Antisemitic letters were sent to the homes of several Corte Madera councilmembers, days after several people logged onto to a teleconferenced council meeting to express hate-filled statements, a town official said.
Mayor Eli Beckman said he was among the elected leaders who received a letter at his home on Saturday. Beckman is Jewish.
The incident followed a Dec. 5 Town Council meeting in which a half dozen people logged on and made racist, antisemitic and homophobic comments. The commenters did not turn on their cameras and did not identify themselves.
Beckman said he hoped to “speak out against hate” after receiving the letter. He said two other council members also received the letter. He declined to name them.
“I don’t want to give the false impression that this was targeted to me as an individual Jew, but it is very scary,” Beckman said. “But the message that I want to share though is that this is not cause for panic, but this is cause for resolve.”
He said he reported the incident to the Central Marin Police Authority and the FBI.
“I feel like what we need to be doing as a society is calling out and rejecting hate,” Beckman said.
During the council meeting, Beckman read from a written statement, indicating that the comments violated the council’s rules.
“It is against town policy to engage in verbal conduct that denigrates an individual because of their race, color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability or other protected category,” Beckman said. “I have stopped the clock on your comment. This is your warning.”
Town staff said they would halt comments that did not adhere to the topic or violated board rules.
“We have informed the public that we have a non-discrimination policy, that we will adhere to this policy and now every speaker is on notice. If you cannot adhere to our policy we will consider you to be in violation of the board rules and disrupting our meetings, so you will not get a second opportunity,” said Town Attorney Amy Ackerman during the meeting.
The Town Council made a unanimous motion to end public comment.
On Sept. 20, similar incidents were reported at meetings in Larkspur and Tiburon. Such incidents have also been reported in other municipalities in the Bay Area.