Kingston alder Michael Tierney wasn’t happy.
“I read this last-minute amendment that the public has not had the chance to look at or examine,” said Tierney, “versus the resolution as drafted by all of us through hours of deliberation, compromise and communication. I just don’t think that this prayer for peace says anything.”
The dialogue surrounding the second symbolic memorializing resolution this year to call for a ceasefire in Gaza was not off to a great start. Rejecting the language of the resolution featured on the meeting’s agenda, majority leader Rennie Scott-Childress substituted his own at the Laws and Rules Committee meeting last week.
A fourth-term alder, Scott-Childress didn’t present his resolution in the customary format. The whereases and the so resolveds had not been included. It did include lines of uplifting political poetry, however.
Tierney found Scott-Childress’ substitution an insult to the resolution already before the committee.
“That resolution had been finished in enough time ahead of the common council meeting of June 4 to be offered for the consideration of the public prior to fine-tuning back in committee,” he said, “This was me, Teryl [Mickens] and Sara [Pasti] sitting in the library for hours going line by line saying, Where could people have an issue with this? Where can people have an issue with that?”
One side and not the other
“I would hope that you withdraw your motion,” Tierney urged Scott-Childress, who had made it clear he had no intention of doing so.
Scott-Childress communicated his belief that the Mickens-Tierney-sponsored memorial resolution was too specifically about the actions of one side and not the other, He said it did not address the feelings of all the members of the community. He emphasized that the issue before the committee was tremendously complex.
“So what I’ve done, and working with other members of the council just like you did,” Scott-Childress said, indicating alders Bob Dennison and Pasti, “is to create something here that refrains from casting blame …. What we’re trying to do here with this is recognize that a lot of people in Kingston have been hurt. Some of them have been hurt extremely personally on both sides. Mr. Schneider, his sister and brother-in-law were murdered by Hamas on the seventh of October. His niece and her two children are still being held hostage. If we don’t hold ourselves out as an option, if we take sides, we are no better than either side in that conflict.”
Tierney accused Scott-Childress of operating in bad faith.
“The substitute version is disingenuous to public engagement, it’s disingenuous to actually wanting to reach a compromise,” asserted Tierney. “And it’s just a disingenuous effort to further delay and further stymie something that has been taking up government business for four months .…It just seems like introducing this is really on purpose to try and delay this. The public has not heard your changes, and how can we, in good faith, make these changes without the public caring about it?”
Scott Childress offered right then and there to read his resolution to the room. Which he did.
Avoiding casting blame
In it, he had the council declare its support for an end to all aggression in the Israeli Gaza (sic), for a permanent peace, and for increased security and prosperity of all inhabitants of the region. The complexity of “the Middle East conflict” was immense, and the onus for a ceasefire itself should be placed on the ruling parties of Gaza and Israel.
“We also understand that others in our community see the conflict as a necessary war,” he continued reciting to the room. “While still others see the conflict as unrelated to our day-to-day lives, we decline to cast blame on the current conflict. To do so would be to take sides.”
There were quotes by Loretta Ross and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the body of his memorializing resolution. He had quoted Ross’ preference for call-in rather than call-out culture, and he referred to King’s concept of a beloved community.
“King called on us to go beyond being against bad things,” said Scott-Childress, “but to actively work toward positive outcomes.”
The facts still remain
Mickens was concerned Scott-Childress’ language was not pointed enough. “I understand the situation is nuanced and complex. Still, the facts remain,” said Mickens. “Are we for women and children being killed, displaced and starved, or can we speak against these human rights atrocities without being accused of being anti-Semitic?”
Mickens said that the matter boiled down to simple morality. Were the Israelis in the place of the Palestinians, would the resolution decry the same conditions and call for the same ceasefire? She said it would.
“I support a resolution that seeks to protect the innocent lives being lost in this conflict between Israel and Palestine,” she said. “I would hope that we, as the common council can stand united against all forms of violence because life is too precious.”
Struck by Scott-Childress’ quotation of Martin Luther King, Tierney answered with an excerpt from a letter King had written from a Birmingham, Alabama jail cell.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counselor,” read Tierney, “or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
Committee chair Michele Hirsch maintained decorum, at times calling for order, keeping track of the votes and the eventual substitution.
Call another meeting
As the dispute dragged on, the committee tried anew to craft one opening sentence upon which they could all agree. The end result was a decision to call a special committee meeting June 27 at 7 p.m., well before the July meeting of the full council to finalize the language.
One pro-ceasefire demonstrator, Jenny Lollier, took issue with Scott-Childress’ memorializing resolution. “It is not enough to practice love,” Lollier said, recalling Scott-Childress’ phraseology. “We must stand against hate.” He said that, and then two more like it.”
The other two were: “It is not enough to practice community, we must stand against division” and “It’s not enough to stand against war, we must practice peace.”
“He’s got it backwards,” claimed Lollier. “What he should be saying is, ‘It’s not enough to practice peace. We must stand against war.’ See what I mean?”
Scott-Childress said that he had heard from other members of the common council about the discomfiture they had felt on reading the Mickens-Tierney language. With an eye to producing something that could achieve near-unanimity among the council, he as the majority leader had produced his own resolution, which he termed a good-faith effort to get a unanimous vote on the common council — which he felt would not happen with Mickens’ resolution.
“When you’re doing something symbolic like this,” he said, “a 5-4 vote is not a good look whichever way it goes.”
Gaza us 5750 miles away from Kingston.
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