What Justice Looks Like in Davis

We find out at the April 28th City Council Meeting

By Scott Steward

City Staff released its version of the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian and Allies (MAPA) recommendations this past Friday. (provided below)

Discrimination against Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian bodies, families, and cultures has been an unfortunate project that has accelerated since the First World War. This bias is also evident in the colloquial, systemic, unequal, and dehumanizing treatment of our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian residents and students in Davis.

City email boxes are filling with canned opposition emails leading up to the April 28th special City meeting to hear Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Allies (MAPA) antidiscrimination recommendations, recommendations made by our own City Human Relations Commission (HRC).  The HRC recommendations were made after months of surveys, hearing testimony, and careful consideration. 

Most of the opposition emails are filled with recriminations and claims of harm inflicted by the MAPA recommendations. However, these recommendations would likely be completely non-controversial if they applied to any other marginalized group. Replace Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Allies with “Asian,” “Black,” “Latino,” etc., and think about how anti-discrimination recommendations would then likely be received.

A number (not all) of Bet Haverim Congregants and many more out-of-town far-right Jewish organizations have been called up by our Davis-based Zionist Sixth Night Coalition to complain about the recommendations and threaten our City. Organizations such as the Jewish Community Relations Council (a division of the Jewish Federation aligned with AIPAC) intend to overwhelm our city’s deliberations, and the Deborah Project (a legal organization also allied with AIPAC) has made implied threats against our city, should the MAPA recommendations be passed

This opposition represents the far-right Zionist community and some additional sympathizers who have yet to detach themselves from their communities’ bias, even if it is flawed.  The Zionists with whom I am most familiar, including Christian evangelicals, despise Jewish critics of Zionism, such as myself.  For many Jews, declaring independence from Zionism has not been a light decision.

Come Tuesday, we will hear more about how City Staff arrived at a rewrite of the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian and Allies recommendations, in which the words Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian are removed entirely. 

You can read what the City Staff had to say in their published report here: 

Click to access 02-Follow-Up-from-HRC-Recommendations-from-MAPA-Subcommittee-Report.pdf

The words offered by the City Staff do not address Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian anti-discrimination; they are instead an example of what discriminatory complicity looks like. Hopefully, our City Council is better prepared to address the persistence of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian discrimination in our town and on our campuses.  

City Staff, in their presentation of generic recommendations, are, through their omissions, providing additional evidence for our City Council to use in restoring the original language of the MAPA recommendations provided by the HRC.

If Council does not work “a commitment to free speech, including speech advocating for justice for Palestine and the Palestinian people”, along with other essential language, back into the MAPA recommendations, then Davis actively joins a historic low point in human relations.

The original HRC recommendations are followed by the City Staff version below.

For Background:  https://davisvanguard.org/2025/06/davis-human-relations-commission-report/

Human Relations Commission Muslim/Arab/Palestinian/Allies (MAPA) Recommendations (submitted to the City Council April 2025 (original):

1. Acknowledgment of anti-MAPA discrimination in Davis.

2. Commitment to free speech, including speech advocating for justice for Palestine and the Palestinian people.

3. The City Manager or appropriate city staff will reach out to set up meeting(s) to review the report and discuss appropriate next steps with DJUSD and UCD administrators

4. City commitment to Anti-Palestinian Racism and Anti-Muslim Bias Training for staff and council.

5. A request from the city for the DJUSD Superintendent to acknowledge and release a statement on MAPA discrimination in Davis.

6. A request from the city for the UCD Administration to acknowledge and release a statement on MAPA discrimination in Davis.

The City Staff version of the recommendations published this past Friday:

1. Acknowledge that discrimination of all forms exists in Davis and affirm the City’s commitment to ongoing education and action to prevent discrimination.

2. Continue to provide awareness and education about the right to freedom of speech, emphasizing that political expression is constitutionally protected, regardless of viewpoint. This applies to all members of our community.

3. Ask the Hate-Free Together Initiative to partner with the city to develop/share broad-based, cross-cultural, anti-bias information, resources, or training that would be made available to the community.