Editors’ note: While the Estes Valley Voice is focused on hyperlocal Estes Valley news, we are pleased to share a feature article with our readers that is a capstone project of one of our journalists, Camryn Montgomery, a senior at CU Boulder, and her capstone partner, photojournalist Lily Delgado. Camryn came to us as an “intern,” but quickly proved she is a skilled writer and able civic affairs reporter. We hope that after her graduation this spring, she will continue to write for us. The Estes Valley Voice has been fortunate to work with several writers from CU Boulder over the past year and a half. They help us with covering local news, and we provide them with an opportunity to work with a news publication and build a portfolio. This article was originally published on a Shorthand platform through the University of Colorado-Boulder. – Suzy Blackhurst and Patti Brown
On the afternoon of June 1, Boulder resident Aaron Brooks was on his way to join a weekly gathering of peaceful demonstrators seeking to bring the hostages home from the war in Gaza. Typically, the Run for Their Lives march started at Lolita’s Market & Deli on Pearl Street and proceeded to the Boulder Municipal Court, about a quarter mile away. Along the route, they sang the Israeli national anthem, said the names of the hostages taken by Hamas, and walked back to Lolita’s.
On any other Sunday, Brooks arrives for the march on time. In an unusual occurrence, he was running 20 minutes late. Expecting to bike up to the crowd and join in, he hadn’t thought much of it.
“My plan was to walk and sing.” –Aaron Brooks, present during June 1 attack
Instead, Brooks arrived to find clouds of smoke and flames.
“I heard a friend of mine yelling for a doctor. I saw this crazy guy who had just taken off his shirt, standing there with two Molotov cocktails. I saw a friend of mine on fire, literally, like a human being burning,” said Brooks. “My brain went into overload.”
This moment of peaceful protest was shattered when the attack on the crowd began, taking one woman’s life, injuring at least 12 more, devastating the community, and shattering the peace.
The attack sparked fear and confusion in a city whose local government was already being consumed by community calls for a ceasefire resolution and divestment from companies tied to Israel. The rhetoric surrounding this political issue had been steadily escalating, and it had now become violent.
The man charged in connection with this attack had no connection to Boulder or the Boulder City Council, apparently choosing his target through an internet search. However, it came after months of turmoil and escalating political rhetoric in City chambers that led to outbursts and cancellation of in-person meetings.
Boulder City Council members have repeatedly told the public that international affairs do not fall under the umbrella of their responsibilities, and that their focus is on local issues. However, many throughout the community, as well as one council member, say this is absolutely a local issue that will have lasting community impacts.
Council Member Taishya Adams
Taishya Adams has been an open advocate for Palestine. She previously has requested the council draft a ceasefire resolution as well as revisit their investment portfolio to make the City’s values align with their investments.
“I’m telling you, you’d get a lot more respect if you just said, ‘No, I’m not going to do it because we don’t have the time’ or ‘I don’t want to,’ but don’t tell me that you can’t. You’re choosing not to.” –Taishya Adams, council member
Following the attack on June 1, the Boulder City Council drafted a statement condemning the attack.
Adams said she could not sign the statement because it did not tell the full truth.
“It just talked about antisemitism, but it didn’t talk about anti-Zionism. And the guy (the attacker) said three anti-Zionist things,” Adams said. “If I don’t tell you the full truth, I’m lying to you.”
The Mayor of Boulder, Aaron Brockett, said that after the attack, the council came under criticism from community members who thought the council should be “cracking down on what has been on what has been termed hateful speech at city council meetings.”
In past months, council members had been called Nazis, Zionists and investors in the genocide in Gaza. Around April of 2025, a wanted-style poster began circulating on social media of the seven council members, excluding Adams and Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts, for complicity in genocide.
Following the Pearl Street Mall attack, the council met behind closed doors, allowing the public to view them only virtually, no public comment was heard and two meetings later, additional rules of decorum were put in place for how the community can address the council.
Given the ceasefire agreement reached in early October and the release of the last living hostages, council members thought open comment might start to move back to local issues. However, activists for Palestine have not given up on their calls to action. They say the ceasefire does not bring them peace because Israel has a history of breaking ceasefire agreements, and Palestinians are not receiving adequate aid.
Al Jazeera has reported that at least 450 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire agreement.
Calls for a ceasefire resolution
According to the Pew Research Center, as of late September, 85% of Americans say politically motivated violence in this country today is increasing. Boulder, despite its reputation as a liberal safe haven full of outdoor enthusiasts, is not exempt from the consequences of escalating political rhetoric and violence in America.
