Quick Take
Public debate over an Israel-Hamas cease-fire resolution before the Santa Cruz City Council pushed the meeting into the early morning hours of Wednesday, with the council voting 5-2 against a call for a cease-fire and instead adopting a resolution that called for peace but dropped references to a cease-fire.
UPDATE: The Santa Cruz City Council rejected a proposed resolution calling for cease-fire between Israel and Hamas early Wednesday after 10 hours of public comment inside city council chambers and demonstrations outside city hall. Instead, the city council voted 5-1 to adopt an alternate resolution, introduced by Councilmember Scott Newsome, that called for peace but dropped all references to a cease-fire.
At around 3 a.m. Wednesday (the discussion began at 5 p.m. Tuesday), the city council voted 5-2 to turn down the original resolution, written by Councilmembers Sonja Brunner and Sandy Brown (only the authors supported the resolution). This launched a loud and somewhat violent protest from the already rambunctious crowd inside and outside city hall. Many in the audience who supported the original cease-fire language threw roaring expletives, signs and bloody, bandaged effigies at the city councilmembers. Protesters outside shattered a panel of a council chamber window, directly behind City Clerk Bonnie Bush.
Mayor Fred Keeley then ordered police officers to clear the chambers, which he estimated took “about 25 to 30 minutes.” Amid the chaos, Brown left, leaving only six city councilmembers to vote on Newsome’s alternate resolution. Brunner was the lone no vote.
As of 2:15 a.m. Wednesday, Santa Cruz City Council was still listening to public testimony over a resolution proposing support for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas — public testimony began at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Local governments around the country have been increasingly called by their constituents to take a stand in the Israel-Hamas war, and most often that stand has been proposing a cease-fire and release of all hostages. Oakland and Richmond passed cease-fire resolutions; San Francisco’s supervisors passed their own Tuesday night; in December, Santa Cruz County’s supervisors rejected a cease-fire resolution.
The path toward the Santa Cruz City Council’s debate began with a relative surprise last month, when hundreds of people funneled into the council’s final meeting of the year, monopolizing the first four hours of the meeting to urge the elected leaders to draft and pass a cease-fire proposal. Although it was not on the agenda, Councilmembers Sonja Brunner and Sandy Brown offered to meet with the community and develop a resolution.
The city council then delivered a shaky 5-2 vote in support of that work. Councilmembers Scott Newsome and Renée Golder opposed, Councilmembers Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson and Martine Watkins were visibly torn before supporting the direction, and Mayor Fred Keeley said he supported Brunner and Brown in working on the resolution, but ultimately he stands with Israel, and said he wouldn’t support any language denigrating Israel or referencing a genocide.
A month later, the resolution made its way onto the city council’s first agenda of the year. The item landing on the agenda allowed groups and people time to prepare; this enhanced just about every aspect of the discussion. On Tuesday, public testimony stretched toward 10 hours, with Keeley giving an equal two minutes to every speaker who wanted it. The majority of speakers supported the resolution but, compared to December when an organized group of cease-fire supporters forced the issue upon the city council, Tuesday brought out a significantly higher number of voices opposing the cease-fire, arguing that the issue was too divisive, too one-sided, and needlessly divided the local community over an international issue.
The audience was rowdier, cheers and groans louder and longer Tuesday, signs and slogans more plentiful, and a bloody and bandaged effigy, representing the war’s toll, sat front row most of the evening. Keeley had to stop the meeting more than a dozen times to calm the crowd and call for decorum. At least three times he emphasized his frustration by simply staring at the audience, in silence, for 30 second-stretches, like an impatient parent. He threatened to clear the city council chambers several times, but those threats never elevated to actual consequence.
In Santa Cruz, international issues have not been off-limits in the past for the city council. Famously, the city council was the first in the nation to denounce the Iraq War in 2003, and Keeley proclaimed Feb. 24, 2023, to be Solidarity with the People of Ukraine Day. In 1982, the city council passed a resolution designating Santa Cruz as a “planetary city,” dedicating itself to international cooperation and just world law.
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