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When U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo announced her retirement in November, we knew the race to take over her seat, which she’s held for three decades, was going to be a critical issue to cover for our readers. Helping our communities understand their choices when they go to the ballot box is central to our mission as a news organization, so we decided we had to host a candidate forum.
With the onset of the pandemic nearly four years ago, these kinds of events moved online. We felt that it was time to return to a normal format in front of a live audience. It takes a lot more effort to do this, but we feel strongly that conducting these debates in person is important to the democratic process. The energy is more engaging with a live event, and we believe it does a lot to humanize the relationship between candidate and constituent. It also forces candidates to confront real people, often with passionate concerns, which can cause them to budge off of their talking points and even modify their views based on public opinion.
In the week leading up to the Jan. 31 debate, we learned that a group of protesters wanting a ceasefire in Gaza was targeting our event, which would take place in Palo Alto’s City Council chambers. We conferred with the city of Palo Alto and the police about how we could handle the situation if the protesters disrupted our forum. The police were clear that they were not going to get involved with people exercising their freedom of speech and would only step in if there was a physical threat to personal safety.
We decided we would still move forward with the live event and put in place escalating steps to deal with the protesters, starting with an explanation that any disruptors would be asked to leave, including directly addressing unruly individuals and leading up to terminating the event early. However, in retrospect, we were unprepared for the scale of the disruption caused by these protesters, and our techniques to quiet them proved insufficient.
The beginning of the debate went smoothly with excellent engagement by the candidates, answering difficult and important questions about their positions on domestic and foreign issues and their past actions. After 75 minutes, dozens of pro-ceasefire activists began chanting and protesting the proceedings. As we had planned, we took a pause to try to quiet them but they did not settle down easily. Only after communicating repeatedly that the next question for the candidates was about Gaza were we able to proceed. Unfortunately, each response from the candidates was met with obstructionist outbursts and heckling from a few loud and persistent protesters.
It was a very difficult judgment to make at the moment about whether to continue. On the one hand, getting all the candidates on the record for their position on the war in Gaza seemed more salient than ever. Regardless of whether someone was pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel, it seemed important to hear from the candidates on the issue. And once we started hearing from the first candidate, it also seemed important that we treat the candidates fairly and give each an opportunity to address the question.
On the other side, some of the protesters were engaging in antisemitic speech and denying the Oct. 7 attack and the atrocities committed by Hamas. We had created a platform that was hijacked for hateful speech. The only tool we had left in this live event was to end it, which we did after giving each candidate a chance to respond but omitting their closing statements.
In the aftermath, we’ve heard from many who were disappointed with how we handled the lengthy disruption. In particular, we’ve heard from many in the Jewish community who felt blindsided by the protests and seriously shaken at the overt display of antisemitism that exists within our community. We want to sincerely apologize to the community for not shutting down this speech immediately and for the harm that this speech caused. It was abhorrent and should not be tolerated in Palo Alto or anywhere.
Looking to the future, we are still trying to get our bearings for how we might handle live events. We still believe that they are an important part of the democratic process, but we will have to have more tools at our disposal to manage disruptions if we are to continue. We’d still like to hear more from the community about how to strike the right balance between providing a live and public forum but also being able to safeguard those proceedings. Please email publisher@embarcaderomedia.org with your thoughts on how you think we should strike that balance.
A commitment to open, constructive discourse is vital for a healthy democratic process. I appreciate the effort to ensure these community events remain informative and inclusive spaces.
I am probably one of the only people who thought you handled it correctly. The 1st Amendment needs to be respected. Democracy is messy, and people have the right to say hateful things. I’m upset that there were October 7th “truthers” at this event. Perhaps some time should be spent countering their language with obvious facts. I would argue that there needs to be a partner org that hosts a discussion on what went down. In the meantime, I appreciate the media for doing their job and upholding the 1st amendment.
But again, there were 3 candidate forums in a row – I watched 2 of the 3 of them – and this was the only in-person one so I think you provided a valuable service. People are receiving their voter information guides in the mail and they can also go to each candidate’s website – we are not lacking in information here.
You allowed Hamas fans to scream anti-Semitism at a Jewish candidate and shout him down. You stood there pleading with terrorist simps for an hour. “Please quiet in the Chamber!” — like a hundred times. At no time did anyone listen to you. Their goal was to stop the event and have the headline be “Protesters stop Congressional forum, demand end to genocide.” That was their goal, so begging them, which you were eventually reduced to doing, obviously wasn’t going to work. You said you knew it could happen long before the event. You said you knew that having it at a private location with security would work. But inexplicably you didn’t do that. Instead you subjected the entire city to a festival of anti-Semitism. You owe the Jewish community and the candidates (Joby Bernstein in particular), an apology. You should never be trusted to host an event like this again. You don’t deserve another chance to subject us to open racism. You don’t even make endorsements any more, your website is a mess and to me it looks like the Weekly is dead.
