A racist post shows we need a conversation about civility
Local political discourse reached a new low this past week when a sitting Sarasota city commissioner accused an outspoken citizen watchdog of a racist attack on social media.
During a Tuesday commission meeting, former Mayor Kyle Battie submitted an agenda item intended to address civility, respect and rhetoric in dealings with the public.
An agitated and emotional Battie, who is African American, presented a wrinkled printout of a Facebook post supposedly written by a well-known Sarasota city resident and community activist. (The Herald-Tribune is withholding this person’s name as there is no way to determine authorship of the social media post.)
The printout featured a photograph of Battie at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Corona Cigar Co., a cigar bar at 22 N. Lemon Ave. – which the activist had previously called “illegal” because of its outdoor seating and smoking area – and the words “Gorillas in the midst of being gorillas are on my mind.”
Tanya Borysiewicz, a co-owner of the cigar bar, came to the dais to state she had provided the printout to Battie after it was received by her secretary from an unidentified party.
Though Battie did not mention the activist by name and said, “I hope this isn’t true,” he spoke angrily for more than 10 minutes about the “sick, abhorrent and egregious” attack before demanding a response from his fellow commissioners. All expressed shock and condemnation; only City Commissioner Jen Ahern-Koch suggested the post might not be authentic.
Meanwhile, the activist, watching the meeting online at home, was equally blindsided. She quickly determined the alleged post was, in fact, a fake “mashup” combining two of her past Facebook entries – the photograph from a post voicing her objections to the permitting of the cigar bar and the words taken from a post featuring pictures of gorillas which she, an amateur photographer, had taken on a 2022 African safari with her husband.
She believes the manufactured post was crafted by someone with a political agenda. Her husband recently announced his candidacy for the District 2 city commission seat currently held by Mayor Liz Alpert. The activist
is part of a civic group that identifies and endorses candidates for the city commission who “seek to implement residentfriendly positions on issues relevant to a livable city.”
Contacted two days after the meeting, the activist said she’d not yet heard from anyone at the city saying, “‘We’re sorry this happened, and we’ll get to the bottom of it.’”
“This was a fiasco on every front and really painful for everybody, including Kyle,” she said. “I’m horrified that he would believe that of me and horrified he wouldn’t reach out to me, the city manager or the city attorney when he got this a week ago. No one should get that kind of harassment.”
Alpert, who tabled discussion after Battie’s impassioned monologue, changed course and reopened public comment after receiving emails from the activist denying any involvement and protests from several others defending her during the commission’s lunch break.
“I wanted to apologize basically for assuming it was her and felt it was the right thing to do to make sure it was on record at the same meeting,” Alpert said of her reversal.
The mayor confirmed she and City Manager Marlon Brown were made aware prior to the meeting that Battie’s agenda item would reference “something defamatory,” but had not been informed of the specifics. She had assumed it had something to do with a recent Herald-Tribune guest column she had written calling out attacks on city staff.
While acknowledging the offensiveness of the faked post, several community members disparaged the “public slander” and the hesitancy of city leaders to formally apologize or address their failure to authenticate the post before it was publicly vetted.
The activist admitted that her outspoken civic advocacy has pitted her against city leaders in the past. But that does not mean they should not address a “dysfunctional” communication dynamic that ignores attacks and disrespects citizen input, she said.
“We’ve seen it happen over and over. When the bullying happens, they won’t confront the elephant in the room,” the activist said. “I would love it if the city commission as a whole would say, ‘Let’s talk about this. Let’s get to the bottom of this for everyone’s sake. We never want to see this kind of division in our chambers or our politics ever again.’ But we just don’t have that conversation.”
Two days after the meeting Alpert said she had not spoken with any of her colleagues about the incident and that Florida’s Sunshine Laws make it impossible for commissioners to discuss among themselves what might be done about it.
This failure to address friction between citizens, city staff and/or elected officials is hardly an isolated incident. In addition to Alpert’s guest column, former Mayor Mollie Cardamone in December contributed a Herald-Tribune guest column calling out the dysfunctional interactions between city staff, the city manager and the city attorney which she said have resulted in the public “being locked out of the policymaking process.”
Despite ongoing finger-pointing, there is an opportunity that presents itself here – if only city leaders will embrace it. Instead of shoving these problems under the rug, allowing them to fester, or responding defensively, they could acknowledge the need for – and help facilitate – a forthright community conversation to discuss the divisions and behaviors that are disrupting a healthy working relationship between the city and residents.
Moderated by a respected local moral leader, it could prove to be a turning point toward developing a way to work civilly and collaboratively, despite disagreement. With enough good intention and integrity, it might just allow us to see each other as neighbors again, rather than adversaries.