It Could Happen Here - City Council Death Squads

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Molly & Garrison talk about the group of extremely online white supremacists zoombombing city council meetings across the country.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and

expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking

musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us,

and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Calls on Media. Hello, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here, your favorite daily podcast about the

steady dissolution of society as we know it. I'm your guest host, Molly Conger, joined once again by our friend Garrison. Hello. Happy to look at the abyss once again. Yeah, try not to ruin your day too bad today. So, Garrison, today I want to talk to you about some terrible guys that I know you're already pretty familiar with. The Goyim Defense League. The GDL. The GDL.

They're sort of a loose network of neo-Nazi trolls, best known for their anti-Semitic flyers, headed up by a failed rapper named John Minnodeo, who calls himself Handsome Truth. Handsome Truth. Handsome Truth. So there's this sort of core cast of characters in Minnodeo's orbit that shows up in person, mostly in Florida and Georgia, but the group's real strength is online. They have this decentralized network of thousands of followers nationwide

who are encouraged to download and print the anti-Semitic flyers and distribute them in their area. It's not a new model, right? Like the Klan has been doing this for decades. National Alliance was big into this in the early aughts, but that's what they do, right? They're in the news every few weeks,

you know, your local news, wherever it is that you live, you know, somebody left these racist flyers on everyone's front lawn. And I know you and I have talked about doing an episode in the future about the sort of counterproductive responses to these in-person demonstrations, the flyering and the banner drops. There's a new law in Florida and a proposed law in Georgia that are sort of allegedly aimed at countering anti-Semitism, but are going to have some sort of counterproductive knock-on effects. And I hope we can get to that at a later date. But today I want to talk to you

about a little project some GDL members have going on the side called the City Council Death Squad. Are they going around and killing city council members? Because that is kind of what it sounds like. It does sound like that's kind of that's the energy here. They haven't done that yet. Yes. But Garrison, how would you feel if I told you a former juggalo calling himself Scotty Big Balls? No. Trying to destroy the thing I love most, which is civic engagement in municipal government.

I have such complicated feelings on juggalos. Oh, God. No, I want to be clear. I'm not slandering the juggalo community here, right? Like Mr. Big Balls got his hatchet man tattoo covered up with a big snake holding a gun a couple of years ago. So he's no longer,

God, there's a cool name for their community. He's no longer a part of the juggalo community. I don't think the juggalos would abide this kind of behavior. Generally not. They are kind of semi-cool. No, I've heard chicken hunting. I don't think they abide. No, just by happenstance, you know, the ICP is not my cup of tea.

No, no shade. It's not my cup of tea. But I did see them perform at the Lincoln Memorial a couple of years ago. And it was the most polite crowd I've ever experienced at a live music event. So hats off to the Juggalos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, if you're a city council meeting enthusiast like myself, you may already be aware of the rash of racist Zoom bombings disrupting meetings around the country over the last nine months or so. meetings around the country over the last nine months or so.

Remote participation in meetings became nearly ubiquitous during the pandemic, and the opportunity to make a public comment without having to devote an entire evening to sitting in an uncomfortable chair at City Hall has made civic engagement more accessible for all kinds of people, right? Not just because of contagion, but remote participation benefits everybody, like parents who are managing a bedtime routine by the time the public hearing opens at 8 p.m. or people who don't work a nine to five or people without reliable transportation. So it's been a boon for local democracy, but it's also created a unique opportunity for people who want to ruin that. Mr. Big Balls. The online pseudonym for a self-described Nazi named Harley Ray Patero Jr.

started a group he calls the City Council Death Squad. The group organizes online to find government meetings, mainly city and county council meetings all over the country, that allow public comment via Zoom. Then he coordinates those members to sign up for speaking slots, crowding out actual community members who are trying to speak on, you know, like actual matters of local concern. And when the members of the group get through,

the calls follow a couple of predictable paths. Sometimes the caller just starts screaming slurs, right? It's just, as soon as they connect, it's just screaming the N-word over and over and over and over again until someone can hit the button to cut it off. Sometimes they do what they call the slow roll, where they start off trying to sound like a real caller. You know, they'll say like, you know, I have concerns about zoning in my neighborhood or I, you know,

