Edgewater Councilwoman Hannah Gay Keao’s daughter gazes at the family menorahs during the first night of Hanukkah in 2022.
From Edgewater Councilwoman Hannah Gay Keao:
As we ease further into the holiday season, I am calling on all of us in Edgewater to collectively center peace and community.
So many of our neighbors are currently in need of this: Venezuelan migrants who have traveled so many miles are residing in our city, attending our neighborhood schools, and waking up daily to the vast uncertainties of their new reality. Guns have now taken the lives of at least two community members this year. And pain and heartache–from death and harm in Palestine and Israel and the plagues of hate speech and acts of violence on our soil domestically–run deep, even in tiny Edgewater. I know I am not the only mother in town who has hugged my child exponentially tighter the past ten weeks.
I am currently the only Jewish City Council Member in Edgewater. Until recently, I never imagined this identity would so directly integrate into my public service.
On November 13th, in our neighboring city of Wheat Ridge, several anonymous people—who were likely not residents—virtually joined a City Council meeting, and proceeded to voice public comments that festered into the darkest corners of hate speech. These comments were a fringe exploitation of Palestinian suffering as a platform for despicable, Nazi-adjacent antisemitism.
I have been in touch since then with several of our Jewish constituents in Edgewater, and made a pledge that I would do everything I could to keep such vitriol off our public forum; groups like those that commented in Wheat Ridge are often highly organized and make rounds of neighboring places.
Hate speech is constitutionally protected, but the ability to comment virtually at a local government meeting is not, nor is it guaranteed by our City Charter. On December 5th, we on Council unanimously approved the difficult decision to suspend virtual public comment (excepting ADA-accommodations). I hope we are able to revisit this decision soon.
And still, the pain in our community remains. As I now light our family’s menorahs for Hanukkah, a holiday that retells the story of a targeted attack on Jewish people, this all has become an especially salient and surreal moment.
So what do we do, and how am I trying to keep leading as I grapple with issues so much bigger than Edgewater, yet still so personal and present here?
First, I ask all of us to spend time together and in our community, to talk to each other, to listen and learn with understanding and vulnerability. And do it offline, with diligence to facts and maintaining space for naming what we don’t know and the complexities of these moments, without reducing them to soundbites and frameworks that lack applicability and intellectual rigor.
I have found hope, education, and solidarity in the countless one-on-one conversations I have had in recent weeks, and have been reading about current issues fervently. Self care and rest, and honoring those practices together, are necessary. But once we emerge, it is the responsibility of each of us to do the work and be empathetic and informed. This is a Jewish practice, too . . . from childhood, we are taught to relentlessly learn and inquire with curiosity and humility.
Second, I ask you all to hold us on your City Council accountable to harm reduction locally. There is much we have done, from work in gun violence prevention to the recent approval of our Mental Health Plan, and still so much left to push for and imagine.
Third, I call on all of us to believe women and everyone, everywhere, who have been harmed with often unspeakable pain and violence, including in Israel and Gaza. We must unequivocally condemn and combat hate speech and crimes, including Islamophobia and antisemitism, while also not indiscriminately conflating support of nationstates and their people, or critiques of their governments, as hatred for others; it is especially critical we get this right for our young people and children.
Finally, I urge each of my fellow Council and community members in Edgewater to join me in contacting our Congressional delegation and demanding a path toward peace and harm reduction for all. We have every right as informed citizens and fellow elected officials to do so, and to do so with specificity, as so many have done before us.
In my head and heart, embedded in my Jewish identity and family’s history, Israel and Palestine both deserve to exist liberated from harmful, extremist powers on all fronts. My practice of Judaism is tied to the concept of tikkun olam, or repair and the pursuit of social justice. To that end, I will continue to ask our federal government to support an urgent, sustained, and unilateral ceasefire that includes the end of settler violence. I want us to stop spending our tax dollars on tools of war that displace and kill babies and children, and to prioritize actions that facilitate the reunification of families and safe return home of both hostages seized on October 7th as well as Palestinians held in administrative detention without charges or trials for months on end.
Humanitarian aid and essential services, including safe utilities and healthcare, have got to be made available at scale and without interference to the people of Palestine, and we need to continue our liberation from fossil fuel dependence such that our interest in the Middle East can be untethered from the desecration of our climate (care for our environment is another incredibly Jewish value, and one many of us support consistently in our service in Edgewater).
We must hold to account the broken agreements and borders of the past, many of which we negotiated and can lead in restoring once again. These need to support true Palestinian autonomy, the end of Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and the dignity of all who reside in Israel and Palestine as well as of each of us for whom these lands hold spiritual and cultural value.
I will forever believe deeply in democracy, in peace, and in our innate ability as humanity to sustain and hold space for both as we navigate our day-to-day lives, both the mundane and profound, the joy, the fear, the pain and the hope.
To my fellow Jewish community members, Chag Sameach and Happy Hanukkah as you close out this holiday alongside my family here on Otis Court and so many around the world.
And as we approach another night of Shabbat this coming Friday, I invite all of Edgewater to join my family in the practice of tzedakah (righteousness, fairness, and charity) by seeking out opportunities for mutual aid that support our unhoused and migrant families locally, or donating directly to nonprofits that do so.
I leave you with wishes of peace and a meaningful rest of the holiday season, and please, do reach out anytime. Community has been here for me and my family time and time again, and I hope always to be here for you, and forever hold space in my heart for all for whom these moments of pain are personal.
Hannah Gay Keao is an Edgewater City Councilwoman. She can be reached at hannahforedgewater@gmail.com, 970-515-3842, or at the handle @hannahgaykeao on social media. To contact our Congressional Delegation: Representative Pettersen’s office is (202) 225-2645, Senator Hickenlooper’s is (202) 224-5941, and Senator Bennet’s is (202) 224-5852. For those who need accommodations, the Congressional TTY switchboard is (202) 224-3091 and Office of Congressional Accessibility Services is available at (202) 224-4048 (voice) or (202) 224-4049 (TTY).
Joel has been a resident of Edgewater, Colorado with his family since 2012. He is the Executive Director of local education nonprofit Edgewater Collective and Editor of the Edgewater Echo.
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