In aftermath of Santa Cruz’s failed cease-fire vote: Criticism, death threats and a community divided

The Santa Cruz City Council meeting last week was already one to remember as the clock drew toward 3 a.m. after 10 hours of intense, sad and impassioned public comment, from hundreds of speakers, about the war in Gaza. The issue, a proposed resolution calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, was a geopolitical one that ignited a response rarely seen in local politics. 

In the wake of the vote that would come, Santa Cruz is left in the exact place city council members hoped to avoid: strained division. A significant portion of the local community feels ignored, disregarded and disrespected by their elected leaders, as well as convinced that their government voted, in essence, to rubber-stamp Palestinian genocide. Beyond an immediate reaction that led to a broken window and police escorts, city councilmembers have been under constant harassment and even received threats aimed at them and their families because of their votes. 

Some city councilmembers have criticized the mayor for his handling of the meeting, while many in the community have criticized the city council for the silent rejection of their demands. 

Sitting before the city council at 3 a.m. last Wednesday was a resolution authored by Councilmembers Sonja Brunner and Sandy Brown. In 800 words, the councilmembers attempted to capture the ethos they derived through more than 20 meetings with local groups. It explicitly called for a cease-fire, named Israel and Palestine, acknowledged the suffering of Jews and Palestinians and how the issue of a cease-fire created some division within the community. Yet, before any vote was taken, Brown said she knew the effort was unlikely to pass. “I’m saddened that our numerous discussions didn’t result in a unifying resolution,” she said from the dais after public comment. “We really tried to reflect the different voices we heard and tried to avoid language condemning sides and really focus on how it is affecting the community.” 

Then Councilmember Scott Newsome proposed an alternative resolution, one which, in 170 words, called for general peace in the general region of the Middle East and excluded any language referencing a cease-fire, Israel, Hamas, Palestine or the specific war raging in Gaza. “I think this resolution affirms our community’s values,” Newsome said. “And I support it.” The city council voted 5-2 in favor of the new language over Brown and Brunner’s. That’s when the pressure cooker that became Santa Cruz City Hall burst. 

“Genocide!” members of the audience, many wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, screamed out as they rushed to the front of the room. The room then erupted into a “Cease-fire now!” chant as people hurled expletives and signs, and held up bloodied effigies meant to represent the war’s toll. The crowd outside began banging on the council chamber’s walls. A window pane directly behind City Clerk Bonnie Bush shattered. Vice Mayor Renée Golder ducked under the dais. Mayor Fred Keeley sat silently with folded hands before ordering the chambers cleared. Police officers appeared from behind the elected officials and, over the course of 30 minutes, shut down the public’s space to the public. 

Police allege that, outside, the incandescent crowd of largely Palestine supporters threw punches and garbage at officers. Golder said sheriff’s deputies were called in to escort councilmembers to their cars. Police officers staked out city councilmembers’ homes to provide extra security. 

The mayor and four city councilmembers who voted for the watered-down resolution — Golder, Newsome, Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson and Martine Watkins — immediately became targets of harassment. Their addresses and phone numbers were published to online message boards and social media platforms under a red banner that read, “We support genocide.”

Kalantari-Johnson told Lookout via text she was “dealing with threats and harassment directed at me, my kids and my family.” Golder said she was so scared that she asked her neighbors to keep an eye on her house because she was home alone. 

Then, amid a flood of critical and supportive feedback, Keeley received a death threat. The person in the voicemail told Keeley that his life was going to be miserable. “You went against a cease-fire? Well now you’re gonna die, I swear you’re gonna die,” the person said. “Santa Cruz hates you … I will stab your fucking ass.” 

Yet, parts of the community do not view the mayor and city councilmembers as innocent victims. In a global sense, local Palestinians and anti-Zionist Jews say they feel the city council voted for continued U.S. support for the Israeli murder of Gazans. But in a more direct way, they felt attacked and disrespected by their local elected officials in the way the city council majority handled it. After 10 hours of public comment, the pro-cease-fire side, which accounted for a vast majority of people in the room, received no acknowledgment from the council majority, nor any discernible explanation for their no vote beyond Newsome’s 12 words about the new resolution reflecting the community’s values.

Sylvie Stein, spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Central Coast, which spearheaded the organizing effort to bring hundreds of people to city hall last week, referred to the city council majority’s handling of Tuesday as “sinister and disdainful.” 

“If they were going to vote no, I had hoped they would at least tell us why, go on the record, and acknowledge us,” Stein told me Sunday. “Beyond passing the cease-fire resolution, as human beings they owe their constituents consciousness and respect. I don’t think they gave their constituents that.” 

I asked Stein whether she endorsed or denounced the response: the harassment, the doxxing, the direct threats to Keeley, other councilmembers and their families. She admitted she was hesitant to speak to it because of how her words might get twisted. She offered this: 

“I think five members of city council endorsed genocide and then didn’t even acknowledge the people resisting genocide,” Stein said. “I strongly denounce the ways that Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs, and those in solidarity with them, get portrayed as violent while the people who operate under the guise of peace get portrayed as peaceful. I long for a world without violence, and I long for a world where we are not endorsing genocide.” 

