Question:
When the Nubians initially came in, did they not want to be part of this community?

Question:
How did you decide when was the right time to bring those two parties together?

Question:
Why did this cause a problem?

Answer:
No. But I started at CRS in June 1968, and the democratic convention was in August. This was not a racial matter, primarily, but there were a lot of civil rights issues and there were marches from downtown Chicago out to the amphitheater where the convention was that went through black neighborhoods. And police would deter marchers by throwing out tear gas which would waft into apartments and there were racial overtones. So we intervened.

Question:
And what did you do?

Question:
We want to direct our attention to Wounded Knee, which is one of the highest profile cases that CRS was ever involved in. Perhaps you could just tell us a little background on the conflict, what it was about, what was going on, and how CRS got involved?

Answer:
The American Indian Movement (AIM), which was the first national and highly publicized civil rights organization representing the interest of Native Americans, had been conducting a series of demonstrations and protests around the country, trying to call attention to the government's miserable treatment of them and their concerns. They were protesting the horrendous disregard of their culture by the federal government and its to acknowledge and address the violations of treaties that had been signed with American Indians. While I was working on an Indian rights case, I recall the late Judge Noel Fox saying to me, "If I have to go by the law on this, I’d have to give all of western Michigan back to the Indians. That included Detroit, of course. There was no voting constituency for politicians, so there was very little political incentive for the Congress to help. There was a caravan to Washington that started on the West coast to take over the BIA building in Washington. There was a lot of damage to the building, which hurt the image of the AIM and its supporters. They skillfully negotiated their way out of that. So they were in a protest mode, and demonstrating in the Midwest. A caravan was headed to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. That was out of my region, but earlier we had responded to some American Indian protests before CRS opened a Denver office. We had responded to some things in Nebraska, an incident involving the fatal shooting of an American Indian by some white ranchers. I was told to relinquish three of my younger staff members to accompany the American Indians march through the plains states, which was headed to Pine Ridge. John Terronez, Efrain Martinez, and John Sarver. They were reporting directly to Washington and I would only touch base with them peripherally. My initial interest was getting them back to work in my region. The team was accompanying AIM on its marches and helping to prevent problems along the way. As the American Indians would come into a community, CRS would perhaps precede them, talk to the sheriff or other local officials and try to help clear the way, give them an escort through town or let them sleep in a local park. They got to the Pine Ridge Reservation specifically to protest the actions of Dick Wilson, the elected tribal chief, who was accused of nepotism and improper use of federal funds and civil rights violations. They got to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the Feds were absolutely petrified because of the disastrous experience at the BIA building in Washington previously. They thought they were going to take over the two story brick building in the town of Pine Ridge.

Question:
How many people were involved in the march?

Answer:
Oh, there were a few hundred marching. I don’t know how many at this point, maybe 150-200. They weren’t heavily armed. I assume some had some arms, but they weren't intending any takeover at that time. But the BIA had stationed troops, US marshals were there, Wayne Colbert, head of the Marshal service was out there. Troops were on the rooftop of the two-story BIA building with machine guns, ready to prevent any possible takeover. I recall talking to John Terronez after the effort to have Wilson recalled had ended unsuccessfully. John told me, "Looks like we’re done. They are breaking up now and they are headed out and we are going to pack our gear and head home.” What neither John nor anybody else knew was that the caravan was going to the historic village of Wounded Knee on the reservation was going to take over the village. Russell Means talks about how this was kept secret because they thought people would be afraid, and they didn’t want word to get out. When the caravan got to Wounded Knee, the leaders announced, to the surprise of many, including the CRS staff, that they were staying.

Question:
Who was living in Wounded Knee?

Question:
What year are we talking about then?

Question:
Go back to what you just said about the woman in the housing authority, where you came into a meeting for 4 months. That sounds interesting. Tell me about what was going on in that case.

Question:
Were they yelling at you?

Question:
Did you provide technical assistance to both sides?

Answer:
Yes. I always provide technical assistance to both sides. Now sometimes, the technical assistance required by an establishment side, just for the purpose of kind of grouping them, they require less assistance than the minority community. But I make sure that I offer pre-mediation training and preparation to everybody who's going to be involved. In this case, there was actually relatively little preparation for each. Partly because of the immediacy. I think some people thought they were just coming to a meeting. But I made sure that we kind of put it into a mediation session rather than a free-for-all conversation, because it was the only way to accomplish what we needed to and, well, I'm a mediator, and that's what I do. But I really thought in this particular setting -- we must have had at least thirty people in the room that we needed mediation. We had many response agencies maybe about twenty people, and six, maybe eight Korean representatives. So we had to have some kind of a structured process so this discussion could actually take place. Part of what came out of that is that, after all the broad issues were addressed, was there were then sort of splinter mediations, if you will, or splinter meetings. And the one that comes particularly to mind was with the Small Business Administration. Besides FEMA, SBA ended up being one of the major sources for financial assistance. They had an excellent director there on-site who really bent over backwards to understand and meet the needs and be flexible. He was one of the least bureaucratic bureaucrats. So that made a big difference. They helped out with business loans, because it was mostly businesses that were destroyed during that time. We helped facilitate the Koreans applications, helping them to apply by giving them technical assistance to make the application process easier.

