For more than a year and a half, the Boulder City Council has been facing protests that have disrupted meetings and interfered with city business.

To its credit, the council has managed to plow ahead with its duties, tamp down some of the most egregious disruptions and generally get on with business.

But more still needs to be done to help return council chambers to a place where all Boulder residents feel welcome and can make their voices heard about the topics that matter to them.

Of course, this is an extremely tricky goal when considering the nature of these protests and the importance of protecting free speech.

At the heart of the issue is the ongoing war in Gaza. The brutal conflict has galvanized activism across the country, including on university campuses and in city council chambers.

Since the conflict began, some community members have repeatedly called for the council to pass a ceasefire resolution, as some other cities have done, while others have urged the council not to involve itself in international affairs.

In February 2024, the council voted 7-2 against considering a ceasefire resolution, but that has not stopped people from coming to meetings donning Palestinian and Israeli flags, waving protest signs in the council chambers and interrupting open comment sessions with chanting and shouting.

Despite how far council meetings have devolved, it is worth taking a moment to acknowledge how hard councilmembers have worked to provide everyone in our community the opportunity to have their voice heard.

Clearly, our city’s leaders have tried to provide space for even the most dissenting voices. This is an admirable ambition.

But it is also important that the council chambers be a civil, inviting and productive space where all members of our community feel welcome. The current hostile atmosphere has, we’ve been told, left some Boulderites with no desire to return to council meetings. This has to change.

One potential solution posited by Councilmember Matt Benjamin was to move the open comment section to the end of the meeting.

Moving the open comment section would, ideally, allow the council to focus on getting the nitty gritty business of running the city done before giving speakers their time, which is often when the chambers have become disorderly.

There are pros and cons to this idea. The council absolutely needs to be able to focus on its important business, and moving any potentially volatile interactions to the end of the meeting could help councilmembers focus on the agenda at hand.

But council meetings already run well past 9 p.m. on a weeknight. Moving the open comment to the end could dissuade some who want to speak before the council from doing so.

It also means that instead of addressing the council directly before a vote on a given issue, residents would have to address the council a week ahead of time.

That isn’t a game changer, but distancing input from decision-making could have unintended effects.

Essentially, the consequences of moving open comment to the end of council meetings will only become clear if the council decides to approve the move.

But it seems worthwhile to give it a try. If only because something has to be done to bring decorum back to the chambers — without running roughshod over our community’s right to be heard before their legislators.

And if the council opts not to proceed with this endeavor, our hope is that they continue seeking out other reasonable measures to rein in some of the more disruptive conduct to ensure our city can conduct its necessary business — and to ensure that other citizens who wish to be heard by the council are not incidentally silenced by the mayhem.

At the same time, the members of our community who are disrupting our council meetings must also reflect on the role they are playing in all of this.

Council meetings are necessary for the governing of our community. Constant disruptions may serve to gain attention for a cause, but they also undermine the functionality of our city.

For some, this standpoint might not comport with the purpose of protest. Protest is meant to disrupt and discomfort. That is how it grabs attention. That is how it facilitates change. One need only look at the Vietnam War protests to understand that protesting is how those without a voice can agitate for a better future.

There is no question that protesting is an essential part of democracy, and protesting the actions of a government — any government — should be a fundamental right. It is how the masses can make themselves heard.

But there is a difference — and a stark one — between protest that disrupts and discomforts, and protest that makes our fellow community members feel unsafe, unwelcome or silenced.

The Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on innocent Israelis was devastating. And Israel’s retaliatory invasion has also been devastating.

The humanitarian aid crisis in Gaza is devastating. The fear instilled by an act of terrorism is devastating. The antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate that have been born of this conflict are devastating. The killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., is devastating.

War — and all the atrocities that come with it — is devastating.

To recognize this devastation is not a justification for anyone’s actions. Nor is it meant to absolve any perpetrators of guilt. The complexities of this conflict are far beyond the scope of our expertise as Boulder journalists. We do not know how to end the violence or how to dispel a terrorist organization (or ideology). But we do know that we are unlikely to solve this conflict at the meetings of the Boulder City Council.

Our city needs a functioning government. That means we need space for civil and productive council meetings. The onus to create such a space falls first and foremost on our councilmembers.

But it also falls on those of us who attend council meetings.

Decorum must be returned to the council chambers. But it can’t come at the expense of the free expression of our community members. We’ve found a balance before. We must find it again.

Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board