I think we should pay the police more. And then it veers abruptly into some kind of bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about crime or 9-11 or advocating for public lynchings. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they like spend a few minutes eating up the city council time and then just curtail it with some unhinged ramble. Right. And then yell the slurs. Yes, yes. Another favorite of the group is a call format where they pretend to be gay or Jewish themselves and then ascribe to themselves various traits associated with

bigoted stereotypes of the group. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Menedeo has participated a few times himself, and he loves this one. He pretends to be a gay Jewish person named Tammy and then says some pretty outrageous things. I bet. The callers give themselves inside joke names like Rudy Hess or Sadie N-Word,

which when you say it out loud sounds like say the N-word. So it's like a Seymour Butts kind of thing. It's like Bart calling Moe's Tavern, except it's Nazis. Wow. Very, very clever on the cutting edge of comedy. Yeah. Or they'll name themselves after a mass shooter like Dylan Roof or Anders Breivik. Or, you know, sometimes it's like a deep cut, like a more obscure killer whose name might not arouse suspicion right off the bat. Like Jim Adkisson, a man who shot eight people at a Unitarian church in Knoxville in 2008 during a children's production of the musical Annie because he was angry about the church's liberal teachings. So, you know, good jokes.

Yeah, this is all kind of like old school kind of Chan humor. It's not even that popular anymore, because it's kind of just out of vogue. You're kind of outing yourself as like a bit of like a, not an actual boomer, but like it's become a boomer-fied, this type of humor. It's not really the sort of thing that younger, more hip neo-Nazis are into. They have moved on.

They have other horizons of bad jokes. So ruining everybody's good time by shouting a racial slur is hardly an innovation. But this particular operation has a discernible origin point. In May of 2023, Patero, that's Mr. Big Balls, if you've forgotten already, and three friends showed up in person to a Sacramento City Council meeting to show their support for Ryan Masano. If you're from the Sacramento area, you probably know him. Masano, a former Proud Boy with several failed runs for office under his belt, already had a long history of being disruptive in public meetings. In 2018, he was removed from chambers during a Vallejo City Council meeting after saying the city was, quote, infested with homosexuals and refusing to be called to order by the mayor. In a meeting of the same body in 2022, he was picked up and carried out after refusing to end his remarks at the end of his time.

So in 2023, he's attending every meeting of the Sacramento City Council. was picked up and carried out after refusing to end his remarks at the end of his time. So in 2023, he's attending every meeting of the Sacramento City Council. This has been going on for almost two months. He shows up, he gets up, he makes his homophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic remarks. But he's keeping with the rules of the meeting, and they're letting him make his statements. But people aren't happy about it. So activists are starting to show up to the meetings. People are showing up with banners. People are boo the meetings. People are showing up with banners. People are booing him. People are showing up to counter this. And so he puts out a call for backup.

So it is at this point that Patero shows up with two masked associates and a man named Jeffrey Perrine, who, like Masano, was a proud boy with a failed school board run to his name. At that time in 2023, Perrine had recently been arrested outside the home of a youth pastor after publicly calling for others to join him in going to the pastor's home during a school board meeting that had to be adjourned because of Perrine's disruptive behavior. So we're seeing a pattern emerging here, right? Like at this point, we've got two proud boys who keep getting kicked out of meetings and failing to run for school board. These are people who are seeing the value in kicking up some kind of disturbance at a meeting. Yeah. And this was like during a time where school board meeting disruptions were very popular. There was a lot of like far right

influencers trying to convince their followers to run for school boards. This was kind of a very particular cultural moment in like 2022, 2023. So they show up to this meeting to support Masano and it doesn't go well. One of the guys throws a Hitler salute. People react angrily. There's a bit of a scuffle. It devolves and the council ends up going into recess and clearing the chambers entirely. Everybody has to leave. You just can't be in here. Too much yelling. Everybody's mad. Nobody gets arrested, but everybody has to leave. And the council ended up continuing the meeting without the public's presence. So I think there was a hearing that night on an ordinance involving homelessness that people had showed up to speak on and they weren't allowed to do that now. Council continues their business, but nobody can be there.

