The Durham city council voted 5-2 to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war during the final moments of a marathon meeting this week.
Inside City Hall, the response to the vote in the early hours of Tuesday morning sounded something like a sudden rainstorm, with attendees in the chambers, the lobby, and the streets outside applauding and beating drums at downpour decibel.
The resolution urges the Biden administration to “facilitate a sustained, bilateral ceasefire” and demands an end to U.S. aid “to the Netanyahu government.” It also calls for release of hostages in Gaza and release of “all people held unjustly in the region” and acknowledges both the October 7 Hamas attacks and the “disproportionate retaliation by the Israeli Government” that has killed or wounded more than 100,000 Palestinians.
Durham is the second city in North Carolina and one of around 70 cities in the U.S. to adopt a ceasefire resolution. Carrboro’s town council passed a resolution in November and Raleigh and Chapel Hill leaders have declined to consider resolutions (see box below).
Hundreds of people came to watch the vote in Durham on Monday. Labor unions and activist organizations such as Mothers For Ceasefire and Jewish Voice for Peace, which have spent months petitioning the council, showed up in full force. Around 30 people signed up to speak in favor of the resolution.
“I’m Mexican, and 2023 was the first year that I made an altar in memory of Day of the Dead,” said proponent Quinny Sanchez Lopez during the public comment period. “It felt like the only tangible way that I could really somehow mourn the death of so many children who just wanted a clementine or a loaf of bread.”
As Sanchez Lopez spoke, she held up a clementine in her hand. Proponents in the audience followed suit. According to a release from the newly banded group Durham For a Free Palestine, the fruit was meant as a symbol to honor 3-year-old Imad Abu Al-Qare’a, a Gazan boy who was shot by Israeli snipers alongside his cousin when they went out to buy clementines from a street vendor in December.
A smaller group spoke against the resolution during the public comment period.
“This is another ‘blame the Jews’ situation,” said opponent Amy Rosenthal.
But most of the Jewish people who attended the meeting were in favor of the resolution, a fact that was highlighted around midnight when council member Carl Rist remarked that “our Jewish neighbors have probably left the room”—referring to resolution opponents who’d exited en masse an hour prior—and half the people sitting in the chamber pointedly raised their hands, as did council member Chelsea Cook. (“Apologies, apologies,” Rist said.)
People on both sides of the issue flagged problems with the resolution’s language. Proponents pressed the council to describe Israel’s assault on Gaza as a genocide. Opponents lamented the lack of an explicit condemnation of Hamas. Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton, who voted against the resolution, also cited semantics as a reason for his dissent.
“One of the lines in the resolution says ‘a disproportionate response,’” Middleton said. “It didn’t say ‘inappropriate.’ It said ‘disproportionate.’ Which means that the resolution itself is contemplating not the appropriateness of the response but the degree of the response.”
“Are we calling for a ceasefire absent a two state solution?” he added. “And who are we addressing it to? To Hamas?”
While Middleton said he’d hoped the council could take more time to draft a unanimous statement, Mayor Leonardo Williams, the other “no,” said he preferred a split vote; the division would be emblematic of Durham, Williams said.
Williams delivered a lengthy statement that ranged from a recap of a tense meeting he held recently with local religious leaders to a rumination on the potency of the ceasefire activists’ campaign.
“You all have been able to do something—whether you’re in this room or you’re watching online—you’ve been able to do something that I haven’t seen in a really long time,” Williams said. “I mean, I’m talking, like, the 60s. And I’ve only seen that just in video; obviously I was minus 20-something years old.”
“What I’ve seen in this process,” he said, “made me really envy the ability to convene.”
