Two white men in Kansas unleashed a profanity-laced tirade at a recent Lawrence city council meeting, where they viciously cussed out the city’s Black mayor and other public officials, with one man boldly shouting, “I’m not your field ni—er, b-tch,” after asserting his First Amendment right to say the N-word.
The explosive board meeting occurred the same day that a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed against the Lawrence City Commission by Michael Eravi, one of the pair who showed up to the July 9 public meeting to express his dissatisfaction with the outcome of his legal case.
In an audacious display, Eravi berated Mayor Bart Littlejohn, repeatedly calling him the N-word in a vile and loud outburst of profanities. He also referred to Littlejohn and another Black commissioner as “colored” and repeatedly disrespected the office of the mayor by referring to Littlejohn by his first name.
Eravi filed the lawsuit last year after being barred from a city-sponsored homeless camp, a move that sparked deep-seated animosity towards the mayor and evoked echoes of Jim Crow-era racial tensions, cloaked under the pretext of defending free speech rights.
When Mayor Littlejohn opened the session for public comments last week, Eravi was already standing at the podium, dressed in a frumpy white collared top with dark sunglasses flipped up on his head.
The gray-haired man immediately accused the council of discrimination before verbally attacking Littlejohn.
Also at the meeting was Amber Sellers, the only other Black leader on the six-member board, and the other three seat holders, including Mike Dever, Brad Finkeidel, Sherri Riedemann, and Lisa Larsen, who are all white.
Everyone on the panel appeared stunned as Eravi launched into in a full-blown impression of Archie Bunker in front of cameras and witnesses.
“Viewpoint discrimination in this room is illegal,” Eravi began. “It’s a civil rights violation, Bart.”
The man showed no respect for the mayor’s position, and his tone was altogether condescending.
“You’re a Black man. Why can’t you understand civil rights? That should be a forté for you,” Eravi continued before getting to his main point.
“I thought about coming up here and using some language. And I even said what I wanted to say to one of the officers,” Eravi began, setting the stage for the verbal onslaught that was to follow.
“I’m not gonna say it out of respect for somebody else on that dais. Trust me, Bart, if you were the only colored person on that dais, I would be saying what I wanna say right now.”
That’s when Eravi began alluding to the hierarchical class system within slavery.
“I think you know what I’m talking about, the difference between ‘house’ and ‘field.’ You know what I’m talking about?” Evari asked the mayor, the moment uncomfortable for everyone in the room.
Littlejohn chuckled at the disrespect, smiled and sat back in his chair with the Stars and Stripes displayed behind him.
Eravi exploded.
“Oh, f-ck you and your smile. I’m not your field ni—er, b-tch,” Eravi roared, even though Littlejohn had not said a word. “You understand?” Eravi went on.
Littlejohn sat back up in his chair, but stayed calm: “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave,” the mayor said, which triggered Eravi.
“You can’t ask me to leave!” the man shouted, his voice now filling the room. “That’s protected speech. I am not your field ni—er!” he yelled shamelessly again, defending his free speech.
“You wanna arrest me? Bring it on, Holmes!” he ranted some more, flailing his arms outward while pointing at the council members and twisting himself around to face everyone else in the room. “One of you cops wanna do it? Direct ’em. Direct ’em,” he dared the mayor.
Not looking for a fight, Littlejohn graciously put his hands up in surrender, saying, “That’s true, you have 22 seconds left, so go ahead and use them.”
Accepting the offer, Eravi continued huffing and puffing.
“Son of a b-tch!” he exclaimed in apparent frustration.
Next, he voiced shock that none of the white board members were equally outraged.
“Did you guys not just — he wants to remove me because of my speech, that he has instigated all f-cking night in here!”
From there, Eravi began rambling and threatened to take over the meeting to finish speaking his mind, but in doing so, he failed to address any substantive issues he may have had.
“Watch that clock, watch that clock,” he warned the mayor. “I’m gonna go to 30 seconds after, and you’re not gonna arrest me because it happened twice in here tonight. It happened twice in here tonight.”
At this point, Eravi had reached the end of the rope with Littlejohn, who appeared fed up.
“Officer, he is clearly causing a disruption,” the mayor said.
