Sarah Kardash attempting to address council as members of Sackville Ceasefire Now turn their backs
About 40 members of a group calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza turned their backs on Tantramar Town Council tonight as their spokesperson Sarah Kardash tried, but failed, to make a two-minute presentation.
“No, you cannot. No, you cannot,” Mayor Andrew Black told her.
As Kardash continued to ask to be put on council’s agenda, Town Clerk Donna Beal said, “Clear the gallery.”
“Israel is starving children in Gaza to death,” Kardash said.
“It’s order in the court,” Black declared as he banged his gavel.
“Order please. We’ll move to clear the gallery folks,” Black added as he called for a recess.
He then left the council chamber followed by Deputy Mayor Greg Martin and Councillors Barry Hicks, Matt Estabrooks and Josh Goguen.
Councillors Allison Butcher, Bruce Phinney and Michael Tower stayed in their seats.
Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell was not present at tonight’s meeting.
All but three members of Tantramar Town Council left the room along with Town Clerk Donna Beal. CAO Jennifer Borne remained in her seat as did most other members of the town staff
Kardash and members of her group remained standing with their backs turned for about two more minutes, then gathered up their coats and belongings and quietly left the room.
In all, council proceedings were interrupted for just over five minutes.
Outside the chamber, Kardash told reporters she had arrived at town hall at 6:10 p.m. to find a closed-door meeting of council already underway.
She says that when that in-camera session ended at around 6:40, she asked the town clerk to be put on the agenda for a two-minute presentation when the public portion of the meeting was set to resume at 7 p.m., but was told that council had already approved tonight’s agenda and that it couldn’t be changed.
Kardash says she asked the clerk to show her where it says on the town website that members of the public have to show up an hour early to be put on the agenda for a two-minute presentation.
‘Genocide in Gaza’
“This is our fourth time coming to council since December, over and over again, asking them to engage with us, asking them to lift up our voices, to raise our voices calling for a ceasefire to end the genocide in Gaza,” Kardash said.
“What more do we have to do to convince this council that this issue is an important one to residents in this town and that we need them to act, to show us that they’ve got the courage, the heart, the moral clarity to stand up as many other municipal councils have, as many other mayors have across Canada and the United States, and do the right thing?” she asked.
“It’s literally the bare minimum that they can do.”
Mayor cites rules
Mayor Black told reporters after tonight’s meeting that council’s procedural bylaw requires members of the public to show up early to ask for their presentations to be put on the agenda before council approves it.
“The procedural bylaw says that you have to show up before the council meeting starts,” he said.
“The council meeting started at 6. They showed up at 7 to do a two-minute presentation so the council meeting had already started, we were in recess,” Black added.
“The bylaw is very clear that you have to come before [the public meeting] and then request and then you get two minutes to speak.”
When asked if it wouldn’t have been possible to amend tonight’s agenda with unanimous consent to allow a two-minute presentation, Black said members of the ceasefire group should have known that council has shown no interest in their request for a letter to the prime minister.
“They’ve been here three times before and there was no discussion, nobody put a motion forward and so, again, they came to potentially ask the same thing and nobody said anything,” he said.
Black said he did not wish to talk about his own views on Palestine and as for a motion calling for a ceasefire, he was clear:
“I don’t have an interest to bring it forward.”
To read the latest news release from Sackville Ceasefire Now, click here.
Much as I dislike Andrew Black, this time he’s right, for the very fundamental reason that whatever is happening in the Middle East isn’t Sackville’s problem. Sackville isn’t a country with a Ministry of Foreign Affairs! It’s a town council for a population of what? 5000?
Sarah Kardash needs to learn to take her complaints to appropriate places.
Wow, old politicians with zero responsibility. Yawn.
Young people especially should be encouraged when they trouble to involve themselves politically.
Censorship backfires. To be democratic council must allow varia to be added to the agenda, and approve the agenda in front of the public. Hate speech and abuse cannot be allowed, but love-speech has its place in municipalities. Love speech never equals hate speech, and censorship of love and caring ALWAYS backfires. Municipalities can be nuclear free zones, they can take a stand on anything. But it looks like this is the wrong council.
It’s the council we chose. And love-speech for one can be hate-speech for another.
while I agree what’s happening is deplorable I wish the group would put this much energy into something that could make a local impact, like homelessness or food security.
“Order in the court!” heehee, cute….someone watches a little too much TV… ;-).
At about 8:30 mark of this video… Youtube video by the town’s management..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40X0x1ePNbk&ab_channel=MunicipalityofTantramar
I’m sure if Andrew Black made the effort to get the comments section open to the public he would get to see a lot more commentary on the presentations from the public.. why are their comments section closed?
“By refusing to respond directly to our demands in council chambers, Tantramar Town Council has failed the democratic process and failed to represent the will of its electorate.” (from Sackville Ceasefire Now’s news release)
Whatever the virtues of what they advocate, “Sackville Ceasefire Now” appears to believe that the democratic process means a small minority of an electorate making demands to elected representatives and getting what they want, without even taking the time to find out the democratic process for participating in council meetings. It’s arrogant of the group to assume that what they want is “the will of [Tantramar’s] electorate”.
They would achieve more by approaching the appropriate level of government (federal), and by taking the time to generate support and petitions that represent the whole riding, rather than taking the easy route of satisfying their egos with a juvenile performance at a town council meeting.
Well said. I know they don’t like to hear it but it needs to be said to them and I think if they had majority of the electorate supporting them we would have seen it by now. Go to shediac and hound Dominic, he’s a personal bestie with JT.
Why is it so hard for your generation to ask for a ceasefire? Why is it always young people? Or at least condemn genocide? How utterly irresponsible of you, and all the other old boomers who are so full of privilege they can’t see beyond their own noses.
It’s amazing how all the boomers here just want to explain to this group what they MUST DO! yet here you are doing nothin, and have done nothin.
Likely younger than you, just know you can’t deal with the nuts in Hamas or any other terrorist organization. Why don’t the Palestinians denounce Hamas? Rather than let them continue to put them in harms way for their benefit?
It’s amazing the tone deafness from the old people on council, and boomers here in the comments. You know us younger folks are just waiting for you guys to get out of the way….. tik tok…
Please include me Gen X in the deafness… or rather apathy to your cause.
Do you realize there are already more dead in Haiti in their chaotic gang warfare and armed civil war than in Gaza? How many times do you youngsters need to hear this? “War Inc.” is a culling exercise.. its a business.. this is a model they use around the world called ‘shock and awe’ and its about terrorizing different groups at different times in a form of psychological warfare. Choose to engage in peaceful behaviour rather than imagining protesting does anything at all.. because it doesn’t.. the biggest trick played on young university students is that their protest actions actually do a damned thing. All you are doing is alienating your locals, why do that? They are not responsible for what the “war inc. machinery” does.. get it???
Sally: They don’t care about people in Haiti.
They also don’t care about Arabs, as they’d have been “all over Yemen”.
They also don’t care about Palestinians, else they’d have been “all over” their situation in Syria during the civil war.
They don’t care about Jews being murdered on Oct 7.
Only when they can blame USA/Israel/Jews do they care.
Defensive or offensive, it makes no difference to them.