2007 Year in Review--10 Biggest Vanguard Stories of 2007

As the first full year of the People's Vanguard of Davis comes to completion, we will countdown the top 10 stories from this year. This is the second year we have done this.

Last year we counted down the 10 Biggest Stories in Davis.

This year we countdown the 10 biggest stories that we followed on the People's Vanguard of Davis.

We begin with the 10th biggest story: The Davis City Council Preserves the City's Historic Anti-Discrimination Ordinance.

This story begins actually in October of 2006. The City of Davis had just reformulated the Human Relations Commission after putting it on "hiatus" in late June of 2006. During the course of reconstituting the commission, the Davis City Council sought to re-write the authorizing resolution in order to strip some of the powers of the commission.

However, it was not until then newly elected Councilmember Lamar Heystek brought forward the language from the city's seminal anti-discrimination ordinance, that the council realized there may be inconsistencies between the new authorizing resolution of the HRC and the city's anti-discrimination ordinance passed in 1986.

The Davis Enterprise in October of 2006 reports:

"[T]he commission has been charged with reviewing the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, created in 1986. [HRC Chair John] Dixon appointed a subcommittee to look at the ordinance to see if any changes are necessary."

When the current Davis City Council reformulated the Davis Human Relations Commission, they sought to strip much of the previous power that they once had. As a result, they passed a resolution making the HRC strictly an advisory body, without the ability to investigate complaints.

This directly contradicted the Section 7A-15(C) of the City's Anti-Discrimination Code:

"Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of this ordinance may file a request to have the Human Relations Commission investigate and mediate his or her complaint. The Commission may adopt rules of procedure to accommodate the needs of such investigation mediation. A complaint to the Commission shall not be a prerequisite to filing a civil action under this section, and the findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action."

Councilmember Stephen Souza (a former chair of the HRC himself) was caught completely unaware of this section of the city's Anti-discrimination Ordinance. The question was whether the city council should alter the anti-discrimination ordinance adopted into law by the City Council on February 26, 1986 and approved by Nichols-Poulos, Rosenberg, Tomasi and Mayor Ann M. Evans and opposed by Jerry Adler.

The council in February by a 3-2 contentious vote (Mayor Sue Greenwald and Councilmember Lamar Heystek) authorize the subcommittee of Councilmember Steve Souza and Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Asmundson to address this issue and make a recommendation to the full council.

The issue finally came before the Davis City Council in June of 2007. Councilmember Souza and Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Asmundson come before the council with a subcommittee report.

The report concludes:

“The subcommittee recommends that Section 7A-15(c) of the city’s Anti-discrimination Ordinance should be deleted.”

Furthermore, they argue that this is not a fundamental problem for civil rights enforcement:

“The Subcommittee believes there is an adequate web of resources available to individuals.”

At the time, it appeared the vote was a mere formality. However, neither the city nor the subcommittee seemed to be very prepared in their presentations or their material. Much of the recommendations were last minute. And indeed neither the council nor city staff appeared to have much knowledge of the historic role of the commission as a body that does informal rather than formal investigations.

Assistant City Manager Kelly Stachowicz was charged with presenting the staff report.

“That particular resolution, one of the things that it did was attempted to remove the responsibility from the Human Relations Commission to investigate individual grievances with the intent of attempting to adjudicate them primarily because that particular responsibility is problematic in a public commission…”

Ms. Stachowicz specifically referred to the Commission's lack of subpoena power and lack of ability to get all information as a reason to strip its power to investigate and mediate.

The first of many twists of this night came when Souza suddenly announced that they had changed their proposal, which first sought to delete the authorizing section from the ordinance and instead would edit it to shift the power from the HRC to the city and city manager.

“Section 7A-15(c) which is civil remedies under the anti-discrimination ordinance, speaks to a specific commission as the entity that would mediate and investigate, what we have done is change that language to not be specific and allow for the evolving nature of the city’s mediation ability and programs over time.”

Souza spoke of replacing the power of the HRC with that of existing organizations. The argument that he used was that the city now possesses resources that it did not have at its disposal in 1986 such as the mediation and fair housing program, the police advisory committee, the ombudsman, the personnel board, and the human resources department. He argued that only one of them has subpoena power, the personnel board. In order to do a proper investigation, a body must be able to compel individuals to come forward to testify, only the personnel board has that power, not the HRC, he stated.