Consistently throughout the last two years, every council meeting has been filled with highly emotional and disruptive speeches during the open comment period related to the war in Gaza.
“It was passionate from the beginning. What you’re seeing now is the result of two years of gaslighting.” –Taishya Adams, council member
Speakers have become more angry and exhausted their pleas, urging council members who say they have no authority to make some kind of change. In past years, they have acted on international affairs in Myanmar, Iran and South Africa, but have not engaged with this conflict.
What used to be a space for residents to voice concerns about bike paths, construction, or children’s safety, quickly turned into a tense space with shouting, arguments and name-calling between community and council members.
While the meetings have mostly been dominated by activists calling for justice in Palestine, counter-voices have pushed back, stating that the international war is not a city council’s responsibility, and this rhetoric has no place in municipal politics.
Brooks has been attending local government meetings throughout his whole life, and when he moved to Boulder in 2022, Boulder City Council was no different. He said that after the Oct. 7 attack, it turned from people talking about issues within the City of Boulder to “things that are going on internationally that have nothing to do with Boulder.”
“It’s primarily expressive. In fact, it’s only expressive. The city council can’t do anything to legally compel a response. International organizations also use such means of expression. A U.N General Assembly resolution is also purely expressive.” –Professor Megan Shannon, CU Boulder International Law
To others in the community, however, anything that the people care about is a local issue.
“There’s people going to council every single meeting to talk about this matter. There’s obviously frustration and a different opinion here,” said Padi Fuster Aguilera, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But there has not been any place for dialogue amongst these people.”
Fuster Aguilera was suspended from attending council meetings in person for 30 days in March for holding her sign higher than the rules allowed. A letter sent by the City of Boulder notifying Fuster Aguilera from her suspension read, “After repeated requests and warning, due to non-compliance, the meeting had to be recessed – causing obstruction and impeding of government operations within the building.” This was the second out of three recesses during the Mar. 20 meeting.
Nine attendees have been suspended in 2025 for “conduct that disrupts, impedes or obstructs government operations.”
This meeting was not the only time a meeting had to be recessed and community members were suspended from attending in person. After recesses following chaos in council chambers began to become common, the council began changing the guidelines for public participation.
Changing rules of decorum for public comment
Changes surrounding open comment have included a strictly enforced 2-minute time restriction, temporary in-person suspensions, sign and presentation restrictions, and time changes that many attendees consider a move to make it more difficult for them to arrive at council chambers by 5:30 p.m. on Thursdays.
“I think that it’s prohibitive. I think that it’s discriminatory, and I think that it actually doesn’t address the problem, which is stronger facilitation and following the rules that we have.” –Taishya Adams
Mayor Brockett said the changing guidelines have been aimed at curbing speech from interfering with other residents attending the meeting.
“I respect people’s passion on this particular issue that we’re talking about, but sometimes it’s made it hard for people who want to address the council on other topics to come speak with us,” said Brockett.
The latest round of changes to open comment rules of decorum was discussed during a council Study Session on June 26, and the proposed changes were implemented on July 24. During the session, council member Ryan Schuchard expressed the goals he felt the body should be seeking to meet in terms of guiding public participation.
“We are seeking to reduce disruptions in open comment that delay and diminish the ability to conduct city business. And secondly that we make, or are making, open comment more accessible and more inviting to everyone,” said Schuchard.
At this meeting, the council voted to remove the video broadcast of public comment from the meetings livestream. Attendees have often called to the camera as they display graphic images from Gaza and signs reading “Free Palestine.”
They also voted for a fixed length of 45 minutes for open comment, prioritizing those who were missed, moving the start time from 6 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., alternating in person and virtual speakers, allowing a maximum of 30 seconds for council responses and giving the presiding officer, most commonly the mayor, the ability to immediately respond to hateful or demonizing language, rather than at the end of the open comment period.
While meeting attendees feel silenced by the evolving rules, the council maintains that their only goal is to streamline meetings and stay on task with agendas and business items.
“I think that our responsibility is to say ‘no.’ We cannot allow business as usual when we are actively funding a genocide.” –Padi Fuster Aguilera
Adams said the council already had rules, and instead of adding more, they should have enforced the ones they had. She said that those engaging in prohibited behavior should be asked to leave.
“When you don’t have that person immediately kicked out, it escalates, and then everybody has to leave. And that’s called collective punishment,” said Adams.
