Fort Collins mayor ends council meeting after demonstrators disrupt it, chant about Gaza
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Fort Collins City Council members abruptly ended their meeting Tuesday night when dozens of people seeking a local resolution supporting a cease-fire in Gaza began shouting inside the council chambers at the start of the meeting.
After the meeting ended and the crowd dispersed, three women who had glued their hands to the wall of the chambers in protest were issued citations.
The demonstration was loud and heated but did not turn violent.
Still, some people from the Jewish community who were present told the Coloradoan they felt intimidated and, as a result, left before the meeting adjourned.
Dozens of people had gathered for the meeting, which began at 6 p.m. and included only one discussion item on the agenda: a vote on whether to approve a metropolitan district for a proposed residential development.
As Mayor Jeni Arndt was making remarks about conduct during public comment, a person in the chambers shouted: "This meeting will not come to order," which was part of a statement the three women had given to audience members to read aloud once they had glued their hands.
Arndt interrupted, warned that the comments were out of order and said individuals could be removed from the chamber for disrupting the meeting. The individual resumed making the statement.
Arndt asked for the person to be removed, but they continued making the statement, so she gaveled into a recess.
The council members left their seats, with the exception of council member Kelly Ohlson, who remained in his seat for a few minutes before leaving it.
For 20 minutes, the crowd chanted several refrains, including "cease-fire now!" and "let Gaza live!” They sang protest songs, including, "City Council you can't hide, you’re ignoring genocide."
Then, a member of the group addressed the crowd and urged them to allow the meeting to proceed as long as council returned. Sabrina, who declined to share her last name with the Coloradoan, said she didn’t want council members to be able to use the disorder as an excuse to not listen to what the people gathered had to say.
City Manager Kelly DiMartino addressed the crowd, saying council wanted to resume the meeting, which includes a public comment portion.
But demonstrators in the chambers shouted at her, saying council didn’t listen to them even when they did follow the formal process.
With council members still not present at the dais, people took to the podiums to make their comments.
Eventually, the microphones were disabled, and members of the crowd shouted their displeasure, calling council members cowards.
Nathan, an Israeli-American who lives in Fort Collins now, was also at Tuesday's council meeting. The Coloradoan isn't using his last name because he fears retaliation or doxxing if his identity is known.
He said the chanting felt more like screaming to him and that some of the demonstrators' words crossed a line, like a chant that said, "Resistance is justified."
"It's crazy to me any person thinks any resistance is justified, including rape of my personal family," along with massacre and killing, he said. When he heard it Tuesday, he said he thought: "Are you about to be violent to me?"
When demonstrators chanted the phrase "from the river to the sea," Nathan said he became scared. The words, for him, are a direct call to eradicate Jews "from the river to the sea."
Nathan said his group left the meeting early after apparently getting a tip that council would be adjourning and out of fears that they might get caught up in an angry mob.
The actions of the demonstrators prevented everyone from having free speech Tuesday night, said another person who attended to speak against a resolution. She is not being named because she fears retaliation.
“I did not a have a voice,” she said. “They took over the microphone and the chamber and … we never had a chance to say anything.”
She said she and her husband hired a babysitter so they could attend, then felt exposed for the 40 minutes council was in recess and heard “obnoxious comments” as they left.
“It’s OK not to feel comfortable, but it’s not OK to not feel safe, and I did not feel safe,” said the woman, who noted she supports a two-state solution and was a peace activist in Israel but opposes Hamas.
When a group of people opposed to the resolution left the chambers, some individuals seemed to taunt them by waving and shouting goodbye.
One person could be heard telling them to go home and watch Al Jazeera. Some chanted "Judaism yes, Zionism no." Some cheered when the group left the room.
After another round of chants by demonstrators, council members came back into the chambers at 6:42. They took a vote to suspend the rules so they could address the disturbance, and Arndt declared the meeting over.
Ginny Sawyer, project and policy manager in the city manager's office, told the Coloradoan it's protocol to go into recess when there is a disturbance in the chambers.
In an interview with the Coloradoan after the meeting, Arndt said she adjourned because the disruption made it impossible for council to carry on with its business.
She said it was important to keep calm.
“We didn’t want the police pulling people out,” Arndt said.
The demonstration followed two consecutive council meetings where more than 200 people collectively showed up to urge City Council to form and approve a resolution expressing support for a cease fire between Israel and Hamas.
