Finally Ready to Vote for Peace
Ojai City Council Series Part XVIII - Covering Some of the Events from the Feb 13th and 26th Meetings
I’ll cut to the end right now. At a special meeting of the Ojai City Council on February 26th they voted three to one to pass a ceasefire resolution calling for an immediate halt to the fighting in Gaza and a return of all hostages on both sides. This ceasefire resolution addresses both Israel and Hamas and their actions. The vote was three (Mayor Stix, Councilmember Rule, and Councilmember Francina) to one (Mayor Pro Tem Whitman). Councilmember Lang was absent.
This is Part XVIII of my continuing series on Ojai Politics. (If you’re just coming into this series, you can start here with Part I - Pluto Misogyny Showdown at City Hall)
During the February 13th meeting, the Ceasefire Now group was again there during public comments. Public comment, however, did not start until almost two hours into the meeting due to a kerfuffle about the awarding of grants from the Ojai Arts Commission. It seems the commission did things differently this year, and Councilmember Francina was not on board. She made a long case for a return to doing things as they had been done in previous years.
The first vote on this failed due to a tie, partly because Mayor Pro Tem Whitman recused himself from the issue since he had family members attached to grants. It was split two/two, with Stix and Lang opposed to making changes to the Arts Council’s work and decisions and Rule and Francina for dividing the grant money equally between all applicants.
Ultimately Councilmember Lang changed her vote and the motion to distribute the funds equally to all applicants passed with only Mayor Stix voting “no”.
Word on the street is that some members of the Arts Commission are pretty upset about this. This also means that people who had been promised a specified sum of money would now be receiving less than promised while others who had been denied completely would now be receiving funds. I sat through two discussions about this during two different meetings, and I am still unclear about some of the nuances here.
There was also some weirdness from Councilmember Rule regarding what happened on The December 20th special meeting held with the sole topic of a ceasefire resolution, a meeting she could only Zoom into due to being “stuck in traffic returning from LA”. She appeared on the Zoom screen right as the major disruption occurred, so she missed the entire meeting as it ended up being canceled at that point. You can read the summary of that meeting here :
She wanted a better recounting of what happened, especially once the council left the room and went into chambers along with who said what when it came to allowing one of the speakers more time. Allegations regarding potential Brown Act violations fell out of her mouth.
Even with what followed on that night, this was the most uncomfortable moment of the meeting for me because it appeared to me that she was at odds once again with her fellow council members and was looking for a conflict.
Public comment then began on the 13th, and I observed photocopied images of children who had been killed in Gaza being passed around by the ceasefire group, some holding the images before speaking and then passing them on to others who had yet to speak.
Meanwhile, over to my right and a couple of rows in front of me sat a community member who is adamantly opposed to the ceasefire reading The Epoch Times throughout the public comments of those supporting the ceasefire most of whom were giving well-sourced facts including information about the Crown family, owners of the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa (responsible for much of the economy in this valley), and their weapons manufacturing investments, weapons which are being used against the Palestinian people. The Ojai Valley Inn and Spa’s sign had just been vandalized with red paint meant to look like blood splattered on it.
If you’re not familiar with The Epoch Times, it’s a far-right wing rag owned by the Falun Gong, an ultra-conservative cult that prints conspiracy theories (Qanon and the like) and supports far-right politicians around the world including Donald Trump.
At some point, I became aware of a spirit moving around the space. I have attended many meetings in that room and have never before felt an intrusion like this one. I did what I could to clear it and send it on its way. I then looked down at my phone and noticed that 45 minutes earlier someone else in the room who is also sensitive to these kinds of things had sent me a text asking me if I had seen it.
It felt to me like it was one of the children killed in Gaza who did not effectively cross over and instead had attached themself to one of the ceasefire activists. They had unknowingly brought them in.
I got up and submitted a comment card. I was not sure when I walked in if I was going to speak on the ceasefire resolution, but tonight felt like the right night for me to speak in full-throated support of the ceasefire instead of continuing to try to hold everyone and their needs in the space.
I was almost the last to speak, and let’s face it, this is often true. I commonly sit and listen to everyone and everything before deciding on whether I am going to speak on a particular issue and if I am what is needed from me at the moment.
Public comment ended and we were onto the official agenda.
First up were two items regarding short-term rentals and strengthening of regulations on the ban in Ojai including raising the minimum stay to 90 days and raising the fines for infractions of these rules. We commonly have illegal STRs flying under the radar. This was the only agenda item I had planned on speaking on due to witnessing the devastation that STRs have created in the housing market, both where long-term rentals are concerned and the contribution to skyrocketing housing prices (both sales and rentals) due to investors.
