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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

> Later in the evening Mia Heider tried to speak out about Flock during public comments about a housing issue. Police arrested her while Schrag looked on. “Sorry ma’m,” the mayor said as police led Heider away in handcuffs.

I mean, what is the appropriate response to someone refusing follow protocol after giving guidance that there's a different topic at hand now? There was a comment session on Flock cameras, people talked about it, then they moved onto housing. You can't run a public meeting where people get to drag every issue back to their favorite issue uninhibited, it just literally doesn't work. The meeting would run 24/7/365 and still nothing would get done.

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Sure makes it awfully convenient to end a comment session when you don't want to hear what's being said. We are approving the budget for the death ray, do we have any objections? You have five hundred microseconds to object. Let the record show there were no objections. Guards, arrest that man for speaking after the time for objections has ended.

The comment session was for an entirely unrelated issue.

> Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.

It wasn't that the council disagreed with what Heider said, it's that what she was talking about was unrelated to the meeting.

It was unrelated because the entire session about flock was skipped.

That doesn't make make it permissible to hijack other meetings. The point remains, she was not removed for simply voicing opposition to Flock cameras. The was arrested and removed for trying to derail an unrelated meeting.

Someone going on the stand to rant about abortion during a meeting on sidewalk codes would similarly get removed.

And arrested?

I doubt you are pro-Flock, perhaps you don't like civil disobedience?

The point of civil disobedience is to be arrested. That's the goal of civil disobedience.

The point is slightly to prevent a thing from happening, but mostly to provoke a massive government overreaction and make it lose face. Such as in this case where a woman was arrested for speaking her opinion at a city meeting.

She was arrested for making an off-topic opinion. Someone delivering a rant about abortion on a city council meeting would likewise be removed.

I don't see a government losing face, I see a bunch of online commenters demonstrating they don't understand that city council meetings have rules.

Many of us on this thread have experience with city councils and are anti-Flock and pro-civil disobedience. We're arguing with you from a point of praticality related to city business meetings. Practicing civil disobedience at a city council meeting is fraught with peril- for example, you're preventing other people from having their topics discussed/voted on. From my perspective, if your goal is to make actual change, getting arrested at a city council meeting speaking on the wrong topic is not a particularly effective method.

I disagree with your assessment. These city councils undoubtedly are aware that Flock/ALPRs are a controversial issue, and in many cases, including this one, they don't allow people to speak on the topic.

I recall watching a meeting, I think it was in Austin? Where on every topic, most people coming up to talk did so because they refused to hear comments on the cameras. Instead, they had to deal with the frustration of constantly sending people off the podium.

The lesson being, if you know people will feel strongly, it should behoove you to schedule time for them to speak properly.

Thanks for being polite and thoughtful and laying out your thinking.

The issue is that city council meetings that schedule open discussion on topics often end up running late into the night (after midnight) and the discussion doesn't achieve much.

I don't thikn we can say with certainty that the chair tabled the discussion with the intent of disallowing people their right to discuss it. That's interpreting subjective intent.

Clearly, the best solution to a discussion taking forever, is for the powerful person to terminate the discussion and declare that the outcome was whatever the powerful person wanted.

They didn't do that, though. They sent it to committee. That doesn't achieve the city council's goals.

Where should civil disobedience be practiced?

You could be right.

An alternative of course is to saw down the Flock cameras. I suspect people like the woman in the article though are trying to find legal ways to be heard—to elicit change.

Is there a legal alternative that you can think of that would be effective?

Everything that works is illegal because it works

Translation: Those in power are allowed to execute 'illegal' chess moves, (skipping the Flock discussion), but the public can't do the same to try and discuss things that officials want to avoid discussing.

I'm glad you agree that the government deserves an easy "suppress dissent" button that makes it illegal to dissent.

People can still dissent and protest - just not in the specific scenario of council meetings on sidewalk codes.

Which scenario then

Countless scenarios!

You can organize a protest in a public space like a park. You can book a space like a library or a church. You can start mailing lists to organize like-minded people.

The first one sounds like something the government can deny a permit for and the second and third ones wouldn't reach the government at all.

You're entitled to freedom of speech. You're not entitled to an audience.

Think you forgot an entire half an amendment there.

What part did I forget? Nothing in the First Amendment compels other people to listen to your speech.

This is, like, the most tame example of civil disobedience I could possibly imagine.

Also, your example is obviously off-base. If they said there would be a period to talk about abortion, and someone did, I’d feel the same way.

The council cancelled the comments about flock because they know they’re doing something deeply unpopular. Perhaps they feel guilt or shame, which are appropriate responses. Rather than sitting in said guilt or shame, they felt the need to prioritize their ego. As a very minor and frankly inconsequential protest, one person spoke briefly out of turn.

That’s what happened. I don’t know, the sides seem clear cut to me.

How it works in Seattle is that people are supposed to sign up and talk about things on the agenda for that council meeting but they are not stopped from talking about anything. This is why you'll see people like Alex Tsimerman (look him up) speak nonsense at nearly every council meeting. The councilpeople just ignore those comments and I believe they aren't included in the meeting record since they're off topic.

There's other ways to also try and limit the length of public comment, if there's more than say 30 people signed up, reduce public comment from 2 minutes per person to 1 minute. Be aggressive about cutting mics rather than giving everyone 10 extra seconds. For topics that council knows will be contentious and attract a lot of public comment they'll either hold multiple public comment blocks that day or literally just do a marathon session, 4-5 hours of just public comment.

Finally, if enough people are frustrated enough about an issue to constantly show up to public comment to talk about it, councilmembers should try meeting with those people at a different forum to at least hear them out to try and diffuse their anger. Council meetings should not be the only other place where residents can talk to their councilmembers.

Thank you for mentioning this. I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand city council meetings and just how many disruptive people who want to play out the clock talking.

> I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand city council meetings and just how many disruptive people who want to play out the clock talking

That may be the case but here it would seem a discussion about Flock was skipped on purpose so that people who want to bring it up would have no choice but to do so during an 'unrelated' discussion.

Well, I think that's a subjective reading of the video, right? We don't actually know the intent.

> I think that's a subjective reading of the video, right?

Sure, to the extent that most reporting or takes on news events are subjective, despite many trying to claim otherwise.

> This is why you'll see people like Alex Tsimerman (look him up) speak nonsense at nearly every council meeting.

I Googled that name and found a bunch of stories about him being excluded/banned from council meetings, because he was consistently disruptive.

As a community leader, it would be to publicly acknowledge that there are concerns, then schedule a town hall meeting for their constituents to discuss those concerns with subject matter experts at a more appropriate time.

That's apparently asking too much.

"The meeting would run 24/7/365…"

Maybe: 24/7/52

Or: 24/365.25

(Always bothers pedantic me.)

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