Pro-Palestinian activists called on Cambridge city councillors to support a returning Middle East cease-fire resolution, confronting the mayor and disrupting the beginning of Monday’s council meeting as they made their case for the second time in the new year.
The protest began before the meeting, with around 30 activists standing outside the doors to City Hall’s second-floor council chamber, talking in small groups as nearly a dozen police officers watched closely.
Councillors Sumbul Siddiqui and Marc McGovern walked through the crowd to reach the staff room behind the chambers and were engaged in quiet, animated conversation by activists as they navigated the hallway.
Minutes before the doors to Sullivan Chamber opened to the public, Mayor E. Denise Simmons cut a path toward the staff room and was intercepted by a young activist who began to ask if she would support a cease-fire resolution.
Simmons stopped walking. “Don’t push me!” she said sharply, turning to face the young man.
The activist raised his hands and stepped back, while the protestors at his back and the police officers standing around began to move toward the scene.
“I didn’t push you,” the activist said. A fellow protester who was recording the confrontation on a phone agreed.
After a tense back-and-forth over the next minute, the mayor turned away and stalked into the staff room, becoming visible seconds later on the screen over the chamber doors as she took her seat at the head of the room.
The first regular council meeting of the new year, on Jan. 8, was disrupted by the protesters as well with complaints the officials weren’t addressing the conflict in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians – including failure to immediately bring back a cease-fire resolution that failed in the previous term.
Another resolution is coming Monday supported by Siddiqui, Marc McGovern and councillors Ayesha Wilson and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, said Jeffrey Shen, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Pressuring officials for votes
A majority of nine councillors, including Simmons, do not currently support the resolution, and the activists in attendance were hoping to put enough pressure on the holdouts to achieve majority support. In the immediate aftermath of the confrontation with the mayor, two activists walked into the chambers and stood in the doorway, calling across the room to her to support the cease-fire.
“You can speak to my city manager,” Simmons said from the dais. “And if you would like to speak with me live, we would be more than happy to set a time with you.”
“We have asked you multiple times to sit down and have a meeting,” an activist called back from the doorway, as the sound of the mayor’s gavel rang through the chamber. “Please, Mayor Simmons, it’s a simple question.”
The mayor sat down and began to call the meeting to order without looking back at the activists now crowding the doorway.
“Simmons refused to answer a yes-or-no question,” Shen said in a speech to the activists outside the chamber. “We’ve asked for a meeting, she said no, now that we’re here, she says she wants to meet; this is a distraction! We’re going to have more actions this week, we have to keep the pressure.”
“We’ll be back”
The crowd of activists chanted loudly as the council went into a 15-minute recess, then filed down the stairs as the council resumed its session and opened the floor to public comment – now with rules highlighted on the agenda and on an easel outside the chamber.
“We are calling on our city to vote for a cease-fire resolution. We want Mayor Simmons and councillor Burhan to vote for a cease-fire, especially as an MIT grad worker,” said Mohamed Mohamed, an organizer with MIT’s coalition for Palestine. Councillor Burhan Azeem graduated from MIT, where he studied material sciences, an academic department that Mohamed explained had collaborated on defense projects with the Israel Defense Forces.
“Why are we in the business of death?” Mohamed asked. “We could be solving world problems, not causing them.”
“They’re such cowards. They won’t say anything. Simmons said nothing; not yes, not no. Nothing!” Shen said to the crowd.
“Shame!” The crowd shouted.
“So we know that we’ll be back, right?”
A stronger
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This is all so stupid, and I hope Council doesn’t cave to their absurd demands. Let’s suppose a ceasefire resolution passes, joining other progressive cities like San Francisco and Oakland. Then what? The Israeli government and Hamas will have a sudden epiphany and decide to lay down their arms?
Last week, the Senate voted on a resolution to require the State Department to report on whether U.S. aid is being used by Israel to violate Palestinian human rights. It was defeated, 72-11. The resolution fell far short of calling for a ceasefire and was quite reasonable. It still failed overwhelmingly.
Clearly, the tactics of the pro-Palestine activists aren’t working. They need to stop disrupting the work of our council and refocus their energy on something that actually has a chance of success.
Free Palestine
Dan Eisner, how are their tactics not working when they are about to get what they want from four councillors on January 29? I think it is wishful thinking to assert that their tactics aren’t working.
If the goal is to bully our city council into passing a ceasefire policy order that is nothing more than symbolic virtue signaling, then sure, their tactics are working.
If the goal is to stop the killing in a war being fought 5500 miles away, then no, their tactics most certainly are not working.
You miss the point. Israel will continue to slaughter civilians at an astounding rate until the US steps in and calls for a ceasefire. Demonstrating that liberal cities support doing so is a legitimate tactic to try and pressure Biden, in our case through Katherine Clark.
The pressure is working, see Stephen Lynch’s coming out moment from a few days ago. Only a matter of time. Keep calm and ceasefire on
If the pressure was working, surely they could have mustered more than 11 votes to support Bernie Sanders’s modest resolution to simply have the State Department report on how U.S. aid is being used.
People having opinions is so stupid…..when they don’t agree with Dan.
They should just give up and leave the area since no one wants them here.
Who cares if they have nowhere to go….
And yeah….if it fails in the Senate it is clearly because an idea is “bad” and not because of “special interests”.
People are so dumb and should just listen to Dan.
Hi Sam, allow me to clarify. I don’t think people having opinions I disagree with is stupid. I think people should voice their anger at the war as vociferously as they’d like—in a forum that makes sense. Social media, for example. Or the lawn in front of City Hall. Or the streets. I think the city manager was wrong to have “globalize the intifada” removed from Graffiti Alley.
It’s the bullying of City Council to put together a policy order about a conflict that is far outside its sphere of influence that is stupid. City Council has far more important things to spend its time on than weighing in on a conflict happening 5,500 miles away over which it has zero influence.
Regarding Bernie Sanders’s resolution: At no point did I say it’s bad. In fact, I said it was quite reasonable. I really wish it had passed. There’s no question the Israeli government is guilty of human rights abuses, and the United States government should hold them accountable.
>>I don’t think people having opinions I disagree with is stupid.
Wow. I totally do.
@Dan:
I think you understate both the moral and tactical value of passing a ceasefire resolution. The CRA board of directors op ed elsewhere on CD outlines some very straightforward reasons why Cambridge might concern ourselves with such a resolution, not least our long history of doing so.
However, to respond to one thing very specifically, I find this statement quite puzzling: “I think people should voice their anger at the war as vociferously as they’d like—in a forum that makes sense. Social media, for example. Or the lawn in front of City Hall.”
Do you believe that protests on the lawn of City Hall are more effective than the City Council passing a policy order? Do you believe that the former would get more public attention and media coverage than the latter? If not, why is the latter tactic not valid / understandable? Folks have outlined above clear reasons why a city policy order might be effective – influencing Katherine Clark e.g.. Do you disagree with this?
Do protesters think Cambridge City Councillors can stop the war! Pretty stupid thinking. They should stop being cowards and go help there people. Stop messing up our country.
Is this the same Dan Eisner who just a few weeks ago in comments here called any consideration of what Israel are doing to Palestinians in Gaza genocide “assanine”??