Ceasefire Retrospective, Part Two

For this second part of my two-part retrospective on the ceasefire resolution, I wanted to focus not on the issue itself, but rather on the ways in which the process of bringing a resolution to the Council is deeply antidemocratic and flawed.

How exactly can a citizen of Indianapolis approach the government to ask for a policy or resolution?

When my constituents first approached me about the possibility of bringing a Special Resolution to the Council, in February of 2024, I agreed to sponsor such a resolution but warned my constituents that other Councilors might express some reservations about it due to widespread misinformation about the situation in Gaza. I encouraged them to engage respectfully, listen, and find ways to peacefully discuss the issue with their Councilors.

For months, constituents reached out directly to their own Councilors and to the Council as a whole with emails and phone calls, while gathering hundreds of signatures on a petition. They explained their desires for a ceasefire, asked for meetings, and offered to answer any questions or concerns.

If Councilors had simply agreed to meet with and listen to their constituents, many would have felt heard and would be able to discuss any of their Councilors’ concerns.

Instead, neither individual Councilors nor Council leadership offered any response to the petition at all, and few Councilors even acknowledged receipt of emails or phone calls.

Attending Council meetings is difficult - one must find childcare and arrange dinner around the 7:00 pm meetings, then pay to park and walk through metal detectors. But there is no way to provide comments or even sign-in to a meeting without attending in person, so constituents began attending the meetings, several months in a row, wearing Palestinian keffiyeh, pins, and T-shirts, silently holding homemade signs, and greeting Councilors respectfully as they entered.

Despite the fact that constituents remained silent and did not disrupt the meetings or offer public comment, Council leadership ordered a much larger number of Sheriff’s deputies to stand inside the Council chambers, with tactical vests and guns on their hips, to stand conspicuously near anyone with Ceasefire signs. Many constituents told me this chilled them from freely participating in the public meeting. They asked why they were treated like criminals for engaging with local government.

The most organized group of constituents pushing for a ceasefire proposal in Indianapolis were affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace, which is a group of Jewish people who felt strongly that Israel’s actions towards Palestinians are both unethical and make Jews less safe. Jewish Voice for Peace activists and student encampment protestors from IU Indianapolis set up a Zoom meeting to explain their perspective, and invited every Councilor to attend. Many of the Councilors who attended this meeting said they found it compelling.

After this meeting, I asked to put the ceasefire proposal on the agenda for the next Council meeting in July.

If the Council had simply allowed the Ceasefire special resolution to come to a vote in July or August, regardless of the outcome of the vote, activists would feel they had been heard on the issue and would see no reason to escalate or continue to attend Council meetings on the topic.

Instead, the Council changed the rules to prevent the resolution from being heard. For one procedural reason or another, the Council found reasons not to hear the resolution in July, August, September, or October - though the Council claimed this had nothing to do with the resolution itself.

One individual organizer from Jewish Voice for Peace attended a committee meeting on July 15th and attempted to offer public comment explaining the connection between a local issue and the war in Gaza. She waited for her turn to speak, waited to be recognized by the committee Chair, introduced herself by name as she was required to, and gave a calm statement. Per the Council’s rules, each speaker giving public comment is allowed two minutes to make their case.

Though the Council has the right to restrict irrelevant comments at Council meetings, it is extremely well-documented that historically, the Indianapolis City-County Council has allowed speakers to speak for at least two minutes with very few exceptions. Former mayoral candidate Larry Vaughn has personally delivered oratory on a wide variety of conspiracy theories, personal attacks, and other items arguably less relevant to Council business consistently for many years.

If Councilors had simply allowed ceasefire activists the same rights to public comment that every other constituent receives, they would have spoken for two minutes and then sat down respectfully, causing virtually no disruption to the meeting’s agenda.

Instead, the organizer speaking about Gaza was cut off within 30 seconds and told Councilors would not allow her to continue speaking. Others attempted the same means of being heard: at each of the committee meetings held on July 18th, July 23rd, and July 26th, one different individual supporter of a ceasefire resolution attempted to use the two minutes allotted to each constituent during public comment periods to explain the connection between the war in Gaza and other issues on the agenda at each of these meetings. At each of these occasions, the speaker was shouted at by Councilors, had their microphones cut off, and had Sheriff’s Deputies escort them physically from the Council chambers as soon as they uttered the word “Gaza.”

