Let the People Clap! (And Speak!)

The city council keeps shutting down public feedback, with predictable results.

City Council chambers shortly before Council President Sara Nelson shut down a meeting because people shouted at the council to let them testify.

By Erica C. Barnett

Over the past few days, city council members have objected repeatedly to public commenters expressing their support for one another by clapping—an innocuous, brief burst of joyful noise that council members argue is a disruption that slows council meetings down and prevents everyone from being heard.

Ironically, they've also terminated public comment before everyone signed up has had a chance to speak, leading audience members to shout and jeer, then compounded this own goal by locking down council chambers and retreating to their offices, where they can vote on divisive issues without having to hear people boo.

City council members have certainly expressed exasperation in the past about vocal crowds; former council president Debora Juarez was well known for chiding clappers and deriding people whose comments sounded too similar for her taste. (Juarez often made a point of dismissing people who used advocacy groups' templates to express their disapproval by referring to their feedback as "form letters.")

But the contempt the current council has shown for members of the public who oppose their policy proposals has gone further, and is now a feature of nearly every council meeting.

Last week, for example, Bob Kettle instructed commenters at a sparsely attended public safety committee meeting to snap their fingers instead of clapping, which he suggested would be disruptive. On Wednesday, Dan Strauss told advocates for student mental health spending, many of them current or recent high school students, to use silent "jazz hands" to express approval, and admonished them repeatedly for clapping instead.

And of course, on Tuesday, Council President Sara Nelson repeatedly warned people who showed up to testify against a long list of council proposals to stop being "disruptive" by clapping and cheering supportively. Then she cut off public comment, prompting many in the crowd to yell at her to let them speak. Instead of defusing the situation by extending public comment, Nelson pulled the council off the dais for a recess, then another, before shutting down council chambers and reconvening the meeting remotely.

This lockdown marked the second time in Nelson's seven-month tenure as council president that she kicked the public out of council chambers. The first time followed a nearly identical template: Nelson cut off public comment, called two recesses, and ordered the public out, leading to an angry standoff in which Councilmember Cathy Moore demanded that police "arrest those individuals" who were shouting from outside the locked council chambers.

This is going to keep happening as long as the council does not think of people who disagree with their policy decisions as constituents they have to listen to. Right now, a lot of people happen to be extremely pissed off at a vast array of policies the council is attempting to fast-track with minimal public process—a new law criminalizing sex work, jailing people for low-level misdemeanors, and the creation of special no-go zones for drug users and sex workers, to name a few. It isn't a conspiracy when advocates on these issues show up in council chambers to sound the alarm—it's a sign that people without access to the council are using the one avenue they have to make them listen.

If the council doesn't want to hear from people whose views, or mode of expression, they find disagreeable (cue Kettle saying "this fucking drives me nuts" after people chanted "when we fight, we win" two times earlier this week), that's on them: The job of being a council member is inseparable from the duty to listen to the public, including during official public comment periods, even when the public's message is basically, "you suck."

City Council members, especially those whose previous jobs didn't involve interacting with the public, have responded to public criticism since time immemorial by decrying the "current lack of civility," or by suggesting that public commenters have been duped by media misinformation or just don't understand how the city works. (Here's a brief history of "civility" as a political concept, for those seeking extra credit.)

Yesterday, for example, after a large group of young people testified in favor of a budget proposal to release funding for student mental health care, Kettle said they had mistakenly brought their concerns to the wrong place, and that the adults that brought them to City Hall should have taken them, instead, to Olympia. Maritza Rivera accused Morales of making false promises to "the students who were here, who were expecting that if we pass this money, that somehow they're going to get it immediately."

The council's condescension to young people (who, incidentally, were the instigators of the proposal to spend money on mental health care, which Kettle repeatedly claimed "came out of nowhere") is the flip side of their enraged response to frustrated public commenters on Tuesday. Kids who disagree with the council are confused; adults who disagree with the council are dangerous. My advice for the council is to try something that might feel radical: Just let people speak.