Councilmember Lamar Heystek took strong disagreement with both the process by which this was brought forward and some of the specific proposals.

Councilmember Heystek pointedly asked:

“We received this amendment to the ordinance shortly before 6:30, why was this not included in our council packet when it was delivered to our homes?”

Councilmember Souza responded:

“Because we prepared it a half hour before the meeting. We thought about it over the weekend, and me and Ruth discussed it, then we came and met with Kelly [Stachowicz] at 5:30 and proposed the language that you see before you.”

Heystek continued to press his point:

“I certainly appreciate that you’ve done that, but I question whether or not we’ve given people, even here, who wish to speak who were not prepared for these changes, and perhaps people at home who haven’t had these changes presented to them, I think the council should be very eager to take public comment tonight, but I question whether or not we should take action tonight.”

He also questioned the relevance of the personnel board as an investigative body for civil rights complaints.

Souza responded:

“It’s the appropriate body where individuals in the city lodge complaints against individuals in the city”

City Attorney Harriet Steiner had to step in here:

“The personnel board is there so that if there is a personnel action against a city employee, if there is a complaint against a city employee… that is the hearing body on whether the employee should appropriately be disciplined for their conduct. That board is set up as an adjudicatory board, but that board is not a board where people come in and lodge a complaint against a city employee…”

Heystek:

“That was my understanding of the role of the personnel board, so I will ask the subcommittee what relevance does the personnel board have to what we are dealing with tonight, changes to this civil rights ordinance, why do you bring up the personnel board if it is not otherwise a body that is open to the public?”

Souza:

“If there is a discrimination complaint against an individual in the city from an employee of the city, that would be the vehicle that they use to adjudicate the issue.”

Souza also admitted in response to a question from Heystek that he had only read the minutes of the deliberations on the original ordinance from 1986 “this evening.”

Councilmember Heystek pressed City Manager Bill Emlen as to where he would be providing referrals to investigate or mediate the complaint of individuals. Emlen in fact had no idea and dodged Heystek’s question twice. First, stating it would depend on the nature of the complaint. And second stating, “I think they’ve been mentioned this evening the various options that are available.” Both of these were essentially dodges and non-answers.

Then came a key exchange between City Attorney Harriet Steiner and Councilmember Souza.

Councilmember Souza:

“Do we have to do anything in order to keep the ordinance legal in its intent and the resolution in the Human Relations Commission? Can we leave it as it is?”

City Manager Steiner:

“I think we probably could leave it as it is.”

Councilmember Souza:

“Does any city commission, in particular the Human Relations Commission, have the ability under law to investigate?”

City Manager Steiner:

“None of our commissions would actually provide what lawyers think of as a non-biased investigation, none of the commissions with the possible exception of the personnel board that we talked about before, really are set up to do an equivalent to what the courts do. Many of our commissions listen to the citizens, provide forums for issues, and come to a policy recommendation to the city council with an appropriate recommendation…”

The discussion turned on the meaning of the term adjudicate. Council seemed largely unaware that the commission had never performed nor sought adjudicatory power. Their power was in the ability to bring sides together to mediate--if both sides were willing.

During this discussion, Mayor Pro Tem Asmundson and Councilmember Stephen Souza conferred with each other and Ms. Asmundson stated that there was an announcement from the subcommittee.

Councilmember Souza stated:

“I would suggest, given the first answer to the question about whether we could just leave the ordinance as is, that I would move that we leave the ordinance as is, and that we direct the liaison to the Human Relations Commission to explain the other avenues that are available and clarify the meaning, and provide the information as to the avenues that are available for mediation and complaints.”

Suddenly by a 5-0 vote, the city council left the anti-discrimination ordinance unchanged and restored the power of the HRC to its previous levels.

It was a bizarre turn of events and the most unexpected ending.

The discussion spawned a few commentaries from the Vanguard.

First, a youtube clip of some of the deliberation.

Second, a general commentary on the degree to which the council and staff appeared unprepared.

