Pro-Palestinian demonstrators speaking out against the Global Conference for Israel coming to Denver this week took over the City Council chamber on Monday night, causing the council to postpone the second half of its scheduled business until the next week.
Members of the protest group — some waving Palestinian flags or wearing traditional scarves — implored council members to stay in the chamber and hear their concerns, but none did as the demonstration stretched on for nearly two hours.
It’s the third time in the last two years that activists have caused the council to go into recess by refusing the cede the podium after the 30-minute scheduled public comment period was over. It’s the first time the council has adjourned a meeting because of such an action.
“It was just unclear how much longer the group was going to go so I just didn’t want to keep (others) waiting on some uncertainty which is the reason behind the adjournment,” said Council President Jamie Torres, who presides over council meetings as well as represents west Denver’s District 3.
She adjourned the meeting at roughly 6:50 p.m., an hour and 20 minutes after public comment was scheduled to end.
A group waiting to accept a proclamation commemorating World AIDS Day and two groups seeking to rezone properties in north Denver were instructed to come back next week.
More than 80 people signed up to speak during this week’s public comment period, with almost all of them listing opposition to the Jewish National Fund USA as their reason for speaking. That group is the organizing body for the Global Conference for Israel, a four-day event that starts Thursday in Denver and will feature Gov. Jared Polis, who is Jewish, as a speaker.
Echoing talking points that pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been voicing in council comment sessions since August, speakers on Monday referred to the Jewish National Fund-USA as an organization that raises money for the brutalization of Palestinians. One speaker, Abdul-Karim Khan, compared the event to hosting a fundraiser for Nazi Germany.
Sam Goldberg, president of the Jewish National Fund-USA Mountain States, last week told The Denver Post that he expected “reasonable and thoughtful critiques of Israel” to be voiced at the conference but added that anyone who supports Israel’s destruction would be “unwelcome.”
Pro-Palestinian and progressive groups are expected to protest the conference throughout with the goal of shutting it down.
Speakers on Monday also implored the council to pass a resolution supporting a permanent cease-fire in Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip that began after Hamas carried out terrorist attacks on Israeli soil on Oct. 7. A four-day pause in the hostilities that allowed for hundreds of hostages and prisoners to be exchanged has been extended until Wednesday. More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed — a majority of them women and minors, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza — since the war began. An estimated 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians killed in the initial attack, have died.
Torres said that the council has no legislative authority to dictate who rents the Colorado Convention Center, which is city-owned.
There were Denver sheriffs and police officers in the chamber on Monday but she never considered asking them to remove anyone. The council is reconsidering how it approaches its schedule and the public comment sessions specifically.
“If I’m presiding over the meeting I am still going to preside over our process and we’re hopefully not developing too much of a pattern here of postponing our meetings and our work,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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