And Patera's alliance with Masano didn't last. They actually butted heads almost immediately over optics. Masano preferred to make his long-winded speeches that, at least in his mind, were more palatable to the listener and might more effectively spread his message and potentially red pill the listeners. He was actually angry that Patero's troll forward tactic of just shouting slurs and obscenities was actually resulting in avenues for public comment being closed off. In September of 2023, he wrote, either out of ignorance or deliberate sabotage, the GDL has no idea what they're doing. So he was mad, right, because he was doing this thing where every week he was showing up to make his comment. And because of the different strategy of disruption, that was getting harder for him.

Massano, for his part, continues his one-man battle against the Sacramento City Council. He's still doing that. Okay. He's a lone wolf out there in Sacramento. But Patero saw the potential in trolling on a larger scale. Hmm, okay. Almost immediately, he branched out. Over the next few months, it developed into an organized trolling machine targeting meetings across the country, covering at least 17 states from Alaska to Maine, Idaho, Wyoming, Georgia, Virginia.

They're all over the place, often hitting the same city repeatedly and in some cases showing up in person with flyers or banners either before or after the Zoom bombing. After targeting meetings in the city of Walnut Creek, California, the group hung a racist banner in the area. Counselor Kevin Wilk commented on the banner in the press, and the following week, the meeting was hit again, with members specifically addressing Wilk, the locality's first Jewish city counselor, asking him how he liked it. In a later stream, Patero laughed about that personalized follow-up, saying, that pissed him off, so I had to rub it in. After targeting the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, the group didn't just flyer. They mailed homophobic materials to the homes of several counselors, including Tu Nguyen, the state's first openly non-binary elected official.

And it isn't even just regular city council meetings. Some of the targeted meetings are incredibly boring governmental bodies like the Morristown, New Jersey Board of Zoning Appeals. Oh, wow. When Patera posted a clip of their racist calls into that meeting, a group member posted the board chair's home address in the replies. They've also, and this doesn't even fit the pattern, I think they just got the bug, but they've posted several compilation videos of the group disrupting AA meetings. All right. That's interesting. I think they just got into the idea of making praying phone calls. So they target addiction support groups, often geared towards members of

the lgbtq community so okay all right yeah just doing like homophobic attacks on people who are trying to get sober huh they're just like finding any any meeting they can and just spamming this thing i don't know that they have other hobbies yes this seems like a lot of time between keeping up on zoning board meetings and whatever local AA call-in there is. It seems to be a bit childish and time-consuming. Right. I mean, this is, it takes a lot of time. And Patero is pretty clear about that. You know, he runs these online spaces where he's organizing, he's, you know, making lists of meetings that they should check out.

He's complaining about how, you know, sometimes you have to wait for hours while they're just doing like regular government stuff. You have to just like wait for it to be your turn to yell the N-word. It's time consuming. Do you know what isn't time consuming? Spending your hard-earned cash on the products and services that support this show? That's right. We make it fast, easy, and reliable by listening to these products and services. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast post run high is all about it's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into

their stories their journeys and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together you know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite

has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough.

So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. and Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. okay we are back talking about the goyim defense league the gdl so we were just discussing how they were spending a lot of time disrupting a lot of a lot of meetings with their little call-in campaign right and it's it's tempting to dismiss this behavior as oh it's just trolling right they're

just trolls sure it's like this is so juvenile how bad, oh, it's just trolling, right? They're just trolls. Sure. It's like this is so juvenile. How bad can it be? It's just people calling in. Right. But this has real world consequences. And they know that they revel in the reactions to their behavior. They're fully aware of and celebrate the destruction that it leaves in its wake. When the city of Portland suspended virtual public comment, commenters in the group called it a big effing win.

public comment. Commenters in the group called it a big effing win. When there's other media coverage of cities who have limited or even ended public comment altogether, the headlines are posted triumphantly in the group, often captured only with lol. Comments like the calls will continue until the Jews leave and shut it down for the win and never let them regroup or rest. No comfort given. Litter the replies to posts about city after city ceding ground to this harassment. So it's not just causing little inconveniences. It is actually shutting down city's ability to hold public comment and for the public to actually speak on issues that are affecting them and their city. Right. So there have been meetings that, you know, when this occurs, the meeting itself, that particular meeting just ends.

