Amherst residents attended a rally and Town Council meeting on Monday, March 4 at Amherst Middle School, where the council approved a resolution endorsing a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

The rally started at 5:30 p.m. outside the middle school, with people of all ages gathered around various public speakers who switched after each chant. The Amherst Police Department ensured a safe environment, with attendees seen expressing their opinions through chants, hugs and handholding.

Rabia Ahmed, a resident of Amherst, led a speech that ended with, “We are here for the thousands of wounded children who will spend Ramadan with no surviving family to break fast with. How many more must starve? Ceasefire now.”

Attendees of the rally held posters, one of which read “JEWS SAY: STOP GENOCIDE AGAINST PALESTINE.”

Dori Midnight, a resident of Amherst and a community care practitioner, also participated by leading the chants. “The ceasefire is a bare minimum; we want an end to this occupation,” Midnight said. “We are here with our broken hearts, our rage, our grief…to call upon the hearts and the voices of those who are in power.”

At 6:30 p.m., residents began to head inside the building to start the 5.5-hour Town Council meeting. Lynn Griesemer, district two councilor, urged for peaceful public commentary.

Mike Offner, a resident of Amherst, started off the public speaking section of the meeting by stating he was a Jewish resident who felt the need to come forward. He said the resolution needed to be adjusted to be more inclusive to the Jewish population in Amherst.

He said his offer to modify the resolution “was rejected and I was attacked and insulted because I am outspoken about Jew hatred in the town of Amherst which makes me the wrong kind of Jew to be included with the group behind this resolution,” he said.

The Council was met with a difference of opinion from the crowd and people’s statements were met with either snaps or boos. After most of the public commentary, Griesemer called for silence in the crowd.

“Major news outlets have been dehumanizing Palestinians on a daily basis” because their deaths are being reduced to only numbers, Stephen Brevik, a resident of Amherst and a psychologist, said.

Tom Porter, a Jewish member of Amherst, thanked the Council for listening to the opinions and concerns of the community, but said “tonight’s proposed resolution only inflames the situation. Please leave it there, let it be, or be prepared to amend it month after month.”

Many educators within the Amherst community also took a stance at the meeting and spoke about how the war in Gaza affects their own students’ work.

Ashwin Ravikumar, a professor at Amherst College, said people in Palestine cannot have justice without a cease fire. “We need to recognize our shared humanity [and] that all our hearts are intertwined.”

Fatima Anwar, an assistant professor in the electrical engineering department at the University of Massachusetts who is on her department’s diversity, equity and inclusion board, said many students of color in her department are not able to perform well because they are fearful after the events in Gaza. Anwar said her students have much to say, but “many of my students are also afraid of speaking” because they feel they won’t be heard.

After the general public comments were closed, the council began discussing amendments to the provided resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza. After reading the new resolution with potential amendments, confusion amongst the council members ensued. Motions and conversations that lacked clarity between council members regarding what exactly the new resolution was asking for and what was being added led to many frustrated back-and-forth debates and misplaced votes.

At-large council member Andrew Steinberg proposed changes to the amended resolution adding extra information of Hamas’ role in the violence and aggression in the war.

“I have a series of amendments for the original motion that I thought would strengthen the original motion by making sure it was factually correct,” Steinberg said.

As the amendments were voted on and added to the resolution, the three co-sponsors of the original resolution, Patricia De Angelis, Mandi Jo Hanneke and Ellisha Walker removed their names from the sponsorship. The lack of sponsors meant that the resolution could potentially be overlooked and pushed back to be considered at a later date. For ceasefire advocates who had been protesting since October, this was unacceptable.

An uproar echoed in the room as the onlookers and expressed their grief and anger at the potential dissolution. “You don’t represent us!” A member of the crowd shouted as others repeatedly shouted, “Shame, shame, shame!”

“One of the things that people need to realize is,” Griesemer said, “no matter when you bring a resolution to council, we have the right to debate it. And we have the right to amend it. We fully respect the amount of work all of you have put into [this resolution].”

As onlookers and advocates for the ceasefire calmed, council members such as Hala Lord of district three and Cathy Schoen expressed their condolences.

“I probably would have voted differently on the two suggested amendments because I didn’t perceive this [reaction from the crowd],” Schoen said. “I appreciated the changes that were made, and I thought they were good ones, so I did not perceive that there would be this result.”

“All of [the sponsors] removed our names because of the amendments that passed,” Patricia De Angelis said. “Not because additional amendments passed. If there were amendments that we could have accepted, we would have accepted them. But you cannot ask us to avoid the likes of Palestinian people.”

Griesemer asked the council members if they would want to conduct a vote to reconsider the action of keeping the amended version, requested by Steinberg. After debate as to whether or not the first, second or both clauses should be kept, the council agreed to either take both clauses or leave them.

Walker, a co-sponsor of the original resolution, said that the resolution does not need to further condemn Hamas. Instead, the approval of the ceasefire resolution should focus on the residents of the town, as the approval would confirm that the council saw and valued the lives of Palestinians. Walker emphasized for the council to check their privilege of the situation at hand and that their main jobs were to help uplift marginalized voices.

“[The town council’s] own opinions don’t always matter,” Walker said. At the moment, the personal opinions of the town council members had to be put aside in order to properly support the rest of the town.

After five hours, at 11:30 p.m., the three council members’ names who were originally the sponsors of the resolution re-added their names. The council then moved to a unanimous decision to move to the original motion to vote on the actual resolution.

Council members Ryan, Steinberg and Ette voted no on the motion, and member Taub abstained. Council members Schoen, Walker, De Angelis, Devlin-Gauthier, Hanneke, Hegner, Lord, Rooney and Griesemer voted yes. The ceasefire resolution passed 9-3.

Kalina Kornacki can be reached at [email protected] or followed on X @KalinaKornacki. Eva Maniatty can be reached at [email protected].