Irvine City Council members will be the second group of city officials in OC to consider an ordinance aimed at curtailing protests outside of homes after officials in Santa Ana deadlocked on a similar ordinance last week.
[Read: Santa Ana Deadlocks on Curbing Protests in Front of Homes]
The proposed ordinances come after a series of protests kicked off outside the Santa Ana home of Congressman Lou Correa this year in effort to get him to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Now, Irvine Councilwoman Kathleen Treseder is proposing a similar ordinance that Santa Ana officials deadlocked over.
Irvine City Council members are expected to consider the proposal at their 4 p.m. meeting Tuesday.
“Targeted picketing not only harasses and intimidates occupants of a targeted home (and other homes in close proximity to the targeted residence) but is intrusive upon those individuals’ right to privacy in their home. Other municipalities have faced this issue,” reads a memo from Treseder.
Treseder did not respond to a request for comment.
At least one of Treseder’s colleagues has an issue with the proposal.
In a Wednesday phone interview, Mayor Farrah Khan said the ordinance is an attempt to silence residents.
“This is not necessary and I am not sure where it’s coming from,” Khan said. “Ordinances like these are very self serving to politicians that do not want to hear from a select group of the public.”
“This is just another way to close that door.”
Khan said while Irvine hasn’t recently experienced protests in front of homes like Santa Ana has, the demonstrations are still a way for constituents to let elected officials know an issue matters to them when they’re not being heard.
In a Thursday phone interview, Councilwoman Tammy Kim said she’s still contemplating the proposed law, adding people have a right to express themselves, but residents also have a right to privacy in their homes.
She also said the proposed law has nothing to do with silencing a certain group of people in the city.
“This is a bigger policy matter,” she said, adding the protests outside Correa’s home are not a factor to her. “It is absolutely not to suppress any pro-Palestinian voices.”
Kim pointed to previous protests outside former Mayor Christina Shea’s house as well as the home of former County health officer Nichole Quick that did not have to do with Israel and Palestine.
The initial ordinance attached to Treseder’s memo was a copy of the one considered in Santa Ana last week and references the protests outside Correa’s home, but not the protests outside Shea or Quick’s home.
A revised ordinance doesn’t mention the protests at Correa’s house.
Councilman Larry Agran and Mike Carroll did not respond to requests for comment.
Will Irvine Ban Protests at Homes?
If approved, the ordinance would implement a 300-foot buffer zone between targeted residential protests and the resident’s property line.
The First Amendment Coalition previously told the Voice of OC that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld ordinances like this in the past and Santa Ana City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said last week that cities like El Monte, Riverside and San Diego have a similar law.
But it’s a proposal that pro-Palestinian activists and various groups like Chispa, the Harbor Institute, VietRISE and the American Civil Liberties Union have also lambasted as violating First Amendment rights and trying to stifle and silence pro-Palestinan protests.
Proponents, however, argue that the proposed law would ensure peace at people’s homes and stop noise disruptions from inconveniencing residents who have nothing to do with the demonstrations.
In a March 19 letter, Correa encouraged Santa Ana officials to pass the proposal and wrote that the protests were impacting his family and neighbors.
“While demonstrators claim to be civil and peaceful, the reality is much different. Many of my neighbors have shared with me their anger and distress because of these demonstrations,” he wrote.
But protestors say they have been peaceful and only started to demonstrate outside Correa’s home after emailing, calling and protesting outside of his office.
Wessal Khader, an Irvine resident and Palestinian American who has shown up to most of the protests at Correa’s house, questioned the legality behind ordinances like the one that was proposed in Santa Ana and is expected to be considered in her city.
“I don’t know how they’re legally allowed to propose such a ridiculous bill to infringe upon our actual freedom, and our rights to freedom of speech and our right to protest,” Khader said.
“We haven’t broken any laws. We stay on the sidewalk. We’ve done all the other avenues in order to get Lou to speak with us, which he’s denied. So we’re just using the exact – to the book – letter of the law rights that we’re entitled to.”
Weasel said while there are weekly protests in Irvine that she attends on street corners, there haven’t been any outside of a home.
Randa Sweiss, a Palestinian Christian nurse in OC who has also been active at protests outside Correa’s home and whom 15 members of her family were killed in Gaza, said in a phone interview the ordinance is an effort to silence Palestinians.
“This is what I was worried about with it coming up in Santa Ana that other cities would try to follow suit just to silence us. I think the fact that Irivne is trying to pass this when we haven’t even stepped a foot in front of anyone’s home there is demoralizing and unnecessary,” Sweiss said.
Elected Officials Face Pressure to Weigh in on Israel & Palestine
Both cities, in recent months, have become the center of Orange County’s debate on the violence in Palestine and Israel as a coalition of activists since November called on both city councils to adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire.
This month, Santa Ana officials became the first in OC to do so after pressure from residents.
[Read: Santa Ana Calls For Bilateral Ceasefire in Palestine and Israel]
In Irvine, a majority of city council members – including Treseder – pushed back on that pressure.
They instead argued that they should focus on local issues and in the past have walked out when people have made public comments on Israel and Palestine.
[Read: Irvine Officials Won’t Formally Weigh in on Palestine and Israel]
Khan and Agran have publicly called for a ceasefire and at the March 12 meeting stayed after their colleagues adjourned the meeting to listen to what people had to say on the matter.
Now, Treseder is pushing to prevent that from happening again by barring officials from listening to public comments after a city council meeting has been adjourned.
“The decision of the City Council to end the meeting was usurped – multiple City staff members and additional City resources were deployed to conduct and manage what was fundamentally an unsanctioned City Council meeting,” Treseder wrote in a memo.
Khan denied using the city resources and said officials can meet with residents anywhere.
Kim said the purpose of the item was to clarify the use of city resources and she is bringing forward a similar clarification item in regards to Tech Week.
Even with the pushback, some say the ordinance will not deter their efforts.
Khader said the ordinance on targeted residential protests will not stop people from putting pressure on elected officials like Correa to call for a ceasefire.
“We will not be silenced,” she said. “If they say 300 feet we’ll be right there at 301 with louder speaker phones.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.