Guest Opinion | Jane Ward: Don’t Suppress Our Voices

If you are interested in the Pasadena City Council and want to make a public comment, good luck navigating the City’s many recent attempts to stifle public engagement.  First, several months ago, the Council cut the time allotted for each speaker in half, from three minutes to 90 seconds. Then, in late February, they began to hold a series of special meetings in lieu of regular meetings, which allows the council to eliminate open public comment and restrict the community’s input to items on the Council’s predetermined agenda.

Most recently, Mayor Victor Gordo announced that, beginning in April 2022, public comment will be moved to the end of every council meeting. This earned the objection of Councilmember John Kennedy, who accurately pointed out that this would suppress public engagement by requiring residents—including parents, the elderly, and so forth— to wait up to five or more hours to provide their 90-second comment to the City Council.

In typical fashion, Mayor Gordo dismissed this concern, adding the bizarre claim that allowing a mere twenty minutes of general public comment at the beginning of the meetings had somehow prevented residents from speaking to agenda items later in the meeting.

For over a year now, dozens of residents have spoken during public comment about the ongoing problem of police violence against Black residents in Northwest Pasadena.

Suppressing these voices is egregious and unconscionable.

We have been given no more than 20 minutes during each meeting to enumerate the many failures of the City Manager, the Pasadena Police Chief, and the Councilmembers to create systems of accountability and justice for the families whose loved ones have been killed by Pasadena police. Commenters demanding police accountability include these families themselves, local clergy members, residents of Northwest Pasadena, racial justice organizers.

In response, Mayor Gordo has been visibly irritated by calls for racial justice, referring to the public as “a group of small but vocal outsiders,” asking for commenters to “stop making race-based comments,” and accusing commenters of not caring about the “real” residents of Pasadena.  His jaw-dropping comments have made patently clear the reason behind the changes to the City’s public comment procedures: Mayor Gordo is tired of hearing community members talk about the fact that Black Lives Matter.  And whether or not you care about Black lives, this suppression of community voices affects everyone in Pasadena who wants to access to the city leaders elected to serve us.

Jane Ward is a professor at UC Riverside, an Altadena resident, and the co-founder of Showing Up for Racial Justice – Altadena/Pasadena.