Three signs that included information about the Birmingham City Council’s public-speaker policy were on display Tuesday outside the council’s chambers. That’s notable because councilors have made conflicting statements about the policy recently, and police officers forcibly removed a would-be speaker from council chambers last week.
“What they did to me is atrocious,” said Terri Michal, a former Birmingham Board of Education member who attempted to speak. “I had been given no command or orders. I was not belligerent. I was not out of line. They called my name, and yet I can be drug out by the cops? There’s a huge problem here.”
During the public-speaker portion of the June 23 council meeting, a city official called Michal’s name, but council President Wardine Alexander stopped her about 10 feet short of the podium. Alexander told Michal, who had spoken the previous week about the city’s controversial new data-center regulations, that she couldn’t speak at consecutive meetings…