Lang
11/8/23
For the second meeting in a row, the Iowa City city council was bombarded with racist and anti-Semitic comments from Zoom callers.
During the October 17th meeting, callers trolled the regular community comment session with stereotypes and hateful rhetoric about the Jewish community, with racist tropes against other groups mixed in. Councilors remained silent during the diatribes.
After the meeting, city officials defended the decision to let the calls continue, citing free speech issues. However, the council has since agreed to only accept Zoom calls for items already on the agenda and not for the community comment session. But that didn’t stop more trolls from calling in during Tuesday night’s meeting during public comment on the listed agenda items. One caller claimed the Jewish community was behind 9/11, while others targeted Mayor Bruce Teague with racist and homophobic slurs.
This time, the prank calls were cut off after a few seconds, although the video and audio of the meeting available on the city’s YouTube channel indicate there was some difficulty in terminating the calls in a timely fashion.
The city has used Zoom for public comments dating back to council meetings being held online during the pandemic. The meetings have since been moved back to Harvat Hall.
