The January 17 meeting of the Laws and Rules Committee in which the proposed memorializing resolution of the City of Kingston Common Council calling for a ceasefire in Gaza was to be discussed and improved turned out to be an anti-climax. Nothing was passed.
Those spectators wearing Covid masks who showed up to sit on the benches along the walls of the conference room watched the five members of the committee grapple with the politically prickly puzzle.
The wearing of Covid masks has become a vogue among that noisy and committed portion of the community which has been attempting to get its point across — that a cessation of war was the only humane solution for the civilians of Palestine caught between hammer and anvil now for 98 days.
Beside their dubious ability to screen out contagious microorganisms, masks provide wearers a level of anonymity comforting to those who fear their activism will draw scrutiny from the forces of the law.
At the January 9 meeting, supporters of the ceasefire claimed that Kingston police chief Egidio Tinti stood at the antechamber doorway taking pictures of them.
A smaller number of the community, just as passionate, doesn’t bother much with Covid masks. Showing up to protest the protestors, uniformly supporters of congressmember Pat Ryan, expressing incredulity that ‘leftist progressives’ would support the patriarchal-minded terrorists whose first order of business would be to eradicate the leftist progressives in their own ranks.
Supporters of the viewpoint that the bombs should not stop falling on Palestine until the hostages were returned and Hamas had been crushed. They were in the room, too.
No pleasing both sides
How then to amend the phrases of a memorializing resolution calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas without getting burned by one portion or the other of a riled-up public of at least two minds about the resolution?
There could be no pleasing both factions.
“I just want to say that I brought this motion forward,” committee chair Michele Hirsch said after she began the meeting. “There were many people in our community that were passionate about seeing this happen.”
Hirsch prodded the committee to enter into discussion on the matter.
Her suggestion met with stone silence. None of the other four members of the committee — Ward 1 alder Sara Pasti, Ward 5 alder Teryl Mickens, Ward 6 alder Bob Dennison and Ward 3 alder majority leader Rennie Scott-Childress — said anything.
After a long pause, Scott-Childress said, “I will not be seconding.”
Wishing to explain himself, he added, “The question is whether the Kingston Common Council should weigh in at all.”
The pro-ceasefire crowd in the room heard the betrayal loud and clear. The supporters of retaliation felt mollified.
Scott-Childress maintained that all were against the carnage in Gaza in Israel. All were sickened by the violence.
“My concern,” said Scott Childress, “is that this issue is dangerously divisive,” said Scott Childress. “The process of voting on this resolution will become increasingly adversarial if we did push it forward as it stands.”
Scott Childress then took an instructive detour, channeling Loretta Ross by name, expressing his desire that the riven community should call each other ‘in’ rather than call each other ‘out,’ exclusivity being, he said, “a logical result of systems of domination and control, such as white supremacy and superiority.”
Scott-Childress shared details of his recent association with the interfaith council and his plan to convene an event calling in the community. “If we cannot find peace among ourselves,” he asked, “how can we demand it elsewhere?”
Relevant or not?
Alder for Ward 2 Michael Tierney, not a member of the committee and so could not second motions or introduce topics for conversation, was allowed to speak. He could not have illustrated the legislative divide more clearly.
“I have to disagree with majority leader Childress,” he said. “I think that this [memorializing resolution] is completely relevant to the City of Kingston.”
Tierney brought up the tax dollars being sent to support the Israeli military response rather than being spent on federally funded domestic public programs. “Where’s that money going? It’s going to fascist régimes across the world to suppress anti-colonial movements,” said Tierney. “It’s going to war.”
The federal government wasn’t supplying Hamas, he said. The federal government was supplying one side of the conflict.
The Democratic Party squabble that everyone knew was coming had arrived. In the current political climate, the position one takes on the call for an end to the bombing of Gaza places one along a well-defined spectrum.
Scott-Childress called for emotional understanding. Tierney called for action.
When she spoke, alder Sara Pasti rationalized her non-action as serving her community and not playing favorites.
“As a representative of the residents of Ward 1, I’m obliged to act on their behalf,” said Pasti. “Whether or not my action may or may not agree with my own personal views. I also feel obligated to take action that I think would be in the best interest of the city.”
A unified direction
First-term alder Drew Andrews, like Tierney not a member of the committee, could not second motions or introduce topics for conversation, He shared his thoughts.
“My friends that I have spoken to support a ceasefire,” said Andrews. “I’d say [I received] over hundreds of letters from residents in Kingston demanding that we do something and we stand up for something when it comes to what’s happening in this world .… I do feel that we should, possibly sit with counsels and further look at what this resolution is stating. And think about how we can begin to move on a unified decision and resolution.”
Scott-Childress agreed. “We should certainly agree to sit down at some point,” he said.
“How many more people will die between now and then?” asked Tierney.
Scott-Childress was stung.
“That’s an unfair question. Walking out of their houses, in the streets of this city, there are people here who are in deep pain,” he said. “What you’re saying I feel like it’s almost making light of that. You’re not taking recognition of what’s going on here with us in our hearts.”
Tierney said he could understand and sympathize with that. “And I really do empathize with Israel’s side of the issue. But at the end of the day, it’s not even about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about our government support. It’s our government, who’s told us time and time again, ‘We don’t have the money for that. We don’t have the money to build a house, we don’t have the money to put a new railway on the west side of the Hudson. We can’t expand the bus service at home. It’s gonna take two hours for the bus to go to Saugerties. That’s the kind of hurt that people deal with every single day in this community. And that’s the federal government turning its back on us to be a merchant of death across the world.”
Alders Bob Dennison and Teryl Mickens remained silent throughout.
“So it looks like we don’t have a motion to move forward. So this, this is where it ends,” summed up Hirsch. “I urge our community to continue being respectful of each other. What the city does control is human-rights violations within our city, and it is under our purview to make sure that everyone in our city is treated fairly and that we do not see any racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism …. That will not be tolerated in our community, and I cannot stress that enough because that is something that we control.
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