Akron City Council response to Israel-Hamas war misguided and uninformed

I’m new to Akron. I first visited to support the Freedom BLOC after the police shooting death of Jayland Walker and the many people who were rightly outraged at the injustice.

I accepted an opportunity as the deputy executive director at Freedom BLOC in April of this year. Akronites have shown me nothing but love and gave me every reason to stay and offer all the support necessary to create lasting change together. The past few weeks, however, have been rough for many of us.

People are emotionally, physically and financially pained already, and with a new war on the horizon, seek leadership from our elected officials.

Unfortunately, the Akron City Council failed to rise to the occasion in response to the Israel-Hamas war, which has the genuine possibility of drawing the United States into another expensive war that taxpayers have little choice in paying for.

In passing a ham-handed resolution supporting their “friends in Israel and Jewish people in Akron,” the council alienated Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims alike. In response to the obvious blowback, Ward 1 Council representative Nancy Holland, stood for a logical fallacy-ridden “personal privilege” tirade with ad hominems, genetic fallacies, appeals to popularity and more, attacking everyone and everything but the arguments being made against the resolution, labeling all dissent as “antisemitism masked as something else.”

Interestingly, she even attacked activist Shaun King, whose news coverage of the disproportionate Israeli response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which saw 1,400 Israeli citizens and more than 8,000 Palestinians and counting die.

Obviously, King wasn’t present at any of the council meetings, and since Holland’s indignancy last week, neither has she. In 11 years of community-based political organizing, I have never heard or seen such a ridiculous display of audaciousness go unchallenged by representatives who purport to be “progressive.”

After the last two council meetings, our progressive councilors left City Hall under police protection. Dissenters, myself included, were watched by police as we headed to our cars. We were armed with our constitutional right to free speech by challenging the genocidal ideation of the Israeli government and the questionable support of those in leadership who take Israeli talking points as gospel despite a history of lies and fabrication.

On Monday, Ward 4 representative Russ Neal had the fortitude and self-awareness to admit that the council made a mistake and that it needed to hear from more people.

Tammy Tucker, the city’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion officer, made an attempt to inform the council on the history of Israel, Palestine and Hamas for the development of a resolution, only to have her efforts paralyzed by Chief of Staff Gert Wilms.

One would hope that in the development of such a resolution, progressive city councilors would be informed on the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. We should question the ever-expanding definition of the former as a Zionist attempt at Palestinian erasure and limit on free speech. Or how the U.N. considers the apartheid occupation of Palestine by Israel as illegal.

They could acknowledge the inhumane continuation of the 1948 Nakba that persists to this day with the razing of entire neighborhoods and family bloodlines wiped out. They should know about the Israeli support of Hamas as a barrier to a two-state solution. They could especially acknowledge the genocidal war crimes committed in response to the Hamas attack by the Israeli government and demand a ceasefire. They could listen to impassioned Palestinian Akronites like Samer Badawi with lived experience. Or at a minimum, read the information guide sent to them that discusses all of this.

People of color have a keen sense of recognizing colonialist conquests. Supporting Israel’s they-were-there-first attitude, despite both groups being genetically descended from Canaanites, makes as much sense today as supporting a resolution that the Ohio Seneca and Cayuga, the Lenni Lenape (Delaware), the Miami, the Shawnee, the Wyandot (Wendat), the Ottawa (Odawa) and the Ojibwe Nations, whose land City Hall sits on, should rise up and retake Akron.

The people who make wartime decisions are rarely on the front lines. We should be careful not to pass resolutions that add to the erasure of Palestinians. City Council has an opportunity to lead and demonstrate genuine progressive attitudes. The question remains if it will, perhaps on another day and soap box.

Djuan Wash is deputy executive director at Freedom BLOC in Akron.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron council response to Israel-Hamas war is misguided