Cook comes under attack

Jenny Marder

A measure meant to unify the city with its yellow ribbons has instead

caused a deep, but subtle rift and prompted a flurry of hate mail to

the sole council member who questioned the ribbon campaign.

Since questioning and opposing a measure that would cover the city

in yellow ribbons, Councilwoman Debbie Cook has received several

dozen nasty e-mails, calling her a number of degrading names.

The e-mails, mostly from people outside the city, were prompted by

the California Young Americans for Freedom, an ultraconservative

group that is spearheading the yellow ribbon campaign to support U.S.

troops.

The group sent out mass e-mails about Cook’s comments. The e-mails

included her e-mail address and encouraged recipients to give her a

piece of their minds.

Posted on the Yellow Ribbons for America Web site is also a video

of Cook’s comments, in which it is falsely stated that she “storms

out of the meeting before it ends.”

“It’s McCarthyism rearing its ugly head again,” said Ron Davis, a

planning commissioner and former columnist for the Independent.

“[Cook] doesn’t deserve to be painted as anti-American because she

has the audacity to question something.”

Cook, who said that she supports the troops, raised questions

about the legal implications of tying yellow ribbons to the antennas

of all city-owned vehicles at last Monday’s City Council meeting. The

measure passed 6 to 1.

Cook also asked how long the ribbons would remain, who would

replace them if they got ragged and unkempt and whether it would, in

time, become politically impossible to remove them.

According to the First Amendment, the city will be unable to

prevent other activist groups from passing similar resolutions now

that this has passed, Cook said.

“Once you open the door to one particular group, you can’t

restrict other groups,” she said. “This is public property. If you

give one person access, you have to give all people access. Now, if

another group says that we want to do this, we have to allow them to

do it.”

Assistant City Atty. Paul D’Alessandro said the vote does not tie

the council’s hands in the future.

“It’s up to the council,” he said. “If the council wants to tie

red ribbons on cars, they can. If they want to tie yellow ribbons on

cars, they can.”

But Douglas Mirell, a Beverly Hills-based attorney who specializes

in First Amendment law, said that Cook was “absolutely correct” in

her statements.

“The First Amendment requires content neutrality,” he said. “This

means you can neither favor nor discriminate against any particular

form of speech based upon its content and whenever you permit only

one group to use public facilities, whenever you permit only one

organization to speak in a particular forum, you violate these

principles.”

By passing the resolution, Mirell said, any group has the right to

demand equal access to this new forum the council has created.

“You either have to allow all symbols, of all groups, or adopt

regulations to prevent displays of any group,” he said.

Brad White, organizer of the yellow ribbons campaign, said that he

considered her statements a direct attack on their organization and

added that while he does not condone threats, people should have the

ability to comment on what was said.

“Was she sincere in her argument?” White asked. “Obviously not. It

was just an excuse for the fact that she didn’t support this. I found

her comments extremely insensitive to people who are defending their

freedom right now and the family members who are concerned about

them.”

“Maybe she owes an apology,” he continued. “To the troops and to

the family members.”

Cook said the incident has opened her eyes to what things must

have been like for people who spoke out during the Red Scare of the

1940s and ‘50s, when thousands were blacklisted as communists,

largely at the urging of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy. She said she

found it odd that Americans wouldn’t allow someone to ask questions

about this.

Cook did say, however, that she has also gotten just as many

letters in support of her comments as hate mail.

“Some of them were very thoughtful, considerate letters,” she

said. “People were upset that someone was trying to tell them how to

be a patriot, how to support the troops.”

Cook says she wished there had been more debate at the meeting.

“Do they want every vote to be 7 to 0?” she asked. “Do they want

no debate, no questioning? That’s not what people want. They want us

to ask questions that need to be asked. To me, that’s un-American.”

* JENNY MARDER covers City Hall. She can be reached at (714)

965-7173 or by e-mail at jenny.marder@latimes.com.