, “Ve iss der master race!”
      Ve heil! (rasberry) Heil! (rasberry) Right in Der Fueher’s face
      Not to love Der Fuehrer is a great disgrace
      So ve Heil! (rasberry) Heil! (rasberry) Right in Der Fuehrer’s face

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  5. Why isn’t there some sort of screening process for Zoom calls? You always announce your full name

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    1. Actually, you don't have to announce your name. The Brown Act (and the Constitution) provides that we can petition our government anonymously. Cutting the mic seems like an easy way.

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