Question:
So the negotiations were basically over what kind of assistance was going to be provided and how and when?

Question:
Can you think of a CRS case you worked on that typifies your use of some of the techniques that you've used over the years?

Answer:
Why don't I just start with the most current thing, the World Trade Center attacks. As immediately as it occurred I happened to be at a New Jersey summit on racial profiling with the Attorney General and the head of the state police. It was the first one on racial profiling in the country since New Jersey was the epicenter of racial profiling activity and also the corrective responses to it. When the first plane hit the first tower, within one minute of the first hit, because of where I was and whom I was with, Attorney General Farmer and Colonel Dunbar, we knew the attack had happened. I immediately called all my staff to make sure they were on stand by. By the time I reached them they were on their way to a job in Long Island, NY, so they stood by instead of trying to get into the city, which was already difficult. Then the second plane hit the second tower. So our first approach was to immediately work with state officials. We worked with the head of the state police in both states. As soon as we had direct information, that's within the first days, and we were working out of command posts because Lower Manhattan was completely sealed off, was to work with high level state officials, and the police departments and state troopers to issue messages of moderation, restraint, tolerance, and vigorous law enforcement of any hate crime activity. As quickly as it was linked to Middle Eastern terrorists, we wanted to avoid creating a tremendous backlash against other people who were Middle Eastern or appeared to be Middle Eastern, which included South-Asian and Sikh populations. We also encouraged that messaging to go into part of what Governor Pataki and Mayor Giulianni were saying in New York, that is, while the primary emphasis was on the rescue and the recovery, we encouraged messages around maintaining this moderation restraint, tolerance, and vigorous law enforcement of hate crimes.

Question:
Did you run into any resistance to your approach?

Answer:
Not at all. There was no resistance to the request by the state and local officials. They saw the clear need. The question was how much air time they could give that particular message in the context of the immediate recovery effort. What happened is that they provided the messaging and it would be left on the floor of the editing room. It didn't get out as frequently as we would have liked. There was close coordination between what CRS was doing here at Ground Zero and our Washington headquarters, as well as what was going on around the country. The same messaging we had started to encourage was encouraged to the department in our weekly reports. The Attorney General also, partially through some CRS input I am sure, began to issue the same messaging around tolerance, moderation, restraint and vigorous law enforcement of hate crime activity, any hate crimes in the backlash. Also, the President's office began to use their mechanisms to do the same when they began to announce that the war on terrorism was not a war on Islam.I think taking the approach of working with high level officials at the state level, then replicating it at the national level, was very important in maintaining a degree of restraint in the local community settings in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. In Puerto Rico, we were able right away to work with government officials, with the Arab-Muslim communities and also to get a moratorium from the U.S. attorney and the FBI and local protestors, on additional protests on the island of Vieques, because this was a natural time that the navy was clearly going to resume training in the aspects of the war effort. We needed to work with local and government officials and community groups there so that the Viequez situation wouldn't create another source of tension on the island. That was part and parcel of maintaining community stability. We also knew that in St. Croix a large number of the Arab-Muslim population was involved in merchant activity, food distribution, food services, so we needed to alert them as to the possibility of any difficulties taking place there. They then were on alert, both the federal and local officials and law enforcement. On the New York side, the city police department was very cooperative. It had already moved to secure Arab-Muslim neighborhoods along Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn. We were in support of that so it was a common thought and step. Also, the Islamic Cultural Center and the Islamic schools in Bay Ridge, which are the primary concentrations of the Arab-Muslim populations in New York City. So we had good cooperation from local law enforcement to provide special protective services. Because we were in the primary investigation area in New York and New Jersey we set up a program with the League of Municipalities and the Association of Chiefs of Police in New Jersey. The state Attorney General led the program and then a couple of mayors, a couple of law enforcement people and CRS. We cosponsored a series of three seminars immediately in central, northern, and southern New Jersey that focused on building bridges, best practices for police-community relations. We were able to reach out directly to mayors and chiefs of police. We had more then 200 people participating. We were able to start with the local-national focus and end with the local-national focus in each program. Again we wanted to get out the message of asking for help locally in messaging on moderation, tolerance, restraint, and vigorous law enforcement of hate crime activity. We needed their help to coincide with the messages of the Attorney General and the head of the FBI and the President, so that in turn we would be able to work more directly with the rescue and recovery efforts here. We took that kind of approach right from the beginning while we contacted our federal partners -- US Attorney's office, FBI, etc -- to prepare them for eventual meetings with community groups that would be affected. In addition to our direct solicitation of similar messaging at the local level by chiefs of police and municipal officials, we encouraged each of the state level organizations with which we were coordinating -- with the state Attorneys General offices and their public safety officers and their civil rights divisions -- so we were providing guidance and technical assistance to them. We already had those relationships or we forged them and reinforced them, so that the messages they were putting out to the Arab-Muslim and South-Asian communities would include this kind of messaging. So, the local community groups, mosques and cultural centers knew that their relationship with CRS was in tandem and in coordination with the state outreach programs. What it wound up doing was reassuring the community very quickly and also providing a good marriage and linkage with high level state officials about federal-state coordination around this which was reassuring to the communities. It also multiplied CRS resources. They were calling the meetings. We were aware of them and then our message along with theirs was being placed everywhere so we could continue with our limited resources to focus on other areas. That was a general approach.What's happened in New York and New Jersey, since we are the primary investigation area, is that there has been a degree of tension because there is a larger sweep. Even though it is focused to identify terrorists in the anti-terrorist effort, the sweep is by the FBI and coordinates with the local law enforcement and the experience of the communities here is under greater stress.

