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.
I wanted to see how it’s doing at the local level, where neighbors and community members often know each other and have to look each other in the face to get stuff done.
What I found was grim. Commission meetings in Lawrence are built to solicit and hear public input. On nearly every agenda item, citizens are given up to three minutes apiece to weigh in. There is even a section of the meeting to hear public comments about city business that isn’t on the agenda.
It ought to be a First Amendment triumph. In practice — these days, at least — it looks like a slow-motion disaster.
Real-life denial of service
I covered the Lawrence City Commission years ago as a young journalist, you see. There was always a culture of vibrant public input — I can remember the gadflies and their names; the meetings could stretch deep into the night — and there could be hurt feelings.
But one could watch the process and come away with a firm sense that the public’s business was being done.
