By Michael Howard
East County Magazine
LA MESA, California — The La Mesa City Council continues to grapple with a balance between free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution and hate speech that just doesn’t seem to go away.
In its latest action, the Council voted 4-1 on Tuesday to adopt a resolution to support state bill AB 3024 the Stop Hate Littering Act, introduced by Assemblymember Chris Ward.
That bill adds language to section 51.7 of the current California State Civil Code to further define “intimidation by threat of violence” to include “distribution of hateful materials on private property of another without authorization for the purpose of terrorizing the owner or occupant of that private property or in reckless disregard of the risk of terrorizing the owner or occupant of that private property.”
The vote comes after anti-Semitic flyers were disseminated to some La Mesa residences in recent months.
“An item very similar to this was on the City Council Agenda about 15, 16, 17 years ago,” Vice Mayor Laura Lothian noted during the Council’s April 9 meeting.
In her comments before casting the only dissenting vote opposed to supporting the resolution, Lothian warned of the “slippery slope” of those in power banning speech they don’t like.
“I’ve been around long enough to see, especially in California, the people in power do not want free speech, they want preferred speech. They want ideological conformity, and those who don’t conform, are censured,” she said while reading what appeared to be prepared comments. “I can’t support this Assembly bill,” she concluded.
Councilmember Patricia N. Dillard, who is African American, did not see the resolution as a matter of free speech, but instead likened dissemination of hateful flyers to the terror and intimidation Black Americans have suffered.
“The history of African Americans goes way back, and I remember when there were people that burned a cross on someone’s front yard,” she recounted. “I don’t see it any other way than someone trying to demonstrate their hatred,” she said of the act of distributing hateful literature by stepping onto private property to deliver it.
“If they want to live their lives in hate, I feel sorry for them,” Dillard said, “but I just don’t want it done on my property.”
Lothian responded by saying it was a big jump from delivering hateful literature to burning crosses on front lawns, then told a story of her own experience.
“When I ran for City Council in 2021, someone or some group posted at least 1,000 flyers on every utility pole and was having them delivered to my house every day, and it called me a bigot, a Nazi, and everything you could think of,” she related. “I didn’t like it, it was scary, I was sort of vigilant in my own house,” she shared.
But, Lothian said it never dawned on her to call the police or the city to ban that from happening. “That’s just the cost of being in America, people are just going to say things you don’t like.”
Before Council members cast their votes on the resolution, Mayor Mark Arapostahis took a moment to share a message to La Mesa citizens.
“The City of La Mesa rejects hate and condemns it,” he assured them, which was met with a round of applause by those attending in the seating gallery. His words come after calls from residents asking the Mayor to publicly denounce hate speech.
Making the vote more meaningful were the in-person citizen comments that came only moments before, with residents pleading with the Council to reinstate remote call-in public comments that the Council banned in late February.
In response to a February 13 City Council meeting in which a barrage of callers spouted hateful comments toward the Jewish faith and community, the Council voted 4-1 in its next meeting on February 27 to ban all remote public comments. Councilman Jack Shu cast the only dissenting vote. At the time, Councilmember Colin Parent urged the Council to reinstate an ad-hoc committee to find ways to allow for remote public comments, but with some safeguards. They argue that the ban is burdensome on working people, parents of young children, seniors and the disabled, who may have difficulty attending meetings in person.
Gene Carpenter, a community activist and frequent attendee at City Council meetings, took a swipe at Councilmember Parent and Mayor Mark Arapostahis in the April 9 meeting, saying they have not responded to requests for a meeting about the subject. In a recent interview with East County Magazine, Carpenter said Janet Castenos, former chair of La Mesa’s Police Oversight Board and an activist in many other local organizations, has unsuccessfully sought meetings with Parent and Arapostathis to discuss proposals for bringing back remote public comments, with possible rule changes.
“When you have somebody that’s requested and been ignored for five, six weeks, two months – that wants to meet with you about this issue around taking away our First Amendment rights – are you a coward?” he appeared to ask the Mayor directly, before during his attention to Councilmember Parent. “Are you a coward? Too afraid to meet with this individual that has given hundreds if not thousands to our community in volunteer time?” he implored.
La Mesa Mayor Mark Arapostahis has not responded to a request for comment or to provide an update on that ad-hoc committee’s progress.
In other actions, the committee declared the month of April as Volunteer Month and the month of art, culture and creativity. They listened to a proposal from the Public Works department to transform La Mesa Boulevard into a complete street based upon receiving a $240,000 Caltrans Sustainable Communities grant. The council also voted 4-1 (Lothian dissenting) to convert city landscaping equipment to nonpolluting power.
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Preceding republished from East County Magazine.