Question:
Are you talking about the city or the state?

Question:
I wonder if we could go back to that particular case and talk a little bit about how you got into it and then what your subsequent actions were.

Answer:
What happened was that it was real straight forward. I saw it in a news cast that they were planning a demonstration for that night and I just showed up. So, we deployed on site.

Question:
What sort of community was it?

Answer:
It was a Puerto Rican and Latino community with changed demographics. It's an exurb, already its own city. We deployed on site and all we did at the outset was work with the local police just so that they were aware, if they hadn't been, and also so that they would have a more tempered response and they'd have the appropriate officers detailed to this assignment. After the demonstration I made contact with one of the people who worked in the human relations commission. They hadn't had a lot of contact with CRS in that community before. So what I asked for was a chance to get to know some of the community leadership and the others who were concerned about this issue -- the superintendent's issue -- because it wasn't going away. What she did, bless her heart, is she arranged a little meeting at her home with the head of the NAACP, a couple of current school committee people who were opposed to this action, some former school committee representatives and the Hispanic community leadership so we could talk about what CRS did and what role we might be able to play. That was a lunch meeting at her home. It enabled us to go through CRS' mission, activities, capabilities, and things of that nature. That made it easier for us to work with them when they were setting up their next set of demonstrations. I tried to get them to get the appropriate permits and if that didn't work to let the police know that this non-sanctioned activity was going to take place. It also helped us to deal with the other resources that they began to bring into the community from outside, like the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and try to keep everybody on message without taking away from their advocacy effort. But at least so that it wouldn't be exceedingly confrontational at public sessions, or if it was confrontational in public sessions, which it did become, that people would understand the posturing of a public session and still be able to have a private session subsequent to it when they could dialogue around the resolution of the concerns. What happened, through some basic lunch meetings at people's homes with people asking for some help, and then arranging their organization with clergy leadership as well as community organizations that came forward. We built that set of relationships first because the official side is much easier, in general, for us to access. At least they'll give us the courtesy of a response after the second phone call, if not the first, and at least some conversation even if they're not going to entertain our services. The real credibility needs to be established in the community setting and that takes time. You need to reach out and then you need to be there with them. The real influence of CRS is to level the playing field. I think the leveraging of power imbalances as part of the conflict resolution and mediation work is the key and it's key to all mediation in general when you have power imbalances.

Question:
At what point did you decide that this was a case to stay with as you conducted your assessment?

Question:
The same visitor?

Answer:
The same visitor came back the following week for another event. The resident assistant recognized him and was trying to get him to be removed from the dormitory or be arrested. The resident assistant apparently didn't get support for what he wanted to do. That set off a lot of feeling that the university wasn't doing anything, so the African-American students started to protest. There were several protests but there was no major newspaper coverage, so we really didn't know what was taking place. As a result of the protests, the chancellor had set up the meeting which I mentioned before that appeared in the Boston Globe that Saturday. The students were upset, not only about that incident but the most important issue was that they referenced a number of racial problems in the past which the University had promised to address -- not this chancellor but others -- and the students said that they were never carried out. There was the whole distrust element that we always talk about as a critical community dynamic that leads to racial disorders. There was a history of the lack of confidence in the redress system that led to the very tense situation on the campus.

Question:
Was this the background to the explosion after the baseball game?

Answer:
No, the baseball game took place in 1986. This was 1992, but that was part of the history, though. After the baseball game, CRS helped set up a number of meetings and efforts to deal with what the university was going to do. There were a number of promises and commitments made at that time.

Question:
Student memory was long.

Question:
Maybe we ought to go right into a case. We asked you to think of a case that typifies your work. It might be instructive in running it through from entry to exit.

Answer:
Well, every case has its own story, its own series of lessons. One of my favorites, without violating confidentiality, I had a university that was willing to consider returning 550 of its Native American remains and artifacts after a person from the Ohlone Indian tribe in Northern California happened to be visiting the university and walked through one of the anthropology department's storage areas and noticed all of these bones sitting on this rack. She said, "What are these bones? Why are you holding them?" They said, "Well, this is the Anthropology Department. We study and let the students work with them, and we use them to practice anthropological applications." She said, "But these are my ancestors. It's very sacred to us that they be in the ground." So this Ohlone Indian went and notified other members of her tribal group, and they began to talk about their ancestral remains needing to be returned. They discussed the issue and it was unanimous among her family the remains should be returned.She contacted CRS, and said, "We're very upset about what's taking place at this institution. Somehow, these remains need to be returned." I was working with Larry Myers of the Native American Heritage Commission for the state of California. He joined me, and we decided that we would work this particular case jointly. The university indicated that it would not go to the table unless all the Ohlone tribes in the area were in consensus as to how and when the remains would be given to the Ohlone People. There were all these tribelets that make up the same tribe, and they all had some legitimate ownership or ties to the ancestors of those remains.