All of this makes the city's preservation of the anti-discrimination ordinance, the 10th biggest story of 2007.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Subcomittee and Staff Look Ill-prepared in Anti-Discrimination Ordinance Deliberations

In many ways this was entirely of their own doing. In April, Councilmember Lamar Heystek pulled a consent agenda item off the consent calendar and moved to allow city staff rather than the city commissions subcommittee of Stephen Souza and Ruth Asmundson look into changes in the anti-discrimination ordinance. At the time, we reported that Councilmember Heystek respectfully but firmly pointed out to the subcommittee that they lacked legal training and moreover they had originally missed the provision. Councilmember Souza's defense was that they were not even aware of the provision in the anti-discrimination ordinance that authorized the HRC to "investigate" and "mediate" charges of discrimination. Heystek responded that proved his point--the council subcommittee had not done their homework and that he lacked confidence in their ability to handle such an important and complex task. Nevertheless, the council voted 3-2 with Heystek joined by Mayor Greenwald in dissent, to authorize the subcommittee to look at the anti-discrimination ordinance.

This criticism would come forth again on Tuesday as the Council subcommittee would come forward with their recommendation first to delete the provision and then to alter it. Without Councilmember Heystek's work, the council would have never been aware of this flaw to begin with as in October of last year, when the council was re-writing the authorizing ordinances and resolutions for all the commissions, neither Souza nor Asmundson had read through the anti-discrimination ordinance. As it turns out, they had not read it in June of 2006 when they shut down the HRC for doing what in retrospect was their job.

In addition to simply not knowing the provision within the anti-discrimination ordinance, there were several other appalling aspects of the subcommittee's work as presented on Tuesday evening. First, somehow between October when the issue first arose and June, and between April when the subcommittee was authorized to look at this question and June, no one asked the city attorney her opinion as to whether the city had to change to ordinance to make it consistent with the resolution. It was her opinion that they did not have to change the ordinance that led Councilmember Souza to withdraw his recommendation for making changes to the ordinance. How could that question not have arisen until there was a public recommendation?

Second, Councilmember Souza and Asmundson made the original recommendation in the council agenda:

“The subcommittee recommends that Section 7A-15(c) of the city’s Anti-discrimination Ordinance should be deleted.”

However, at the meeting it turns out they altered that recommendation without any sort of notice to the public or their colleagues. Instead of deleting that section, they altered it, substituting the HRC for the "city" and "city manager." This change was literally made at 5:30 on Tuesday evening.

Third, Councilmember Souza and Asmundson admitted that they had not read the minutes from the 1986 original deliberations until 6:00 Tuesday evening. In fact, the only reason they saw these minutes at all were that Councilmember Heystek requested of Kelly Stachowicz all the records from the 1986 proceedings and then all the councilmembers received copies of those proceedings. Asmundson claimed that there was no information in them that was useful, but this is simply not true. First, the council voted by a 4-1 margin to approve it. The one dissenting vote was Councilmember Jerry Adler. Mr. Adler at that time made a string of legalistic motions to alter various parts of the ordinance that he thought were problematic. He did not raise one objection however to the section in question. Second, the minutes also contained a list of citizens who at the time spoke in favor of the ordinance, citizens who are still in the community now and are in fact allies of the council majority. It is in fact a veritable "who's who" list of Davis residents.

Fourth, it was not clear from the deliberations that either council or staff understood the wording in the ordinance. It was only when Mayor Greenwald pointed out that the ordinance itself contained the key provision that precluded any findings of the commission's investigation and mediation from being admissible in a court of law, that Harriet Steiner acknowledged that there were in fact distinctions between the legal definition of "investigate" and "mediate" and a more general and common language usage.

The language reads:

"The findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action."

This section in fact indicates and clarifies that when the ordinance speaks of investigate, it does not mean a legal investigation that would have subpoena and more importantly, "adjudicatory" power. Rather, it was meant to be a more informal means of findings out facts and making recommendations to the actual body with legislative authority, the city council.

Fifth, following from this, it was clear that neither staff nor council really understood the history of the commission or its functions. This is especially appalling given that Councilmember Souza was a longtime member and in fact chaired this commission. Bill Ritter, a former chair, told the council that city had a times hired independent investigators to follow up more formally on HRC findings. In fact, as the three former chairs sitting in the audience pointed out, the HRC never had, used, or sought adjudicatory power. The council apparently had little understanding of what the HRC did or how it operated.

This is not surprising in light of the dispute last year, that in my opinion, was largely distorted and blown out of proportions. The council depicted an HRC out of control and bent on subverting the will of council. In fact, what happened was that as a series of complaints against the Davis police arose, the HRC had public meetings to determine the nature of the complaints against the police. They appointed a subcommittee to investigate those complaints led by Jann Murray-Garcia. That subcommittee released their report in February, but by that time the council had already gone another direction in terms how to approach the problem and opted for an Ombudsman rather than Civilian Oversight. The HRC, never took up the issue again formally, although some of their members were involved in pubic protests over the handling of the Buzayan and other cases. None of these actions overstepped the bounds of commission. The council had every right to do as they did and go a different direction, though the tone of the meetings and Councilmember Puntillo's denouncement of their work as "not worth the paper it was written on" was decidedly unprofessional and in poor taste.

Nevertheless, one must in the end question this particular subcommittee, which has seemed to not only fail to perform their duties in an adequate and timely manner with regards to the HRC, but it also badly blundered with another recommendation that in the end they had to withdraw--the recommendation to merge the Senior Citizens Commission with the Social Services commission. (For an overview of that process click here and also here.

The basic facts here are surprisingly similar, but play out over a longer time frame than the anti-discrimination ordinance. The subcommittee issued their initial recommendations for the merger in a consent agenda item and it was only because Councilmember Heystek asked for the item to be brought back later that we discovered that there was a full blown resolution for the merger of the two commissions. Souza would later claim this was brought forward for discussion, but it was not. It was a full blown resolution with a recommendation for merger and it was in a consent agenda item that would not be discussed unless someone pulled it.

When objections to the merger arose, Souza took it to each of the commissions, the Social Services Commission approved it, but the Senior Citizens Commission refused and in fact made a very public complaint about it. At one point, Mr. Souza in fact, berated and attempted to browbeat the chair of that commission, Elaine Roberts Musser, and the rest of the commission, but they would not back down. After a series of very public hearings, included a devastating speech by the chair before the council (see the you tube video of it here), the council not only backed off but attempted to make it appear as though they had not really intended to do anything more than "raise the issue" for the "purposes of discussion."

The historic record of this however does not bear it out and in the end like the anti-discrimination ordinance, the Senior Citizens Commission prevailed when Souza and Asmundson did a hasty reversal in the middle of the proceedings.

What is also interesting is that in both cases, the subcommittee of Souza and Asmundson did the primary work. Councilmember Don Saylor in neither controversy said a whole lot and in fact he did not make a public assertion of his view on either matter and allowed his colleagues and allies to essentially hang themselves.

There has been some controversy about the amount of work done by subcommittees as opposed to the entire body. I am of two-mindsets on the issue because on the one hand, I prefer public deliberations on staff prepared items. On the other hand, I think much of the preparation work can be done outside of formal meetings. What is clear however is that the council should think twice before assigning Stephen Souza and Ruth Asmundson to work together on a subcommittee. They have made two pretty large miscalculations that have in essence wasted both the council's time as well as the community's time. The amount of work that the Senior Citizens Commission and their chair had to do must have been tremendous. Instead of pushing forward with their duties they were forced to fight for their existence.

This process played out in a rather embarrassing way for both city and staff. Frankly both the subcommittee and the staff should be embarrassed at both their lack of knowledge but more importantly their lack of preparation on this item.

I am very grateful that the council did the right thing in the end on this issue, just as they did on the Senior Citizens Commission merger, but that should not excuse the steps that were taken in the interim and especially the lack of preparation and notification to the public.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Council Deliberations on Anti-Discrimination Ordinance

For those who missed the Davis City Council Meeting from Tuesday evening, here are some of the key snippets and exchanges. Included on here are the admissions by Councilmember Stephen Souza that he rewrote the proposal just prior to the city council meeting and that he has only that evening read the minutes from the original discussions. Moreover, you see Souza questioned on the use of the personnel board to lodge complaints against employees. You see Councilmember Heystek question City Manager Bill Emlen on how he would operate under the proposed changes. Finally you see Mayor Sue Greenwald flesh out that the "mediate" and "investigate" mentioned in the ordinance clearly do not refer to those terms in the legal sense since the ordinance explicitly states that these findings are not admissible in the court of law--whereas if the HRC were an investigative body with actual authority to adjudicate, the wording would be more reflective of that.

See for yourself by clicking on the video below...



---Doug Paul Davis reporting

STUNNING REVERSAL BY COUNCIL ON ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ORDINANCE

“Fait accompli,” were the words I used to close my remarks in yesterday’s column to describe the prospects for the proposed changes to the Anti-discrimination Ordinance that would have removed a key passage that empowered the Human Relations Commission to investigate and mediate complaints regarding allegations of discrimination. All went according to plan until about two-thirds of the way through deliberations when one of the members of the subcommittee recommending the changes to the ordinance, Councilmember Stephen Souza, suddenly and unexpectedly moved that there be no changes to the ordinance. The result was a 5-0 vote to make no changes to the ordinance and to basically restore the duties that the Human Relations Commission had previously performed up until June 27, 2006 when the council voted to disband the commission.

Perhaps the most stunning part of the evening was the way that we got to this point, the effectiveness of public testimony, and vigilance on the part of Councilmember Lamar Heystek and Mayor Sue Greenwald in somehow, some way, forcing the council majority to back off. Even more stunning was how woefully unprepared Councilmember Souza and several city staffers were about this meeting and how little either council or staff knew about the actual history of the Commission. This was particularly surprising given the fact that Councilmember Souza was himself a former chair of the Commission.

Assistant City Manager Kelly Stachowicz’s remark actually set the tone for much of the discussion:

“That particular resolution, one of the things that it did was attempted to remove the responsibility from the Human Relations Commission to investigate individual grievances with the intent of attempting to adjudicate them primarily because that particular responsibility is problematic in a public commission…”

Stachowicz specifically referred to the Commission's lack of subpoena power and lack of ability to get all information as a reason to strip its power to investigate and mediate. As we shall see, the interpretation of this language would prove key in the ultimate decision to restore the Commission with this power.

The first of many twists of this night came when Souza suddenly announced that they had changed their proposal, which first sought to delete the authorizing section from the ordinance and instead would edit it to shift the power from the HRC to the city and city manager.

“Section 7A-15(c) which is civil remedies under the anti-discrimination ordinance, speaks to a specific commission as the entity that would mediate and investigate, what we have done is change that language to not be specific and allow for the evolving nature of the city’s mediation ability and programs over time.”

Souza spoke of replacing the power of the HRC with that of existing organizations. The argument that he used was that the city now possesses resources that it did not have at its disposal in 1986 such as the mediation and fair housing program, the police advisory committee, the ombudsman, the personnel board, and the human resources department. He argued that only one of them has subpoena power, the personnel board. In order to do a proper investigation, a body must be able to compel individuals to come forward to testify, only the personnel board has that power, not the HRC, he stated.

Councilmember Lamar Heystek took strong disagreement with both the process by which this was brought forward and some of the specific proposals.

Councilmember Heystek pointedly asked: “We received this amendment to the ordinance shortly before 6:30, why was this not included in our council packet when it was delivered to our homes?”

Souza responded: “Because we prepared it a half hour before the meeting. We thought about it over the weekend, and me and Ruth discussed it, then we came and met with Kelly [Stachowicz] at 5:30 and proposed the language that you see before you.”

Heystek continued to press his point: “I certainly appreciate that you’ve done that, but I question whether or not we’ve given people, even here, who wish to speak who were not prepared for these changes, and perhaps people at home who haven’t had these changes presented to them, I think the council should be very eager to take public comment tonight, but I question whether or not we should take action tonight.”

He also questioned the relevance of the personnel board as an investigative body for civil rights complaints.

Souza responded: “It’s the appropriate body where individuals in the city lodge complaints against individuals in the city”

City Attorney Harriet Steiner had to step in here: “The personnel board is there so that if there is a personnel action against a city employee, if there is a complaint against a city employee… that is the hearing body on whether the employee should appropriately be disciplined for their conduct. That board is set up as an adjudicatory board, but that board is not a board where people come in and lodge a complaint against a city employee…”

Heystek: “That was my understanding of the role of the personnel board, so I will ask the subcommittee what relevance does the personnel board have to what we are dealing with tonight, changes to this civil rights ordinance, why do you bring up the personnel board if it is not otherwise a body that is open to the public?”

Souza: “If there is a discrimination complaint against an individual in the city from an employee of the city, that would be the vehicle that they use to adjudicate the issue.”

Souza also admitted in response to a question from Heystek that he had only read the minutes of the deliberations on the original ordinance from 1986 “this evening.” This appears to be another inexplicable example of Mr. Souza, who had a full nine months to prepare from the time this issue was first raised and a good four or five months since the issue was given back to the council the subcommittee. Why would he only read the minutes of the meeting on the evening of the council action, rather than as a member of the subcommittee as they deliberated on this issue presumably over the prior nine months? This seems inexplicable and utterly contemptible.

