Put The Dog on a Leash

Ojai City Council Series Part `IX

“Put the dog on a leash!?!?” I repeated into the mic to make sure it was heard by not just all present but captured on video as well. It was yelled at me (about me) by a member of the community unhappy with the fact that I was there countering all of their BS. Again. The pack of them, sitting there, mob mentality running, as they had shown up triggered by an email meant to enrage them, foment hatred, and set them on the attack. They kept interrupting me and finally, I turned and told them to shut up. Some men can just not take a woman expressing her power and voice, hence the dog insult.

I hope you got what you wanted, John Drucker. I don’t really think you did.

This is Part IX 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)

It had already been a complete horror show, maybe the worst one yet due to another orchestrated and coordinated attack against Mayor Sitx, Councilmember Whitman, and sometimes Councilmember Lang initiated by an email sent out by the aforementioned Drucker to a select group of people in an effort to rally them to the meeting filled with talking points they all used with calls for the resignation of the three along with our city attorney.

This rallying the troops to your cause thing is exactly what The Councilmember R accused Mayor Stix of doing at the last meeting I wrote about. It’s so Trumpian, to accuse someone else of doing the thing you are actually guilty of. The sender of the email is someone who also happens to be very close to The Councilmember R exacerbating the situation as she sat there smirking, an accomplice on the dias. Her abusive and disrespectful behavior along with The Mayor Pro Tem F’s is a permission slip for the community to behave in kind.

He never got up and spoke. His words just spewed out of everyone else’s mouths as they ranted about the Brown Act and a SLAPP motion and a judge and the Simply Ojai conspiracy theory. Most seemed not to have an actual understanding of what they were speaking about, their emotions manufactured and then manipulated by the massive amounts of disinformation running through our town.

Sounds familiar, right?

My town is your town is national politics. I half expected Kevin McCarthy to show up and try to reinstate himself as speaker.

The night started badly with immediate disagreements on agenda items right as Pluto was set to station direct. At one point The Councilmember R said, tone cranked up to an eleven, “Once again, I think Councilmember Lang is not understanding the situation”. She often does this, speaks to Councilmember Lang directly or indirectly in this way, demeaning and disparaging as an attempt to manipulate/infantilize her. Public comment this night treated Councilmember Lang the same way (ie: “Good, Little Girl, Rachel” when she votes the way they like and “You’re corrupted and confused” when she votes the way they don’t.) It’s disgusting and misogynistic, kind of like calling a female you disagree with a dog.

Somehow, the council hacked their way through and approved a version of the agenda. A couple of reports were given to the council by Ojai Day and the Historic Society, and then public comment began.

One after the other, hit after hit (with the exception of our librarian and the film society representative) they spewed vitriol at the Mayor, Councilmember Whitman, Councilmember Lang, and City Attorney Summers. Some of them demanded resignations from them all.

About three or four people in right as Pluto was stationing direct, the Mayor said, “I am going to read a statement.” She was prepared for this.

She began, and then The Councilmember R threw a fit. The Mayor Pro Tem F piled on. The Councilmember R made a motion to shut Mayor Stix down. The council voted. Her motion failed, and Mayor Stix proceeded to speak about what she perceives is happening not just here in our town, meaning the small group of detractors unhappy with the result of an election now almost a year old, but everywhere in the country. The hate is amplified and seeping into all of our spaces.

It was a good statement calling for decency and an end to the personal attacks that happen at every single meeting.

Typically if there are a lot of people signed up to make a general public comment (meaning a comment about something not on the agenda) those comments are split into two sections. The Mayor Pro Tem F had other ideas and made a motion that since Item 2 had been removed from the agenda, we hear the whole of public comments before heading into the agendized items. She showed her cards here as she typically does. She was more than happy to hear people try to eviscerate her fellow Councilmembers with no regard for their well-being.

And there you have it. Some of them do not have the others’ backs.

Our city was split into districts before the 2022 election and for the first time, we had people running directly against other people for city council. The campaigns by one slate of candidates were particularly ugly and all of them but one lost, The Councilmember R. I have talked about this in my other pieces. The Ojai Democrat Club bears some responsibility for this due to having endorsed a particular slate even though everyone running was either a Democrat or an Independent. They should have stayed out of it, in my opinion. But they doubled down on their negative campaigning under the failed leadership of Name Redacted.

Before 2022, when council seats came up, people ran for office and the voters would get to vote for as many candidates as there were seats available. So it was not a head-to-head race like this last one was. It has been terrible for our town which is a little more than four square miles in size.

Jon and I sat in the back row, as we often do, and listened to comment after comment as the pack continued in their attack, each feeding off of the one that came before. The energy in the room was awful. When I had enough I slipped out to the entryway, filled out a comment card, and handed it in.

I was called up soon after that, right after Name Redacted was finishing his comment using a child stealing cookies as a metaphor for what exactly? I don’t know. Of course, he dittoed every heinous thing said prior.

