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Did you have any continuing professional relationships between CRS and community people after a case was "closed?"
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Angel Alderete
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
How do you decide when to end an
intervention in a community?
Answer:
Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes they become a part of you, and you have a heck of a time
breaking away. Even if you say, "This is it," you'll still find yourself calling to see how things are
going.
And when you travel
somewhere, you always try to do a site stop to see how things are going. Even today, I still call
the folks at the Department of Corrections. But I don't call them to find out how they're doing, I
just call them to talk with some of the guys I know. With the Native American
community, although I haven't done it in six months, I keep in touch with the guy who was then
the director of the California Association of Indian Tribal Leaders and I stay in contact with the
Shasta County Sheriff's Department.
Manuel Salinas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Answer:
Utah has a Hispanic representative or Hispanic aide, so we
started working with the police department and the Hispanic aide, and the Hispanic aide then
worked closely with the chief. So he became our contact, he became our source of
information, how things were going. Without our necessarily being there. That office played a
significant role after things quieted down. He was under the governor's office. He or she
works throughout the state. He became our contact thereafter, and we didn't even know that
existed until we went in on that case.
Question:
So is it also accurate to say that in this case and the first case you described, that you built
relationships with people that you maintained afterwards as part of your follow up?
Answer:
Primarily, I kept a strong relationship with that Hispanic aide. He's supposed to know
what's going on in the state, and since Utah has only three or four major cities, large cities,
that's where most of his work was. If you read his job description, he basically was doing what
we would do. We got into some education problems later, and he identified who to work with,
what professor to work with at the school or what teacher to work with at the school.
Other concerns surfaced. For example, there was a city north of Salt Lake, where there was a
housing problem with migrants. There was inadequate heating and the homes were sweating
on the inside during the winter. It was bad construction. The people were complaining, and
there was no resolution. He then began to identify problem areas, and asked us to help them
figure out what was going on.
Question:
So you build a mutually supportive network.
Answer:
Yes.
| Angel Alderete
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
I worked at Santa Maria and I had a
difficult time breaking away from there, because I...maybe I identified with them. You know,
you do
your job, and you like the folks so much, that you hate to leave. Their
honesty, their intent to do what's right, their ability to do shenanigans when they're called for and
not be concerned about whether they might get arrested for it or not. Anyhow, sometimes you
never do.
Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Did CRS have any long-term
involvement in it, or did you leave
after the settlement?
Answer:
No. While CRS had an office in Denver and had relationships with both parties, the reality
is
that CRS did not then, and does not now have the ability to do follow-up, except on a very
limited basis.
Question:
Why's that?
Answer:
Lack of resources and, of course, staff.
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