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.    

Hate Speech at Emeryville City Council Meeting

Neo-Nazi Hate Fest in Emeryville Council Chambers

It was bound to happen here eventually.  Trump’s America came bursting into the Emeryville City Council chambers in a co-ordinated attack Tuesday, out-of-town neo-Nazis phoning in racist public comments; calling out Jewish, gay, transgender, and Black people.  The group responsible, the ‘Goyim Defense League’ is identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a Florida based hate group.  All manner of hateful epithets including the ’N word’ were used by the speakers in our Council Chambers.

Five people identified themselves with fake names and four were shut down by Mayor Courtney Welch for violating Emeryville’s prohibition for public commenters using “threatening, profane or abusive language which disrupts the orderly conduct of meetings”. 

Mug shot of former Petaluma resident
neo-Nazi leader Jon Minadeo.
Mayor Welch cut his mic.

 

The same five people (sometimes using different names), have been calling in for public comment at city council meetings in Blue States across America including but not limited to San Francisco, Petaluma, Sonoma, Sacramento, El Cerrito, San Jose, Walnut Creek, Laguna Beach, Monterey, Saratoga, Walla Walla WA, Snoqualmie WA, Framingham MA and Norwalk CT.  At the January 24th council meeting in Walla Walla, one of the speakers identifying himself as ‘Andy Zemite’ but in Emeryville went by ‘Rex Yuden’, yelled “Heil Hitler” just before his mic was cut.  That speaker may have been the group’s leader, former Petaluma resident Jon Minadeo. 

Goyim Defense League (GDL) is a small network of virulently antisemitic provocateurs led by Minadeo  who moved from Petaluma to Florida in December 2022. GDL is a parody of the anti-hate Anti-Defamation League’s name by replacing “Anti-Defamation” with “Goyim Defense” -- “Goyim” being a disparaging Yiddish and Hebrew word for non-Jews.

Minadeo was arrested in 2023 and jailed 30 days for illegally distributing racist literature in Florida.

Former Emeryville resident Marc Albert reports on the group disrupting the Petaluma council meeting:  https://krcb.org/2023110793047/news-feed/petaluma-to-weigh-resuming-public-comment-following-racist-disruptions

The Walnut Creek attack can be seen here: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/neo-nazi-walnut-creek-city-council-white-supremacist-antisemitic/

Watch at your own risk.  Contains extreme hate speech.  City Council Meeting March 5th, 2024  Hate speech starts 1:25:10 and extends to 1:34:50: