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What might a contingency plan include?
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Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
But once you go into a city and establish some sort of structure, such as the one you were
talking about yesterday, does that tend to improve things over the long term?
Answer:
I don’t know for sure. I am sure it does in some places. That’s why I suggest we try to
get a grant to look at some of that. I mean I could think of some good things that have happened,
where you have a police-community conflict, where you get a significant level of response from
the establishment, from the mayor’s office basically, and police commissioner, depending on
the structure, and the aggrieved community. Then you come together and you set up some
mechanisms to address the issues. People exchange phone numbers so that anybody can contact
anybody in an emergency, so when there’s a problem you can get to the leadership on the
streets. Whether it’s the police leadership or the community leadership. You have monthly
meetings of the leadership to discuss issues. You have improved training, you review the police
firearms policy and you make changes in it. You do human rights training, human relations for
whatever that’s worth sometimes it’s worth a lot, sometimes less. You build this into the
orientation for new police officers. You address personnel complaints about assignments, hiring,
and promotions. So these things would be written in. You come up with an agreement with half
a dozen components to it, whether it was formal or informal mediation. You’ve involved the
business leadership, perhaps, or other socially concerned business leaders, civic leaders, the black
community, the white community, whoever the parties are. I don’t know how enduring those
have been in places over the years. It takes some enlightenment.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
When you were moving to leave a case,
what sort of structures, if any, did you try to set up to continue the work that you were doing after
you were gone?
Answer:
Depending on the nature of the case, we’d try to set up some structure. For example, one
or committees might be set up in the community that would continue in force long after CRS was
gone. In the case of a police-community conflict, it might a leadership committee that would
meet monthly to keep communications open and to address any alleged violations of agreements
that had been reached. CRS was unable to enforce these agreements so we would set up local
"enforcement mechanisms” to do that. If someone came back to us, we might re-enter, but
usually, if you had success in the case, there was some mechanism locally. I don't mean a formal
mediated agreement, it just could be a negotiated agreement that the parties were going to do
certain things.
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
This was the
same group that you had constituted?
Answer:
Part of that group became the first task force. Then they had in place the criteria for
replacing themselves over time. Because the students would have to rotate. But they put in the
document, ways for the group to replace itself as time passed. We did the brochure out of the
group. We had it designed and printed up out of that process.
Question:
And what is the task force's purpose?
Answer:
There was one overwhelming interest that came up. That was the minority students' lack of
anonymity when they needed it, when they felt they were being discriminated against. So part of
it was to create a buffer between them and the complaint in the classroom or housing or
whatever. So that they had a place to go to deal with the problem, and then that group became
part of their voice. Obviously they'd still be identified, but here's this task force group looking at
it, so that the faculty member or housing authority or whatever is not just dealing with this
student, they're dealing with this task force. And the task force is made up of a cross section of
the university, who says discrimination is not appropriate. So it gave them some buffer against
the majority because you can't create an environment where they can be anonymous, when there's
so few. So how do you create a place where they can be safe? So that was the purpose.
The other was to try to be pro-active. Looking at additional ways where we are not
meeting the needs of our students, where we are not encouraging minorities to stay here, and be a
part of the campus. They looked at things dealing with handicap access, housing, the systemic
kinds of things that affect students. The different programs that the university has, why are there
no minorities in this particular program? They had the two goals, as I remember. One was to
create this safety net for the individual, and the other was to be pro-active in proposing and
recommending change for the institution to continue to do that. I think they called themselves
the multi-cultural action team. They wanted to be sure that "action” was a part of their title.
| Angel Alderete
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
There was an agreement reached that
number one, the police would have such a simple thing as a minority person on call, both
African American as well as a Spanish speaking Hispanic on Saturdays and Sundays in the event
there was that kind of need. Beforehand, if a man who couldn't speak English was arrested, too
bad. "We haven't got that kind of capability," they'd say. "We'll wait until Monday or get your
attorney."
But this way they could provide that kind of service. Another item was to get training
for the
police officers in human relations. Not
provided by us, but by someone like the L.A. County Human Relations Commission.
It worked out with the city administrator and members of these
groups, that they might be able to develop employment opportunities, not only for the adults, but
also for the kids. Especially during the summer, because this is when these kids get into all sorts
of hassles. It was a written agreement and they lived up to it.
Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
What were the terms, generally, of the
agreement? I'm sure you don't remember this exactly, but what were some of them?
Answer:
Like I said, the one thing that sticks out to me was that it was a
five-year program; we also said publicly that it was a one million dollar program.
Question:
What was the money going to be used for?
Answer:
One thing the money would be used for was scholarships.
Question:
Scholarships for minorities?
Answer:
Scholarships at universities, in this case, in the state of Colorado. Not only in the state of
Colorado, but in the other four cities where McGraw Hill also had television stations. There
were
also hiring goals over a five-year period. One of the points of agreement was that each of the
stations would hire a minority manager that would work as a liaison with the minority
community
to manage minority programs and air time. At the time, there was a popular show called "Talking
Heads" which was a talk show. This show gave minorities experience in the media. Not only
before the camera, or before the microphone, but also behind, working the cameras and doing the
writing.