More: Crowd urges Fort Collins City Council to support cease-fire in Gaza
The Human Relations Commission discussed the possibility at a meeting last month and recommended council pass a resolution. Council opted not to act on a resolution at its Feb. 20 meeting.
Women glue hands to walls of council chambers
Three women glued their hands to the wall as the meeting was starting, while the crowd recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
Fort Collins residents Cheryl Distaso, Claire Kopp and Hania Sakkal used Gorilla glue to affix their hands to the brick wall where people line up for public comment.
After the meeting was adjourned, the crowd was asked to leave the chambers and was told the building was closing. A few opted to remain in a sign of solidarity with the women.
The remnants of that crowd left the building only after a woman who identified herself as their attorney told them it was time to go and that she would remain there with them while first responders worked to free them.
After a crew from Poudre Fire Authority freed them, the women came out of the building carrying their citations, which included obstructing a legal assembly, disrupting a legal assembly and tampering.
The women said they knew going in that there would be legal consequences for carrying out their plans.
Kopp said they felt they had exhausted all the options available to them.
“They refused to even put it on the agenda for discussion,” she said. “We feel just in good conscience that we can’t sit by week after week after week watching people be massacred and our city just ignoring it and moving on, like you know, ‘We’re just going to talk about pickleball now.’ ”
Distaso said council didn’t even acknowledge the Human Relations Commission’s recommendation to move forward with the resolution.
Sakkal said as a Lebanese American whose country has been bombed by Israel, "to be forced to pay for the massacre of my own people is unconscionable."
"We've tried every avenue that we possibly can, and nobody cares to listen to our concerns," she said. "What is it that we're supposed to be doing at this point? Just walk away and say, 'It's OK?' It's never going to be OK."
In an interview after the meeting Tuesday, Arndt responded to a question about her reasons for not taking up a resolution by referring to the comments she made at the Feb. 20 meeting, when she thanked the public for showing up to speak on the topic.
In that statement, she said she heard love, compassion, commitment to peace, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, all bedrock values of the city and the country.
Arndt said Islamophobia and antisemitism are "on the rise, and it’s my sincere desire that we see each other in Fort Collins as friends and as neighbors, as community members as we live work and play together. That we celebrate what brings us together and embrace our differences, that we care for each other and live in peace and understanding.”
As for what happened Tuesday, Arndt said council's business will resume.
"This is part of our public discourse, and we’re going to work it out."
Prior to the meeting, human rights activist group NoCo Liberation Coalition issued a statement saying it was devastated by council's inaction in February and would continue to advocate for the liberation of Palestine, "whether or not the council wills it."
"By refusing to represent the constituents they are purported to serve, the members of Fort Collins City Council have betrayed not only the democratic processes of an entire community, but the responsibility of each and every one of us to repudiate inhumanity," the statement said, in part.
"Northern Colorado Liberation Coalition stands firmly on the side of human rights; City Council’s actions have made it clear that they do not. Rather than adhere to the established procedures and mechanisms of functional democracy, Fort Collins City Council has instead subverted it, placing “the will of council” over the will of the people they were elected to serve in an abhorrently undemocratic silencing of dissent.
"Dissent, however, does not simply disappear in the face of silence," part of the statement said.
Flyers show council members' addresses
Multiple people provided the Coloradoan photos of a copy of a handbill they said was circulating at the council meeting showing City Council members' home addresses.
Some of the members of the Jewish community who were there said they found it to be not only a direct threat toward council members but a warning to themselves: "We can find out where you live too," said one person who was present at the meeting.
Ohlson said once someone had handed him the flyer, his job was to pass the information along, and he shared it with police on site.
He said he personally was not concerned by the dissemination of the information but knows others were and understands why.
"I’ve been active a long time, so you build up controversial issues," he said about his many years as a public official. "I've never even had a prank phone call."
While he wasn't present due to illness on Feb. 20, when council chose not to take action on a resolution, Ohlson said he had no plans to bring it up at Tuesday's meeting despite expressing support for an internally crafted resolution earlier.
"Knowing there was no support for that, I wasn't going to take council time. It wasn’t going to go anywhere, so I didn’t see the value of doing that," he said.
As for what happened Tuesday and how council moves forward, Ohlson said: "Democratic republics aren’t always pretty. We're going to have to figure out a way we can do our business meetings, but we don’t know if (Tuesday's events are) more than a one-off. We have to be ready if it is."
This story may be updated.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins women glue hands to wall during City Council meeting