Question:
Was this all one tribe, primarily?

Answer:
Primarily one tribe in an area.

Question:
You said her "family."

Answer:
Often times you have families that make up tribelets that make up the tribe. And they're often are very dysfunctional and at odds with each other. That proved to be the situation in this particular case. The university felt that if they negotiated with one tribelet, they may be attacked by another tribelet for being excluded or disagreeing with what was done to the remains. The only way they would come to the table was if all of the different tribelets and families unified and had reached consensus on the treatment of the remains before they came to the table. So that really meant that the Native American Heritage Commission and CRS would spent months going into sweat lodges and homes over weekends, meeting with all the different tribelets, to make sure that, first, they would participate in pre-meetings to prepare for the negotiations, and second get them to come to some consensus.

Question:
You were working this alone for CRS?

Answer:
Okay. This was a situation where two different people in an Indian tribe claimed to be the chief. But they both claimed to be elected. Being chief of the tribe means having control of a lot of money. So there was interest in being the chief. The person who was in the compound said that he was the chief, and the people around him agreed. Another man in the community said he was the chief, so he took his friend and guns and took over the compound. I called in from Lubbock, Texas. It was routine on a Friday afternoon to say, "I'm coming in, is there anything going on?" "As a matter of fact there is. This chief in Oklahoma said that he won't do anything until you get there. Will you go talk to him?" "Okay." I had to drive to where this is. It was noon on Saturday by the time I got there. When I got there, people were parked all along the highway. I parked and walked up to where the gate of the compound, and all law enforcement at both the state and federal levels were there. Bureau of prisons, state police, local police, sheriff's department, highway patrol, everybody. So here I come, walking up, going in to talk to these people. Law enforcement thinks, "Yeah right." About that time, one of the Native Americans comes out, gets me, and takes me in with him. I was pretty new in this; I'd probably been with the agency for a year and a half or so. The building was like an elementary school, it had the same kind of layout. I walked in the front door with this fellow, and this was one of those potentially violent situations. I had called ahead to the compound and talked to the chief. He had agreed not to do anything until I got there. Also the police and law enforcement had agreed to stay outside until I got there. The very fact that we were coming gave law enforcement an out for not going in. It gave the people inside an out for not escalating this thing. The fact that this person is coming who doesn't have an interest and who doesn't have a gun gave everybody an out to back off. Otherwise their tendencies move toward violence. I get there, the guy walks me in, there's nobody else around except him, walking me in.

Question:
Which side is he on?

Answer:
Well, as soon as civil unrest took place CRS was flying down. We were all based in San Francisco at the time.

Question:
So you were working out of San Francisco and this happened in Los Angeles, how did you hear about it?

Answer:
Well, we didn't make the whole 30 days, I know that. I remember getting to the 15th day and saying, "These people are obstinate, this is amazing." I just didn't think that it would be sustained. Around the 17th day I think they decided, "We can march all these days, but they don't get it." That's when they decided to go into the building. It was interesting because they kind of played with the doors, to see what the reaction was going to be. They'd stay around the doors until bottles were thrown on them. They would hang on these doors, then start marching again. The police would always meet you right at the door and say, you can't go through here. The police were adamant, they were not going in. I think one day they found a back door, or some way to get in, and they went right into the city hall. Now we had 300 people right in the middle of city hall, blocking the whole main floor, demanding to see the mayor. I told the sergeant, they're coming in. And he says, "Wait, wait, hold them off." I go, "I can't. They've asked for this meeting." So now they are panicking, and willing to do more all of a sudden. The message came out from the mayor's office that he would meet with a delegation. "Figure out who they want, how many people. He will meet with you this afternoon, but you have to clear out." So we convey the message and we negotiate all this. I don't think they trusted the mayor. I think we stayed there. The mayor said, "Okay, let's move the meeting up, get your people." So now we're helping them. "So, who are you going to get? You only get so many people." " No, no, we want more people." And it was all right there on the floor of City Hall, all this chaos.

Question:
The mayor set the limit?

Question:
What kinds of cases were you mostly involved in?

Question:
Can you think of an instance, or an example that we could talk about a little bit?

Answer:
A lot of it was in Indian country, where the disputes were occurring and we would, in some cases, get requests from law enforcement or from the US Attorney's office.

Question:
Okay, well, we'll bring up other questions. I don't know whether this will jog your memory or not, but think in terms of if you were regional director now, and you heard that there was some violence happening on an Indian reservation. What role can CRS play to try to stop the violence? What do you do to try to calm things down?

Answer:
Initially we did a telephone assessment as to the nature of the violence, the nature of the dispute, certainly the parties, who are the parties, in a lot of the cases we have already established relationships with them. And in a lot of cases, we get to the scene, because we do have relationships with them and can talk to them.

Question:
With both sides?

