Wesley Bell Town Hall Violence: Three Personal Accounts

On August 19, St. Louis Congressman Wesley Bell hosted a town hall meeting at the old Post-Dispatch building in downtown St. Louis. It was a contentious meeting where many constituents arrived angry at Bell because of his support for Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza and the West Bankand the fact that he won his office with massive support from the pro-Israel lobby organization AIPAC. (You can see a video of the town hall here). During the meeting Bell denied that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, despite overwhelming evidence and in contradiction to the findings of the world’s most respected human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as B’Tselem, Israel’s major human rights organization, and al-Haq, the largest Palestinian human rights organization. After the meeting police and security for Bell assaulted constituents as they cleared them out of the room. A man who appeared to be Rep. Bell’s private security for the evening was put on administrative leave by his employers as a result of his behavior. We present interviews with three participants and eyewitnesses, two of whom were assaulted. All are part of the St. Louis chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Maxi Glamour

Mound City Messenger: What brought you to Wesley Bell’s town hall?

Maxi Glamour: I’m a very politically engaged person and I really care about the environment and peace and Wesley has been a really strong opponent against peace, against pro-environmental things abroad, especially when it comes to Gaza. Due to this being his first public town hall, I really wanted to show up and hear what he had to say about particular things.

MCM: What did you generally think about how the town hall went?

MG: I think about it like this – did we get the message across that his constituents are fuming, quite angry at his responses and the way that he has handled the situation? Secondly, I thought about, how do we also continue this movement, because there is a strong faction of conservative voices in the area that support him. A lot of them are older. How do we bridge that gap to get older generations to be more intersectional in the way that they look at political figures?

MCM: What was happening right after the town hall in the building?

MG: During the town hall Wesley said “Stay after and I’ll answer more questions” and then there was a group of older people who were to the side by the door. They were all waiting, they were all congregating, talking with each other. I went and I started talking with some people, trying to see how I could bridge gaps and just let people know that yes, we are his constituents, yes we do know what its like to struggle and yes we have been fighting for tornado relief, we have been fighting for black liberation, for out local communities and also this genocide in Gaza is something that young people care about. As these conversations were happening it kind of got a little bit more shaky in the air, to say the least.

I saw a whole bunch of shoving and pushing and I was like, what’s going on? Then the police were shoving people around then I saw them pick up a girl and choke her and throw her into the wall. People were trying to get him off of her and they threw one of those people down on the ground and they pushed a whole bunch of other people onto the ground and then I was just quite literally overwhelmed trying to record it. Then the security officers kicked out every person that was there that was younger and only allowed older people to stay there.

It was clearly a demonstration of if you agree with this person you can stay. If you don’t agree with everything then you’re not allowed to be here. I started walking out. I saw someone, I looked over – then I kept walking. Then a police officer came behind me and choked me and put his hands in my belt loop and started shoving me off and dragging me. My phone dropped and I was like, what is going on, I didn’t do anything people were like hey, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? That’s what happened, from my perspective.

MCM: And then you were able to leave the building after that?

MG: Yes, after that I went outside and just kind of checked in to see what was going on with everybody to see how they were feeling.

MCM: What do you think this tells us about the state of our community that this can happen at a congressional town hall?

MG: I think that this was a culmination of months of a public official hiding from the community, hiding from town halls, hiding from public discourse and so he finally faced the community in a public space and there was a lot of dissent. The fact that he and his hired hands used violence to silent dissent and assault several people with physical marks afterwards indicates that there is a willingness to perpetuate the harm that is going on in Gaza here back home. I think that this is congruent with some of his policies and stances toward Trump. I think that we’re in a situation where we have a fascist takeover. Trump is trying to increase violence towards unhoused people, undocumented people, trans people and others and Wesley Bell has been documented supporting these measures, documented being an obstacle of combating Trump in his illegal use of promoting violence around the world. So I feel that this violence that happened in his town hall is documented evidence that Wesley Bell supports the violence of fascism and is not on the side of the people when it comes to combatting fascist ideology.

Elior Berkowitz

Mound City Messenger: What brought you to Wesley Bell’s town hall?

Elior Berkowitz: Me and other Jewish St. Louisans with Jewish Voice for Peace St. Louis and Progressive Jews of St. Louis among many others in the crowd were there to ask Wesley some hard questions about why he is supporting the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and why he took millions from AIPAC. We wanted to voice our anger at his going to Israel on a sponsored propaganda trip while they’re starving Gaza just miles away. We wanted to confront him about those things and let him know that we as his Jewish constituents reject the notion that sending weapons to Israel is done for our safety. What Israel is doing is wrong and it needs to end immediately. That is why we were there.

MCM: How do you think the town hall went?

EliorB: We didn’t really know how many other folks were going to be there who were upset at him. I think that a town hall is a space where constituents are supposed to let their Representative know how they feel about how they are representing them. It is a sign of how a Representative is doing if a lot of people are yelling at him during his town hall – it’s a sign that his constituents are unhappy. In that regard, the town hall was a real democratic process, more democratic than campaigns that are funded by special interest super PAC’s like AIPAC. 

