Tears Falling On Deaf Ears

Ojai City Council Series Part XV

Photo Credit - Ojai Valley News

“Please listen to Nora!” Ojai resident, Bill Miley, a constant fixture at the meetings, interjected as Michelle Johnson, there with the Ceasefire Now group, tried to calm the audience.

This is Part XV 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)

“She’s calm,” he said. I’d gotten up and stood in front of the dais, openly running Reiki through my body and out to the group after they had erupted into a violent exchange of words. The City Council had retreated into chambers as the yelling tone began to turn ugly, and I stood there in front of their empty chairs. The chair where our Chief of Police typically sits was empty as well. It had been decided that she was not needed at the meeting.

When I walked in 20 minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start the gallery was full, the vestibule was filled, and the patio with the outside livestream viewing area on the opposite side of the vestibule was also full. I almost left then, but I felt like I needed to be there. So, I sat down on the floor in front of the first row of seats. It felt like I was in a wind tunnel as both doors to the outside, which sit opposite one another, were open. I was focused on staying healthy for my Solstice event the next day so I got up and sat in the chair that always has the sign on it that says “reserved for next speaker” as it is rarely used and normally sits empty throughout the meetings. My intention was to move if the council planned on using it for that purpose.

The Ceasefire Now group largely populated the vestibule and the outside patio with a smattering of those there either neutral or opposed among them. The gallery was mostly filled with those who were opposed to the ceasefire, a group largely populated by members of our Jewish community, with just a few of the ceasefire activists sitting in the back. It’s important to note that there are also Jewish people in the Ceasefire Now group. The difference between the two was notably in age with most of the younger generations leaning into the ceasefire activism and most of the older generations there in support of Israel.

As I sat in the chair, front and center, I could feel the conflict brewing. I did not have a good feeling.

Mayor Stix and Councilmember Lang began the meeting as the two of them had taken this agenda item issue on. Originally Councilmember Lang had offered to craft something at the first meeting the Ceasefire Now activists had spoken at. This was now the fourth and the largest turnout so far from those both for and against with over 60 comment cards handed in and 200 emailed comments sent in before the meeting.

I pulled my arms around myself and put my feet flat on the floor as Stix and Lang shared how we all got here and the possible outcomes for the night - vote on the resolution as is, craft a new resolution, or dismiss the matter completely with no vote. I was already hearing grumbles and complaints coming from behind me in the gallery as I also witnessed eye rolls and other reactions from those in the vestibule. I had no view of what was happening on the patio.

Mayor Stix proffered House Resolution 786, which has not passed Congress, as a substitute for the resolution that had originally been attached to the meeting’s agenda. The Mayor has spent much of her time speaking with the Ceasefire Now group along with the Rabbis in our community, other members of the Jewish community, and an Israeli Council.

Mayor Pro Tem Francina along with some in the crowd expressed frustration that they were just seeing this document. This is a Brown Act issue. According to the Brown Act, a council member may discuss an issue outside of session with only one other council member. Due to the collaboration between Stix and Lang, it would have been a breach of the Brown Act if either of them had spoken to Francina, Rule, or Whitman about the issue or offered the substitute document to them before the meeting.

The Brown Act was enacted in 1953 to stop the backroom dealings that were becoming common in California politics, and to guarantee the public full access and participation in local governmental meetings.

Weston Montgomery, Interim Deputy City Clerk and Records Manager, quickly made copies of House 786 to hand out as Attorney Matt Summers suggested putting it up on the viewing screens. Mayor Stix read the short document aloud to the room. It is a brief and concise statement, much shorter than what the council was originally offering, and yet some in the crowd were mad that they were going to have to adjust their comments to respond to this instead of what was originally offered.

Then we had to talk about how much time everyone would get to speak. The rule is that if there are over 25 comment cards handed in, speaking time per person goes from three minutes to two minutes. Mayor Pro Tem Francina wanted everyone to get their three minutes. The council voted and the vote was three to one to keep it to two minutes. Councilmember Rule was not yet present as she was stuck in traffic returning from Los Angeles and would be Zooming into the meeting as soon as she could.

I quickly did the math in my head, three hours vs two hours of public comments is a huge difference. I knew what was ahead and was grateful the council voted to keep it to two. Francina pressed her point suggesting they “See how it goes and if someone really needs their full three minutes that they give it to them.”

This disagreement between her and the other three seems minor, but I got the “uh-oh” feeling as it was happening, indicating to me that this night was going to be worse than I thought it would be coming in, and as I said, I already did not have a good feeling about it.