Everyone just leaves because they can't continue. Or, you know, the meeting does continue, but they stop taking public comment or they change their policies and procedures to limit public comment moving forward. So this is having real effects that are, you know, living on in these cities even after they've moved on. Group members suggest using burner phones and fake number generators to avoid being caught or blocked. Patero has written online that he's been, quote, banned on multiple devices, but I have some tactics to prevent them from stopping me. Patero noted on a recent stream that the ADL's estimate of over 130 disruptions is shortchanging them, insisting they've done at least three times that many,

sometimes hitting dozens of meetings per week. And they're not just doing it, right? It's not just the act of doing that that is the thrill to them. They then cut the clips and then post them online for everyone to enjoy. They're cutting promos and making highlight reels of their favorite moments. There are compilations grouped by genre of hate, right? There's videos combining all the best moments of homophobia, all the best moments of anti-Semitism. There are these promo videos set to that sort of ugly,

electronic, fash wave music that they all love so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The promo videos have titles like this is our meeting now or we're jacking your shit. So these are being shared on like, like BitChu and Odyssey

and Telegram, I'm guessing. Yeah, they're, you know, GDL. They're on every platform thatu and Odyssey and Telegram, I'm guessing? Yeah. You know GDL. They're on every platform that's open to people like them, right? Okay. And following that GDL model, right, they're posting these videos and getting money. They're accepting donations to continue doing this. Then on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, they targeted a planning commission in Crescent

City, California, entitled the video CCDS Goes Kristallnacht on Crescent City. Right. So it's just a joke, right? They're not really doing Kristallnacht, but they're using the language of this sort of genocidal violence. And it's like monetized. They're like making money off of it they are making making those donos as they say it after a recent adl article about the operation patero posted fuck the adl we'll give those caselers something to kvetch about in 2024 and his wife hayley reposted that adding you think he's playing he lives for this. They don't work. They really do live for this. It does sound like this is like the most important

thing happening in their life, which is, one, quite sad. That also shows that they have a lot of time to dedicate to pulling off stuff like this. Time that they should be dedicating to parenting, honestly. Well, I don't know if you want them around their kids. Honestly, the more time they spend away from their children is probably better.

God damn. During a zoo bombing in October, an official in Sausalito, California, voiced support for just cutting off the calls over objections from other members of council that this could get them sued, saying he would, quote, take the lawsuit if these people can even get organized enough to sue us. would, quote, take the lawsuit if these people can even get organized enough to sue us. And while the group has made no progress on actually filing any legal action there or anywhere else, they haven't forgotten it. Just last week, the group expressed an interest in seeking some kind of retribution for that comment, saying they may need a little visit. And the group is raising money to start traveling to meetings in person. A fundraiser on the platform of choice for right-wing extremists,

GiveSendGo, has already raised $1,000 in donations to fund travel and lodging for the group members to travel to city council meetings for in-person disruptions. On their weekly live streams, viewers can donate directly in the stream. On the stream, Patero thanks viewers for donations, often in the amount of $14.88. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh yeah, they live for the memes. Reminding them that every donation goes directly towards funding their IRL activism,

getting them offline and into real life, traveling around the country to engage in racial harassment in person. He also says the donations fund a side project called Postcard Waffen, the Nazi- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait say that say that one more time just a little slower postcard waffen they love to add postcard waffen they love to add waffen to things right that's just the german word for weapon yes this is weaponized mailings and this is the nickname they've given to the work of mailing hateful materials directly

