BERKELEY – All nine chairs reserved for the Berkeley City Council were yet again vacated earlier than expected Tuesday night, when the biweekly meeting was forcibly adjourned only 96 minutes after it started.
It’s become a regular occurrence since councilmembers abruptly walked out of their Nov. 14 meeting only 20 minutes after protesters pressing them to call for a ceasefire in Gaza disrupted the agenda’s proceedings.
This week, Mayor Jesse Arreguín attempted to keep a tight grip on public comments during the council’s final meeting of 2023, directing the city clerk to draw only 10 speaker cards from people physically at the meeting and call the first 10 raised hands on Zoom.
But organizers who want the council to act on Gaza have quickly adapted their toolbox of tactics to get their comments in.
After three different ceasefire resolutions — each drafted by Berkeley councilmembers Rigel Robinson, Terry Taplin and Ben Bartlett — were abandoned in the days before Tuesday’s meeting, organizers said they realized that city leaders weren’t going to willingly carve out any time for a conversation on the subject. Arreguín also asked his colleagues to suspend the council’s rules and cap public comments for items on the city’s consent calendar, which is typically passed without discussion, to 45 minutes.
So the small number of people selected Tuesday night to talk about issues on the consent calendar found ways to creatively bring up Gaza — all while technically abiding by rules of decorum.
On the topic of affirming the “right to reproductive freedom” in Berkeley, one speaker voiced concerns about mothers giving birth in Gaza without access to safe, clean medical care, and lacking enough food to adequately breastfeed.
Regarding a $250,000 city contract for on-call roofing and gutter repairs, another said that Israeli bombardment has destroyed scores of roofs in Gaza, which will need to be reconstructed.
Speaking on the reappointment of an infectious disease immunologist to the Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District Board of Trustees, one woman said that the terms of the sitting Berkeley City Council should end because they are not listening to what their constituents are saying.
“I’ve realized that this is not a matter of humanitarian crisis for my representatives; rather, it is a circus,” she said. “You all reserve the right to not pass this resolution, but if you don’t even call for a special meeting … that just makes it clear that you’re not doing your job.”
Shortly after 7:30 p.m., Arreguín quickly bumped two of the three remaining issues on the agenda to consent, continued the third to a future date and adjourned Tuesday’s meeting. But the boardroom remained packed near its 240-person capacity as demonstrators continued chanting to their no-longer present elected representatives.
Armed with signs, flags and shoes symbolizing the estimated 18,000 Palestinians killed in the first two months of the war, dozens of others who could not fit inside the 1231 Addison St. boardroom remained huddled together outside. Organizers broadcast the Zoom meeting and other announcements using a small loudspeaker, hosting their own makeshift town hall, despite being corralled by Berkeley police on the opposite side of a gate around the boardroom.
One organizer who only identified themselves as Christina said that their community wants the Berkeley City Council to be on the right side of history. But if local leaders — as well as state and federal representatives — remain unresponsive to the hundreds of emails, signatures and people attending meetings, she said, demonstrators will continue to protest.
“They won’t let us have the conversation, so we’re pointing out the contradictions,” Christina said. “The people here are fighting for the soul of Berkeley.”
The Zoom audio of the Dec. 12 Berkeley City Council meeting was broadcast from a small loudspeaker to attendees waiting outside the boardroom, located at 1231 Addison St., which was filled to capacity.