To that point, the hundreds of proponents who came to City Hall on Monday actually weren’t able to convene in the way they’d planned: a few minutes before the 7 p.m. council meeting, security guards locked the front doors of City Hall, leaving dozens who’d planned to watch the meeting from the TV in the lobby out on the sidewalk. Some left as the night grew late and cold but many stayed until the meeting adjourned at 1 a.m. (At a city council meeting earlier this month, a group of ceasefire activists streamed into the chambers to chant and place roses on the ground in an act of protest, stalling a rezoning hearing for 30 minutes.)
The five council members who voted yes on the resolution explained their decisions in different ways.
Rist said he resonated with the sentiment that “our federal policy is out of line with values of peace and values of individual life” but also stressed that the resolution is not a referendum on Israel’s right to exist.
Cook, a newly appointed council member who proposed the resolution as her first action as a public official, spoke from a more personal standpoint.
“It has been a lifelong struggle for me to find my place in the Jewish community and hold opinions different from the Zionist Jews I was around,” Cook said. “I understand the difficulty and the risk of ostracization that you face when you come out and speak on these issues, and all I can say is that I understand.”
Council members DeDreana Freeman and Javiera Caballero spoke about the 2018 resolution they voted to ban the Durham Police Department’s training program with the Israeli military, describing that vote as difficult but important, like this one.
And Nate Baker, who committed to exploring a ceasefire resolution immediately after he was elected to the city council in November, threw his full support behind the ceasefire cause and affirmed that processes like this are what the council is here for.
“This hasn’t taken anything away from the time we commit to direct city government related issues,” Baker said. “Some folks have even discovered local government and city government through this issue, by coming here.”
The largely youthful crowd of attendees sat through three hours of rezoning cases before the ceasefire resolution came up on the agenda.
“We are here late tonight,” Baker said. “We just would’ve had a shorter meeting otherwise.”
Chapel Hill and Raleigh Decline to Consider Ceasefire Resolution
By Chase Pellegrini de Paur
Carrboro’s 4-3 council vote in favor of a ceasefire in November hinted at the intensity of public and private conversations around the issue in the months to come. Council member (now mayor) Barbara Foushee was in the minority then.
“The issue is complex and divisive, which is why I don’t want to weigh in on it,” Foushee said. “There is too much to be taken into account, and one resolution could never hold it all. No voices should be muted in this resolution.”
At recent meetings, majorities on the Raleigh and Chapel Hill councils seemed to agree with Foushee. The mayors of both municipalities used similar language to announce that they would not consider ceasefire resolutions, thereby avoiding votes on the highly sensitive topic.
“We do not weigh in on things that are outside of our expertise or authority,” said Chapel Hill mayor Jess Anderson at a January 24 meeting. “In this situation, where our community is deeply conflicted and the issues are very complex, a resolution is not what’s needed. Instead, as we have seen in other communities, it could serve to add to the divide.”
While Chapel Hill has been the site of some protests, the council has not seen the same level of intensity as Raleigh’s has. Residents have stalled several meetings, leaving mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin playing the role of an annoyed teacher as protesters’ breaches of decorum have interfered with the ordinary public comment process.
“We appreciate every member of our community who has shared their voice with us through email and in person,” Baldwin said at the February 6 meeting. “While we do not have a consensus among our community, we also do not have a consensus among our council.”
Baldwin also acknowledged “the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia across the city and across the country” and condemned “all forms of harassment and hate speech.”
Both Baldwin and Anderson emphasized areas of agreement.
“We all want an end to the horrific violence. We all want the safe return of hostages. We all want everyone to have access to basic necessities, shelter, food and water. We all want long lasting peace,” Anderson said.
“We call for the protection of all civilians and humanitarian relief. We call for the safe return of all hostages. We, like many others in our country, call on world leaders to work toward an end to this conflict and a peaceful long term solution,” Baldwin said.
Raleigh city council member Christina Jones disagreed with the decision to avoid a vote: “But I do hope that our community can begin to heal even though this was not a unanimous discussion or—decision,” Jones said.
Follow Staff Writer Lena Geller on Twitter or send an email to lgeller@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at chase@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.
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