Question:
Now we'd like you to "walk us through" one case that typified your work with CRS. Please tell us about the case, how you gained entry, and you did from that point on.

Question:
Did you ever bring in outside resources who might act as informal mediators or people who helped groups work better together, such as church people, for example?.

Answer:
There was a big case in Atlanta involving the Atlanta police department, the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) which included the white officers, and the African-American Patrolmen's Association (AAPA). This was a three-way court referred case. The case was long-standing, it had been a long stalemate and hassle that the Atlanta downtown community wanted to see resolved.

Question:
What was the issue?

Answer:
Among the cases that came to my mind, that I thought were significant and showed the dynamics and so on, was the Indian treaty fishing case, the first one of these that I had handled. It deals with some of the difficulties we are confronted with in being able to develop mediation. This is distinctive. It's unlike labor management. This is a characteristic of what we are sometimes involved with. Another case is one in which questionable police actions generated community response and a coalition was formed to provide the community input in the mediation, and that in turn, evolving into an ongoing entity for dispute resolution in this area. That's a criminal justice issue. The other case I referred to was a mixture of criminal justice and treaty rights. Another one would be an education case, where a school board was faced with a paralysis, a standoff, and had to act, but for legal reasons could not act because of actions taken by the community and how we were able to work through that case to resolution. One is Indian treaty rights, another is school related, the third is criminal justice issues and all three are kind of complex and they led to a long succession of developments.

Question:
Is there a fourth?

Answer:
Well, there's a half dozen here, but I think those might provide dynamics that would be of a little more interest.

Question:
I think I'd be inclined to suggest the Indian fishing rights. We've heard a little bit about that kind of thing from Ed Howden, but nobody else has talked about that. A lot of people have talked about excessive use of force. We've heard a lot of stories on that already. We haven't heard that much about education either, so you might want to touch on that. But I'm intrigued with the Indian one.

Answer:
This was about 1977 in Seattle. I received a call from a tribal attorney, for the Squackson Island Indian Tribe, saying that members of this tribe were being harassed and assaulted, and even shot at. There is a particular island, where they have treaty fishing rights. It was an usual and accustomed fishing place even though it's completely off of the reservation. But, this was a traditional area, and treaties specify that they had a right to harvest fish in such locations. As I went down and met with the attorney and tribal chairperson and the fishery's chair, I eventually came out with a long list of issues that had developed in this case. One issue was the vandalism of boats and motors, gasoline supplies, fishing equipment, and cutting of nets by local residents, especially when they were not there. The Indian tribe had to leave the equipment on the island shore while they were away. The island was all owned as private property, and most of the owners had retired. It's connected by a land bridge, to the mainland. But the Indians traveled by boat to their tribal center. Anyway, their equipment was vandalized and they were being harassed while they were there. The result was that they were reaching the point where there was arming of the waters, as they put it. Indians were bringing firearms onto their boats, weapons to protect themselves. One recent example had been that someone on land had shot at a boat and hit a mast, just above the head of one of the tribal fisherman. Another example of what had happened is that they had accessed the waterfront area of private homes and had been shouted at, ordered off of the land, stating that, "This is private property. You don't own this. This is my land. I bought this." Words to this effect. Dogs were being released to attack the Indian fishermen. These were the main issues that had been raised in that first visit and in my talking with the Indian leadership. Then I got the names of persons, as far as I could, who were the alleged perpetrators of these kinds of acts. I wanted their identification, and what they had done about these on their own.

Question:
'They had done,' meaning what the Indians had done?

Answer:
Yeah, every aspect of their involvement that I could find, plus the extent of communication with the land owners and so on. And then I went to the island and began to make contacts with people there, starting with some of the people that they had mentioned. I asked, "What is your understanding of what's going on? Why is this happening?" Why and when. They referred to the Indians trespassing on private property, refusing to leave when ordered to do so by the owners of the land. Not only had they individually suffered from this, but neighbors, they say, in this particular bay, had complained of the same thing. And there had been some shouting matches back and forth. Abusive language, dangerous precedents being established. Among the charges were, Indian fishermen set up their nets indiscriminately, wherever they wanted to. These would be float nets out in the bay. According to Coast Guard regulations, they're to be lit at all times. At night, you can't see the nets. "And last week, a man came into the bay after dark," and according to some reports, he may have been under the influence of alcohol, "and his boat hit one of the nets and the boat capsized and he drowned. And we've had enough of this." That kind of attitude.

Question:
Did you have any trouble reading credibility with the land owners when you went over there? Was there anybody who was suspicious of you, or didn't want to talk to you?

Answer:
Oh, I think everybody that I contacted initially was suspicious of me. You had a lot of conflicts on the water itself. In Puget Sound, the State Department of Fisheries had confrontations in their small boats with sport fishermen in their large, fast boats. There had been one death there. The State Department of Fisheries enforcement officer had shot and killed the owner and operator of a large cabin cruiser that was bearing down on him at a high speed, allegedly. All of this is in reaction to the boat decision. Federal Court Judge Bolt issued a landmark decision stating that Indians had a right to fishing common. Which means, they were entitled to 50/50 catch of salmon in the Puget Sound area. If the Indians are not necessarily equipped to catch as many fish or salmon as the fisherman were equipped to fish, that's too bad. They have to hold back.

