Anyone who has attended a council meeting would know full well why the citizen is being ignored. Every self-righteous nutcase in a town full of self-righteous nutcases shows up to speak what's left of their mind.

Yes a very unfortunate visual. I am personally ignoring my children as I text this comment, as are gainfully employed people railing about City Council on company time in online forums around Seattle. Humans, all of us.

Lester Black, tool of the man

Sarghorn dear, if you think that “the vast majority” of people commenting at council meetings are “SJW warriors”, you have gotten all your information about council meetings from television news, AM talk radio, and the Seattle Times comment sections. It’s mostly NIMBY’s, conspiracy theorists, anti-government cranks, and the mentally ill.

@7: What the difference between a NIMBY and a Seattle citizen expressing their grievances?

It helps to go back and review the entirety of the public comment session at the March 11, 2019 council meeting, particularly what occurred immediately before Mr. Schwartz (who is a regular - and somewhat notorious - commentator at council meetings) began speaking, because it changes the perspective somewhat.

The first speaker, Alex Zimmerman, is also a well-known attendee and has been ejected on numerous occasions for his disruptive and disrespectful behavior. In this particular instance he uses the entirety of his 2 minutes to rant about why the Director of Seattle City Light, a position appointed by the council, does not "report directly to the people", which he attempts to rationalize because, "Seattle is #1 city in America" - whatever that's supposed to mean - and rounds off his time by calling all the members of the council "criminals", and is then again ejected - for the umpteenth time - from the meeting. So, that's speaker #1.

Speaker 2, identified as Michael Fuller, picks right up where Mr. Zimmerman left off, by making accusations of organized, criminal behavior, which then immediately segues into a pinball game of references to: Richard Nixon, something about the "18 U.S. Code", something-something war crimes, 9/11, undocumented aliens, homeless veterans, random citations of the Revised Code of Washington - literally a melange of incoherent, unconnected statements that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, before he apparently runs out of steam and meanders away from the microphone.

Then, we get to Mr. Schwartz - who again, is a frequenter at these meetings - and who begins his allotted 2 minutes by passively-aggressively berating the council members present for "not paying attention to him" - while he's on a live-mic, with a camera recording his every word and gesture; and, based on the images, with at least 2 of the 7 members present looking directly at him when he steps forward, and at least 2 more looking at him as he gets into his complaint. He continues in this manner for a full 30 seconds - at which point they're all looking at him, and despite admonitions from Council Member Juarez who was chairing the meeting to get to the topic of his comment - and then complains that he only gets 2 minutes to speak (most of which he's already squandered at this point), whereas the previous week the Council allowed U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal an earth-shattering 4 minutes to speak in support of the Medicare For All Initiative that the Council subsequently endorsed. So, he literally spent the entirety of his allotted time whining that nobody was listening to him - never actually getting to whatever it was he originally intended to say (assuming it was anything other than "look at me!") - while they're all watching and listening to his every word.

Oh, right - and then he runs to Dori Monson to get even MORE air time to complain that nobody ever wants to listen to anything he has to say!

Just for shits and giggles - go take a look at any few random council meetings from the past several years, and view the public comments sections. It will clearly and unequivocally support Mrs. Vel-DuRay's assertion: these people are, for the most part, NOT SJW warriors, but preponderantly the sort of neighborhood nut-cases you wouldn't normally give the time of day to if you ran into them at the mail box.

http://www.seattlechannel.org/FullCouncil/?videoid=x102848

Yes, government is messy and cringing at times. Nevertheless, the council needs to hear what citizens need to say take these characters with a grain of salt and move on.

Alex Tsimerman is actually quite a charming fellow when he's not putting it on for the council. He used to have a younger companion who resembled a a low-rent version of Dominic Holden, but I haven't seen him in quite awhile.

My favorite council public speaker moment was the time some guy mistook me for Jorge Carrasco.

@10:

Which is EXACTLY what the Council was doing - which you would have seen if you'd taken the time to view the video. But, of course RWNJ's, like Monson, who enable these time-wasters don't give two shits about the quite obvious fact these people can't string more than a handful of words together without devolving into complete and utter nonsense; they simply like to hold them up as examples of how "out-of-touch librul gubbamint officials refuse to listen to the voice of the people!", even when - as is frequently the case - they themselves wouldn't listen to their barely-articulate ravings, except to the extent they can use them to further their own ideological agenda.

@12: Yes, the council endures silliness of various political agendas. My only point is that for very x crackpots, there are y legitimate grievances by citizens.

The characterization that they're all a bunch of yahoos is disingenuous.

comte is spot on this time

Every large City Council hearing involves at least one commenter who goes into a rant about having a time limit imposed and uses up all the time. Why is this any different?

@11 Laughing here. A poor man’s Dominic Holden.

Hahaha, what a tool. Watch the video lib boy.

@9 yassss. Go to one (1) physical Council meeting and I dare you to say otherwise.

Human beings do not use speech to communicate ideas. Human beings use speech to communicate emotions.

The video was of course taken out of context. I’ve been to City Council meetings in Tacoma where a guy named Robert the Travelller periodically shows up to give public comment, and he’s kinda fucking nuts. After one of his harangues, anyone will feel like staring into their phone unless they can just get out of there. If this guy’s speech came after a Seattle version of Robert the Traveller, yeah, you know, the Councillors were probably a little mentally numb by that point.

We also don’t get to see the phone screens the Cluncilors are looking at. They could very well have been communicating with constituents or staffers about important stuff.

However, because speech is used to communicate emotions, it doesn’t really matter. For democracy to function properly, people have to hold their leaders in contempt. It’s that contempt that allows us to critically examine their leadership and replace them if they fail to perform. This means we’re always looking for their faults, and they have to live as if the camera was always recording, the mic is always on, and everything from body language to tone of voice is observed by the public. Especially when on official business. If you don’t like the Sword of Damocles, get off the throne.

Is the video unfair? Yeah. Does it matter? Nope. What to do next? If your on the Council, edit your speech and body language to something less likely to incur public outrage before the next meeting. That’s the job. It sucks, but it’s still the job even though it sucks.

Seriously, no one cares about this. Especially now with districts. If people vote, and they like their council member they will vote for their council member, and if they don't hate the citywide candidates, they will vote for the citywide candidates.