Former NFL player Chris Kluwe arrested during Huntington Beach City Council meeting
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Huntington Beach resident Chris Kluwe was arrested during Tuesday night’s Huntington Beach City Council meeting after moving toward the dais following his public comments.
Kluwe, a former pro football punter, has long spoken out about social issues.
He attended Tuesday’s meeting to protest a proposed MAGA acrostic plaque outside of the Central Library for the library’s 50th anniversary, as he did at the Community and Library Services Commission meeting a week before.
This time, his comments ended with, “I will now engage in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience.”
Kluwe, 43, started approaching the dais where the City Council was seated. He was subdued by several officers and carried out of the council chambers.
Kluwe did not fight the arrest, putting his hands behind his back and going limp.
“I made sure I warned the officers I was going to the ground,” Kluwe said in an interview with the Daily Pilot on Wednesday. “Then I told them, ‘I’m going to stay limp, you guys got to carry me out of here.’”
Kluwe said he was held in the city jail for about four hours before being released late Tuesday night, adding that he was cited after being arrested for disrupting an assembly.
Kluwe commended the Huntington Beach Police Department’s handling of the situation but said he felt something had to be done to amplify his concerns. During his comments before approaching the dais, he was critical of several Make America Great Again policies, calling it “explicitly a Nazi movement.”
“I want our elected democratic officials to start engaging in civil disobedience,” Kluwe said Wednesday. “People need to be aware that what’s going on with this administration is leading us down a really dark path. Right now, no one is willing to step up and do that. So, if I want to ask them to do it, then I have to be willing to do it too.”
City Council member Gracey Van Der Mark said it was pretty scary for a few seconds as Kluwe walked onto the platform in front of the dais, before she saw him turn around and put his hands behind his back.
“He wanted his five minutes of fame, and that’s what he got,” she said.
She said that Kluwe’s comments are an insult to Jewish people who support President Trump and called Huntington Beach a “beautiful conservative city.”
“It is OK for us to have our beautiful conservative city,” she said. “We respect everyone. We’re not out there attacking people who don’t think like us, we’re not out there running across and trying to intimidate people who don’t agree with us ... The city of Huntington Beach has always been conservative, and they tried to change that, and we’re just taking it back to the way it was. If I wanted to live in a liberal city with liberal values, I would have stayed in Los Angeles.”
Kluwe said he sees a sense of resigned anger in many public comments made during council meetings.
“People are speaking out because that’s the American thing to do,” he said. “You’re a public citizen, your voice should be heard. But it’s very disheartening when your elected officials are not listening to your voice ... It is profoundly un-American to do what this council is doing, and I think there are a lot of people in this community that get that. At a very visceral level, what we are seeing is not how America is supposed to work.”
Symphony of Flowers passes unanimously
Also during Tuesday night’s meeting of the Symphony of Flowers, an orchestrated light show, is coming to Central Park as the panel unanimously approved it.
The show will be staged in the northeastern portion of Central Park East, at the same location where the Revolution and Civil War days are staged each year. The council heard residents voice concerns about potential issues with disrupting the park’s ecosystem, though an addendum to the final master environmental impact report of recreational uses for Central Park found that the show would have no impact or a less than significant impact in several environmental areas.
Library plaque approved
An alternate design for the 50th anniversary of the Central Library plaque, submitted by Van Der Mark, was also unanimously approved by her colleagues.
The new design features a large eagle on the left side. It still features the MAGA acrostic with the words “Magical, Alluring, Galvanizing, Adventurous,” though now they are on the bottom instead of in the middle. Below that, it reads, “Through hope and change, our nation has built back better to the golden age of Making America Great Again,” combining presidential slogans of Presidents Obama, Biden and Trump.
Library petitions election date to be determined
The panel did not make a final decision on an election date for two library initiatives, one seeking a repeal of the parent/guardian children’s book review board and the other seeking to require voter approval before library operations can be outsourced.
Councilman Tony Strickland said the council would work with staff to come back within 30 days with a resolution to call for an election.
The two options are to call for a special election or put the initiatives on the general election ballot in 2026.
Vigliotta appointed city attorney
Longtime Assistant City Atty. Michael Vigliotta was appointed as city attorney on a unanimous vote. He is replacing Michael Gates, who took a post at the U.S. Justice Department.
Vigliotta, a Huntington Beach resident, had left to be the city attorney in Orange in 2023. Now he will step in to continue Huntington Beach’s fight with Sacramento on voter identification, housing mandates, sanctuary state laws and other issues.
“I don’t have a speech, but thank you for the confidence,” Vigliotta said to the council members.
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