Antisemitic speech has prompted the city of Walnut Creek to join other Bay Area cities in shutting down online and phone-in public comments during public meetings.
The city announced its decision to stop taking remarks remotely via phone and Zoom on Tuesday after months of harassment by antisemitic callers, frequently targeting City Councilmember Kevin Wilk, who is Jewish.
Wilk said it’s a strategy of far-right, white nationalist groups like White Lives Matters California, who use locally broadcast public forums to broadcast their messages. Wilk has often been mentioned by name by callers, who Wilk said typically use pseudonyms like “Eddie from Walnut Creek” and don’t show their faces over Zoom.
“It’s sad really,” Wilk said Thursday. “A valuable tool of communicating with local government has been forced to be taken away due to hate speech hijacking it.”
The strategy has been used in other municipalities, including San Jose, Richmond, El Cerrito, San Francisco, and Berkeley.
Sonoma County, Redwood City and Fremont have already stopped allowing people to speak in public comment portions of meetings via Zoom and phone calls.
The Brown Act, which governs public meetings in California, only requires municipalities to offer the public a chance to address public meetings in person. The pandemic obviously changed how the public interacted with its elected officials, and most municipalities kept the Zoom and phone option open after reopening to the public.
But now, if people promoting hate speech want to air their views — at least in Walnut Creek — they will have to show up in person. The new policy — which was officially an administrative decision by City Manager Don Buckshi — applies to all city-run public meetings.
“We are conducting business meetings with city and resident issues and interests at the core,” Buckshi said in a statement.
“Some of the comments we are hearing are deeply disturbing and sickening. Those making the hateful comments are not residents of Walnut Creek and in many instances are not residents of California. These types of hate filled comments do not reflect the values of Walnut Creek.”
Walnut Creek spokesperson Betsy Burkhart said Zoom and call-in speaking was a great way for people who otherwise couldn’t come to meetings to have their voices heard. She said all five council members supported the move.
“We kept it open because it expands the public’s access,” Burkhart said. “Unfortunately, some people weren’t using it for city business.”
People can still offer written comments to be submitted at least two hours before meetings.
“This is unfortunately a consequence of the rampant antisemitic and racist hate speech that callers from outside the region and even outside the state have been spreading using public city and county board meeting platforms,” Wilk said. “We have taken this disappointing step to ensure that Walnut Creek will not provide our platform to amplify this heinous hate speech. Due to the First Amendment, allowing remote comments limits the ability for public entities to control someone intent on spreading hate speech.”
No group has officially taken responsibility for the comments to the Walnut Creek council, which have come fairly regularly for more than a year, though at least one caller said he’s with “WLM,” which presumably means White Lives Matter.
The commenting started around the same time racist flyers began appearing around Walnut Creek, Concord, and Marin and Sonoma counties in September 2022. The fliers appeared on driveways and sidewalks during the Jewish High Holidays between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
What did they say?
Doesn’t make sense: They’re sure the callers are from out of the area, but the calls happened at the same time racist flyers began appearing in local neighborhoods?
That is so dang ridiculous maybe there merely using his being jewish to attack the most emotionally sensitive subject of his being to get to him and it obviously worked. Now if they’re on there discriminating against all jews it’s different they’re obviously attacking this man’s entire being not just segregating a part of him and all those other peoples they just don’t like any part of you that shows nothing of the characteristics of a man when in order to not face a person’s judgements and accusations of yourself you then bring others into the misunderstanding under false claims
They said Eddie from Walnut Creek.
Question: how do they know the callers are from outside of Walnut Creek and California? Are they running an IP address? If so, wouldn’t they be able to track down the location? If not, this is just a statement to help them justify their actions.
I am in no way condoning or supporting the callers who are being discriminatory, racist, or harmful. Those callers should be located and prosecuted.
Track them down? Do you understand that it’s not illegal to make racist comments.
You don’t get to use tax dollars and government powers to track the people you disagree with.
They pretty much have the right to say what they want but no one has to listen to them. If one group wants to silence another group then that group gets to silence another group until no one can say anything. Thats why everyone has a right to speak. You don’t have to listen. That is what the cancel culture is trying to do. Shut up everyone that doesn’t follow their wokeness.
Prosecuted for what? I don’t condone it or agree with it either, but so-called hate speech is protected.
@Parent
Be careful what you wish for.
I am not sure how to take this comment.
Cyn
How am I supposed to interpret this comment? What do you mean?
@Parent
You want people tracked down and prosecuted for speaking their minds. At least, that’s my take on your post.