Will Reed
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
I always build in a monitoring mechanism for
any of these
things that get written up in the mediation agreements. Who's going to test this thing? Who's
going to enforce it? Who's going to be sincere enough to see that the garbage trucks
are rolling over to Blue Sky? Who's going to be looking at recruiting Indian teachers for the
school
district? Who's going to be the one to try to recruit Indian policemen and jailers? Are you going
to find
some? How do you identify those? Then, underneath all of that, in monitoring mechanisms, in
order to
have a full-fledged working, sincere, and functional mediation agreement, you're going to make
sure that
you have tentacles coming out of that agreement that will address work issues. What I mean by
that is
you put together a committee. Let's say you are looking at recruiting Indian teachers. You
address all this stuff in the agreement. Subsections, headings and so forth. So when you got the
agreement finished, you have all of the other mechanisms put together to address and speak to
each
issue or concern.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The last issue, and we were saving this one, was the Inmate/Staff Advisory Council,
ISAC, that would be established to deal with future problems on any matters unresolved from our
agenda. ISAC would be there, and the question was who would be represented. Everybody
agreed the culture groups should have representation. Nobody felt they shouldn’t have special
representation. Every cell block plus culture groups. That’s when the Italian leader said, not
the Italians. He understood. He'd grown some in that process and there was a lot of that kind of
transformation. An angry Hispanic inmate said to Charlie Davenport, the associate director who
was viewed as compassionate and a friend of the inmate, "You don't even know my birthday.
You don't care about me. You deserted me, you took a promotion to be associate director. You
used to handle programs, now you're associate director. You deserted me. You don't care about
me. You don't even know my birthday." That was a stinger. People saw how they were seen.
So they set up ISAC, and the big controversy was if there is a reorganization of the institution,
will they still permit the inmate groups to come together in culture groups? The answer was yes.
The administration yielded on that critical issue. That was a big concession, but it also was the
last issue.
| Efrain Martinez
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Then we
helped analyze with them what some of those things were that they
could be doing to address that. Which was the better path?
After many meetings everybody had a role to play in the creation
of the Mayor's Task Force 2000, and we gave them technical
assistance in that. Also discussing with them that if
they were to focus on the future, that they could be better able
to handle the present. They would then have a plan how they're going to
reach that future and then they could withstand whoever came in
and out, and whoever had other agendas and the city was not
focusing on where they wanted to be. And they would decide where
that place was, and how they're going to get there. It would be
essential that before they decided where they wanted to be that
they should discover where they were. And once they discovered
where they were, and everybody understood where they were, then
they could shed more light on where they needed to be and how
they're going to get there. Through a lot of meetings and a lot
of private discussions they did that and formed the Mayor's Task
Force 2000, formed of all the elements in the community. There's
always consequences for doing something, and consequences for not
doing anything. So there were pretties, and as you know the
mayor's African American, and the head of the chamber of commerce
is African American, the board president who had been there
twenty years is African American, or he just resigned, the head
of one of the major employers, the hospital. Two of the city
council members are African American. A lot of people they
themselves credit that as to why the town was able to cope with a
lot of things. Other communities are not composed like that, and
may not have been able to handle it as well. Fifty percent of
the population is black or about that much out of 8,000. This
incident happened in the county.
When we were discussing and I asked him what area are you
going to cover because it was in Jasper, and we talked about
creating a vehicle to take them into the future, but this vehicle
would be Jasper owned and operated, they would decide where they
would go, who was going to be in it, how the vehicle is going to
be shaped, and how they were going to get there. The mayor and
others felt that although it may be a Jasper vehicle that it
would be inclusive of the areas outside of Jasper too, like the
creek area where the killing occurred. Critics on both sides
said that it wasn't going to work, it would be a white wash, they
were going to hide things, and there's no problem. Yeah we've
got problems, we're not perfect, but things are okay. Things
have happened here, and there have been other incidents that have
just been kept covered up and we have longstanding issues.
We kind of agreed with them that the creating of a vehicle
in a public manner through community dialogues and small town
hall meetings they could discover where they were. All of those
meetings were public and the way they organized the task force is
it's composed of different committees. The task was to do a self
examination of the law enforcement, of the education system, and
of the business community. These committees are composed of
representatives of the whole, but with representatives of those
entities and the committee was going to take a self look, so then
they organized these meetings. I had sketched out a skeleton of
an organization but they even did me better. They got really
sophisticated and came back with an official organization
structure that really was great because it covered everybody.
And everybody participating in the process of this self look.
That's recommendable to any community, to take a self look of all
facets of the community, and based on that self look come up with
a plan. It's not like me looking at you and pointing out your
faults, but together let's see what we can do better here. That
was published in the newspaper, the results and the finding of
all those meetings. So they proved wrong those that felt it was
going to be covered up, because it was very obvious what happened
right there in the paper.
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