Question:
The commercial fisherman had to hold back?

Answer:
Yes.

Question:
When you say 50/50, that means the commercial fisherman get 50% of the catch?

Answer:
Shall not take more than 50% of the catch.

Question:
And the Native Americans?

Answer:
If the fishermen take a certain amount, then they have to stop fishing. The Indian tribal fisherman, they did not have the equipment, the gill netters, the persaniers, or some of these very expensive ships and larger fishing boats. They couldn't acquire fish as quickly as their rights said that they could. So all that created tension. That's the background of feelings in this. But what we're talking about here is rights of access, through private property, in order for the treaty rights to be exercised. As the Decision of 1911 put it, if Indians cannot access the water to exercise their fishing rights, then their right is being denied them. Therefore, they have a common law easement through private property to get to the waterfront, and in this case, the Indians were taking that to include if there's a dock there, then they have the right to go out on that dock and set their net on the end of that dock. I think all of the landlords were white, that I know of, but some of them complained about the Indians sleeping in the boats of the landowners, which are tied up at their dock, and leaving them a mess. Littering, defecating in public, in front of school children on their way to school, catching the school bus going up the street. They complained of loud music being played on radios when they camped out.

Question:
Did you ever witness any of this?

Answer:
I knew at the time, but maybe a thousand people. But not all were waterfront, necessarily, as you would assume.

Question:
How big of an island is this?

Answer:
Yeah, out of that model came the Interstate Task Force on Human rights that we eventually formed. Hate group activity began to manifest itself, cross-burning incidents, harassment, and organized activity, and this was before skinheads surfaced. We had Klan activity and Aryan activity and your Christian patriots and various assorted organizations that had not been present before, or known to be present. We became aware of the territorial imperative of these groups, they were organizing to form a state within a state. The Northwest Aryan Empire.

Question:
So what did these groups do to try to counter that?

Answer:
Well, every year, the World Aryan Congress met at Coeur d'Alene, out at Aryan Headquarters, seven miles North of Coeur d'Alene. You had up to three or four hundred people coming there. The Kootenai County Task Force on Human Rights, broke off from the Interstate Task Force, so you had two different groups, after a couple of years. They formed Human Rights Observances in the City Park downtown, with several thousand people in attendance, and greetings from the governors of Oregon and Washington. That was my job, to generate these. It was to say, the media was coming to cover the Aryans, that was news. So this was to say, in effect, that there are other people besides them, and we stand for human rights, fairness, and say yes to equity, and so on. But they took on a lot of different projects and programs. Then there were incidents in Coeur d'Alene, Pocatello, Boise, Portland, Seattle, and it was just cropping up all over the place. I pulled together about fourteen people from over in Spokane to sit down and consult together, these would be the NAACP regional president, Human Rights Commission Representative, and LULAC, and so on. But after we had this initial meeting, we then decided there was a need for more input. So we held a series of consultations over a year. First in Spokane, and then in Seattle, then in Portland, then in Coeur d'Alene, and then at the end of a year, formed the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. And that has now expanded to include Colorado. Surely you know this, or do you?

Question:
I don't.

Answer:
Oh. Well it's ten years old now, the Northwest Coalition. But it has representatives from the Governors' offices from each of the five original states that we had involved, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. It's a mix of officials and community leadership. The NAACP regional offices, and somebody from an Urban League, Latino organizations, one representative from a police organization in each state, a representative of the Governor's office in each state, a Human Rights Commission representative from each state, general local coalition organizational representatives from each state. This is on the Board of Directors. And we've held a full-time staff of five people. A foundation support of 265 organizations of different kinds, ranging from the police department to state departments of education, and Diocese. The local Methodist Church on Mercer Island, was the first church. That's where I lived. The annual Methodist conference, and even the Northwest Kite-Flyers organization. You don't have to be a civil rights organization to be concerned about these things. It is 265 organizations. But it's educational programs, conferences, and there's a big annual conference held in each of the three states annually. And then smaller conferences are supported. When an incident occurs, a team will be formed to go there and respond to the problem. I was the chair of the monitoring committee, which is the main role we had, and that was to document incidents. If we could document incidents, and show by compilation of credible data, that this number of incidents had occurred in this community. Or then over to the Northwest, so many homicides, kidnapping, all of the different forms of violence. We could persuade officials and public opinion that we have a problem. And that's what we did. We were doing bias-crime data collection on a five-state basis, way before the FBI started.

Question:
We, being CRS?

Question:
Now I want you to get a little bit more specific. I want you to talk me through a case and when I ask this question I always have to laugh because we are asking for typical case but I understand with CRS there is no such thing as typical, but I want you to sort of walk me through a particular case and tell me how you became involved, who you talked to, and take me through the whole process.

Answer:
Well you want a long case, a major case, or a small case?

Question:
I want you to tell me something that you found particularly interesting or that you were particularly involved in, something that has particular meaning to you.

