Quick Take
The Santa Cruz City Council's most contentious meeting in memory centered around a geopolitical issue 7,000 miles away, with impassioned calls from the community to take a stand and elected officials deciding to go in a different direction.
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 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.
The discussion began at 5 p.m. Tuesday and lasted until around 3 a.m. Wednesday, when 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).
After almost half a full day’s worth of continuous, impassioned testimony from the public, the city council took the vote to turn down the original cease-fire resolution without a word of explanation. 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 rushed to the front of the room and hurled roaring expletives, signs and placards, 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, who had threatened multiple times throughout the evening to clear the chambers, then ordered police officers to do just that, which he estimated took “about 25 to 30 minutes.”
“When councilmembers are having stuff thrown at them, and a window is shattered directly behind our city clerk, it becomes a public safety issue,” Keeley told Lookout on Wednesday, defending his decision to clear the city council chambers between the two votes. “My sense was that the situation was only going to escalate.”
Amid the chaos, Brown left, which she told Lookout on Wednesday was not a protest but misunderstanding of the procedure on her part. She said she didn’t realize the city council still had to vote to adopt the new resolution. When that vote came around, only six city councilmembers remained. Again, councilmembers took the vote supporting the new resolution — much shorter in length with no explicit reference to Israel, Hamas, Palestine or a cease-fire — without any explanation behind their votes.
The exact language of the new resolution was brought to city council by Gail Michaelis-Ow, a longtime leader at Temple Beth El and wife of local philanthropist and retired real estate developer George Ow Jr. Keeley said Michaelis-Ow brought it to the city council about a week before the meeting, and that it was the product of community conversations separate from what Brown and Brunner were hosting in developing the original resolution.
Brunner was the lone no vote. Brown, who didn’t vote because of her early departure, criticized the new resolution as a “Hallmark card.” Brown and Brunner’s resolution included nearly 800 words directed specifically toward the Israel-Hamas war, the suffering of people in Palestine, and the City of Santa Cruz’s responsibility to take a stand given the community’s passions. The new resolution, in 170 words, removed all reference to the specific violence occurring in Gaza, requested general peace in the general region of the Middle East, and declared January 2024 “City of Santa Cruz, California Peace Month.”
Between the two votes for the resolutions, protesters screamed at city councilmembers, saying their vote against the cease-fire made them responsible for the killing of Palestinians.
“I think people just felt gut-punched,” Brown said. “Not simply because of the vote, but because no one on the city council said a word. There was not a single word toward the public, no acknowledgement of them coming out and staying for hours to participate in a public process.”
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 have 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 vote 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, Brunner and 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. Newsome and Golder opposed, Councilmembers Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson and Martine Watkins were visibly torn before supporting the direction, and Keeley said he supported Brunner and Brown in working on the resolution, but that 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 more than seven 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 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 four times before finally doing so after the council’s first vote.
In Santa Cruz, international issues have not been off-limits in the past for the city council. Famously, the 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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