If the Council had simply allowed these speakers to comment, activists would feel that they were being heard and would see no reason to escalate their tactics.

Instead, constituents felt that they had no way of being heard other than by making more noise.

The largest crowd of activists yet attended the full Council meeting on August 12th. There, protestors outside the Council chambers shouted at the mayor and Councilors as they entered the chambers. Multiple people, representing activists from a variety of organizations and individuals only representing themselves, attempted to offer public comments in support of a ceasefire resolution. President Osili, in his authority as Chair of the meeting, silenced each of them in turn, including former (Jewish) City Councilor Ethan Evans, wheelchair-bound activist and hero of the SB52 Blue Line fight Lucas Waterfill, former Indianapolis Library Board member Stephen Lane, and more. Armed and body-armored Sheriff’s deputies led many people away, physically grabbing two speakers’ wheelchairs. No speaker for this topic was allowed to simply make their case for two minutes; all of them were shut down early. As each speaker was silenced, other constituents in attendance grew more audible and angry.

(As a quick aside: at that meeting, I calmly stated into the record that I had severe concerns about the legality of these Council actions and felt they were a clear violation of first amendment rights. After all, the government cannot be allowed to determine what is relevant to the government! President Osili responded by saying that we would check with the City’s legal department about that. Shortly after this meeting, the Council changed the formal statement that is read prior to public comment and stopped cutting people off prior to two minutes. My assumption is that the City’s legal department agreed with my assessment. Naturally, I was not thanked for helping protect the Council from a lawsuit, nor even acknowledged for my concerns).

Activists continued peacefully attending meetings throughout September and October, mostly carrying signs and giving public testimony. As the Council had changed its procedures and allowed each person to be heard for their full two minutes, the Council saw far less disruption during these meetings than in August. Activists continued their personal outreach to Councilors as well. They stayed after Council meetings to try to speak in person to Councilors about the resolution. One, a Christian of Middle Eastern descent, purchased tickets to St. George’s Middle Eastern Festival and offered them to Councilors as a way of showing that there were communities beyond Palestinians and Israelis with deep ties to the region and a deep desire for a ceasefire. Some Councilors did accept these tickets, but did not follow up with the person who had paid for them to share their thoughts on the experience. Activists also continued sending emails and making phone calls.

At the Council meeting on November 4th, one of the largest gatherings of constituents yet had made arrangements to come watch the Ceasefire resolution finally be introduced. This group included not only the activists who had been attending meetings for months, but also the head of the Indiana Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and religious and community leaders from other groups who had yet to attend a Council meeting.They were not attending to protest. They were prepared for the possibility that the resolution would not pass. But they were intent on witnessing the vote.

Instead, the Council once again chose to silence and ignore them.

A Republican colleague, Michael-Paul Hart, made a surprise motion to table the ceasefire proposal, claiming that he saw no need to hear both the ceasefire proposal and a brand new anti-xenophobia proposal on the same night. I calmly stated into the record that my proposal had been sitting in queue for months already and I found it inappropriate for it to be tabled - but almost unanimously, my peers voted with the Republicans to remove my proposal from the evening’s agenda.

The Council also introduced a proposal in November, which will be voted on at tomorrow’s meeting, to grant the President of the Council authority to prevent similar resolutions from ever being heard in the future.

The constituents who sought a ceasefire resolution did their very best to follow the rules and procedures of the Council.

Time and time again, the Council changed its own rules in order to prevent the constituents from being heard.

The constituents who sought a ceasefire resolution were happy to spend their time, money, and energy to engage in dialogue and conversation with their government.

Time and time again, the Council chose to shut down conversation, cut off public comment, and use armed guards to stifle dissent.

As one professor of Islamic and Arab Studies asked me in an email after the November Council meeting, “Were we just supposed to be silent?”

What path should concerned constituents have followed in order for their representatives to listen to them and consider their perspectives?

How many months should constituents need to remain polite and accept their government illegally suppressing their speech via viewpoint discrimination?

When people feel that their government refuses to hear them and seeks to silence them, what then should they do?

Martin Luther King, Jr. told us nearly 60 years ago that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” When people feel they have no way to be heard within the existing rules, they will break the rules.

The Council escalated tensions for nine months and caused disruptive protests to its own meetings by refusing to hear constituents.

As a pacifist and a Christian, I urge our city to find more peaceful ways of hearing the voices of its constituents.