Answer:
Well, there are probably several dozen of those. Just within the last few years, the Summer Olympics were held in Atlanta. We knew that we were going to have to be responsive to that based partly on what happened in Los Angeles during the Olympics that were out there and the number of situations that arose that relate directly to what our mandate is to community tensions along the racial line. We knew that we were going to have to become involved and I became the leading person on that.

Question:
What were some of those problems just for the record?

Question:
Now think back in a case that you were actually able to bring to the table and actually mediate and I want you to walk me through that particular case because I am very interested in some of the techniques that you were able to use to get people to the table and ultimately negotiate this conflict and negotiation situation. Again it's your choice.

Answer:
That's hard because you see we were really the center of the storm for several years. We worked with the farm workers. We had the Navajo nation. We didn't have Wounded Knee, but we had half the Indians in the country in Arizona. We were involved with the Navajos and the Hopi, although we didn't mediate that dispute directly. Nobody did. People claim credit for it, but it never got mediated. To this day it isn't mediated. It was legally settled and the old people are dying out, but it never got settled.

Question:
Did CRS consider getting in that one?

Question:
If we could get you to sort of expound on the school system, how did you became aware of that crisis, how did it even come to you?

Answer:
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) had put some things together. First, Howden had gone to training with the FMCS and they were using a technique where there were chronic work stoppages. There might be labor agreements, but still there were wildcat strikes. FMCS developed this problem solving approach in which people were grouped by occupation. They would put the foremen and the managers in different groups. Initially, they set up homogeneous groups based on occupational status and they would get them to talk about problems and then they would compare results. They would see where there was consensus about what the problems in the plant were, although there was disagreement about how the problems occurred and what you did about it. For example, absenteeism. Oh yeah, this is a real problem, everyone agreed, but the workers would ascribe it to one thing, the foremen might ascribe it to something else, top management something else, middle management something else. They would get a consensus on the problem, maybe on three quarters of the problems, and then they would get mixed teams to talk about solutions. Recognizing the solution, they would then develop a work plan. That is the significant thing. It wasn't trying to change attitudes of people. We were dealing with multiracial fights at a high school in Stockton. There were at least five distinct groups at this high school. There is a substantial black population in Stockton, so there were African Americans. There were the whites, including the kids from the outlying areas, the "rednecks" if you will, who were actually different from the white kids in town. There were two Asian populations, a third-generation Chinese population (the second oldest Chinese community compared to San Francisco) and new Vietnamese. Then there were Hispanics, mostly Mexican immigrant workers, who were one step away from the fields. There were a lot of fights. Of course these kids don't see each other as human beings, they see each other as "them," the other people. I used the FMCS approach. Why don't we try to do this in the schools and we'll split them apart by race. Also, I was hearing that the Asian kids won't talk, particularly the new Asian kids. I said we'll put them in separate areas and we'll get an Asian facilitator and see if they'll talk. Same with the Hispanic kids. They won't talk. Bill Briggs was my education specialist and Ed Howden was my mediator. (There was only one mediator at that time.) I pushed this for a year. There was a black principal who finally said yes. He ultimately got fired, but he was desperate enough to do something. We went in there and we did it. I had the whites, I had the redneck kids, and by that time I was working with Vermont McKinney. Vermont had the black kids and he really made a tremendous difference.

Question:
Is he retired or still working?

Question:
That strikes me as a real interesting way to move into the case that we were going to talk about which is the relationship between Vietnamese and the KKK. The KKK is certainly a small organization, but obviously the dominant group, and not one that necessarily needs help getting to the table.

Answer:
The issue with the Vietnamese was after the war in 1975. They came to this country, not knowing the culture, not knowing the language, and with very little resources. They were settled in Texas and other states, but they eventually migrated on their own, especially to the Texas coast. When they got there, they saw that the best way of making a living at that time was to go into the crabbing or shrimping business. The investment was very low, all you needed was a boat. So they bought these boats and after a few years, once they saw how they were made, they started making the boats themselves. They were beginning to put a lot of pressure on the local fishermen because they were disturbing their way of life. Tensions began to build. It's mostly small communities out there on the coast. In Seadrift, Texas, two Vietnamese brothers that were into crabbing were being harassed a lot by this one Anglo crabber. From what I understand, this went on for several months. Finally, they were accosted by the docks one day and severely beaten. So then they both went to their home, got some weapons, and killed the guy.

Question:
So it was the Vietnamese that killed the white guy?

Question:
Can you briefly tell us what the other interests were for the groups besides the businesses?

Answer:
Political leaders want to be elected and they care for the overall community. As for educators, their classes were being canceled, causing disruption in the schools, it's not good business for them, either.

Question:
Was there picketing outside of schools and businesses?

Question:
Not guilty?

Answer:
Not guilty of killing this one guy. They had good lawyers. They made the case that you can defend yourself if you feel that your life is in danger. You can take life preserving measures to defend yourself, including using a weapon. The jury had to weigh the fact that, in this situation, the Vietnamese felt in imminent danger even though it was fifteen minutes later when they killed the man. They had good lawyers, and they made the case for coming back and shooting the guy. At the time, I used to have a government car. It was a brown Plymouth Horizon, little bitty car. In this little town, there's only one way in and one way out. I always used to take different streets when I was in town at night. I was cautious, in case somebody was following me. The first night I stayed at that hotel in town I had to fight the roaches and rats and what have you all night. I stayed in the next town, but I would always leave from a different direction. I used to park my car in the parking lot at City Hall, they had one big light. So after roaming around with whoever, I would come back and pick up my car, let's say 11:30 at night. The whole town was dead by then. I would open the door, lower the window, and then put the key inside and then turn it while I was still outside, if it blows up you go with it.

