The Ojai Metropolis Council was listening to public feedback on a secular short-term rental ordinance when a scream pierced the air.
Cyrus Mayer burst into the room, sporting a keffiyeh head scarf and a white scarf soaked with fake blood.
“Hellllp!” shouted Mayer, a pro-Palestinian activist, punctuating his phrases with agonized screams. “Stop-fire! Stop-fire!”
Mayer collapsed onto the ground. He writhed. Then he went quiet, pretending to be useless.
“Why doesn’t anyone care? Why received’t individuals assist?” yelled a fellow protester within the crowd.
“Oh, Jesus,” muttered resident Larry Steingold, aggravated as he stepped away from the lectern the place he had been asking for a crackdown on trip leases.
Metropolis Council members shuffled out of the room — their assembly, as soon as once more, halted by protest.
Ojai, inhabitants 7,500, is half a world away from the Gaza Strip. However the eclectic vacationer city — which has declared itself an “worldwide metropolis of peace” and a “nuclear-free zone” — has been rocked in current weeks by more and more brazen protests over the brutal battle between Israel and Hamas.
This month, pro-Palestinian activists have focused the historic Ojai Valley Inn as a result of it is owned by the billionaire Crown household of Chicago, who’re main shareholders of the army contractor Normal Dynamics. Protesters stated they oppose U.S.-made weapons being utilized by Israel.
On Feb. 11, somebody coated an indication for the famed resort — a celeb hang-out as soon as frequented by Clark Gable, Walt Disney, Ronald and Nancy Reagan — with blood-red paint. An investigation is ongoing, stated Ojai Police Chief Trina Newman.
The earlier two days, police received a number of calls about protesters making an attempt to interrupt onto the property and into a non-public occasion. When officers confirmed up Feb. 10, they noticed 15 to twenty protesters outdoors the grounds “and saved the peace,” making no arrests, Newman stated.
A spokesperson for the inn couldn’t be reached for remark.
Shutting down the Feb. 13 Metropolis Council assembly with the “die-in” protest is the type of disruption that, Mayer informed the Occasions, he and different activists plan to proceed till council members go a decision calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Mayer, an Ojai resident who works as a landscaper, stated he was overwhelmed by grief over Palestinians’ struggling and that his screams had been “not only a theater piece.”
“What different place do we’ve got to show on this so-called democracy, the place our state and federal representatives have failed us, however our most native establishments?” requested Mayer, who stated he additionally attended one of many protests outdoors the Ojai Valley Inn.
Emotionally charged demonstrations over the battle in Gaza have taken over public conferences throughout California — from the state Capitol in Sacramento, the place cease-fire activists shut down the Meeting final month; to the Central Valley metropolis of Madera, which handed a ceasefire decision on Valentine’s Day; to Berkeley, the place the hire stabilization board handed a cease-fire decision and the Metropolis Council has been assembly in a personal convention room to keep away from shouting protesters.
In tiny Ojai, biweekly Metropolis Council conferences often lasted greater than 5 hours even earlier than scores of individuals started exhibiting as much as plead for a cease-fire.
“We’ve got rather a lot on our plate and solely a sure variety of hours within the day, and so my feeling is that we have to concentrate on points in our jurisdiction,” Mayor Betsy Stix stated in an interview.
She famous {that a} dialogue about updating the town’s basic plan was delayed after the die-in simply after 9 p.m. halted the council assembly for half an hour.
In December, the Metropolis Council devoted a complete particular assembly to a cease-fire decision. The council agreed to offer a younger girl who stated she was the daughter of Palestinian refugees greater than her allotted talking time — a choice met by indignant shouts from the viewers and attendees getting out of their seats to argue with each other .
Demonstrator Cyrus Mayer is dragged from an Ojai Metropolis Council assembly on Feb. 13.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Occasions)
The assembly was shut down. The decision was dropped. It has not been introduced again for dialogue.
Stix opened the Feb. 13 assembly by main the gang in taking a deep breath, saying she hoped everybody “practices self-control” — and warning that the police chief would escort disruptors from the room.
“Please restrict your feedback to gadgets which might be the town’s enterprise,” Stix stated, including that the council and metropolis employees ought to concentrate on native points similar to streets, sidewalks, public security and land use, regardless of the perils dealing with the world.
Speaker after speaker decried the battle and pleaded for a cease-fire decision.
Well being authorities in Gaza say that greater than 27,000 individuals — largely girls and kids — have been killed there since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants, in a shock assault, killed no less than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped round 250 hostages, in response to the Israeli authorities.
Within the Ojai Metropolis Council chambers, one speaker held her cellphone as much as the microphone, taking part in the recorded screams of a frightened youngster pleading for assist as gunfire blasted close by.
“You sit right here and do nothing, caring extra about your picture than human life. Are you human beings? When you’ve got any humanity in you, you’ll stand on the fitting facet of historical past and do the naked minimal by passing a cease-fire decision in Ojai, metropolis of peace,” a younger girl who stated she attended a neighborhood highschool informed the council.
Steingold, 72, stated he would have most well-liked to speak about roads, budgets and different metropolis points and that he was pissed off with the pro-Palestinian activists.
“There’s no person right here crying for Somalia or whining for the Uyghurs or beating their chest for Mali or Nigeria or any of the opposite conflicts on the planet,” Steingold stated from the lectern.
When Steingold returned an hour later to speak about short-term leases, Mayer burst in.
Nuri Ronaghy, 83, her voice cracking, learn dozens of names and ages of useless Palestinian kids whereas weeping activists positioned flowers by Mayer’s susceptible physique.
“You have got crossed the road! This can be a public assembly!” stated one pissed off girl standing within the room’s entryway. A protester tried, unsuccessfully, to close the door and preserve her out.
Paramedics are inclined to Cyrus Mayer, who was dragged out of an Ojai Metropolis Council assembly after a “die-in” protest of the battle in Gaza.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Occasions)
After a number of minutes, Newman stopped Ronaghy from studying the names and informed the protesters they might not preserve interrupting the assembly.
“Do you might have a toddler?” Ronaghy repeatedly requested the chief.
Newman then stood over Mayer and — as a result of it is a tiny city the place everybody is aware of nearly everybody — addressed him by first title.
“Cyrus, what do you need to do?” she requested after he had been on the bottom for about half an hour. “Do we have to drag you out of right here?”
He remained immobile. Two officers hauled him outdoors. As paramedics checked on him, he screamed: “Stop-fire! Stop-fire! Stop-fire!”