to the homes of the elected officials who preside over the meetings they disrupt. This seems like a sort of targeted harassment kind of campaign. Sure. Targeted harassment, intimidation. There's some with the other like mentions, you know, it's like veiled threats. These types of neo-Nazis are not averse to actually doing violence on people. So yeah, there's like an unpleasant threat implied with this sort of rhetoric and activity. And because of the decentralized nature of the GDL, and I think this is something we can talk about

in a later episode about kind of what they're up to these days, is they don't have communication with or control over all of the people who are consuming this content. So they may not plan to follow up with these people in a manner that would be criminal, but they're encouraging people to think that that's an option and that has ramifications. Sure. So this isn't just annoying prank calls. It's an organized effort to ruin local democracy, to make meetings unproductive and unbearable, to intimidate

and humiliate local government employees and elected officials, to make your city council chambers an intimidating and uncomfortable place for you, closing off that avenue for you to address and engage with your local government, and to take away options for actually engaging with local government by forcing cities to limit public comment. And we can't cede that ground to them. Oh, man, that is, I mean, I know there's just been so many instances with city council meetings and various other kind of these big public forums, especially school board meetings where like they are they are like discussing extremely important stuff around like trans people and forming policies that that that impact people. And I know a lot of people do actually end up going out to these and talking about their experiences and why proposed laws or ordinances would be so harmful. And just removing that option,

whether or not you believe in the electoral process TM, removing that option from people to actually speak on their own experiences does have real consequences. Even if you're not a big believer in it being a meaningful political action to engage with your local government. I think we can all agree that it's not OK for Nazis to make it unsafe for anyone to do that. Yeah. You know who won't cede ground to the Nazis trying to take over your local school board?

The products and services that support this podcast? I hope so. It depends. Capitalism is quite strong, but we'll see how this develops. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the

pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,

and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology.

I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions sponsored by Gilead now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Thursday. Okay, we are back. So this is kind of depressing. Molly, what is to be done? What is to be done, Garrison? Yes. So unfortunately, a lot of the obvious solutions here are bad ones, right? The response that a lot of cities have had is that, well, they're just going to eliminate

remote public comment altogether. You just can't participate remotely anymore. Which hurts people who are like disabled, hurts people who have tough things with scheduling, parents, people who work at certain hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like most people can't spend six hours sitting at City Hall on a Monday night. Most people can't. And so having remote participation was really, it opened up local democracy to people with all kinds of life situations, right? And that's what happened here in my own city of Charlottesville.

CCDS targeted us last October. And in response, the mayor eliminated remote participation in all meetings. We didn't get to revisit that. That's just how it works now. So they've moved on. But now my entire city of over 50,000 people lives with the consequences of that action. And we're left with a less accessible local democracy. They'd rather prevent anyone from calling in than have to deal with deciding whether they can do anything about it when someone abuses that process.

And there's some really basic steps that cities can take right off the bat, like without even overthinking it or getting into the legal complications of the First Amendment. Cities like Linwood, Washington responded to their CCDS Zoom bombing by adding a few basic layers of security to their virtual meetings, like requiring commenters to sign up the day before. So this group is organized in a private telegram chat. And so like one person gets into a meeting and just drops the link into the chat. And so everyone just clicks that link. But if you make it so everyone has to have a unique sign in link that they signed up for with a real email address the day prior, that makes a little bit harder to coordinate a dog pile. Sure. You know, it isn't hard to make a fake or temporary email address

to sign up to get the link, but if sometimes just adding one extra step is discouraging enough that they'll pick somebody else this week. But this behavior is escalating, right? And making it a little bit harder to get into the Zoom isn't going to solve the problem. It's going to keep happening, and you can only make a public meeting so secure without actually locking out the public. Elected officials are, understandably, concerned about the legal ramifications of dealing with these kinds of calls. With some exceptions, they can't prevent someone from speaking based only on the content of the speech. I actually found a 2006 letter, I guess in 2006, the LA City Council asked their