But before he could finish speaking, Eravi began talking over him, referring to himself in the third person, saying, “He is not causing a disruption. He is going over time …” That’s when Littlejohn raised his voice a little higher, telling the officer at the back of the meeting room to “go ahead and remove him.”
However, Eravi kept holding the floor.
“He is going over time, and if you have me removed before that clock gets to three minutes and 25 seconds, I’m going to sue you and the police officer who does it.”
The room fell silent for a beat, but the officer never approached Eravi, who remained defiant when he spoke again.
“I’m going until three minutes and 25 seconds,” Eravi repeated twice. “I’m going until three minutes and 25 seconds.”
That’s when Littlejohn called for a five-minute recess, and Eravi turned his back and walked out.
The video picks back up after the recess, when another white man has some choice words for the mayor, too.
“Go ahead, sir,” Littlejohn addressed the man respectfully before the man stomped up to the microphone and blurted out: “Y’all motherf–kers are so f–king soft.”
This man had a black beard and long hair hanging from under a fishing cap that he wore low on his brow.
Like Eravi, he alleged that the council was denying the right to free speech.
“A f—king word shuts down the meeting?” he asked rhetorically. “Talk about being fragile. A word? And during this break, they had to tell y’all scurry out of here cause he said a word? Cause you’re so fragile.”
The man then directly confronts Commissioner Mike Dever with an absurd argument, claiming Dever did not show support for free speech by preventing Eravi from using racial slurs, as he had moments earlier.
The man’s argument implied that bigoted language should be permissible and without consequences.
“It is letters together that form a word that comes out of our mouth, and you can’t tolerate that? A f—king word?” He paused for a couple of seconds to let his point sink in.
The room was quiet enough to hear a pin drop as commissioners sat stone-faced, some with hands on cheeks during the tense and agonizing comments.
The man questioned why certain derogatory terms, such as “cracker” and “honky,” were not being censored in the same way as racial slurs against Black people.
“Can I say cracker? Honky? Can I say honky? Shut it down, Bart. Shut it down. It’s a f—king word. Why aren’t you shutting it down for honky and cracker? Why aren’t you shutting it down? What’s the difference? Shut me down, Bart. What’s the difference?”
The man remained at the podium for several more minutes, basically arguing with himself.
Littlejohn had no response, and neither did anyone else, and the man finally left the podium and walked out.
Video of the meeting is circulating on a Reddit sub-page called PublicFreakout, which identified the men as locals with a long history of conflicts with the city government.
Eravi is a regular attendee at government meetings and a vocal critic of the police, according to the Lawrence Journal-World. He has had multiple confrontations with law enforcement in recent years, including numerous City Commission meetings where he has repeatedly used obscenities to refer to the police chief.
The second man who went off was not formally identified.
Previously, in February, Eravi acknowledged that his lawsuit lacked sufficient facts to support his case, at which time he requested permission from Judge Julie Robinson to amend the lawsuit.
Robinson took several months to weigh the decision and denied Eravi request on July 9, and the judge went a step further by dismissing Eravi’s suit with prejudice, which prevents him from bringing the matter to court again.
Hours after the ruling, Eravi and the other man went medieval at the council meeting.
The city maintained that Eravi’s lawsuit was baseless because the board had the authority to restrict access to the homeless camp, designating it a “nonpublic forum.”
Additionally, the city argued there was sufficient cause to trespass Eravi, who had been repeatedly warned not to enter the camp.
Last summer, City Manager Craig Owens told Eravi he couldn’t attend city meetings for 60 days because of his threatening and harassing behavior.
This included telling two commissioners he knew where they lived.
Owens said Eravi had been asked to leave or was removed from meetings at least five times before the ban. Despite this, Eravi could still participate in meetings virtually, the Journal World reported.
At the time, the city cited safety concerns given the threatening nature of the comments by Evari.
“The City is committed to maintaining a safe space for important community business to be conducted and for members of the public to participate,” Owens said in the letter dated Aug. 21, 2023.
Eravi faces a felony charge of interfering with law enforcement after allegedly compelling officers to leave their secured positions during an armed standoff in May 2023, according to the Journal-World.