Public Comments began

As I listened to the fear and anger and anguish being expressed by those speaking, I wanted to give every single one of them exactly what it was they were asking for. I had prepared some comments specifically calling for an end to the killing, all killing, and that we use whatever words needed to adequately support everyone there, and yet as I listened I went back and forth. As the Ceasefire Now activists spoke I agreed with them. As members of our Jewish community spoke, I agreed with them. Back and forth. How to support both? There were only a few I did not agree with at all and this was due to their comments being fueled by rage.

The behavior, however, of those listening on all sides was disruptive, disrespectful, and completely inappropriate for the setting we were in, a city council meeting. The Ceasefire Now group continued to break out into applause and cheers when one of their own spoke even as Mayor Stix reminded them again and again not to make any sounds from the gallery. They eventually reduced their responses to finger snapping as if we were attending a beatnik poetry reading. They booed and jeered comments from those opposed to the ceasefire resolution.

Meanwhile, those sitting behind and to the left of me, those opposed to the ceasefire, were doing their booing and jeering and loud sighing and pushing back as well, along with making audible sounds of approval when one of theirs spoke.

At some point, Mayor Pro Tem Francina asked if the two countdown clock warning sounds for public comment could be disabled or turned down.

“It can be turned off but not turned down,” Weston said.

The council agreed to keep the sound indicator on despite Francina’s pushback.

We were nineteen people into the sixty signed up to speak when it happened. The woman at the lectern identified as Palestinian. She came in hot and proceeded to get hotter. Her time was up. She asked for more. “She may be the only Palestinian present!” was shouted from the back of the room by one of the ceasefire activists who increasingly became rageful when he had the opportunity to speak.

The Council agreed to let her continue. She did and as she continued she got angrier and louder and it began to feel like a call for violence there and then in the chambers as her rage exploded all over the room. Jon’s analogy as he watched from home was that it was as if she was crying “Fire!” in a packed theatre.

The crowd behind me began to yell about both what she was saying and the unfairness of her getting so much time at the mic. A woman opposed to the ceasefire stepped forward and began pointing and shouting at the council as calls of, “Shame on you! Shame on you!” reverberated through the room as her voice got louder. Then one of the leaders of the Ceasefire Now group began yelling directly at the woman who had been shouting at the council.

You can watch this all here

Mayor Stix interjected with her gavel and her voice to try to get them to stop and quiet the growing anger in the room. The woman at the mic continued, unabated, as she began again yelling her prepared statements into the mic.

“We’re going to take a five-minute break,” Mayor Stix said over the yelling as Councilmember Whitman was already up and out of his seat, headed into the closed-off room behind the dais. Weston Montgomery stood next, followed by Attorney Summers and Mayor Stix at the same moment. Councilmember Lang got out of her chair as Weston went and stood in front of the dais. Carl Alameda, our interim city manager, got out of his chair as Summers bent down and it looked like had to convince Francina to leave. They all retreated as the shouting in the room grew louder with each side screaming “Shame on you!” at the other. Meanwhile, the woman at the mic began once again yelling, “They said I can finish! Can you respect what they said?!” over and over as other members of her group stood behind her in support chanting along with her.

And what was I doing during all of this? I was calling upon the help and support of all beings available and specifically asked for the presence of the spirit of Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by a far-right Israeli extremist as he was about to start his next term as Prime Minster in Israel, winning that election in part due to his commitment to pursue peace and the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine via the OSLO accord.

I heard Michelle Johnson’s voice, a member of the ceasefire group, shouting “Calm down! Calm down!” with authority as I found myself getting out of my chair and walking up to the dais, turning, facing my palms out to the room, running as much love and healing energy as I could to everyone in the room as I felt my sadness rising.

For a moment, it seemed everyone might calm down, and then the woman at the lectern stood up from the crouching position she had taken and began again, this time screaming into the mic. I closed my eyes and continued to run the energy through me as she got louder and louder. Behind me, Weston closed the door between the dais and the private area behind it and disappeared behind it.

A short woman with blonde hair, opposed to the ceasefire, got out of her chair and marched to that door. She was one of the ones that had been screaming, “Shame on you!” earlier. She knocked on it loudly. I have no idea who she was. I have never seen her at a city council meeting before. This is true of many of the people there that night. Watching the video replay now, I can see her trying to push her way in, to what, yell at the council? As Weston shakes his head no, steps back into the room with us all and prevents her from going behind the dais again. At this point, the mics have been turned off. And there I continued to stand through it all, sending Reiki.

Weston then let me know that he’d like me to step away from the dais as he wanted to keep that area clear. So I advanced slowly towards the crowd as Michelle continued in her efforts to calm them.

