The Huntington Beach City Council voted Tuesday to repeal and rescind the city’s celebration of Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, and other months recognizing diversity and heritage. Instead, the city council will adopt a new 12-month celebratory history schedule developed by a panel of appointed members. The new agenda would “be free of any identity politics and political agendas,” according to a city staff report. A sample of alternate monthly celebrations, including “Black Gold Jubilee – Honoring the Discovery of Oil,” can be found here.
The proposal passed along ideological lines, with the council’s conservative members in favor and the council’s liberal members opposed.
Interestingly, the city council did not consult with the city’s Historic Resources Board. It also left the board out of the decision-making process on the new 12-month history program. That so offended the board’s chair, Kathie Schey, that she resigned during Tuesday night’s meeting.
“I was thunderstruck when I received a copy of the current agenda,” Schey said. “God knows I’m all about celebrating history, but this is just peculiar.”
She called the council’s decision a “clear vote of no confidence.”
San. David Min (D-Irvine) also criticized the decision in a statement released on X.
“This is a disgraceful departure from the ideals we should be championing and once again illustrates that this particular HB City Council is more interested in earning cheap headlines than in actually addressing the issues affecting the lives of Surf City residents,” he said.
Huntington Beach leaders have made a series of controversial decisions over the past year. These include the adoption of a new flag policy that essentially bans the LGTB Pride flag, disbanding the city’s Human Relations committee, pursuing restrictions on certain library books for children, banning COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates, and adopting a new Declaration of Policy on Human Dignity that calls for separating biological sexes in certain sports activities.
Read more about Tuesday’s vote at Voice of OC.