For anyone out there right now looking for housing or being negatively affected by this, I feel you. I was fortunate to follow Vickie Carlton-Byrne who had a stunning rundown of facts and data on the wreckage being created by STRS. I cried again up there when I talked about being priced out of Ojai and having to leave as I spoke in support of the more stringent regulations. Larry Steingold was next, also speaking in support of the regulations when it happened.
“HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” screamed a male voice from right outside the city council meeting room’s doors.
“What’s that?” said Councilmember Francina as a man screaming and wrapped in a white sheet splattered with red paint fell to the floor and then continued to scream.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Larry in response to the interruption as a female voice shouted, “Why isn’t anybody doing anything?” while the man in the “bloody” sheet continued to wail and scream and she continued to call out for help.
Mayor Stix gaveled and a recess was called.
Frustrated by the interruption, I got up out of my chair and went into the vestibule with a few friends. Then the naming of the dead children began, as it had at the last meeting. I am a fan of civil disobedience, but these actions felt unnecessary to me. The Ceasefire Now group had made a solid case for another go at a resolution and I was fairly sure the council at that point was going to put it on a future agenda. After this demonstration, I was not sure they now would.
I left a few minutes later, after being chastized twice by members of the Ceasefire Now group that we were being disrespectful by talking right outside of their demonstration. They did not like our disruption of their disruption.
“Even Martin Luther King Jr………….” were the last words I heard from the woman schooling us as I abruptly turned and headed out the door.
The activist on the floor wrapped in a “bloody” sheet eventually had to be physically removed by the police. They deposited him on the outside patio where he continued to yell on and off for a bit.
This time the council returned and commenced the meeting once more, voting unanimously on strengthening the STR regulations. The General Plan for the city once again would need to be delayed to the next regular meeting. Weston Montgomery got a new job title, Chief Deputy City Clerk, and a raise, both well deserved!
This brings me to February 26th. Two council members, Francina and Rule wanted to create another special meeting to address the ceasefire resolution and allow for all voices to be heard, due in part to the Dec 20th meeting being cut short. Mayor Stix agreed to be the third person needed to allow for this meeting to be scheduled.
I was surprised, but then I remembered that this is how democracy works. Democracy demands action as does peace. They are both active principles. Typically those who are the loudest and most active within the structure of our system of democracy get heard.
Rule and Francina spent the week doing as Stix and Lang had done before, meeting with members of the ceasefire group (some of whom are Jewish), members of the Jewish community who were opposed to the ceasefire, and other community members as well. As had happened in the late fall of last year, the resolution went through several revisions each time more input was received.
When I got to Kent Hall, where all city council meetings will now be held, there was a line at the door. The room was filled with people standing in the back and spilling out onto the deck. There were at least 40 comment cards submitted when they started and more continued to flow in as the meeting progressed along with some additional comments on Zoom. By the end, 71 people had spoken according to the Ojai Valley News.
The introduction of the resolution began with Councilmember Rule reading it/them. There were two versions, the one that had been published online with the agenda and an amended version being put forth by the ceasefire group. Distinctions between the two needed to be highlighted. The amended version had not made it into the previously published agenda and copies of it were being passed around as Councilmember Rule spoke.
Public comment began. By and large, those in support of the ceasefire were clear and factual in their statements showing less emotion and less theatre than in previous meetings. The clarity, consistency, and concise quality of their statements were effective.
Those opposed to the ceasefire, for the most part, shared numerous safety issues that have been activated in them since talk of a ceasefire resolution began. These are people who live in privileged Ojai. They are also people whose ancestral trauma seems to run so deep that what is happening across the world operates as a lived experience in their bodies as if they are under the threat of an attack at any moment. This is exacerbated by the very real rise of antisemitism worldwide and right here in this country. Repeatedly we heard that the temple in town had received bomb threats.
It turns out that these threats were part of a swatting incident and were deemed not credible.
On Dec. 16 CNN reported more than 400 “false” bomb threats had been made to “Jewish facilities” in several states, including California, Montana, and Colorado.
According to a Dec. 18 report by Intermountain Jewish News, a similar threat in Denver was characterized as a “swatting,” incident meant to cause a disturbance. The same group claiming responsibility for the threat Bloom received was responsible for the Denver threat. - Source Ojai Valley News
While there were no actual bombs, the threat was still terrifying to Jewish members of our community.
There was a family a couple of rows ahead of me with two small children with them, the only children in the room. I wondered at their presence there as they had a difficult time being still and often disrupted the meeting by just being themselves. The husband’s name was called and he got up to speak, stating that he and his family were in Israel on October 7th in the settlements and that they witnessed the atrocities there and had made it out and had come to our area just ten days earlier. They had heard about our meeting and attended to express their strong opposition to the ceasefire resolution.
When the chime ended signifying his two minutes were up, he continued to talk, even as his microphone was silenced and Mayor Stix gently banged her gavel letting him know he needed to stop.
