Hours before the meeting began, people gathered in the square of City Hall. Many held signs, with messages including, “Ceasefire now,” and “All children are our children — Stop Genocide.”
The line for public comment wrapped around the Santa Cruz City Hall and extended down the block. One or two at a time, people were led into the packed City Council Chambers towards a single microphone. Voice after voice gave impassioned pleas to council members — some in favor of, and some against the proposed resolution calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The tense meeting on Jan. 9 lasted over 10 hours, with public comment making up a majority of the time. At around 3 a.m, the Santa Cruz City Council voted 5-2 to reject the proposed ceasefire resolution. In a subsequent 5-1 vote, the City Council approved an alternate resolution that called for peace in the Middle East but made no mention of Israel, Palestine, Hamas, or a ceasefire.
Council Members Sonja Brunner and Sandy Brown authored the original resolution. It called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and immediate humanitarian aid for the people of Palestine. The resolution also urged the release of all hostages and the restoration of electricity to the Gaza Strip. In addition, it declared January as the “City of Santa Cruz, California Peace Month.”
Reactions of activists outside could be heard from within the Council chambers. Some activists held up their signs against the chamber windows. Eventually, Mayor Fred Keeley instructed City Clerk Bonnie Bush to close the blinds on the windows, preventing people outside from looking in.
The decision to reject the resolution led to an immediate uproar from the audience, who began chanting “Ceasefire now” in unison. Some threw objects at the council members, while protestors outside shattered a chamber window. Mayor Fred Keeley then ordered the chambers to be cleared by police before the commencement of a second vote.
Following the clearing, only six of the Council Members remained. Council Member Sandy Brown left the chambers and did not participate in the second vote. Council Member Sonja Brunner was the lone opposition to the final peace resolution. Brown later told Lookout Santa Cruz she did not realize there would be a second vote.
Community members first brought the issue of a resolution to the City Council on Dec. 12, during the final meeting of 2023. Many city governments in the United States have already called for a ceasefire in Palestine, including the Oakland City Council and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
“There’s legitimate limits to what […] is in our core mission to do,” said Mayor Keeley, who served as the presiding officer of the meeting. “I don’t think it should surprise anybody that two City Council Members sitting in the City of Santa Cruz didn’t draft a resolution that made 100 percent of the people in Santa Cruz happy.”
Mayor Keeley told City on a Hill Press that he has received credible death threats since the meeting. On Jan. 16, police detained a minor who allegedly sent one of these threats. He was then released back into the custody of his parents while the District Attorney’s office investigates the case.
Laid on the steps of the courtyard were effigies stained with red dye to represent the dead bodies of Palestinian citizens.
Community Action
One group in attendance at the meeting was the Santa Cruz County Mental Health Professionals for Palestine. Local mental health providers gathered over 100 signatures from therapists and trainees, urging the respective Santa Cruz and Watsonville City Councils to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
“We want Palestine to be liberated. We want people to be safe. We acknowledge 75 years of occupation by Israel on Palestinians,” said marriage and family therapist Jasmeen Miah. “As mental health professionals […] we have an ethical obligation to call this what it is — it’s a genocide. Our ethical code includes advocating for the community and for the rights of everyone.”
Many faculty from UC Santa Cruz spoke in support of the ceasefire resolution, including Sophia Azeb, assistant professor of critical race and ethnic studies, and micha cárdenas, associate professor of critical race and ethnic studies and performance, play & design. Both are also members of the Santa Cruz chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine.
“Our city can do some small part of trying to end the genocide as part of a larger campaign led by Palestinians to end the genocide and then end the siege and then end the occupation and have the right to return,” cárdenas said to City on a Hill Press. “[To say] it’s a far off issue that doesn’t affect us […] is totally not true at all. There are many Palestinians that live in Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County that are affected by this.”
Some attendees brought the effigies inside the council chambers for speakers to hold when addressing the Council Members at the podium. Throughout the meeting, attendees in the crowd raised the effigies in protest.
Opponents of the original resolution, including Rabbi Paula Marcus from Santa Cruz’s Temple Beth El, believed that it would cause more division in the community.
“We need to advocate for peace, and getting into all the details of what they should and shouldn’t do from over here in this part of the world is not going to be helpful in Santa Cruz,” Rabbi Marcus said. “You can’t meet everybody’s desires for this.”
Rabbi Marcus also noted that the resolution included no mention of Hamas’ initial attack on Israel on Oct. 7, an issue many on the opposition side pointed out during public comment.
Throughout the meeting, people outside peered through the windows cheering or booing, with some holding signs. At times, there was banging on the windows from spectators outside. Mayor Keeley called for decorum several times, often with visible frustration.
“As the meeting went on, it was clear to me that people’s patience was getting lower. Frustration was getting higher, but that’s not my issue. I’m not in charge of their feelings,” Mayor Keeley said after the meeting. “My job is to make sure that whether you were the first person […] or the 275th speaker, you had your time at the microphone, uninterrupted however much time it took.”
Mental Health Professionals for Palestine underscored the psychological trauma caused by the ongoing violence against Palestinians. Marriage and Family Therapist Ellen Garfield describes it as possibly “the first time that a large group of mental health professionals in Santa Cruz have organized around a social justice cause.”
After hundreds of public comments, the meeting came to a tumultuous end. Activist Hart Fae, an associate social worker and avid member of the Santa Cruz County Mental Health Professionals for Palestine, expressed disappointment at the final result of the vote.
“To see everyone going up there and sharing their personal stories and experiences and connection to this, really pouring their hearts out, being vulnerable, and then to have this other resolution proposed that did not address what was being called for by the community […] was enraging and extremely disappointing,” Fae said. “It was just horrifying.”
Sankritya Anand Rai and Ira Gupta provided additional reporting.
Editor’s note: The article’s headline has been updated as of Jan. 22 to more fairly represent the events as they happened.