And then I saw him, Bill Miley, 91-year-old resident of Ojai watching me intently. He stood and responded to Michelle’s call for love with an “I want to love you. Listen. Please!”

Michelle continued trying to calm the crowd.

He waved his arms and said, “Please, please listen to Nora! She’s calm.”

“Okay, let’s listen to Nora,” said Michelle as she nodded, and everyone there turned and looked at me.

Bill then said, “Nora, please say, We all need to sit down and relax and let everyone speak.”

He sat as I began with, “I need to stay first, that I am heartbroken right now,” I started to cry, “at what is happening in this space.”

The crowd began to truly quiet then as a response to my expression of grief.

You can watch my full remarks here

At one point, as I was speaking to the energy of hate that had inhabited our space that night, the small, blonde woman who had tried to enter the council members’ chambers, sneered at me, “Your tears are falling on deaf ears.”

At that point, Bill Miley, a man who walks with a cane and whom I often have a differing perspective from, got up, stood next to me, put his arm around me, and said, “I want to say, please listen to her,” as he pointed his cane at those who were trying to counter me. I encircled my arm around him as well.

“I am 91, and I would like, I’m an old guy, and I would like us all to have a chance to listen, to speak, to understand. Yelling at each other is not going to get us anything. So please, take a breath.”

More shouting ensued this time between one of the front people for the Ceasefire Now group and the same woman who had responded to me.

“Please,” I implored him repeatedly to stop, as Bill again put his arm around me, “we are not going to solve Israel and Palestine in this room, and that is the energy that is rising.”

I spoke for a bit more, and then a local male stepped into the room and told me to stop. This is where the video gets cut off.

At some point, two police officers wandered in due to hearing the noise as they were passing by. City Hall sits directly across the street from the police station. I did not see them interact with anyone directly or try to calm the crowd. They stood in front of the dais protecting the council who were still locked in their chambers.

After I spoke I was hugged by a friend. She was there with those opposed to the ceasefire. I needed that hug and her gratitude and love were palpable.

Most everyone else who talked to me afterward thanked me and then wanted to offer me their hot takes and push their position upon me along with some of them deciding to let me know that this was all The Mayor’s fault, a complete and total demonstration of their unwillingness to own their pieces of what had happened along with, again, a lack of understanding of how the Brown Act works and how this limited Mayor Stix’s and Councilmember Lang’s ability to share information with their fellow council members.

More than once I had to ask someone to stop talking at me from my seated position, and they would not, having no understanding or appreciation truly of what I was feeling in that moment after putting myself in the middle of the conflict as a peacekeeper.

My intuition was that the council would come back and dismiss the matter and end the session. This is exactly what happened. Attorney for the city, Matthew Summers stated that Councilmember Rule had now joined via Zoom. Summers said that there would be no vote, the discussion on the item was ended, the Mayor would make a statement, and then the meeting would adjourn.

“No’s!” and moans and groans could be heard from the gallery as I breathed a sigh of relief.

Mayor Stix - “Can we have quiet, please. Our city council shares the concerns and grief over the military operations in Gaza. We also represent all residents of the city of Ojai, and we are committed to working with everyone impacted by conflict in the Middle East. We are mortified by the death and destruction and believe our government must do something to de-escalate the violence. However, the ceasefire resolution proposed for adoption on tonight’s meeting would not have ended the violence in Gaza and Israel, but it would perpetuate more divisiveness and hatred in our community. We continue to hold all peoples affected by the violence both here and abroad in our thoughts and prayers. May we practice peace and respectful dialogue in all our interactions each and every day. And I will work together, I am committed to lead an effort, to reach out as federal voters to our federal officials to register our concerns.”

More grumblings and shaming from the audience.

“Thank you. We’re adjourned,” Mayor Stix. Gavel struck.

Epilogue: I hung around for a bit afterward to speak with friends. I hugged Bill Miley again and thanked him for his love and support. Weston Montgomery eventually cleared and then locked the building. Something I have never seen him do before. I walked to my car alone on the street, half in and out of my body, the shock of the experience having not fully registered. I got in my car and pulled out. In front of me was a larger vehicle (a van, maybe, or a truck). It stopped in the middle of the street. I saw the driver’s side door open and one of the heads of the Ceasefire Now group got out. He walked around the back of his vehicle waving at me to go around him as it looked like he was getting out to go talk with someone he saw on the sidewalk, leaving his vehicle there in the middle of the road obstructing my path.

A completely appropriate metaphor for the night’s events.

Read Part XVI Here

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