The news called it a privacy fight. The room said “genocide” 16 times.
Twenty-nine people testified about Flock cameras and police drones at city hall on Aug. 26. Here’s what they actually said, who turned out the room — and what every TV story skipped.
CITY TAPE · 2026-08-26
00:39:42WHAT SHE SAID — TAP THE BAR
“…transparency that will allow our community to organize to stop the Skydio contract and to end this contract with a technofascist company.”
WHAT MADE TV — 80 SECONDS LATER
“…political weaponization and overreach.”
Same speaker, same speech. FOX 9 kept her title and eleven words. The title survived the edit. The campaign didn’t.
How to Hijack a City Council Meeting (In 3 Easy Steps)
A week before this hearing, the same campaign took the mic at two unrelated public hearings — a bond sale and a domestic-abuse intervention grant — to argue about the drone contract. The dais ended up debating whether to suspend its own rules on tape. Seven days later, the coalition’s poster read “our actions last week worked.” The film walks it step by step.
Among the speakers at the commandeered bond hearing: University of Minnesota professor Sima Shakhsari, self-identified on the tape at 21:52. A September 2020 Facebook post archived by Canary Mission shows her praising Leila Khaled — the PFLP member who hijacked two passenger planes — as a “freedom fighter” who “has a lot more to teach us all.”
Her full 2 minutes. TV kept 11 words of it.
States the goal in one sentence. One radio station ran it. No TV did.
Names the coalition on the record — and lands the hearing’s best argument about the unpublished contract.
Named on the tape twice — a speaker self-identifies as a member at 21:42, and the coalition's public-events campaign is described at 28:49. Its own poster (below) claims the hearing as a win. tape
President Sana Wazwaz self-identifies at 39:09 and states on the record she was part of the campaign against the Minneapolis Skydio pilot — the cross-city link, in her own words. tape
Cedar Larson self-identifies with WAMM at 16:44. The hosting of the coalition's call to action is from WAMM's own site. tape
Wyatt Miller self-identifies as a Free Palestine Coalition member on tape at 21:42; his Anti-War Committee organizing role and 18-byline Fight Back! record are from that outlet's own author page. tape
Coverage verdicts reflect the Saint Paul stories we located in an August 13–27 media sweep. A row marked partial means we could not read the story end-to-end.
Five weeks earlier, the same outlets printed the word "Israel" in their headlines.
When Minneapolis killed its Skydio pilot 6–6 on July 16, council members made the vendor's ICE and Israeli military contracts their stated reason — and coverage followed: one KSTP headline read "citing ties to Israel, ICE." In Saint Paul, officials framed the same fight as privacy and data, and coverage followed that instead. The gap isn't a taboo. Coverage tracks what officials say, not what the public says — 29 people testified here, and the frame came from the dais.
Minneapolis roll call pending a records request — cited from coverage until the city hands over the record.
The full film is in the works.
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