city attorney, I don't know, I need to do a little research on what was going on in 2006 in L.A., but the L.A. City Council asked the city attorney, can we make a rule that people can't say racial slurs in here? Which seems like an OK rule. Like, I don't know. The answer was no. Legally, you can't limit speech based on its content, right? Because these are public forums put on by the government. I mean, it's what's called a designated public forum, but we don't, they can't limit speech based on its content, right? But what they can do is have rules of decorum. Their city attorney pulled some language directly from a Ninth Circuit court opinion that's in California. So it's a federal court of appeals that covers that part of California. White versus city of Norwalk. And that decision upheld a city ordinance that authorized the legislative body to remove individuals who uttered, quote, personal, impertinent, slanderous or profane remarks if the remarks disrupted, disturbed or otherwise impeded the conduct of the meeting. So it's not just that your remarks were nasty, it's that your

behavior was disruptive. The way that these remarks were delivered was interfering with the conduct of the meeting. So the meeting is disrupted because counsel is prevented from accomplishing its business in a reasonably efficient manner. The court further wrote, indeed, such conduct may interfere with the rights of other speakers. And that's what's happening here, right? That these disruptions are not only not your right, you don't have a right to disrupt the meeting, but that behavior also fundamentally infringes on everyone else's rights to have the meeting. It keeps the meeting from being conducted and it's interfering with the conduct of the government's business. So if they open a public forum, anyone can speak in the public forum and you can't cut them off

because of the content of their speech. But that doesn't mean there's no legal way to put limits on public comment. If the rule is content neutral and serves a legitimate government interest, the government can impose some restrictions on your speech, right? Like requiring a permit for a parade is a limit on speech or saying you can't yell in a courtroom is a limit on your speech, but it's not a violation of your First Amendment rights to say you can't disrupt a trial. But more importantly, and the risk of getting too boring, right, like a meeting is not a sidewalk. There is some, this is not just any public place where you're speaking. This is a meeting where business is being conducted. There's a legitimate and compelling government interest in the ability to conduct the meeting. And so the rules that they can make

in this space can vary state by state. Some states do or don't allow you to limit speakers to residents, or you can or can't limit the topics that are germane. So it's going to vary a little bit, but the courts have repeatedly upheld, not just in the Norwalk case, the ability of a council to adopt a content neutral rule and use that rule to cut off or remove speakers who are disruptive. And honestly, I have to say, I think any city attorney worth his salt knows this. This is day one stuff. If your whole job, well, not your whole job, but your job on Monday nights, whenever the meeting is, is to provide legal advice to a city council on how they're conducting their business. You know this because disruptive behavior during a meeting isn't some brand new phenomenon. But it's kind of remarkable.

And I watched like 100 clips of this happening. Right. And over and over and over again, you see these city attorneys saying, like, oh, we're powerless here. We're powerless here. We don't want to get sued. There's nothing we can do. And that's not true. And they know that. Yeah. I mean, I've seen people get escorted out of chambers for being disruptive in city council meetings before. Like I think it happens relatively frequently. It's not like an uncommon brand new occurrence. Right. I mean, I've seen that discretion applied appropriately and fascistically, right? Absolutely.

It happens. But over and over and over again in these situations, you see these city attorneys, the city council saying, like, I guess we just have to let them do it. A commenter in one of the Sacramento meetings from last summer actually pointed out that, you know, she was saying to her city council, you had no hesitation removing black members of the public from this room when they were angry that your cops murdered stefan clark so why are you so nervous about infringing on the free speech rights of literal nazis like someone who's just in here screaming the n-word why is that worthy of more breathing room and something you know as a resident of the city of charlottesville who watches our local government pretty carefully, something we found over and over again here is that if fear of litigation is your starting point for making decisions on how to govern, you're going to make cowardly, dangerous, stupid decisions every time. And you're probably going

to get sued anyway. So make the choice to protect people. Get good legal advice. Sure, consult with your city attorney, consult the case law. Don't be reckless. But if you're faced with the opportunity to make a decision that protects people, a decision that serves the public good, a decision that aligns with the values you claim to hold, but might result in someone filing a lawsuit against you that they're not going to win anyway, don't err on the side of shielding yourself from nuisance litigation at the expense of the public. Don't just look at us and shrug. Your hands are not tied here. And if you're not comfortable making that kind of decision, get off the dais. I mean, I'm not a city attorney, but that would be my advice, right? And so again, I think the bottom line here is that we can't cede this ground. The end result here can't be, well, local government just isn't a place where we can safely and meaningfully engage with elected officials on the issues that matter. Right. That that can't be the answer here. Don't wait until this is happening where you live to react to this. Right. Like it could happen here. It is happening in a lot of places.