Question:
So you were afraid?

Question:
We know there's no such thing as a typical case, but can you think of one that typifies your work and might be particularly instructive in helping new mediators understand how you did what you did?

Answer:
I'm thinking about this and, I have a case in mind. I'll just say it was a school desegregation case and I was appointed by a federal court judge to work as a mediator in the case to help resolve the case which had been brought by plaintiffs in the city. The other side was the school district.

Question:
Would you start by telling us how you became involved, what types of things you did, how they came?

Answer:
I had read about the case for some time in the local newspaper and there was something in the articles that gave me the indication that the judge handling the case was trying to find a way to mediate it. The words were not in the article, but there was a clear indication that he wanted to find a way short of going to trial to resolve it. So I called the judge's clerk, we don't call the judge directly, but it's really a way of testing to see whether the judge was open. That way also you didn't jeopardize the judge by talking to somebody about the case without the parties being present. I called up the judge's clerk and told the clerk about CRS and asked him to share with the judge on the case the service of CRS. It seemed like less than a day when I received a call from the judge and we spoke more about it. He invited me down to the city to meet with him and with the parties' attorneys. He had made up his mind by the time I got there that he was going to appoint me to the case. So, even though there was some reluctance upon the part of the attorney for the school board about my being involved as a mediator in the case, the judge had made up his mind and he just announced that he wanted the parties to meet with me to try to mediate the case. So after we introduced ourselves, I explained to the attorneys of the parties about CRS and how we operate and about our ground rules. Then I set up a time to meet up with the parties separately at a different time.

Question:
How did you overcome the school board attorney's resistance?

Answer:
Got rid of him.

Question:
How so?

Question:
Moving to Salt Lake where you were involved in a mediation, who did you mediate between?

Answer:
There are so many kinds of cases. In some of them, you have dramatic confrontation, like we had in Memphis, for example. I was the field rep in charge of Memphis when Martin was killed. That whole crisis had evolved from January to April. I think Martin was killed on April 4th.

Question:
April 4th, yes. 1968. Let's take that case and would you walk us through that? How did you get in, what did you do? Everything.

Answer:
Right. When the sanitation workers started that protest, I was called by George Pembleton and he said, "Ozell, we want you to get to Memphis." I had read something about the conflict, and teasingly I said, "And do what?" He said, "You're the one person I'm sparing who will know what to do once you're there. So just get there." So I went to Memphis. Now this is the way you do it-- CRS first does an alert of a case. An alert simply calls attention to the fact that the problem exists. We don't even know whether it's our jurisdiction or not, but it sounds like it. And then there's some preliminary information I gather so I can alert those involved, find out where and all of this. And then there's what we call an on-site assessment. Where you go on-site and you determine surely, who the parties are in the conflict, what are the demands, what parties are blocking or refusing to yield to the demands, and as a result of that, what the problem is.

Question:
Okay, that's what I want you to walk us through. How do you know who the conflict is with? Who are the parties? What are the demands? Exactly what you said.

Answer:
Well, I knew that it was the sanitation workers. It was just a matter of finding out particularly who was leading the sanitation workers and where their leadership was coming from, who was making the decisions. I knew it was against the city, so it was just a matter of finding out what powers in the city were pulling the strings. The mayor, the city council, what part everybody was playing. You do that by just simply conferring with people. I went to the sanitation workers' leadership to find out exactly what their demands were. By this time they'd been circulated everywhere, anyway, in the newspaper and in leaflets. And I sat down with the parties to see where it is that they were. And you get some idea, in the back of your mind, what it would take to resolve the problem. Of course, they will tell you in no uncertain words. And then you go to the other side and say, "Mr. Mayor, these are demands being made by the sanitation workers. Now what is it that keeps you from agreeing to their demands? Why is it that you refuse to do this?" All of these questions are focused towards why and what your position is. The sanitation workers position was not only that they were very low paid, but they contended that they were not treated as human beings ought to be treated, and that they wanted their dues write-off. Now do you understand what I mean by dues write-off?

Question:
No, I don't.

Answer:
Well there's a union. They don't collect the money from the union members. Rather the city, or whatever they're working for, pays the union, and the city collects the money and gives it to the union, right? Or the company they're working for does this--that's what you call dues write-off. That's a withdrawal from your paycheck of the dues which is turned over to the union. The city refused to give a dues write-off because they refused to recognize the union.

Question:
Because?

Answer:
Well, that was just their attitude, to not recognize a union. They didn't want any unions there in city government.

Question:
You think it didn't have anything to do with the fact that the sanitation workers were almost exclusively black?

Question:
Are you being accurate with these numbers that there were a thousand parents there and out of them only 6 volunteered?