Boulder City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde said this week that the removal of “kidnapped” posters by Parks and Recreation staff “was done too hastily.” The posters feature photos of those who were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 attack with the word KIDNAPPED. Like public spaces across the U.S., the posters papered billboards on the Pearl Street Mall.
Rivera-Vandermyde said in an email to the community that the city will be “shoring up its policies and practices to prevent this from happening again.”
“As a city, we are committed to upholding the First Amendment,” Rivera-Vandermyde said. “As such, we cannot make content-based decisions about what is displayed in these public locations.”
The removal of the posters came after a request from Andrew O’Connor, who made statements denying the Holocaust. In a Dec. 15 email to city officials, he requested that the posters be taken down, referring to them as a form of “hate speech and is akin to posting White Supremacists or Neo-Nazi posters or pictures of Hitler.”
“While I will defend your right to free speech, this kind of harmful and historically inaccurate content is not consistent with our city values and is not conducive to a meaningful dialogue around the complex issues in the Middle East,” Rivera-Vandermyde said. “The City of Boulder will not tolerate discrimination or violence against any group of individuals based on their faith or personal identity.”
The incident has stoked a deeper dispute over the war in the Middle East that was on display at the Boulder City Council last night. Residents held up posters of people who were kidnapped. One person waved a Palestinian flag. Another waved an Israeli flag. As people filed out of the council chambers, a police officer broke up a verbal dispute and Mayor Aaron Brockett called for a brief recess.