Like elected bodies around the Valley, the Easthampton City Council held its first meeting of the new year last week, when the councilors were sworn in to their new terms.
But the meeting wasn’t all celebratory and ceremonial; the Council’s first order of business, after the oaths were taken, was to address a racist comment made by at-large councilor Donald Cykowski at a meeting last month.
That now-notorious moment took place at the Council’s Dec. 7 meeting, amidst some joking by councilors about one of their colleagues’ inability to get back into the chamber after a door locked behind him. “Where’s a Puerto Rican when you need one?” Cykowski asked.
A tape of the meeting shows that Cykowski’s comment was met with a couple of heavy sighs and uncomfortable looks from other councilors. “Councilor Cykowski, please,” Council President Joe McCoy admonished before the group hastily moved on with the meeting.
At McCoy’s request, Cykowski offered a brief apology for his remark at the next Council meeting: “If I offended anyone, I apologize.”
The apology, however, did little to appease observers upset that an elected official would feel comfortable voicing racial stereotypes in the midst of a public meeting. As the Rev. Talbert Swan II, president of the Springfield NAACP, told the Advocate, Cykowski’s apology was of the increasingly common variety that doesn’t actually take responsibility for the wrong committed.
“It’s the culture of the generic apology: I have to be able to appease folks by apologizing, without actually saying I did anything wrong,” Swan said.
The NAACP suggested that if the veteran councilor holds racist views, he’s incapable of representing all his constituents and should consider resigning. The group also called on Cykowski’s colleagues to censure him for his comment.
Instead, at its Jan. 3 meeting, the City Council unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution that referred to an “inappropriate and offensive comment” made at the December meeting and went on to say that “the city of Easthampton and its representatives shall not condone or tolerate any form of discrimination.” The resolution was submitted by McCoy and, in an apparent act of contrition, seconded for a vote by Cykowski himself.
After the meeting, Swan said he appreciated the City Council’s effort to address the issue, but noted that the resolution was carefully worded, neither naming Cykowski nor rebuking him for what he said. The underlying message, as Swan put it: “We want to do something, but, then again, we’ve got to work with this guy.”
Swan said he finds it “amazing” that some observers have come to Cykowski’s defense, saying he should be excused because he’s a senior citizen (“In my estimation, because he’s a senior, he ought to know better,” Swan responded) or writing his comment off as an ill-advised but harmless joke. In an interview with the Springfield Republican, Cykowski referred to the remark as a “quip” and said that, as a Polish-American, he’s been the butt of “dumb Polak” jokes, but—in the words of reporter Diane Lederman— “he just rolled with it.”
But Cykowski, Swan said, isn’t a comedian; he’s an elected official entrusted with the job of representing all his constituents, a number of whom continue to voice their unhappiness with the councilor’s comment, including through an on-line petition calling for his resignation. That petition, at www.change.org, bore 143 signatures as of late last week, from a mix of Easthampton residents and residents of other Valley communities.
Lauren Marcous, the Easthampton resident who started the petition, described Cykowski’s comment as “beyond offensive,” and said she felt it was important “to let our elected city officials know that Cykowski’s racist statement was inexcusable and that racial and ethnic prejudices against any group of people will not be tolerated in our community.”
In an email to the Advocate, Marcous noted that at-large councilors like Cykowski are elected to represent the entire city. “[G]iven the discriminatory nature of the statement that Cykowski made, I don’t think he can continue to effectively do that job,” she said.
“As a community, we need to demand a higher standard of conduct from our elected officials when they are acting in their official capacities,” Marcous continued. “I think that Cykowski’s recent conduct, from the original statement he made at the Dec. 7th meeting to his feigned apology … falls short of that standard of conduct. For those reasons, I believe Cykowski should apologize to the public and resign immediately.”
