With calls for a ceasefire, protesters pressure city councils for U.S. action in Gaza

Read the Full Transcript

• Geoff Bennett:

  As Hamas weighs a new proposal for a temporary truce in Gaza, protesters in the U.S. calling for a cease-fire have disrupted everything from commutes in New York City to a parade in Los Angeles.

  And in cities across the country, groups have now taken their fight to city halls, where in some cases the topic is overtaking other priorities.

  Stephanie Sy reports.

• Stephanie Sy:

  With the Israeli counteroffensive to the October 7 Hamas terror attack, the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank has taken on new urgency to activists like Shereen Nasser, a Cleveland resident with strong ties to Palestine.

• Shereen Nasser, Palestinian Activist:

  We are struggling every day. I wake up every morning and think of my dad, who is currently in the West Bank, and call him and be like, hey, just want to check on you, make sure you're still alive.

  We're watching these horrific stories unfolding of our families back home.

• Stephanie Sy:

  She's channeled her grief into protest, and, lately, those protests have found their way to an unlikely venue, Cleveland's City Hall.

• Shereen Nasser:

  If you see my humanity, then maybe the genocide of people that look like me, the family members of 25,000 Palestinians in the greater Cleveland area will be worthy of this city's empathy.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Since October, the Cleveland City Council's weekly public comment period, usually a forum to vent about local issues, has been dominated by talk of a war on the other side of the world, says Council President Blaine Griffin.

• Blaine Griffin, President, Cleveland City Council:

  I would say approximately nine out of ten commentators almost every week for the last four to six weeks have been people that speak on that conflict.

• Stephanie Sy:

  These citizens are almost all calling for the same thing.

• Man:

  Cleveland City Council can, should and must pass a resolution calling for a cease-fire.

• Woman:

  Join with other brave leaders and calls for a cease-fire.

• Man:

  Call for a cease-fire.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Over a dozen City Councils in cities across the country have passed cease-fire resolutions, which range from condemnation of both sides of the war to calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.

  Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, says it's all part of a growing trend.

  Daniel Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania: We're seeing what political scientists term the nationalization of American politics, so, increasingly, City Council members, school board members and other local officials, whose training and whose experience is very much focused on their local communities, being forced oftentimes to weigh in on hot-button national issues on which they don't have a lot of experience.

• Blaine Griffin:

  The topic is cease-fire and Gaza.

  I can't speak for all of my colleagues, but most of us never signed up to be Henry Kissinger.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Griffin says the protests are interfering with other city priorities.

• Blaine Griffin:

  Just keep reading — first reading emergency resolutions. Let's keep moving.

  I have a bank that is possibly going to be leaving the community. There's community members that want to come down and petition the government for that. There's people that want to talk about very critical issues. And I think the unfortunate part is that people have been drowned out and don't feel welcome in City Hall.

• Stephanie Sy:

  One of those who hasn't felt welcomed lately is Marc Ashed of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland. Watch as he speaks. Two rows of activists walk out.

  Marc Ashed, Jewish Federation of Cleveland: Twenty hundred and twenty woke up not knowing that they would be kidnapped, snatched from their homes and held hostage in Gaza by terrorists.

  The feeling of hostility in that room was very palpable.

  For 16 days, there's no…

  (Crosstalk)

• Man:

  Please shut the doors, please.

• Marc Ashed:

  There's no justification.

• Man:

  One second.

• Marc Ashed:

  We're seeing the language turn to anti-Jewish language, not just language about the state of Israel or Israelis.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Because of the tenor of the crowd, Ashed says he no longer encourages his community to attend Cleveland City Council meetings. But his organization wrote a letter to the council against the cease-fire resolution.

• Marc Ashed:

  We all want to see a cease-fire, but we want to see a cease-fire that leads to peace, and any cease-fire that does not release the hostages and does not remove Hamas from power will only bring us back to this point in the future.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Ashed's opinion aligns with the Biden administration's policy.

• Woman:

  The murder of 23,000 Palestinians still hasn't illuminated you all so-called leaders.

• Man:

  OK. So you refuse to speak to the…

• Stephanie Sy:

  Powerless to change that, activists calling for Israel to stop its bombing campaign have interrupted City Council meetings in cities across the country.

• Man:

  You are now disrupting this meeting. You are disrupting the meeting. You are ordered removed from this meeting.

• Stephanie Sy:

  In some cases, like at this meeting in Oakland, California, spreading misinformation and baseless conspiracies.

• Woman:

  Israel murdered their own people on October 7.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Dean Preston, a San Francisco city supervisor, says what he's seen at City Hall has been orderly.

• Dean Preston, San Francisco City Supervisor:

  We have thousands of people coming to city hall. I have been in office four years, never seen anything like it in terms of the number of people coming These were entirely peaceful gatherings.

  These folks are coming to their local legislative bodies. They can't go meet with Joe Biden. They can't get two minutes in front of the Congress. They can come to their local City Council, and that's why they're doing it.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Preston introduced a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages that passed.

  But San Francisco's Democratic mayor, London Breed, returned the resolution without a signature and issued a harsh statement, saying it made the city angrier, more divided and less safe.

  Supervisor Preston, also a Democrat and the son of a Holocaust survivor, says the war is directly impacting San Franciscans.

• Dean Preston:

  Just this morning, I heard from a Palestinian-American friend here in San Francisco who informed me — and I quote — "Seven more members of my family have been killed overnight."

  This is not just something happening thousands of miles away. And, frankly, when elected officials don't speak to this trauma, folks feel ignored and that their pain is not being recognized.

• Stephanie Sy:

  But the resolutions have no legal authority.

• Dean Preston:

  It's not the case that any of our allies look to San Francisco or Cleveland to learn what U.S. foreign policy is going to be, but I do think that they potentially can have an impact, say, within the Democratic Party, in that they can signal the extent of discontent and the sources of discontent around U.S. foreign policy set by the Biden administration.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Whether or not President Biden or even the Cleveland City Council responds, Shereen Nasser has no plans to stop speaking out.

• Shereen Nasser:

  Going through this grief, I felt such an urgency to be in my community and do this work alongside my community, calling for a cease-fire, because I think about the kind of world I want to leave for my kids.

  And so we're going to keep showing up. We're going to, until the City Council says, we are engaging back with you.

• Blaine Griffin:

  Khalia (ph) wants to talk about the cease-fire.

• Stephanie Sy:

  An impasse with no clear end in America's city halls and in the Middle East.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy.