photo by: City of Lawrence screenshot

Lawrence City Commissioner Amber Sellers speaks at the City Commission meeting Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023.

Updated at 5:14 p.m. Friday, Sept. 6

Lawrence City Commissioner Amber Sellers, for at least the last two commission meetings, has not been physically present for general public comment. In a statement Thursday she shared why: targeted, intentional assaults that create “toxicity” and “erode the foundations of our democracy.”

Sellers did not mention the perpetrators by name in her Facebook post but described them as a small but vocal group of people interested in self-aggrandizement. Sellers said that she would listen to public comment from an alternative location.

As the Journal-World has reported, two commenters in particular — Michael Eravi and Justin Spiehs, both of whom have filed lawsuits against the city and other local government bodies — have routinely disrupted public meetings with obscene name-calling and even use of the N-word. At least twice in recent weeks, Spiehs has insulted Sellers’ personal appearance and called her a name while the other commissioners sat in silence.

The Journal-World, after one such incident in August, reached out to commissioners, asking if they planned to address the situation and whether the public could expect such behavior to be allowed and normalized for the foreseeable future. No commissioners, including Sellers, responded, and the city’s spokeswoman, Cori Wallace, sent only this response: “Due to the ongoing litigation naming the City of Lawrence as a defendant, we cannot offer comment at this time.”

Eravi’s federal lawsuit claiming that the city had violated his First Amendment rights was dismissed for failing to provide factual support. The same day that the dismissal was filed, Eravi angrily used the N-word to belittle Lawrence’s mayor, who is Black, at a city meeting, as the Journal-World reported. Spiehs’ lawsuits against various government entities, including the city, are still pending. A federal judge, however, has denied Spiehs’ request to order the commission to temporarily stop enforcing its commenting policy, ruling that his overall claims were unlikely to succeed on the merits.

In response to an open records request by the Journal-World, the city indicated that it has spent more than $26,000 defending itself against lawsuits filed by Eravi and Spiehs between January 2023 and Aug. 23, 2024.

Sellers’ post on Facebook said she felt the public comment portion of meetings was meant to be a platform for “genuine community engagement,” but it has been taken over by individuals “more interested in creating conflict than fostering meaningful dialogue.”

Commissioners do not traditionally speak with public commenters, but just listen as they talk for their allotted three minutes on topics that are expected to be germane to city business.

Sellers listed some of the attacks she and other commissioners have experienced at meetings, including:

• “Persistent racial and political slurs directed at specific Commissioners during public comments.

• Coordinating campaigns of misinformation designed to undermine the commission’s credibility and sow discord among the community.

• Intimidation tactics, including threats and bullying, that seek to create an atmosphere of fear and hostility.”

Sellers said in her post that normalizing the behavior of these public commenters could lead to a dangerous mentality and potentially embolden someone to act with violence.

“It perpetuates a cycle of division and hostility that threatens the safety and well-being of not just the commissioners but also city employees and other public servants,” Sellers said.

Governing bodies in Lawrence, including the school board and the Douglas County Commission, have dealt with numerous disruptive instances during public comment periods.

Spiehs has been arrested at least twice at public meetings, and Eravi has been banned for a 60-day period after exhibiting what the city manager termed “threatening and harassing behavior,” including telling two commissioners that he knew where they lived. Earlier this year during a City Commission meeting, a different frequent public commenter, using a fake and pornographic name, addressed city commissioners via Zoom with graphic references to fellatio, female genitalia and ejaculation. That incident in May followed an April incident when multiple public commenters on Zoom derailed a commission meeting with racist and antisemitic hate speech, using the N-word, displaying a flaming swastika and calling another commenter a “f-cking c-nt.”

The City Commission made changes to its general public comment procedure recently, voting in May to move that comment session to the end of the meeting and not to broadcast it live.

Sellers said her decision to leave the meeting room and listen to public comment from elsewhere was not a “retreat.” She said that discourse and debate were essential to democracy and that she would continue to listen to all voices in the community, but that the “fanatical grandstanding” was simply a destructive distraction and that enduring abusive behavior should not be considered as “just part of the job.”

“Lawrence is a city built on respect, inclusivity, and a shared commitment to progress,” Sellers wrote. “We are better than the behaviors we’ve witnessed in recent months.”