Antisemitic messages beamed on buildings spur proposed Jacksonville law with jail time

Jacksonville City Council is poised to make it illegal to project images onto a building without the consent of its owner after antisemitic groups have been using high-powered projectors to display jumbo-sized signs such as Nazi swastikas on buildings in Jacksonville and other cities.

Two identical pieces of legislation introduced separately by City Council President Terrance Freeman and City Council member LeAnna Cumber will come up for an emergency vote at the City Council meeting next Tuesday.

The penalty would be a $2,000 fine and up to 60 days in jail for anyone convicted of projecting text, graphics, logo or artwork onto a building without the building owner's permission. In addition, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office would be able to seize any equipment and vehicles used for the projections.

Freeman and Cumber each convened separate news conferences on Thursday morning to urge passage of the bill.

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"Hate has no place in our city," Freeman said in the City Hall atrium where he was joined by Sheriff T.K. Waters, Mayor Lenny Curry and seven City Council members.

Cumber was joined by four fellow City Council members in front of the CSX headquarters building in downtown where someone had used a projector over the weekend to put a large image of a Nazi swastika on the side of the building.

Cumber said "evil antisemitic messages" are spreading across the state of Florida, and it's time for Jacksonville to be a national leader in fighting against normalizing antisemitism.

"I am proud to share this day with amazing Jewish leaders in this community because we need to all stand with everyone in this community, stand against the antisemitism and take a strong stance and show that Jacksonville really is the city that values religious freedom," she said.

Sheriff says new law will be effective tool

Waters said the photo of the swastika on the CSX building captured something that actually happened.

"All the information that I've been given is it's a real image and we have an idea who did it," Waters said.

He said the Sheriff's Office will have a plan for how to use the new law in order to deal with cases of projecting images onto buildings without the owner's consent.

"There's no room for hateful speech or hateful anything with anyone in this city," he said.

Freeman said the said the proposed new law complies with the First Amendment because it would not base prosecution on the content of the message, but instead would apply regardless of the message if the projection onto a building doesn't have the owner's consent.

"It won't change the hearts and minds of people who spew hate, but it will set a clear and common-sense guardrail," Freeman said.

Curry said he supports the legislation.

"I am so tired of a handful of people that are filled with hate projecting images onto our city, particularly when we're having big national events, trying to demonstrate this may represent who we are as a city and it doesn't," Curry said.

Freeman praised council members for being "unified and coming together" in support of the legislation. But with two separate pieces of legislation, one decision at next week's council meeting will be whether the bill introduced by Cumber or the one put forward by Freeman will get voted on by council.

Cumber started working first with city attorneys on filing the legislation. Adam Chaskin, CEO of the Jacksonville Community Alliance, said he called Cumber on Sunday after seeing the image of the swastika.

General Counsel Jason Teal said Cumber contacted him Sunday night and asked his office to draft legislation. After a city attorney started working on the legislation, Freeman contacted the Office of General Counsel and asked for a bill to be drafted that he could introduce with the same legislative intent.

Teal said his office has a first-in, first-out policy so the attorney worked first on the Cumber legislation and that was followed by the Freeman legislation. Teal said that in order to ensure compliance with the First Amendment and other legal issues, both bills ended up using the same language.

Cumber said Freeman and Curry "came a little late, but I'm glad they are following my lead and they obviously are on the right side to agree with this."

The bill introduced by Freeman has the most council members signed on as co-introducers and co-sponsors. At least two-thirds of the 19-member council would have to vote Tuesday to take up the bill as an emergency. Freeman said it "shouldn't matter who gets credit" and it's more important for City Council to be unified in condemning hate speech.

Other cities facing similar cases of projections on buildings

Jacksonville isn't alone in facing projections of antisemitic images on buildings. Police in West Palm Beach investigated the projection of a Nazi swastika on the side of an AT&T building on Saturday night. West Palm Beach police said two masked individuals in a rental truck went to a public parking garage to set up the projector that put the image on the building, according to media reports.

Last year in Jacksonville, the message "Kanye was right about the jews" was projected onto the back of a TIAA Bank Field videoboard when the city hosted the annual Georgia-Florida football game. The message referred to Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, after he posted hate speech about Jews on social media.

The same message was projected onto a downtown building and on banners held by people standing on overpasses on Interstate 10 and the Arlington Expressway during the Georgia-Florida weekend.

State Attorney Melissa Nelson's office said at the time "such speech — even despicable speech — is protected by the First Amendment." She said if her office received evidence of intent to "directly incite imminent criminal activity or specifically threaten violence against a person or group, then criminal prosecution may be implicated."

The legislation coming up for a vote by City Council would not base prosecution on the content of the messages so the key factor would be whether the building owners gave its consent.

CSX quickly condemned the antisemitic symbol as "shocking and hurtful" and pledged to work in any way it could to aid law enforcement in investigating the matter.

Bryan Tucker, vice president of corporate communication for CSX, said Thursday with the headquarters building behind him that he was at TIAA Bank Field cheering for the Jaguars in their playoff game victory last Saturday when he got a call from CSX during the Jaguar's game-winning drive.

"I went from excitement to being completely crestfallen and sad for our city − and angry," he said, adding it "certainly doesn't represent CSX and it does not represent the city of Jacksonville."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville City Council weighs ban on projecting messages on buildings