I’m hoping you’ll let me know what you think about an item on this coming Monday’s City Council agenda (Nov. 4, 2024, starting at 7 p.m.).  Could you please email me your thoughts? davidwrobinsonblog@gmail.com

The issue is: What should be the rules for how public comments at City Council meetings are enabled, supported, constrained, prevented, delivered, and broadcast?  (The five pages from this week’s agenda pertaining to this issue are pasted below)

The precipitating event behind this effort to modify our rules was a shocking intrusion of vile anti-semitism, by way of two anonymous online speakers, into our September 16, 2024 meeting.  I wrote about this here: https://davidrobinsonblog.com/2024/09/hate-has-no-home-in-worthington/

My hopes for Council is that we 1) take effective steps to deter and, if possible, prevent hate speech from gaining an audience through our public forums, and 2) to not do so in a way that substantively erodes our free speech by diminishing our ability to address our elected officials, and the community at large, in the closest thing we now have to town hall meetings.

I believe we need more, not less, personal, direct public discourse.  Now more than ever, we need to hear from one another.  This is part of the path forward.  How to do so, with hate in the air, is the challenge in our public governmental setting.

Those are my current, unfinished thoughts.  And so I ask for your feedback on this foundational issue.  How we structure our rules for public discourse may have unexpected consequences at some future date, for good or ill.  I seek your wisdom.  Thank you.

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My earlier post from Sept. 20, 2024:

Hate Has No Home in Worthington

Knowing about something in the abstract is very different from experiencing it first hand.  Even when the subject is something you have known about, read a great deal about, and thought about, for as long as you can remember, back to childhood, when the simple joy of life first became qualified and clouded with the ugliness and horrors of the world, most horribly of all, our cruelty to one another, hate instead of love, born of profound and often willful ignorance and an aggressive greed and a sick delight in violence over others.  A black and white photograph comes to mind: someone kneeling before a mass grave, forlorn hopelessness on their face, with a gun pointed at their head from behind, held by someone who, with chummy support from grinning faces around him, appeared to be casually ready to do a grim day’s work.  The horrendous banality of evil.

But this is not just history.  The evil lurks today.

Which I learned, first hand, last Monday night, in the City Council chambers, when, in the midst of what seemed to be a normal evening meeting where we do our best to conduct the people’s business, two persons, men, called in to give comments about non-agenda items, and instead of sharing thoughts or concerns about community affairs for the-good-of-the-order, they spewed antisemitic hatred and white grievance.  The context—small town governance, typically mundane, neighborly, based on the best of democratic traditions where all voices are typically welcomed as part of the fabric of who we are—made these disembodied voices of conspiratorial malice all the more shocking, at first unbelievable, and then horribly real as their meaning and evil purpose became clear.

The City as City, with complex legal issues and liabilities at stake, is understandably cautious in what it says and does in such cases (see below for the City of Worthington’s formal statement), but as a single elected official I do not speak for the City, so let me now state what I wish I had had the presence of mind to say in the moment, to the two callers: Your antisemitic hate has no place in Worthington.  None.  I condemn it with every fiber of my being.  Your hatred is deluded and twisted.  This monomaniacal need to blame, to have an enemy, is at the root of so much of humanity’s suffering.  And, I wager, yours as well.  Whether you believe in a loving and just god, or not, I urge you to repent.  It’s not too late.  In the meantime, know that I will reject, resist, and repel to the best of my ability, any demonization of any group of people, most certainly our Jewish friends and neighbors, in the belief that the realization of our shared humanity is our deepest calling.

For now, our City is going to evaluate how best to continue our tradition of free and open discourse at our public meetings.  I will likely be advocating for the continued ability of persons to speak on non-agenda items, but in-person only.  The cowardice of anonymity ought to be thwarted, but face-to-face confrontation not avoided.

City of Worthington, public statement, September 18, 2024:

During Monday evening’s City Council meeting, calls involving antisemitic comments targeted at Jewish members of our community were made during our public comment period. We unequivocally condemn these comments. Our City embraces freedom of speech and respects diverse opinions, but we draw a clear line when it comes to hate and discrimination. This kind of speech is hurtful to community members and threatens their safety, and we are sorry this occurred during the meeting.

City Council will evaluate the manner in which public comments are received for items not on the agenda to avoid providing a platform for this type of speech. During this evaluation period, we will be suspending virtual and in-person comments on items not on the City Council agenda during meetings. Additionally, public comments on agenda items during the meeting will be permitted in-person only. The public may continue to submit comments to City Council through the City’s website, via email or by letter.