Yo-yo, Ricardo and Rollo
Racism may be legal, but discrimination, the other works I used is not. TBH, racism should be illegal and it is not tolerated in my work place- our HR policies strictly forbid it and you will be terminated per our age guidelines.
Discrimination is illegal and should be persecuted, but that is not the case here.
I listened to the video clip embedded in this report, and TBH, I don’t think the board was correct in their decision at all. ‘Scotty’ was not yelling or discriminatory. He was racist, to an extent, but the boats over reacted because their feelings were hurt.
I never heard the discussion. If I ever get the sound fixed on my computer I will listen. Thanks
@Ricardoh
From what I could tell, it was from 4 months ago and someone named “Scotty” got cut off for speaking his mind.
“ TBH, racism should be illegal”
And how would you propose that such an overly broad, inadequately defined term be enforced?
Sure thing! Just let me be the one who defines what is racism and what isn’t.
That’s exactly what our founding fathers had in mind,
or maybe not!
For speech!?! You have outed yourself you would sell your own mother if it gave you social cred..WOW go take your tyrannical approach somewhere else, just don’t listen to what bothers you & stop trying to control others.
As a Principled Conservative who has full faith in the US Constitution, all I have to say is
“I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It”.
To all those offended “Grow a pair”.
Why do I get the feeling this isn’t the real reason. Their response is way too lengthy to be credible.
Perhaps they were receiving too many calls inquiring about the continued spike in crime.
Was this actual racism or a facts are racist type of thing?
Oh you have some not racist facts you want to share?
Some facts are considered racist because they shine a light on truths, those truths may hurt feelings
Chuq,anytime time crime stats are announced,people like u get all butt hurt over the truth.
Like anything else all it takes is for a few idiots to wreck things. On the other hand if you have anything worth saying show up for the meeting. Certainly don’t need to waste time with crank callers. I have never seen a racist flyer. Where are they being dropped on driveways?
I’m not sure about Walnut Creek. But the “racist flyers” found in Martinez were obvious fakes. They were found by a single person and used as an excuse to create a BLM mural in front of the court house. A few weeks later Main st was boarded up with threats of riots.
You are 100% right about that.
No specifics. So, no facts
Just another way to stifle public comments.
The comments deemed offensive were widely reported at the time though you may be right in that I don’t recall if the news reports contained a full recording plus transcript of what was said.
Google finds that kron4.com has some news articles about the fliers that include partially blurred out images of the fliers. They were left in the area of found in the area of Homestead Avenue and Seven Hills Road. That to me is a curious thing. The section of Homestead Avenue that’s nearest to Seven Hills Road is a private street and was gated off a few years ago to prevent employees of John Muir Heath from using their street as a shortcut from the hospital campus on Ygnacio to/from the office building style campus on Treat that’s across from PH BART. Seven Hills Road dead ends at the former Seven Hills Ranch that will eventually be developed into something that neighbors are protesting.
Thus the fliers were left in a dead-end cul-de-sac unless you know the gate code to allow you to get to the publicly maintained part of Homestead.
The news articles about the Zoom-bombing of government meetings that I ran across were routinely vague about what was said other than they were antisemitic hate speech.
I thought this was America!
-Randy Marsh
Bunch of cry babies to let some unknown racist clowns get inside their head over some hateful words. For the record, I think freedom of speech is more important than anyone’s general comfort level. I think there may be an ulterior motive to shutting down the online and phone comments. Next up is closing the meetings to the public due to some new Covid variant and then they are free to run amok without any public comment.
Exactly, MOJO. Governing by Smollett Syndrome? Or is it even worse than that… Maybe it’s an “in your face” to the constituents who elected a Jew to their Council.
About 56 mins in —- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VcCuwsIFp4 2 speakers
Thanks for sharing. Unbelievable that they want to restrict people’s right to speak based on this.
They’re control freaks and petty tyrants – and as the 2nd caller pointed out – blatant hypocrites.
All of their other claims of racist flyers and anti-semiticism seem so much more dubious now.
Hard to believe the comments are turned off on the video.
Thats how to do it – call it racist and they can shut it down
This has been in the playbook since they started shutting down school board meetings and arresting parents. Same math on using state of emergency to circumvent the Constitution. None of it is real but people are too indifferent to ask for proof for fear of being labeled a sympathizer. Text book Reichstag Fire Decree.
Unfortunately, city council meetings aren’t “free speech forums,” they’re “limited public forums,” so city councils can silence speech they find “disruptive.”
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I listened to the comment made and I expected it to be much worse given the response from local cities canceling Zoom comments.
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The Concord City Council has also stopped Zoom comments.
Of course they do…the city council is entirely made up of cowards that gleefully stab the public in the back. They all need to be voted out or nothing will change.