Professional harasser Jo Ann Rivas has tried—and failed—to erase one of her most infamous moments from the internet.
That moment, captured on video, shows Rivas screaming, disrupting and provoking police at an LA City Council meeting. When the footage went viral, Rivas’ reaction was predictably desperate: She filed a fraudulent copyright claim to take it down.
Rivas’ effort to remove the video underscores the audacity of her scheme: profit from disruption, then censor the proof.
In the recording, Rivas, a member of the Greater Toluca Lake Neighborhood Council, makes clear that her goal is to disturb, derail and hijack the public meeting, impeding community governance so she can profit from the YouTube “content.”
“I’m just going to keep interrupting until they kick me out,” she declares.
Once Rivas gets the chaos she orchestrated, she immediately turns the moment into a grotesque performance: livestreaming her ejection while framing the councilmembers—the victims of her for-profit harassment—as oppressors who “kicked out a disabled person.”
Rivas’ effort to remove the video underscores the audacity of her scheme: profit from disruption, then censor the proof.
Aimed at hiding her misconduct from other neighborhood councilmembers, her attempt to misuse copyright law is the latest maneuver in a years-long campaign to bully, harass and muzzle anyone who pushes back against her abuse. Rivas has even gone so far as to advocate for the killing of her opponents.
But the footage she tried to erase endures and her record is crystal clear: Rivas’ harassment is calculated, putting law enforcement, public officials and residents at daily risk—all for clicks, self-promotion and the thrill of engineered mayhem.
From livestreamed ejections to advocacy for violence, every action reveals a pattern of predation cloaked as civic engagement. The menace, the spectacle, the chaos—they aren’t accidents. They are the instruments of something far more sinister: a deliberate campaign to terrorize, manipulate and dominate a community she claims to serve.