However you look at rules of decorum for open comment, adopting strict rules for how community members can address their local representatives poses a threat to good local governance. Professor Megan Shannon, an international law professor at CU, weighed in on the restrictions from a governance standpoint.
“It is a limitation, but I see it as a necessary limitation for the healthy functioning of government,” Shannon said. “But it is tricky because like, who’s to say that Gaza isn’t relevant for Boulder local governments?”
While community members can still contact the council through email, many activists say this does not have the same effect as in person speeches do.
Nisha Shanmugaraj, assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at CU Boulder, said, “Rhetoric, even going back to Aristotle’s day, has known for a very, very long time that a speaker’s body language, their presence, their gestures, their eye contact, where they’re looking… those are all things that add to the persuasiveness or detract from the persuasiveness of their message.”
Tensions in council chambers, strong emotions and increased police presence bring public safety and community trust into question. Adding police presence to public spaces often comes with the goal of maintaining safety, however this can sometimes have a reverse effect.
“That to start with makes the place not safe for Black and Brown folks, but for everyone, right? I don’t think that the police make people safe,” said Fuster Aguilera. “There’s a lot of emotions playing a part in this.”
Community impact
As tensions continue to rise, the rhetoric surrounding this debate continues to have consequences within our local government as well in democracy at large.
Mike Jones, Orchard Grove neighborhood, came to a council meeting on Nov. 6 to speak about bike lane usage in the City. When his two minutes were exhausted, he was cut off just as most are when their time runs out.
While he said he felt people should be talking about City matters and there should be a content restriction, he also said it “felt like they had no sympathy for any of us.”
“Why even have public comment if you’re not going to listen to it,” said Jones.
The council did not address his comments, and he left feeling “much the same.”
When open comment is dominated with speakers addressing one issue and disobeying the rules of decorum, Mayor Brockett said it takes away time and resources for addressing the issues within the community that the council set out to address.
“We’ve had to postpone business items sometimes,” said Mayor Brockett.
He said he’s also had multiple community members tell him they feel unsafe within council chambers.
One Palestinian activist, Laura Gonzalez, had been calling on the council for over a year to divest and draft a ceasefire resolution. She was recently arrested, “kidnapped from my home in the middle of the night,” she said at a Nov. 6 council meeting, and is facing felony retaliation against a judge or elected official and misdemeanor harassment for her alleged involvement in an incident where council member Matt Benjamin was “heckled” at a Boulder Farmers Market.
As escalating rhetoric and political violence become increasingly prevalent in America, it comes into our own backyards, even in towns where the locals would think “never here.” Brooks moved to Boulder because he loved the outdoors, biking, the Grateful Dead and breweries, things he thought were a part of Boulder’s liberal culture.
According to a study conducted by Politico, Americans expect political violence to continue increasing. After assassination attempts on Donald Trump’s life in 2024, the assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and conservative activist Charlie Kirk in 2025, people are becoming accustomed to it.
At a time of such violence and seeming despair in the world, activists believe they must take action now.
“I absolutely think that what citizens say and do and the activities that they engage in, I think that they matter. I think political pressure has been shown to work, even against governments that are considered to be, you know, authoritarian and are not responsive to political pressure.” –Megan Shannon, professor of international law at CU Boulder
Local struggles and larger stories
These conflicts have taken their toll on city governance all around, but this phenomenon mirrors a broader national trend surrounding the political escalation and polarization in communities that had thought they were immune.
Boulder, even with its progressive and peaceful reputation, is not free from the nation’s struggles of polarization and increasing political violence. It serves as a microcosm.
“He didn’t have any connection to Boulder, but there’s a culture and an environment that is continuing to grow and percolate,” said Brooks. “But it’s happening slowly, so slowly that some people are not noticing it.”
As towns across America continue to face these struggles and our elected representatives battle balancing the diverse needs of their constituents, a larger question is raised: What role should local governments play in navigating conflicts that seem bigger than a city issue, and at what cost to their core responsibilities?
During deeply polarized times, as people come to feel less connected, they feel less represented and less heard. So they turn to the people they can access, their local government. But if the local government says it’s not a city issue, then where do they turn?
Dealing with these difficult topics does not come without challenges. In what is already a divisive time, Council members say it’s hard to step into areas that might further the divide. With high-running emotions, gaping divides and uncertainty of how to balance empathy and civic order, the city of Boulder is not alone in its identity struggles.
Boulder is now facing the prominent question of not only what to do within their city council meetings to balance all voices, protect free speech and maintain good relationships with the community, but also how to deal with the reality that international conflicts can, and do, manifest locally.
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