The City of Evanston has announced that a meeting of the city’s Equity and Empowerment Commission scheduled for Thursday evening has been canceled.
Protesters who disrupted a City Council meeting last week demanding that the Council adopt a resolution calling for a cease fire in Israel’s war in Gaza had pledged to return for the EEC meeting this week.
Commission members had drafted a resolution for discussion at their meeting last month that critics said was extremely one-sided — with a long litany of criticisms of Israel’s actions and hardly any mention of the terrorist attacks by Hamas that touched off the conflict on Oct. 7.
The city’s Law Department said the the international issue was outside the scope of the commission’s jurisdiction and therefore shouldn’t be acted on, but the commission at its November meeting agreed to hear extensive public comment on the issue anyway.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, a City Council committee voted Monday to recommend a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. That resolution is expected to be up for a vote by the full Chicago City Council next month.
Evanston rolled out the welcome mat for this outside disrupters by continuing the meeting after the Corporation Council nixed the resolution. With tv cameras rolling and microphone in hand, these people got the public attention they craved. They then came to the City Council Meeting, and will, I’m sure, keep coming back as long as they have the ability to disrupt normal city business. It was a grave mistake continuing that meeting and all of us are paying the price.