Near the end of Tuesday night’s meeting of the Lawrence City Commission, a man in a jester’s hat approached the speaker’s podium with a smile on his face.
The room was tense.
“Public comment time?” the man, Michael Eravi, asked Mayor Bart Littlejohn.
Not quite, Littlejohn said.
Eravi proceeded anyway.
He said the commission meeting was a “god**** clown show.” He berated Littlejohn and called him “Mayor Little Man.”
“You’re not a strong mayor, Bart,” Eravi said.
When Littlejohn tried to take back control of the meeting, Eravi put a finger to his lips in the universal signal for “hush” — ordering the mayor to be silent.
“This is my time,” Eravi said.
It wasn’t his time.
Littlejohn declared that Eravi was being disruptive.
Police officers escorted Eravi out of City Hall and told him he was being cited for trespassing.
It was a mess.
And it’s become routine at the Lawrence City Commission.
I went to the commission meeting on Tuesday night — when much of America was watching Donald Trump and Kamala Harris face off in a presidential debate — because democracy at the national level feels all too fragile these days.
