Lang
10/18/23
City of Iowa City officials are considering ways to prevent a repeat of the anti-Semitic trolls who interrupted a recent city council community comment session.
Community comment is a section of each council meeting set aside for community members to address any issue not on that meeting’s agenda. Participants are allowed three minutes to speak uninterrupted by council members or other city staffers.
When council meetings became virtual during the pandemic, community comments were solicited online via Zoom. Comments can currently still be submitted through Zoom, even though the council meetings have returned to in-person events at Harvat Hall.
Anti-Semitic trolls took advantage of the Zoom option at Tuesday night’s meeting, with multiple speakers sharing stereotypes and hateful rhetoric about the Jewish community, with other racist tropes against other groups mixed in. Councilors remained mostly silent during the diatribes, although one councilor can be heard on the YouTube video of the meeting muttering, “Good Lord” under their breath during one of the later calls.
Anti-Semitic trolls are not unique to Iowa City’s council meetings. Other government entities that still accept online comments have recently been experiencing similar incidents of Anti-Semitism around the country.
KCJJ has now learned Iowa City staffers are considering options for preventing further interruptions in the future. One option would be to only use Zoom comments for items that are on the agenda, and not for the open community comment sessions. There is no indication that the city is willing to do away with Zoom comments entirely.