As a non-profit, the Weekly is no longer legally allowed to endorse candidates or show any kind of favoritism to any candidate over another. I wonder if this is why they let the protesters disrupt the event, because they were afraid that escorting them out would be seen as supporting one set of politics over another.
On the other hand, if this had been a government or public agency meeting, the police would likely have escorted them out at the first disturbance.
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/the-restriction-of-political-campaign-intervention-by-section-501c3-tax-exempt-organizations
“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.
Certain activities or expenditures may not be prohibited depending on the facts and circumstances. For example, certain voter education activities (including presenting public forums and publishing voter education guides) conducted in a non-partisan manner do not constitute prohibited political campaign activity. In addition, other activities intended to encourage people to participate in the electoral process, such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, would not be prohibited political campaign activity if conducted in a non-partisan manner.”
I thought the Weekly blew it. This article seems to underline that. You knew protestors were likely, you articulated clear rules for the debate, and then utterly failed to enforece them. The Weekly should have had security / ushers there. Once you established the rules, it was up to you to ask people to leave if they violated them, and escort them out the doors. Bringing in the police was not an option and should not have been. As people have stated – we have freedom of speech and shouting didn’t violate the law. But the Weekly as the host, could ask people to leave their event. Taking out the loudest most obnoxuious folks would have set the tone. THe Weekly totally miffed this one.
Well, you’ll get a second chance but if you do another open political debate forum then you will incur lots of bad will from the community and it will be a major setback for your organization and a demonstration of very poor leadership judgement.
While currently a lot of folks are justly upset about what’s happening in Gaza, many of them are not fully acknowledging the atrocities their side created and the fact that the majorities on both sides want the each others land more than peace and have lots of blood on their sides hands.
There will continue to be other things winding up the left and the right with the elections and the MAGA onslaught so if the current issue dies down don’t think others won’t “unexpectedly popup”. We need a community where folks are free from hate speech and discrimination against all races and religions. We need to keep our city government out of national politics and focused on keeping the lights on, roads paved, educating our children and provided a safe place to live and work.
That means the next political forum hosted by the weekly needs to be in private setting with security (I know its more expensive).
We have no definition of “protest”. If it disallows another’s free speech then it is not protest but something far worse. I am no expert in the law, but when one person’s free speech infringes on another’s free speech, we have big problems. The law has to be amended to prevent the closing down of discussion and debate by a protest that is so loud that nothing can be heard, nothing can be discussed and nothing can be gained. To do otherwise, is to let protestors win and encourage even more protest preventing free speech. This is not a fair interpretation of protest and means that “he who shouts loudest, insults most and causes most damage” wins by default. That cannot be allowed to happen.
Protesting against a genocide is not “antisemitic” just because the perpetrators of the genocide happen to be Jewish. Contesting the details of what happened on October 7th is also not anti-semitic just because most of the victims were Jewish. In fact the woman videoed calling loudly that there were no rapes on October 7th is herself Jewish. The Israeli government mobilized their special group trained to deal with the aftermath of attacks but held them back and instead employed a very controversial far right wing “charity” called Zaka that also does this work. Zaka, which was on the verge of insolvency, used this opportunity to raise more than $12 million. They also fabricated stories about beheaded babies (repeated my President Biden before it was debunked), fetussed cut out of pregnant women, a family tortured (repeated by Secretary of State Blinken before being debunked), a baby in a oven and many others. There was no cry of “Islamophobia” as these horrifically dehumanizing and absolutely false stories made their rounds and very little effort to publicize the fact that they were false. It was also learned (via Israeli eyewitnesses) that a number of the horribly burned Israeli bodies were the result of an Israeli tank being ordered to fire into a house where there they knew Israeli hostages were being held. There were also interviews with helicopter pilots who complained that they had no idea who or what to shoot at when they arrived at the festival so they shot at just about anything that moved. (Please check all these facts if you don’t believe them).
Though I think it was unreasonable for protesters to deny that there were murders or rapes, I can well understand why many refuse to believe anything that comes from the Israeli government given the torrent of shocking lies that spewed forth right after the event.
@Noel
You are free not to believe Israeli’s version of events. But the truthfulness of Israel or Hamas is not what this editorial is about. It is about a group of people who, as the editorial states, “highjacked” an event and shouted down participants. Their behavior was unacceptable—whether their claims were true or not.
Well said