The meeting started with Christmas carols and prayer.
But a crowd of people waiting to call for a ceasefire in Gaza grew more restless in the audience, as Santa Ana City Council members, at their regular Tuesday night session, continued on with the holiday-themed ceremonial proceedings.
Finally, a swell of “Ceasefire Now” chants exploded before the city parks director – wearing a santa hat and red suit with a bowtie – could give a departmental presentation, leaving him to stand there as the shouting grew shrill.
That was when Mayor Valerie Amezcua called for a recess, after prior warnings to the audience. As council members left their seats, police officers formed a wall in front of the dais.
Roughly 20 minutes later, council members resumed the meeting with an announcement by the City Attorney, Sonia Carvalho, in a significantly emptied room – that council members decided to “clear the council chambers” while invoking the state’s Ralph M. Brown Act public meetings law.
Carvalho said the council had a legal right to clear the room “when a meeting’s decorum cannot be restored so the business portion of that meeting can be conducted.”
As Carvalho invited members of the media to come back inside, it became harder to ignore the continued chanting from outside, and Amezcua asked if there was any way to raise the meeting’s volume.
“It was a little difficult to hear the City Attorney,” Amezcua said.
Then, Councilmember Jessie Lopez requested the city clerk to note for the record:
“I was not part of the decision making process to kick the public from the chamber and I disagree with the decision.”
Amezcua responded: “Just to be clear, madam clerk, we did not kick them out, we cleared the room, so I want to be very clear on the terms that we’re using.”
Council members Johnathan Ryan Hernandez and Ben Vazquez also said they weren’t part of the decision.
After the meeting resumed, community activist Fernando Delgado – whose videos about Santa Ana politics have a large following on Instagram, and who was there in support of speakers calling for a ceasefire in Gaza – entered the chambers as a member of the media.
Amezcua told Delgado to sit in the back of the room.
She and Councilmember Phil Bacerra then remarked at the fact Delgado got in. In a phone interview after the meeting, Delgado said a city staff member told him he could go inside.
There was no public comment portion held for Tuesday’s meeting.
An International Matter
It comes more than a week after council members deadlocked on taking a formal stance on Israel and Palestine, after pro-Palestine speakers called for them to pass a resolution supporting a ceasefire in Gaza, while pro-Israel speakers said the international matter wasn’t under the City Council’s legislative purview.
[Read: Santa Ana Council Deadlocks on Israel & Palestine Statement]
Similarly, at the Dec. 5 meeting, Amezcua directed police to clear audience members out, except dozens of pro-Palestine and pro-Israel speakers had already made their public comments, at times arguing with other people in the audience.
In a phone interview on Tuesday night, First Amendment lawyer Karl Olson said that kicking the public out of a meeting should be a governing body’s “last resort.”
“It would have to be a real extreme situation,” Olson said. “Absent actual violence or something of that nature, it doesn’t seem to me that the meeting rose to a level where you can just evict the public from a council meeting. It was probably an overreaction by the council.”
Olson said the subject of Israel and Palestine is “obviously a tough subject that people throughout the country have very strong views about, and you can debate whether the city council or City of Santa Ana can do anything about it, but to clear everyone out because people are protesting or speaking — even if speaking quite loudly — I think it sets a bad precedent.”
Public Comments Heat Up
In the weeks leading up to the Dec. 5 resolution debate, Amezcua attempted to bar public comments calling for a ceasefire, until a majority of council members overturned that decision, which she exercised in her capacity as chair of the meeting.
One of those council members was Thai Viet Phan, who in closing remarks on Tuesday night said she was “disappointed” by audience members’ behavior “that prevented this city from carrying out its business.”
Councilmember Phil Bacerra, in his remarks, thanked the police officers in the room “for keeping order” and addressing “disruptive behavior” from “out of town” meeting attendees who “prevented this city council from celebrating our community.”
Hernandez – who said he did not support clearing the room but in his closing remarks called on people to speak at City Hall “respectfully” – described a community where residents have lost loved ones in Gaza: “We have police officers who are Palestinian.”
The closing discussion prompted Carvalho, the city attorney, to chime in again, arguing that council members were compelled by their own rules to remove members of the public for disturbing public meetings, on grounds such as “speaking without permission.”
“I didn’t write these rules, they are in your municipal code as I see they were adopted originally in 1952,” Carvalho said.
She continued, “All I can tell you is that I have a duty as city attorney to help you enforce these rules … and I understand some people might find it offensive, they might claim they didn’t have an opportunity to speak publicly, but those are the rules. If the city council doesn’t like those rules, you can always direct the city clerk and I to make revisions to those rules.”
In the meantime, Carvalho said she would continue to enforce the current ones.
Amezcua blamed the pro-ceasefire people for preventing council members from honoring Mater Dei High School’s sports teams and a resident recipient of the city’s “Good Neighbor Award.”
She said she was elected to first and foremost serve Santa Ana constituents, and proceeded to read letters she said she received from students at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, asking her to arrest drug users and keep city parks clean.
“This is my ‘Why.’ This is why I ran for mayor,” she said. “I don’t want to bring something that’s an international matter to my city … we have enough issues here in our city.”