'Moral Cowards': Worcester Mayor Fortifies Council Public Comment Rules After Racism

WORCESTER, MA — Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty is making changes to how members of the public speak at city council meetings in an effort to prevent out-of-state racists from hijacking future meetings.

The changes follow an incident at Tuesday's meeting where a caller used a racial slur and antisemitic language — the second such incident since January. The callers are likely affiliated with a California neo-Nazi group whose members call in to city council meetings across the country to spew hate speech.

The group is taking advantage of new ways the public has to watch and participate in Worcester City Council meetings. The city has been allowing public comment either by phone or virtually through Zoom since the beginning of the pandemic.

For all city council meetings moving forward, virtual attendees will be required to have their cameras on, and callers will have to display their real phone number, Petty said Thursday.

"I have seen virtual participation in public meetings as an accessible way for residents to offer testimony pertaining to orders on a meeting’s agenda. Unfortunately, we have recently seen an abuse of this option in our City Council meetings," Petty said in a news release. "In today’s era of virtual meetings, moral cowards can feel safe behind a screen to utter the worst words in our dialects."

Tuesday's meeting was especially objectionable because the caller pretended to be local journalist Bill Shaner, who reported on the group behind the calls earlier this month, calling its members "nerds with negative reaction fetishes."

Several callers to a meeting in January were also able to spew hate speech before being cut off. The group behind the calls was also likely the same that sent transphobic, antisemitic postcards to the homes of Worcester city councilors at the end of January.