Asmundson seemed to attempt to justify this glaring oversight by suggesting:

“The 1986 minutes really doesn’t show us anything, it’s just the action it showed in the minutes, there was no discussion, and we couldn’t find any discussion on that motion.”

Heystek responded, “I respectfully disagree with you on that point.”

Also present at last night’s council meeting were members of the public who played a key role in this as well, with six members speaking, each one of them speaking strongly against the proposed changes to the ordinance.

Michelle Stephens, a current member of the HRC spoke for her out of town colleague Shelly Bailes first. “She was there when the anti-discrimination ordinance was written, and she is opposed to any changes.” And then Ms. Stephens spoke for herself:

“Changing this document would be a mistake, for over 20 years this anti-discrimination ordinance has served our community well, providing proof that the city of Davis is committed to human rights… We should not allow something that has shaped our city to be re-written so easily. Changing the ordinance will also effectively make the Human Relations Commission, a party-planning group…” “There is no such thing as having too many opportunities for citizens to voice their concerns.”

Dean Johanson, spoke on behalf of the Yolo County ACLU. He voiced the ACLU’s “opposition to any change in the ordinance as it stands now.” Furthermore, “as an individual who has in the past used the Human Relations Commission, I do think that what you are calling, ‘evolving,’ is actually de-evolution, you’re actually going back in time by making these changes.”

I also spoke on the need to keep to a mechanism that is free of court action that would enforce the anti-discrimination ordinance. Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald, my wife, and former chair of the Commission, spoke about some of the cases that the HRC actually dealt with and their role in bringing about changes in the school district’s climate policy, the city hate crimes, and other programs that dealt with civil rights.

Former HRC Chair Bill Ritter,

“In the nine years I served, this was an important task of the Commission, it was important because it gave teeth to the anti-discrimination ordinance, an avenue by which citizens could come and work out their problems as they perceived them.”

Mr. Ritter pointed out that the mediations services have always been a part of the process. In one case, the city manager, followed up with a private investigator to follow-up on the research that the commission had done.

Former HRC Chair, Tansey Thomas, also spoke out against the changes she cited a number of reports and recommendations that were not followed through upon.

Councilmember Heystek pressed City Manager Bill Emlen as to where he would be providing referrals to investigate or mediate the complaint of individuals. Emlen in fact had no idea and dodged Heystek’s question twice. First, stating it would depend on the nature of the complaint. And second stating, “I think they’ve been mentioned this evening the various options that are available.” Both of these were essentially dodges and non-answers.

Councilmember Souza then asked several key questions of City Attorney Harriet Steiner.

Souza: “Do we have to do anything in order to keep the ordinance legal in its intent and the resolution in the Human Relations Commission? Can we leave it as it is?”

Steiner: “I think we probably could leave it as it is.”

Souza: “Does any city commission, in particular the Human Relations Commission, have the ability under law to investigate?”

Steiner: “None of our commissions would actually provide what lawyers think of as a non-biased investigation, none of the commissions with the possible exception of the personnel board that we talked about before, really are set up to do an equivalent to what the courts do. Many of our commissions listen to the citizens, provide forums for issues, and come to a policy recommendation to the city council with an appropriate recommendation…”

This is actually a key statement because Steiner is speaking in terms of how lawyers think about the term, “investigation,” rather than other possible definitions of the word. It was Mayor Greenwald who demonstrated from the text of the ordinance that the intent was never to “adjudicate” and always referred to a much less formal mechanism of mediation and investigation. The ordinance specifically states that the findings are not admissible in court, implying strongly that the HRC was not to be a body that investigates in the manner in which Steiner speaks of the term “investigate.”

Greenwald pointed out that the council was not provided a copy of the actual ordinance.

Mayor Greenwald's reading of the ordinance was: “yes the Commission can investigate and mediate, but it would not provide material for action.”

Harriet stated that it says, “the findings and conclusions are not admissible in court for a civil action.”

Greenwald: “Investigation and mediation does not have only one definition.”

Harriet: “That’s what I was trying to say. There are different kinds of investigation and different kinds of proceedings. An investigation to come forward to have a community forum is a different kind of investigation than an investigation to try to adjudicate an individual complaint against another individual against a city employee.”

Harriet: “I don’t know that the Human Relations Commission has ever been in a position where it has taken an individual complaint and tried to come up with the answer as to what should happen on that particular complaint as opposed to a larger issue and what the community should do...”

