By Ryan Walters, Anacortes City Council Member
The American has an article this morning about the hateful comments made during public comment at Monday’s City Council meeting. I was out sick and not present at the meeting, but have seen the video. The comments are vile, and deeply disturbing, and deserve a response.
The comments in question were not made by residents of Anacortes—instead they were apparently part of a larger regional or national effort to “Zoom bomb” public meetings to spread anti-Semitic hate speech. Viewers of the live stream of the meeting (but apparently not anyone present in the council chambers) were able to continue hearing the online commenters speak after the public comment period ended. Staff were unable to mute the commenters, and eventually kicked them from the online meeting.
This is not the first time we’ve faced these issues. In 2019, in response to events outside the council chambers, the City Council adopted a joint resolution with then-mayor Laurie Gere declaring a policy of inclusion and pledging to reject all acts of racism, harassment, and hate speech. Resolution 2060 was our promise to use our voices as community leaders to condemn hate.
So what can we do about racism and hate speech during the public comment period?
- We can use our own voices to condemn hate in all its forms, and these comments specifically, consistent with our pledge to do so in Resolution 2060.
- We can change to an online meeting platform that offers more control over muting/unmuting participants and better train staff in how to use it.
- We can revise the City Council’s rules of procedure to tighten controls over unruly commenters.
- Drastically, we could eliminate the public comment period about topics that are not on the agenda, and allow comment only germane to agenda topics.
What we cannot do, as Councilmember Young suggests in today’s article, is cut people off for their opinions. The First Amendment does not have an exception for hate speech, which we recognized in crafting Resolution 2060. We are only able to impose viewpoint-neutral limits and cannot prohibit hate speech during public comment. Walking that fine line is something that we’ll need to do if we continue to encounter this kind of disruption.
We’ve seen a substantial coarsening of public discourse in the last several years, thanks in no small part to social media, but also due to the antics of national political figures. It is incumbent upon all of us, but especially those of us in positions of leadership, to push back against this kind of rhetoric and outright devaluing of others based on their ethnicity, skin color, sexual orientation, or other illegitimate basis.
I hope you will join us in condemning hate and promoting tolerance, understanding, and inclusion. You can write to the entire City Council and mayor simultaneously at