Mohammad Ahmad approached the lectern at last week’s meeting of the Covington City Commission to speak.
“I’ve accepted that you don’t care about human life that is Palestinian,” Ahmad said, addressing Mayor Joe Meyer, “and I question whether you care about any life, for that matter, because you are a moral failure because Palestinians–“
Meyer banged his gavel before Ahmad could finish; supporters of Ahmad in the audience clapped. Ahmad raised his hand, seemingly trying to calm them.
“Personal attacks are inappropriate and out of order,” Meyer said. “No more personal attacks.”
“Cowardice!” someone from the audience shouted.
This exchange was a culmination of a months-long attempt by Ahmad and others to get the Covington City Commission to support a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Various forms of ceasefire resolutions have been passed in about 70 cities throughout the United States as of January. Earlier this month, just across the river, Cincinnati’s City Council passed a resolution supporting a temporary ceasefire, but only after much debate between council members and the public.
Covington, on the other hand, has not taken up a resolution, and events from Tuesday’s meeting suggest that it’s unlikely to happen, at least not in the form proposed by Ahmad and his supporters. The situation in Israel and Gaza itself elicits strong opinions from all sides, but Covington’s situation–which dates back to November of last year–serves less as a window into what’s going between Israel and Palestine and more as a case study for American debates about the role of local government, the power of city resolutions, freedom of speech and the operations of political decision making, however one feels about its result.
“This is not about Jews versus Arabs. It’s not about Jews versus Muslims,” Ahmad told LINK nky in December, shortly after his first appeals to the commission.
Ahmad is a Palestinian-American originally from Lexington who moved to Covington in September of 2022 to be close to his job working as a sports reporter covering the Cincinnati Bengals, a position he said he was laid off from in August of 2023.
He has never been to Gaza, but both of his parents are from the West Bank. He said he’s traveled there and still has relatives living there. In fact, he believes that one of his relatives, Bilal Ibrahim Qadah, was killed by either Israeli settlers or occupational forces while driving to work in July of last year. He cites an article from the UK-based publication Middle East Eye as evidence. Note: There has been some controversy about Middle East Eye’s operations and ownership, but LINK nky did not investigate this.
In any case, besides having a personal stake in the region, Ahmad argued that the violence committed against Palestinians should not be characterized as a conventional war or conflict, but rather a deliberate and systematic attempt to eradicate the Palestinian people, a view that’s common among pro-Palestinian activists.
“I don’t think this is a conflict at all,” Ahmad said in December. “I think this is just a matter of the occupier enacting collective punishment, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism on the occupied.”
Ahmad’s passion for his cause comes out in his public speaking, and he has no scruples about criticizing people he disagrees with.
Ahmad had spoken alone in his first public statement in November, but in the months that followed, he recruited supporters on social media to come out and advocate for a resolution. Soon, crowds of supporters–some acting as individuals, others representing organizations–holding signs and banners packed into the commission chambers to speak. Virtually every public comment session at the commission’s meetings from the beginning of December to Tuesday’s meeting has featured multiple speakers on the issue. At times, the issue has taken up the whole 30 minutes allotted for public comments.
The commission members were hesitant to weigh in on the issue at first. In time, Ahmad met with many of them one-on-one to make his case and try to reach a compromise, as many of the commission members found the language in Ahmad’s initial resolution proposal, which used many of the same arguments he’d expressed to LINK nky, as too pointed, even divisive. Finally, in January, the mayor gave a statement in which he explicitly declined to take up a resolution, characterizing the proposals as one-sided. He added that, as a rule, the commission wasn’t in a position to weigh in on international issues.
Naturally, the question arises: what can Covington, Kentucky, do about any situation on another continent?
A city resolution is not a binding piece of legislation like an ordinance or a municipal order. Instead, it’s a way a local body can express support for a particular policy, often one that’s out of their direct control. As such, even though resolutions are weak compared to other actions a local government can take, they can at times draw large crowds of both members of the public and community leaders looking to weigh in.
The thinking goes that if a city passes a resolution in support of something, then it can serve as a signal for officials in higher jurisdictions to make policy changes. Thus, for those wanting a ceasefire overseas, getting local elected representatives to pass a resolution for a ceasefire could signal to federal leaders, who are better positioned to diplomatically or militarily intervene, to take action. Conceivably, this rhetorical effect compounds as the number of local governments who show support increases.
The resolution efforts in Covington mirror similar calls to action throughout the nation, albeit within their own local contexts. Israeli, Palestinian and religious advocacy groups have responded to this wave of public interest by reaching out to cities to get them to pick a side. A representative from the City of Covington told LINK nky on Tuesday that the city had already received between 500 and 600 emails, many of which were copy and pasted form letters, from pro-Israeli groups alone. The representative added that commissioners had been fielding phone calls from advocacy groups as well, but he could not speak to the scale of those calls.
LINK nky reached out to several commissioners for additional comments on their calculus for supporting or opposing resolutions, but they had not responded by the time of this article’s publication. LINK nky will update this article once they do.
According to the mayor and some of the commissioners’ accounts, the tenor of conversations with the resolution supporters deteriorated over time, arguing that what started as a conversation had transmogrified into bullying, intimidation, and unnecessary disruption.