Jasmeen Miah, a leader of Santa Cruz Mental Health Professionals for Palestine and member of Palestine Solidarity Central Coast, said getting a city council approval would have offered a “felt sense of safety that our city doesn’t stand for violence and hate.” Although she said she supports putting pressure on elected officials and holding them accountable, Miah was quick to emphasize that she does not condone death threats, harassment or doxxing. 

“That stuff is traumatizing too,” said Miah, who is a licensed marriage and family therapist. “The community has been so divided. I want to see us figure out a way forward in which we don’t continue to traumatize each other. People don’t change from shame and blame.” 

The resolution that eventually passed was presented to the city council by Gail Michaelis-Ow and Susan Karon, both leaders from Temple Beth El Jewish Community Center, according to multiple city councilmembers and Keeley. Rabbi Paula Marcus, of Temple Beth El, told Lookout she had worked with Brunner and Brown on the original cease-fire resolution. She said the Jewish community members she represents would have supported a cease-fire resolution if it included language about Hamas.

“Honestly, if that resolution had included condemnation of Hamas and the Oct. 7 attack, the outcome would have been different,” Marcus told Lookout. 

Marcus was originally scheduled to speak at Martin Luther King Jr. Day march on Monday, as she had in previous years, but said NAACP officials decided to remove her as a speaker over safety concerns and to keep the focus on celebrating the civil rights leader’s message and not on the Israel-Hamas war. “It was a sad situation all around,” Marcus said. “I understand it was a matter of safety and not shifting the focus from what Dr. King stood for to the conflict in Israel and Gaza. I both understand and am also very sad.” 

Keeley, who was visibly shaken in the days following the meeting, told Lookout that the Santa Cruz Police Department determined the death threat he received was credible. Police have opened an investigation. 

“I’ve been an elected official in four different offices since the 1980s, have cast tens of thousands of votes, but to receive a credible death threat is way out of bounds as a response to an official action,” Keeley said. 

Deputy Police Chief Jon Bush declined to confirm whether local police are investigating the threat as credible. However, he did confirm via email that police are looking to lay charges for two counts of assault on a police officer, and felony vandalism for the broken window. Bush said they have no suspects for the broken window, and have been unable to identify the suspects for the assaults on police officers. 

“There were no injuries, but we are looking to identify those suspects and charge them as well,” Bush said via email. “At the moment, we don’t have any identities for the suspects.” 

Keeley, who, as mayor, runs the city council meetings, said he takes no blame for what happened Wednesday morning. He said he received requests before the meeting about shortening or capping the public comment time, hosting a cease-fire-specific special meeting, or changing the venue to a larger space, such as the Civic Auditorium across the street. Even during the meeting, he said he received notes from the dais asking him to cut off public comment. But he is known to take a hard line in encouraging public participation, and committed to giving everyone an equal two minutes, even if it took them to nearly 4 a.m.

“I have no regrets at all on how I handled it,” Keeley said. “It’s the Santa Cruz City Council. It’s our job. I’ve got an iron butt and can sit there all night, and I’m old.” 

Yet, Keeley is the only person on the dais who doesn’t have a full-time job outside of their city council duties. Golder, the principal at Bay View Elementary School, went home after the meeting, showered and had to go directly to work. 

“I felt like it was a little selfish of Fred to hold us all hostage there when everyone had to work the next day,” Golder said. “It’s neat that he’s retired, but the rest of us had to go to work.” 

She criticized the mayor for not clearing the chambers earlier and allowing the tension to build to a point where a window was broken and members of the public were throwing objects at the dais.

“I was ducked down behind my desk, and I told Fred, ‘I’m scared, can you please clear the chamber?'” Golder said. “It took way too long.” 

Brown told Lookout that the length of the meeting and how it was handled “absolutely 100% contributed to the tension.”  

“In principle, I appreciated the mayor’s willingness to let the public speak without constraint, but practically speaking, it was a challenging process,” Brown said. She thinks a larger space that brought more people inside rather than keeping most of the crowd outside in the cold could have eased tensions. 

Crowd management, she said, was poor, and the decision to pull down the council chamber’s shades only made the people outside more irate and led to more window banging. Brown said she requested at the last minute to change the venue to the Civic Auditorium. 

“This just shows the city doesn’t really think about how to respond to a high level of public interest in an issue,” Brown said. 

Keeley said he is open to the feedback, but maintains that he did what he thought was right. 

“I didn’t enjoy it any more than anyone else did,” Keeley said. “It’s just hardly on me that several hundred people decided to speak, and it’s not my obligation to try and start editing and changing the rules in the middle of the game. I think what happened is a very, very, very rare occurrence in this city.”

—Tamsin McMahon contributed to this report.

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