Just as the regularly-scheduled meeting of the St. Paul City Council came to a close on Wednesday, Council Member Nelsie Yang asked for permission to introduce a resolution under a suspension of the rules.

Her request was cut short mid-sentence by Council President Mitra Jalali, who was in the process of banging her gavel to end the meeting as it was being made.

“I’m sorry, we just adjourned, Ms. Yang. I’m happy to talk to you about it afterward,” she said.

The council president then walked out of the chambers with the five other council members, eliciting boos and shouts of condemnation from a large crowd of pro-Palestinian advocates in the audience.

“That’s really unacceptable,” said Yang, repeatedly objecting to the sudden walk-out.

“There is only one solution!” chanted the crowd in unison. “Cease-fire resolution!”

Yang’s proposed resolution calls for the St. Paul City Council to condemn the Israeli military strikes that have decimated large swathes of Gaza since October, leaving some 30,000 Palestinians dead, most of them women and children.

Similar resolutions, each with their own wording, have been approved by city councils in Minneapolis, Hastings and some 70 other cities, including Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta and Providence, R.I. in a growing effort to pressure the Biden administration to encourage a cease-fire, if not halt U.S. military aid to Israel entirely.

Israel has been steadily bombing Gaza since the attacks of Oct. 7, in which the militant Palestinian organization Hamas — designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department — killed about 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians. Another 250 people were abducted.

In St. Paul, four newly-elected council members have declined to meet with protesters or take questions from the media about their opposition to a cease-fire resolution.

Noecker on Monday said a council vote would have no bearing on international relations or the day-to-day work of City Hall, and Jalali, a cease-fire proponent, said she did not have sufficient votes to move a resolution forward.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter has appeared disinterested in forcing the issue.

“What you saw here was so undemocratic,” said Yang, addressing the protesters, who have shown up at council meetings each Wednesday for the past month and shut down unrelated council hearings with their chanting a week ago. “From St. Paul’s most progressive city council, this was a poor example of what public leadership is.”

Director of Council Operations Brynn Hausz later noted in an email that council members at any time can work on a resolution and meet with their colleagues to share language, receive amendments and potentially bring them forward for consideration as a noticed item on the regular meeting agenda, yet no council member has done so.

Yang said she would submit her proposed resolution for the council’s consideration next Wednesday, though the council president has the authority to strike it from the meeting agenda beforehand. Introducing a resolution during a meeting in process under a suspension of the rules would require a two-thirds vote of the council.

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