In July of 2020, Atlanta's City Council voted to limit the time frame that citizens could submit comments for their remote meetings. They made this decision during a meeting that lasted for over 24 hours, largely due to the fact that there were far more public comments than they usually hear.  Yes, there were a lot of comments. But isn't it important to understand why, before we just allow them to silence our voices?

The Rayshard Brooks Bill was up for the City Council to vote on. It was (and remains) controversial. They were talking about reallocating half of the budget for Atlanta Police Department, which would have had an effect on everyone in the city. Atlanta was suddenly put under a microscope, with people from all over the country watching to see what we would do after Rayshard Brooks died just over two weeks after George Floyd died. It would have been far more concerning if nobody had any input at all, in actuality. That wasn't the case though: we wanted them to hear us.

And they responded by mandating that comments will be allowed only from 4-7 pm the day before a remote meeting, and all comments that are deemed irrelevant will be filtered out. Who is going to be in charge of filtering out what they think is "irrelevant," and do we have any assurance that their decisions will be fair? Before you believe their story about this resolution being the result of one exceptionally long meeting, you should know that past Councilmembers had already wanted to silence (or at least muzzle) the public. It was already a topic of debate in 2018.

Is the City Council even within its rights in the first place to limit the time frame and subjects for public comments? No. This isn't acceptable. The members need to focus on doing the job they were hired to do and fixing the way our city is run, not limiting time frames or sieving out comments they do not think are important or relevant.

Limiting #publiccomments stifles popular opinion. The purpose of public comments is to provide the government feedback with regards to the perceived impact of a law or regulation under consideration, such as the Rashard Brooks Bill. Public comments cannot be treated like a waste of the City Council's time and resources. This is the task they were hired to do, and their very own Mission Statement says they will "work for the good of all citizens across the city." They ought to take it seriously, because their decisions have far-reaching consequences in our daily lives and set the pace for our city's economy and justice system.

The council members are elected representatives of the people, and they owe it to the public to hear their comments, no matter how long it takes. It's not like these contentious lengthy meetings take place every day. The topics of discussion in July 2020 were monumental, and the Rayshard Brooks Bill wasn't the only important topic; five people had just been shot dead by police during a riotous July 4th weekend. July's meeting was to discuss police reforms, and to gauge if Atlanta's residents were in favor of re-allocating $73 million of the police budget towards other community-based activities.

It is for this reason that the Atlanta City Council's decision to limit comments is not only disappointing but also sets a dangerous precedent.