There were a lot of threats from police to remove people which I think was uncalled for. I was holding a small sign up that stated Wesley votes to send billions of our tax dollars to Israel and a cop was flashing me in the eyes with a flashlight from across the room to get me to stop, which I felt was ridiculous. I think it was the same cop who hit me and threw me to the ground later. 

I think that the things that he said in response to our demand that he address his stance on Gaza were not satisfactory to me and other people. A lot of them were lies. He used a lot of mistruths and distractions that Israel and its allies like to spread around to garner support. He shifted all of the focus to October 7. It was utterly insane that he mentioned meeting with an internationally wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu as if that was a normal thing, as if that was an acceptable thing. He mentioned meeting with – he said “Gaza Health Foundation”, which I assume he meant the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation or GHF which is a non-profit organization that is supposedly there to deliver aid into Gaza, run and funded by the US and Israel, the two perpetrators of the starvation, bombing, and destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants. It has been called out by numerous international human rights organizations, by United Nations experts, by American citizens, veterans, that have worked there. They have referred to it as a death trap. There have been thousands of people killed at their distribution sites. He mentioned meeting with the GHF and Netanyahu and repeated their lies like these are casual things. He is basically saying “I have met with war criminals and I am working with an organization that is executing war crimes, and we’re going to decide what is best for the Palestinians” and that is a violent and horrific stance to take.

MCM: It seems like he thought he was speaking to people who did not understand the context and so he thought he could just say things and people would nod along.

EliorB: Yes – I saw him smirking a lot when he was saying these types of things. That was really disgusting to me. His demeanor made it very clear to me that he views all of this as a joke. This is purely about his motivations to have power. That is why he took this money from AIPAC and took a seat in Congress, and he finds it funny that people are telling him that genocide is wrong. He feels that he can get away with it and that is why he was smirking. 

MCM: He compared AIPAC to ActBlue, which for anyone who knows anything about either of the two things, is absurd.

EliorB: Yes, it is absolutely absurd.

MCM: What was happening right after the town hall in the building?

EliorB: Me and some people that I came with were getting ready to leave. It was, I’d say, around five minutes after the event had ended. Tons of people were still mingling around, mulling about. I was towards the center of the room – we were just talking about how the town hall went, just chit chatting. It was the normal amount of time that it takes to leave an event. There was no flicking of the lights. There was no announcement saying that the building was closed. Everything felt like we were just hanging around, making our way towards the door.

Then I started hearing noise and seeing some sort of escalation happening across the room. I walked over there and pulled out my phone to start recording because I saw that the police, plus this other person in plain clothes, who did not have any identification on, were aggressively pushing people in attendance. Within thirty seconds of me starting recording a large man in a green shirt grabbed this young woman by her hair and threw her against the wall. I decided to intervene because he was physically harming her. I put my body in between them to separate them. Soon afterwards I was hit in the face and grabbed by the neck and pushed to the ground. I had four or five police standing over me and shouting – I had my hands up because I thought they were going to harm me, I was in a bit of a fetal position. They were just yelling at me. Then they told me to get up and they kind of pulled me up and I started walking away and they just started shoving me into these chairs as I was trying to exit. But the chairs were in the way and they just kept pushing me into them. Then I left the building.

I want to add that what I experienced is a normal interaction with police for many people in this country and it is a fraction of the harm being done regularly in our communities by police. And it is a fraction of the harm being done to Palestinians at the hands of Israel with US support.

MCM: What do you think this all tells us about the state of our community for this to happen after a congressional town hall?

EliorB: To me it shows that Wesley Bell is not only totally disinterested in representing us but is also a danger to his constituents if this is what will happen to them when they use a fully lawful act of protest at a town hall which is a forum where you are supposed to let your representative know how you feel. This is his first town hall since he came into office over 8 months ago. Since he’s been elected I have called his offices in St. Louis and D.C. numerous times and have never gotten a response or even a staffer answering the phone.

It’s extremely telling that this is what will happen if you disagree with him.

I think this is very in line with the rising fascism that we see across the country. The police and this other plain clothes man – why he was there, whether he was working for Bell as security is still unclear – were presumably there to protect Wesley Bell. Instead they were attacking and suppressing opposition to the Representative. This is a pretty clear sign of fascism.

Edward Berg

Mound City Messenger: What brought you to Wesley Bell’s town hall?

Edward Berg: I wanted to shame him for supporting a genocide and mass murder.

MCM: How do you think the town hall went?

EB: I think it went pretty bad for Wesley Bell and pretty good for people protecting basic human rights in Palestine.

MCM: After the town hall was over, what did you observe happen?

EB: I observed a small Asian woman around my size grabbed by the neck by a giant man in green. He shoved her against a wall and put down. Then the police started protecting the man who just assaulted a woman and there was a guy named Elior who tried to stop the lady from getting assaulted and Elior was shoved to the ground. While they were keeping Elior on the ground there was a cop dressed in white – I think he was the leader of that group of police who were protecting the assault. Me and a couple other people were chanting “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?”. The cop in white clearly leading the other cops pointed at me and he said “Not you!”

MCM: What do you think this town hall and what happened afterwards tells us about our community here in St. Louis?

EB: I think it says that we need to make sure that St. Louis never has a congressman like Wesley Bell again.

Author’s note: Edward Berg is my son.