“We have met privately with you several times–if not all of us, most of us more than once, several times–and your appearance and your words have not changed a single mind,” Meyer said on Tuesday. “And what they have done is introduce elements of bullying, name calling, intimidation. You’ve harassed and threatened people. You’ve forced some of our visitors to run a gauntlet to get out of the building during the last meeting. And it’s completely the contrary of the spirit of public comment.”
The “gauntlet” Meyer referred to took place in the lobby of City Hall leading from the commission chambers to the building’s main entrance onto Pike Street. At a previous meeting, the resolution supporters had furnished a very long banner listing the names of Palestinians who have died in Gaza and attempted to lay it on the ground in the front row of seats in the commission chambers. Commissioner Tim Downing expressed concern that the banner might be a fire hazard, given its heft and proximity to the room’s exit, and asked Ahmad to remove it from the chambers. Ahmad acquiesced to this request and moved it out of the room, but not before it got caught in the door.
Supporters then stood outside in the lobby holding the banner. They did not block the main exit, but anyone going in and out of the building would have had to walk past the banner and the people holding it.
Although LINK nky did not witness the gauntlet of intimidation and harassment the mayor alleged, shouting and chanting when officials did or said something the activists didn’t like occurred at multiple meetings. Shouts of “Shame!” and “Ceasefire now!” were common refrains.
Social media amplified all of this tension. In online posts, pro-resolution activists often derided the mayor and other officials as hypocrites and shills. Likewise, people who opposed the resolution frequently characterized the speakers as either useful idiots playing into the hands of terrorists or outright malign actors.
“This is not a rational social intercourse when they send me emails, calling me a Zionist, a racist, a hypocrite, a liar,” Meyer said.
Meyer showed a postcard, seemingly handwritten by Ahmad, calling him a racist as well as a copy of a critical email Ahmad had written to Tracy Siegman, a Covington pastor, who had spoken out against the resolution at a prior meeting, to LINK nky as examples of some of the personal attacks he’d received.
“That’s not conducive to agreement,” Meyer said.
This all seemed to reach its apex last week.
The number of people in support of a resolution in the commission chambers had dwindled since the early days, when people had to stand in the back of the room for lack of open seats.
Just before the meeting officially began, Meyer stated that signs, even the small handheld ones, needed to be removed from the chambers for security reasons. The commission had allowed attendees to hold signs in the past.
After a few moments of silence, one of the resolution supporters quipped, “Looks like I’m doing security.”
A police officer standing by the door said that it was “not a discussion,” and resolution supporters filed out of the chambers with their signs. Some stayed out; others returned empty-handed.
Then just before the public comments began, the mayor announced that, rather than allowing multiple members of a group who were in agreement on something to speak, as had been the case in the past, the group had to pick a single representative to speak on their behalf. Meyer said he got this idea from observing speaking rules at public hearings for the Brent Spence Bridge corridor project.
Ahmad stepped up and made the remarks that prompted the mayor to bang his gavel. When he’d finished, the mayor invited Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, Lexingon-based chair of the Kentucky Jewish Council and member of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, to the stand.
Litvin had spoken at only one other meeting on March 12 in opposition to the resolution. Dressed in a green t-shirt emblazoned with the emblem of the Israeli Defense Force, Litvin had characterized the ceasefire efforts as being “not substantive but performative” and trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes, charges Ahmad and his supporters reject.
As Litvin approached the stand, Jordan Smart, a resolution supporter who had signed up to speak directly after Ahmad, stood up, introduced himself, and claimed his right to speak.
“You’re not recognized,” Meyer said.
“I don’t know why the Rabbi takes precedence over me,” Smart said. He said he wanted to speak on “local issues,” both on the meeting’s sign-up form and upon standing up.
As Smart came to the lectern, Commissioner Ron Washington spoke up.
“I make a motion to have him removed,” said Washington.
Another commission member did not take up the motion, but Smart voluntarily walked towards the exit upon Washington’s statement.
“My local issue is leadership,” Smart said as he left. “Y’all are failures!”
A police officer escorted Smart out.
No physical violence occurred, but the room thrummed with tension. A murmur of chatter arose from the audience, and at least one commissioner, Downing, was visibly perturbed by what had happened. As Litvin made a statement thanking the commission for not supporting the resolution, it wasn’t clear that anyone was truly paying attention to what he was saying.
The meeting proceeded, and the majority of the resolution supporters left the room after the public comments had concluded.
At the end of the meeting, the mayor and commissioners discussed the meeting’s events.
“I find that the behavior of standing in the middle of the room, shouting and screaming at your elected officials is not an acceptable way to conduct yourself,” Washington said.
Downing agreed with Washington that the behavior was not “in any way acceptable,” but he explicitly disagreed with the new speaking rule that only one person from a group could address a topic.
“Generally speaking, though, I want to make sure that I create an environment that’s going to make sure that all voices are heard,” Downing said.
Meanwhile, Ahmad and his band of supporters gathered on the sidewalk outside, holding signs.
When asked if he planned to come back to the commission to speak again, he said, “No, that’s it. There’s really no point.”
In spite of this, he and his supporters stood outside with signs for the remainder of the meeting.
A police officer stood at attention nearby.