A divided Minneapolis City Council committee on Tuesday decided to seek help from state lawmakers to crack down on threats against them and near-takeovers of council meetings by protesters.
The tense discussions came a week and a half after protesters so disrupted a meeting and accosted council members that three of them filed police reports alleging intimidation.
In those incidents, a group of protesters on the losing side of a series of votes forced a recess of the council when they shouted down council members with profanities and statements about their families while several reached over the dais where council members sat.
Shortly after, Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw and a member of her staff were followed in the skyway by an activist screaming profanities at them and, according to Vetaw's account, briefly trapping them on the top of a two-story escalator in an incident recorded by the activist, D.J. Hooker.
Vetaw on Tuesday said she has been granted a court restraining order against Hooker.
Also on Tuesday, St. Paul City Attorney Lyndsey Olson confirmed that her office is reviewing the matter, which was forwarded to them by Minneapolis city prosecutors. Such referrals are common in cases where a potential conflict of interest could exist.
At Tuesday's meeting, council members struggled between finding solidarity and empathy amid tensions in a group generally divided between two factions of left and more left — although a spectrum of members said they had personally been targeted with threats and bemoaned the state of affairs that holding office has come to engender.
In the end, a pair of split votes made it likely that the full council will officially ask for help from state lawmakers as soon as Thursday — although the likelihood that anything will happen at the Capitol this year is uncertain, several acknowledged.
New rules and tougher penalties
The formal actions taken during Tuesday's meeting of the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee were to support any efforts at the Minnesota Capitol for changes to state law that would accomplish two things:
- Allow for government bodies to more strictly regulate unruly conduct at public meetings without stifling First Amendment rights or the state Open Meetings Act. The committee approved it in a 7-6 vote.
- Increase criminal penalties for "assaults and threats of violence" against public officials and their families because of their status as elected officials. The committee approved this by an 8-4 vote.
It was unclear Tuesday what, if any, active bills at the Legislature might satisfy either of those wishes, and state lawmakers have imposed a Friday deadline for new policy proposals.
City Council Vice President Linea Palmisano, who introduced both measures Tuesday, said she had spoken with several lawmakers who were open to helping.
"We are not criminalizing protest," Palmisano emphasized, responding to suggestions by Council Members Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley that her ideas amounted to a crackdown on protests by people of color. "We are stopping people from stopping us doing our work, and that is what happened last council meeting. It crossed a line, but I think we need to ask the state to say what that line is."
Frayed civility
The notion of civility frayed to the point of threatening democracy isn't new to the nation or the city of Minneapolis.
In 2020 after a number of council members took the stage at a Powderhorn Park protest espousing an end to the Police Department in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, the city hired private security details to protect three council members: President Andrea Jenkins and Alondra Cano and Phillipe Cunningham, who are no longer on the council.
On Tuesday, Council Member Jeremiah Ellison revealed that he had also been targeted with threats at the time, prompting him to "became familiar with my Second Amendment rights and castle doctrine."
The presumed narrative of those threats, as well as others experienced by city officials during the pandemic, was that they emanated from the far right.
Ellison said he felt some of the more moderate members of the council at the time "mocked" those who sought security, which is why he didn't.
The current wave of threats is from the left, targeting the more moderate wing of the council.
That's what has happened with the contentious debate over Roof Depot, an abandoned city-owned building in the East Phillips neighborhood that city officials want to demolish to expand an adjacent public works facility.
Vocal opponents have decried the plan on environmental and social justice grounds — and the more progressive wing on the council has allied themselves with that position. Some of those opponents have become more vitriolic, with some openly calling for anyone opposed to them — and their families — to be accosted "wherever you find them," according to one Facebook post, which calls them "evil people."
