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Tom Hayden's avatar

I've had a bunch of people message me about this and I don't know, it doesn't strike me as that bad. Obviously the vitriol wording is just the standard Evanston Facebook keyboard warrior stuff but (I think) you gotta look past the "equity language" that gets attached to everything and the points.

- The original EEC meeting had people on both sides of the issue. It seemed like it was split down the middle, to be honest. Source: me but I haven't counted.

- The ethics compliant is just whatever but I think they make a valid point at the opposition using legal maneuvers (such as calling in the city counsel at the last minute) to silence the committee. I agree that that is pretty anti-democratic even if technically right in the long run.

- The suggested changes to the statement, I think, would probably be agreeable to most Evanstonians

- Evanston has passed resolutions like this in the past

I am not sure I understand why this is so inappropriate to debate - even if I think the original statement itself was dumb...

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Tom Hayden's avatar

I will also say this: one side is soliciting people to sign a letter. The other side is soliciting people to sign a letter. It's almost like we should have some kind of mechanism where all of us can come together and sign one letter or the other and pick which thing the city should do.

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Terry's avatar

Tonight at the city council meeting, these clowns tried to shut the meeting down by disrupting the proceedings after they were given time during public comment. All the stuff in the letter about the ethics complaints, etc, were all apparently unfounded according to city officials.

I am not sure what these people are trying to accomplish. They claim in the letter "The City has been silent on the immense violence carried out by the State of Israel against Palestinian civilians. This sends a message that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. A failure to call for a Ceasefire and to condemn all loss of life in the region as unacceptable, does, in effect, contribute to existing inequities in Evanston, Illinois, the U.S., and around the world."

That is complete bollocks. Israel and Hamas are not waiting on the City of Evanston for messages to be sent. Failure to call for a ceasefire in a conflict thousands of miles away has absolutely zero impact on anything in the city, let alone "contributing to inequities in Evanston Illinois."

You know what does have an impact? When these clowns try and shut down a city council meeting where they are adopting a budget to keep city services running.

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