Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin reaches for his gavel while Yousef Khalaf speaks during the public comment period on Monday, Jan. 22, 2024. (Ideastream Public Media)
Monday night meetings in Cleveland City Council chambers are usually a quiet and orderly affair. Council members filter into their seats, listen to the voices of the public commenters among a typically sparse crowd and pass the city's legislation, most of which has been hashed out in committee meetings before it reaches the council floor for a vote.
But for the past several months, City Council meetings have been a hotbed of tension and protests. Rows of wooden seats are packed with people wearing Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, carrying signs — which are banned in chambers, according to council's rules — demanding things like "Free Palestine" and "Cease-fire now," and flooding public comment periods with impassioned pleas for empathy or condemnations of a "xenophobic" council.
"Every person who sits behind me, you have wronged," Kamal Alkayali, a manager at the Palestinian-owned Algebra Tea House on Cleveland's East Side, told council members during Monday's public comment period. "We begged for three straight months for you to see our people as human, but we are done begging. Do you forget who you work for? We run this city."
At least one person has been removed from chambers by Cleveland police for shouting and started chants charging Mayor Justin Bibb with "genocide" for comments he made on social media after the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis. Shouting and disruption have persisted for several weeks, and in the case of Monday night, even forced an early adjournment after legislation had been passed.
What do protesters want?
What they want is simple, said Cleveland resident and Palestinian Shereen Naser: a resolution condemning violence in Gaza and expressing support for the more than 25,000 people the Associate Press reports have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since the start of the war.
Unlike ordinances, resolutions are not laws, but rather a sentiment expressed by a legislative body.
Naser said their demand for a resolution is not unprecedented: Four days after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Cleveland City Council passed a resolution "strongly condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine" and "denouncing Vladimir Putin’s years-long aggression."
"The passing of the resolution for Ukraine is an indicator that our City Council does have the capacity to care, the compassion to care and the procedures to pass such a resolution," Naser said. "When we see how quickly that resolution passed, but how difficult it is to pass this one, it feels like a real double standard to our community and furthers that feeling of disenfranchisement, dehumanization and not being seen or heard."
Naser is part of the Cleveland Palestinian Advocacy Community, a coalition of local social justice organizations advocating for the recognition and rights of the Palestinian people. Her family is from Bir Zeit in the occupied West Bank, where she said her father is currently.
"The level of hurt and anger is being prolonged by how long City Council is taking to address this issue," Naser said. "We could have been done with this weeks ago."
Several other cities across the country have passed resolutions, including Akron. Naser said Cleveland of all places should join rank with those cities, Greater Cleveland is home to a sizable Palestinian population. According to 2022 American Community Survey 5-year estimates nearly 10,000 people of Palestinian ancestry live in the state — almost half of those in Cuyahoga County.
"So the continued silence ... makes us feel like we don't belong in the city, even though we are the fabric of the city," Naser said.
“We put gas in people’s cars, food on people’s tables. We teach people’s kids. We’re doctors. We’re lawyers. We make up the city, and it feels very much like we’ve been forgotten. So part of asking for this resolution is just asking for City Council to acknowledge us as Clevelanders.”
Why won't council pass the resolution?
Council President Blaine Griffin, on the other hand, said passing a resolution is not as simple as the pro-Palestinian groups make it out to be.
"This conflict is very complicated, hence why it's so hard to try to have 17 members in Cleveland, Ohio, who have a very vague knowledge of the intricacies and the sensitivities of this conflict, to make a statement, and especially when it's not a joint statement by the two groups that are the closest to it," Griffin said. "It's almost impossible for us to appease anybody and anybody who doesn't understand that is being purely myopic, and only seeing things from their point of view and not trying to understand that Council has to have a point of view that's respectful of all the city."
Griffin said despite what some members of the public may think, council members care deeply about the lives lost in Gaza, but said they also care about casualties in Israel. Israel has the right to defend itself after the Hamas attack, he said.
"The only thing [passing the resolution] is going to do is then all of a sudden we'll probably have another community, the Jewish community ... descend upon us," he said. "And then we got to deal with them demanding that we that we make a statement. Then who's next?"
“Societies have been destroyed and religions have fought with each other over this thing. This thing is not going to be solved by a resolution in Cleveland, Ohio.”
Griffin said that while he will not allow city business to be affected, the disruptions can make it difficult for other residents' voices to be heard, especially as annual budget hearings and other important legislation are upcoming.
"So everybody else in Cleveland be damned because the only thing that we should be worried about is their issue?" Griffin said. "Now, what about people that have concerns about crime in your neighborhood? What about people that have concerns about that empty house on their street? Or what about a policy like we're doing now with Residents First? So what about the [tax increment financing] districts? Residents that have legitimate issues about Cleveland can only move forward to get their concerns addressed if we acknowledge what is happening" in the region?
What does council say it would take?
Griffin previously told Ideastream they will not consider action unless "both sides" come together and bring forth a resolution to council, including the "Jewish, Arab and Muslim communities." He said he has met with leaders from each of those communities to discuss the conflict.
"I just think it's unfair to put council in this conflict and be the arbiter of peace. When, quite frankly, all this is going to do is stoke more divisions, whatever we do, because of the sensitivities."
“I just think it’s unfair to put council in this conflict and be the arbiter of peace. When, quite frankly, all this is going to do is stoke more divisions, whatever we do, because of the sensitivities.”
Naser said the Jewish community is represented in their coalition and the signees of a letter sent to council asking for the resolution, which included the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace Cleveland.
Only two members of City Council — Ward 15's Jenny Spencer and Ward 12's Rebecca Maurer, who is the only Jewish council member — have vocalized support for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Some members in the rest of council are opting for silence — or opposition.
Ward 8 Councilmember Mike Polensek has repeatedly expressed outrage at some protesters' public comments, calling the remarks "antisemitic" and "racist" and threatening to walk out instead of listening.
Without all 17 members of council reaching an agreement on the subject, it seems unlikely that there's an end in sight for protests in council meetings. Griffin told Ideastream he is working with law enforcement to establish protocols to maintain decorum and order in council chambers going forward.
"There are some members of the community that feel it's unsafe to come down here, and that's totally unacceptable," Griffin said.
The next City Council meeting is Jan. 29 at Cleveland City Hall.
This story was originally published on WKSU/Ideastream Public Media on Jan. 25, 2024.