Memory lane: Robbie Perkins censorship edition

GREENSBORO, NC -- Prompted by his recent proposal to further limit speakers from the floor at city council meetings after being called a deadbeat this week, let us take a trip down memory lane and remember the last time Mayor Robbie Perkins squelched public commentary, shall we?

It was April 1, 2008 (hellooooo) and a group of creative artsy types came up with a brilliant way to promote an upcoming local arts festival. One of their group spoke during the speakers from the floor portion of that night's council meeting to express his concerns about threats to the "monkeywhale." It was a sincere presentation chock full of serious and concerning "facts."

The speaker asked supporters of his efforts in the audience to stand, which they did to play a kazoo accompaniment (hellooooo).  The speaker ended by directing people to "save the monkey whale dot com," a website that had nothing to do with saving the "monkeywhale" but that promoted the upcoming arts festival.

Perkins, then a council member, reportedly checked out the site on his phone and somehow (some of us speculated he hit his back button) determined that savethemonkeywhale.com was a porn site. When he reported this to his colleagues, it led them to vote to strike mention of the site from the record, which it was, [See correction below] both in the minutes of the meeting (probably illegal) and from the video of the meeting. Both are still censored to this day even though the harmless truth subsequently became known.

[See correction below] Even the record of the council voting to censor the record is itself censored. The official minutes of the meeting not only lack any record of the monkeywhale speaker, but the council vote to censor the record is itself missing from the official minutes of the meeting (also probably illegal), although one can hear the vote through the music at the 2:20 mark of the city's edited "official" video.

Good times.

Here is what inspired the censorship—in its entirety:






UPDATE/CORRECTION: The city of Greensboro brings to my attention the following paragraph from that night's minutes. I apologize for the oversight:

Christopher Spence, residing at 1003 Surry Drive, spoke to the extinction of an unknown aquatic mammal.
(Note: After Council’s first recess, the Mayor and Council voted that due to what appeared to be the inappropriate content of the website referred to by Mr. Spence, that this portion of the meeting should be deleted from the official meeting tape made available to the public.)