The Santa Ana City Council meeting was not business as usual Tuesday night after city staffers were directed to clear the public out of the chambers in a rare move following loud chanting calling for a permanent ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
The demonstration at the meeting follows a deadlock by the City Council at its previous meeting over whether the city held any responsibility to address the nearly 3-month-old conflict. Councilmembers Johnathan Hernandez and Benjamin Vazquez proposed a resolution in support of Palestine and calling for a permanent ceasefire in the fighting, however, it failed to garner enough support from their colleagues who said the international conflict was outside the scope of the City Council.
Tuesday’s meeting started off with holiday festivities and presentations, however, those were cut short when “Ceasefire Now” chants filled the room, drowning out the speakers. Despite warnings from Mayor Valerie Amezcua, chants continued and the meeting was called into a recess.
Amezcua, and councilmembers Phil Bacerra, Thai Viet Phan and David Penaloza left the room. Councilmembers Hernandez, Vazquez and Jessie Lopez, who said they did not support the decision to empty the chambers, remained seated at the dais. After a short period, the video feed of the chambers went to the recess screen typically used. When the stream from the chambers went live again the audience seats were empty.
“I am the mayor of Santa Ana and I will address local issues. If you want to come and speak for two or three minutes peacefully, that’s not a problem,” Amezcua said Wednesday. “But if they’re going to disrupt the meeting to the point where we can’t conduct business, per our charter, I can ask them to leave the room.”
When the meeting resumed, City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said the council was exercising its legal right to clear the room under the state’s Ralph M. Brown Act.
“When a meeting’s decorum cannot be restored so that the business portion of that meeting can be conducted,” she said the city has the right to empty the chambers to continue with the meeting. “In this case we must make an invitation to members of the media who are present to come back into council chambers and we must make sure that we do have audio or video feed of this meeting continuing,” she said.
Members of the media were then invited back into the room. Protestors could still be heard on the video feed from outside the chamber doors.
“We’ve certainly seen more instances of a council or a local school board in recent years having to clear the room because business of local government is being disrupted. You hope that it is rare because it stops a meeting from occurring and doesn’t allow the public in, which is their right to be there,” said Jodi Balma, a political science professor at Fullerton College. “But it’s balanced against the right of the local governing board to conduct their business, which is the purpose of the meeting.”
The public has a right to speak and be heard, Balma added, but doesn’t have a right to prevent the meeting business from continuing. She said though the Brown Act doesn’t prevent clearing the public from a council meeting, it also doesn’t outline the specific ability.
“We do this, asking for a ceasefire, from the dais in order to push our government to have a ceasefire. It’s been done in city councils across the state and the country,” Vazquez said later in the meeting during council comments. “The world is calling for a ceasefire at the General Assembly at the UN. It’s not radical to say stop the killing.”
But Amezcua said it’s not the councilmembers’ place to take a stance on foreign affairs.
“In Santa Ana, we have a multitude of issues that we need to address, whether it is the crime rate, whether it is our streets, whether it is the homeless,” she said. “Do I care that people are dying in Israel and Gaza? Yes, I do. Wars are a very terrible thing on both sides. But we as a council have no control over that war. For me, my priority is addressing the needs of Santa Ana constituents, our children, people who live here, voter or non-voters. That is my job.”
Following the previous council spilt on a resolution supporting a ceasefire, CAIR-LA Policy Manager Basha Jamil said in a statement that “the people of Santa Ana do not expect her to singlehandedly solve the problem, but as mayor, she has the duty to honor her constituents’ calls for justice and peace, and to create a welcoming environment for all residents of Santa Ana, without displaying bias towards one side.
“The horrific situation in Gaza is not some far off issue that has no impact on Santa Ana residents,” Jamil said, “many of our community members have lost family members at the hands of the Israeli military and we are seeing the alarming rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism right here at home.”
Amezcua ended the meeting by reading aloud letters she received from Santa Ana elementary school students asking her to get homeless people off the street and keep parks clean and safe.
“I’m not OK with war anywhere, at any time, but I was elected to handle local issues and address the needs of my constituents,” Amezcua said. “And the councilmembers that brought this forward, in my opinion, are wasting our time and we cannot get city business done.”