As I stepped up to the lectern The Councilmember R did what she almost always does when I get up to speak, she got out of her chair and left.

Okay then.

I took a breath and said, “I don’t know what to say right now other than our city deserves better than all of that,” as I gestured behind me to the pack.

The pack audibly groaned in unison as Mayor Stix banged her gavel and asked for quiet.

So I repeated myself, “Our city deserves better than all of that.”

I then spoke about the beauty of our valley and how fortunate we all are to live here and the anger so many are running, anger that’s being manipulated and misdirected towards the people sitting on the dias due to the powerlessness we all feel at the hands of late stage capitalism, climate change, and living through a time of accelerated change, unlike anything any of us have experienced before.

They continued, the pack, to audibly interrupt me with their groans and moans as the Mayor again asked for silence.

I asked for my time back, meaning just the time that had elapsed while they were interrupting, but they restarted my three minutes in its entirety.

Again the pack howled in protest as again the Mayor asked for silence.

“So you all are demonstrating right now exactly what I am talking about,” I continued as I waved my hand behind me and to my left. “I started to talk about my love of this valley and the anger that is very present right now in our society, and it’s everywhere. Mayor Stix tried to speak about that anger and how it has seeped into every political space in our country. And it has. And you all think you’re fighting a fight, and I see it as something different.”

I continued with what I already summarized above, hitting home how hard everything is right now for so many of us because we don’t take care of one another here as our structures are failing and how the people on the dias are navigating us through this period of time to the best of their ability and expressed my thanks to them.

The pack interrupted me again and I turned and said, “Shut up! Seriously!”

The pack got louder.

Mayor Stix banged her gavel, instructed them to be quiet, and asked me to continue.

“You’re the one who’s angry,” someone shouted at me

“Yeah, I am angry. That was a boundary violation and that’s what anger is for. You violate my boundaries, I will express my anger. That’s how it works,” I fired back.

And then it came, a male voice behind me clearly and loudly, “Put the dog on a leash!”

The Mayor banged her gavel as I repeated the misogynistic statement. I mean, how dare I, a female, challenge the male power structure behind me? HOW DARE I???

Attorney Summers interjected with the suggestion that they let me finish my comment and then take a recess.

The Chief of Police got up and instead of going to the pack, embodied mainly by men she came to me and said, “Let’s take a break.”

“You want ME to take a break?” I said, shocked that I was the one being confronted by her when I was the one in front of the mic and not one of the many who were out of order at the time.

She said, “We’re all going to take a break.”

And we did. We broke for about 10 minutes.

I went outside and Rachel (Councilmember Lang) found me to see if I was okay. I got teary for about 30 seconds due to her kindness. I asked her if she was okay, “No!” she replied.

And for a flash, I craved a cigarette for the first time in many, many years.

I was terribly verbally abused as a child and a teenager. It took me decades to rebuild my sense of self once my abuser was out of the picture. For a moment there, standing outside of city hall, I was thirteen years old again.

The moment passed and my strength returned.

The person who called me a dog was still sitting there. I went up to him to let him know that what he said was not okay, and he told me that his wife told him that he needed to apologize to me.

Some apology.

If your wife tells you to do it and you include that information while saying, “And so I apologize” and then follow it up with a “but” statement, as he did, well, it’s not really an apology.

Jon missed that moment and a few minutes later I saw him angrily defending my honor. There were others there in the room as well, countering his misogyny and meanness. I was grateful to Jon and them all for their support and pulled Jon off as the abuser and I had already had our say to one another. Why the abuser was allowed to stay at the meeting is currently beyond me.

The meeting continued and I got my three minutes. Again.

The Councilmember R got out of her chair and left when I went to the mic. Again.

I was brief. I expressed my appreciation to and for the Council. Again. I spoke on the infantilizing of Councilmember Lang, did some more debunking on the Simply Ojai/Mayor Stix conspiracy theory, and reminded them all that Tom Francis was the campaign manager for our former mayor Johnny Johnston on both of his campaigns and not once was Johnny accused of being Tom’s puppet, highlighting the inherent misogyny in claiming that Mayor Stix is.

I was pretty much in a haze after all of this. I felt like a walking sage bundle that had tried to clear the space of all of the hatred, disinformation, and misogyny and was now just a pile of ashes.

They got to the agenda. The usual suspects spoke on the issues saying the same tired things they have already said just to hear themselves speak again since nothing was new tonight. These were agenda items continued from previous meetings. I did not get up and speak again.

The valet parking ordinance passed, largely banning valet parking with some slight exemptions.

The Becker housing development agreements were rescinded and will be removed from the upcoming March ballot.

There was some weirdness with the city manager losing his temper again. I am currently chalking it up to the altogether crappy energy in the room.

We then heard updates on the items that were prioritized during the August 30th workshop. Good forward movement on many of them.

Despite all of the detractors and all of the drama, the city and the council are getting the business of the people done.

If you’ve made it this far you will now be rewarded by my actual pack of dogs playing with one of their besties.

Read part X here

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