“Fuck you!” he shouted as he angrily pushed the lectern and stepped back from it.
Police Chief Newman pushed her chair back appearing ready to spring into action if needed.
Instead, he walked back to his seat and within a couple of minutes he and his family were gone.
A bone of contention for many there was that as an International City of Peace our mandate here is to create a peaceful city at home and events elsewhere should be beyond our purview. This argument was blown up when it was revealed that during the March 8, 2022 meeting, Mayor Stix read a proclamation on behalf of the entire Ojai City Council in support of Ukraine and condemning Russia’s attacks there and then presented it to one of the co-founders of Ojai International Cities of Peace. There was no representative from the Ojai International Cities of Peace organization at this meeting. They had chosen to withdraw their involvement with the ceasefire resolution for Gaza after initially being involved in the first attempt to create something in November and December of 2023.
As I listened to everyone, feeling their pain and fear and feeling the destruction and murder unfolding across the world I meditated on finding what had not yet been said. I had not put in a comment card as I did not want to reiterate the many things that I had already spoken about.
It came to me in a flash, as these things sometimes do. I was feeling into the fear of some there who are Jewish and were speaking about the rise in antisemitism, a rise that is coinciding with the rise in fascism worldwide, something that began here more obviously not with the attacks on October 7th of this year but with the beginning of Trump’s run for President in 2015. This was the thing I had not yet heard. A demand for a ceasefire between two fascist regimes - Hamas and the Israeli government under the “leadership” of far-right Netanyahu - is a step towards stanching the rise of fascism worldwide. I got up, submitted a card, and when called upon, this was what I spoke to.
The council had been challenged numerous times by those opposed to the ceasefire for even taking up the matter once more. However, democracy demands that our government be representative of the people’s needs. The need that they address this issue, although nonlocal in many ways, was clearly local based on the many people I saw there, people I hope will stay engaged in the many directly local issues we are facing.
Three hours in, as public comments ended, a much-needed break was called. I went out on the deck and ate a slice of cold pizza. Boxes of pizza had been brought in by Grace Malloy, there in support of the ceasefire. As I enjoyed it, one of the owners of the Ojai Valley News let me know she liked what I had said and wondered why more people were not addressing how problematic Netanyahu is.
I had spoken with a Jewish member of our community a couple of months ago, and when I brought up how horrible Netanyahu is she agreed with me but said that Hamas needed to be dealt with first and then they could focus on getting rid of him. I disagree with this take. He is bad for democracy and bad for Israel, just as Bush Jr. was bad for democracy and bad for the United States. Trump is in a whole other world of bad. Netanyahu is not the solution Israel or any country needs.
The council reconvened. Mayor Pro Tem Whitman spoke at length as to why he could not vote to support the resolution, citing the safety issues of some of our Jewish community and that this is a federal issue and not a local one. He talked about the generational trauma being activated here by the term “ceasefire” and said that while he did not understand it viscerally, he could conceptualize it.
Councilmember Francina spoke next in support of the resolution with some antiwar sentiments and words highlighting the money spent by the military-industrial complex, our tax dollars, which could be used to solve so many of our problems here. She spoke about holding a vision for a different world, one not funded and fueled by wars and weapons.
Councilmember Rule was next, also in full support of the resolution. She mentioned that two of her closest friends were Jewish and were in disagreement with her choice here. One of them abruptly left once it was clear the resolution was going to pass.
Mayor Stix thanked everyone as she always does, being specific with people and groups and speaking to everyone in attendance as well. “I think it says a lot that the majority of Americans support a ceasefire and most of us would prefer to see our tax dollars going in a direction that would support saving and protecting the environment, health, education, safety, and equity for all rather than bombing innocent people. I believe that it is our moral obligation and responsibility as humans to do everything we can to reduce the suffering of all beings with whom we share this planet. JFK said ‘This country can not afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.’” She voted in support of the ceasefire.
Councilmember Rule made the motion to accept the revised version of the resolution, the one the ceasefire group supported. Councilmember Francina seconded it, and the motion passed with only Mayor Pro Tem Whitman against it and Councilmember Lang not voting as she was absent.
A couple more people angrily left as the vote was being taken.
The meeting was adjourned and many hugs were shared including some between people on opposing sides of this issue. I found myself face to face with Councilmember Rule and offered her a hug which she accepted.
Thus ends the saga of passing a ceasefire resolution here in Ojai for events taking place in Gaza and Israel, a saga which began here in Ojai at the November 16, 2023 city council meeting and began in the Middle East, well no one can agree upon an answer as to when. Is this political? Is this religious? Is this both? Even some speaking in support of the ceasefire cited biblical texts.
My take is that potentially this conflict like all other conflicts came to this world via some form of collective consciousness from elsewhere and we are here working on healing it all. Some have simply forgotten that this was their mission in the first place.
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