It could happen here. It is happening in a lot of places. If you're inclined to do so, show up, engage, speak your mind on local issues. Don't wait for your city hall to become a battleground to show up to counter right-wing influence. Don't just react to reactionaries. Stake out that ground now. That's our space. Make it clear that people are engaged and that they insist on their right to engage so that your city council can't say, well, people aren't really making public comments anyway. We just won't have it. And let me make sure that they know that you will not accept the death of local democracy at the hands of some weaselly paradox of tolerance bullshit about letting Nazis dominate our spaces. I know there's been other people who've been like talking about and pointing out these instances of GDL, Zoom bombing and shutting down these meetings. But there certainly has been less discussion of this being a deliberate tactic that GDL is doing specifically to actually like shut down the democratic process. Like it has been so focused

on just like the trolling and the spreading of any semitic rhetoric which are big problems but i think there's been a little bit less of a focus on actually looking at this as a deliberate tactic being employed to remove people's ability to engage democratically in the city or school board or wherever they live and i think viewing it as a deliberate tactic like that, like you've been talking about, both gets a better look at how these neo-Nazis are trying to organize,

but also it's a more holistic approach towards why this is happening. And it can allow you to look at this as more of a tactical decision, less than just kind of random trolling slurs XD, which it can be kind of reduced to, which is at the very least an incomplete way of looking at this phenomenon, if not just kind of wholly inaccurate. I mean, I don't want to give them too much credit, right? Like they didn't have a brainstorming session where they were thinking

about ways to contribute to the death of democracy. I think this is just sort of a phenomenon that occurred as a result of their actions that they then saw and appreciated, right? So it's not that they don't understand it, but I don't think they intended it from the outset. But at this point, it's hard to deny that that is something they're doing on purpose. And it's just been an interesting trend with the GDL specifically, especially considering the legislation trying to crack down on political flyering, which we might we might talk about at a later date. But yeah, it's been interesting watching the GDLs as political force that, yes, is like annoying and bad in the rhetoric they spread.

But also they've had this interesting ability to just either affect legislation or like shut down people's ability to engage with politics in their local area in a few notable ways. So it's important to sort of sit for a minute before you react to people like this, right? Like you were talking about that legislation that's going to end up infringing on a lot of people's political speech, right? Like you can't just react to the troll. You have to sort of think about the context in which this is occurring and make a reasonable choice about how to react so you don't end up giving them what they want, basically, right?

Because they love the attention. They love the attention. Every time they do this, it ends up on the local news. People are talking about it. People are repeating their message. And you don't need to give them that. Well, thank you, Molly, for putting this together. This has been very enlightening, if slightly upsetting, but that is kind of

the entire bit we do here, I suppose. Yeah, that's sort of the show, huh? Where can people find your work online? You can find me on Twitter. I will never call it X, um, socialist dog mom. And in keeping with the spirit of this episode, um, most of what I use my Twitter account for is live tweeting my local city government meetings. I've been doing that for God, seven years now. So this is, this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart. I love engaging with municipal government. near and dear to my heart. I love engaging with municipal government. Fantastic. Yeah, I've attended more city council meetings the last year than I have ever before in my life. And it has certainly been an experience. A lot of wacky, wacky and unusual things happen in city council

meetings. Thank you, Garrison, so much for joining me today. And hopefully we can bring the listeners something even worse someday soon. Yeah, yeah. Stay tuned for more breaking Goyim Defense League news. Fucking dark. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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