The discussion seemed to turn on the term, “adjudicate.” The perception of the council seemed to be that the ordinance authorized the HRC to adjudicate a complaint, when in fact the language of the ordinance precluded such action and it had never been the practice of the HRC to adjudicate. It was Mayor Greenwald’s teasing out the term that led to this clarification and seemed to change the course of the meeting.

During this discussion, Mayor Pro Tem Asmundson and Councilmember Stephen Souza were conferencing. Suddenly, Asmundson stated that there was an announcement from the subcommittee.

Souza stated: “I would suggest, given the first answer to the question about whether we could just leave the ordinance as is, that I would move that we leave the ordinance as is, and that we direct the liaison to the Human Relations Commission to explain the other avenues that are available and clarify the meaning, and provide the information as to the avenues that are available for mediation and complaints.”

There was an air of disbelief, as it appeared briefly that the council minority could not believe what they had just heard and sitting in the audience, I had the same feeling. It was quite stunning given the direction of the conversation up until the last few moments.

Heystek quickly regained the initiative at this point however, and pressured the council to reconcile between the language of the ordinance and the language of the authorizing resolution of the HRC. He pointed out that in the future, councilmembers would not be reading the motions made on this date, but rather the language in the resolution. He spoke forcefully and ultimately prevailed in getting the subcommittee to re-write the resolution to include some of the language of the ordinance to make it clear that they had the ability to mediate and investigate, but not adjudicate (again a power that the Commission never had to begin with).

By a 5-0 vote, the city council not only left unchanged the historic anti-discrimination ordinance, but also appeared, and I stress appeared, since there will have to be another item on this in the future, to restore the previous power of the Human Relations Commission to what it had been prior to its being disbanded in June of last year.

This was the most stunned I have ever been at a council verdict and in many ways I still am not clear as to what happened. It appeared that public comment moved the council. It appeared even prior to the meeting, that perhaps criticism of the initial proposal, perhaps from this blog, moved the council to use stronger wording. And it appeared that the discussion brought up by Mayor Greenwald with regards to the issue of adjudication probably provided the final death knell.

Souza justified it by the answer that Harriet Steiner gave to his first question, but in fact he asked four questions and it appeared by the fourth question that he was simply lining it up for his eventual victory asking her about the role of adjudication and whether the ordinance itself was proper. Steiner’s response was that she was always uncomfortable with the language of the ordinance. The fourth question was about police oversight, a question and answer that were discussed at length last year and that Souza fully knew the answer to.

Thus my only conclusion is that somewhere during the course of that discussion, the issue of definition of investigation arose and the issue of adjudication made it clear that the ordinance never intended to authorize nor did the Commission ever act as a body that adjudicates individual complaints.

I will point out that people last year charged that the HRC was trying to become a de-facto civilian review board for police complaints, but that is not true. What the HRC was doing was taking individual complaints and attempting to advocate a general policy—the construction of a civilian review board. The council rejected that proposal, but that was the HRC’s intent, not to adjudicate the Buzayan case or any of the other individual cases. Those cases were only used to provide examples for a policy change.

It is very important to note that the HRC was never granted the power of subpoena nor did they ever seek to use the subpoena power. The charge was made that the commission overstepped their bounds and misused their power, but as we saw last night, it has be acknowledged that is simply untrue given that they never attempted to adjudicate individual cases. We can disagree on the forcefulness with which the commission conducted its business, but that alone does not mean that the commission was not outside of its charge.

In the end, the council did the right thing last night, but one must severely question several aspects of the proceedings. First, the late change of text for the ordinance butts up against a violation of the Brown Act which requires a period of proper noticing to the public. That change caught all involved off-guard. Second, the lack of preparation on the part of the subcommittee was irresponsible. Souza’s question of Steiner could have taken place in private and having her opinion that there was no conflict could have mitigated against this discussion. Third, the lack of staff providing of resources including the ordinance is appalling. Fourth, Souza’s admission that he had only read the minutes of the 1986 discussion last night, prior to the meeting, was not only appalling, but disrespectful to the work of past councils. Finally, this entire discussion embodies a sort of lack of preparation and lack of professionalism. It was clear from the discussion that neither the council nor staff really understood the history of the Commission or how they have operated in the past.

This is not surprising in light of the controversy that happened last year that in my opinion, as a very biased observer, was greatly distorted in the public realm. That is not to suggest that the Commission acted without error that is far from the case, however, their intents and their actions were greatly distorted in the heat of a political campaign and the heat of public scrutiny.

In Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald’s closing comments during her public remarks, she asked the council

“to take this historic anti-discrimination ordinance and instead of stripping it of its protections, to move in the other direction to make it stronger. I ask you to take these fractured ties in this community and bring us together. I ask you to lift up those who have suffered in this past year from hopelessness and despair and give them hope and guidance that the City of Davis will not turn its back on its commitment to civil rights.”

In many ways, a year removed from the controversy, when things could be treated with reflection rather than with impulse, they have done exactly that. The question though is really whether it is too late. The results last night stunned us all, but they also served to reinvigorate us. It was the first time in a long time that we had any sense of optimism, accomplishment and hope.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Souza and Asmundson Propose to Strip Civil Rights Protections from Seminal City Ordinance

The Davis City Council in 1986 passed one of the most sweeping anti-discrimination ordinances in the country. This ordinance put Davis on the forefront of civil rights protections in the nation. The ordinance would then be re-affirmed by a vote of the public.

The ordinance protected individuals on the basis of “race, religion, color, ancestry, age, national origin, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, disability or place of birth…” It granted “The fundamental rights of citizens include the right to live unfettered by unreasonable discrimination and this right is consistent with the American ideals of individual freedom, liberty and responsibility for one's own actions.” Moreover it placed the responsibility with government “to take action to prevent such discrimination.”

In addition to the sweeping scope of the protections, it provided three core enforcement mechanisms to ensure that this ordinance was not merely a paper tiger. In 10.06.050(a):

“any person whose rights are violated pursuant to this chapter may bring a civil action against person or persons engaging in such violation. Upon a finding of liability, the court shall award actual damages…”

Second, (b) allows:

“any person who commits an act in violation of any of the provisions of this chapter” to “be enjoined therefrom and from future violations by any court of competent jurisdiction.”

While both of these provisions are essential, they both require court action. Court action has two fundamental drawbacks. First, it is not a speedy process—meaning it may take a period of years for the court to issue a finding. Second, it is an expensive process, thus people of modest means have difficulty retaining quality counsel and even more difficulty following through on the lengthy and expensive court process. However, the city of Davis, visionary as it was, created a third option that would mitigate this problem. They empowered a government body—the Davis Human Relations Commission with the power to investigate and mediate complaints of discrimination.

Section 7A-15 (c)Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of this ordinance may file a request to have the human relations commission investigate and mediate his or her complaint. The commission may adopt rules of procedure to accommodate the needs of such investigation and mediation. A complaint to the commission shall not be a prerequisite to filing a civil action under this section, and the findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action. (Ord. No. 1359, § 1 (part).)

When the current Davis City Council reformulated the Davis Human Relations Commission, they sought to strip much of the previous power that they once had. As a result, they passed a resolution making the HRC strictly an advisory body, without the ability to investigate complaints. It was pointed out last fall by Councilmember Heystek that the resolution passed by the Council by a 3-2 vote (with Mayor Greenwald and Councilmember Heystek dissenting) was at odds with the anti-discrimination ordinance.

Council again by a 3-2 vote, decided to send the question back to the subcommittee of Councilmembers Ruth Asmundson and Stephen Souza (rather than staff) to determine what to do with the anti-discrimination ordinance. On Tuesday, they will take up the issue as a full council.

The report concludes:

“The subcommittee recommends that Section 7A-15(c) of the city’s Anti-discrimination Ordinance should be deleted.”

Furthermore, they argue that this is not a fundamental problem for civil rights enforcement:

“The Subcommittee believes there is an adequate web of resources available to individuals.”

This view is actually based on a very limited understand of the ordinance and the scope of protections under the ordinance. In effect, the council decision (and there is little doubt what the council decision will be given that Councilmember Saylor has been the most fervent about abolishing the powers of the HRC and oversight), will strike the major enforcement mechanism in the ordinance, leaving only judicial remedies as a possibility for an aggrieved individual. As we discussed, due to the prohibitive costs and general lack of ability for individuals to file suit, there is no legitimate recourse an aggrieved individual of modest or even moderate means possesses.

To understand this, we should look toward the Buzayan case, which is now two years old following the initial incident in June 2005. And yet, a full two years later, the federal trial has not yet begun. Moreover the family has already spent in the hundreds of thousands of dollars on court costs. While the Buzayans can afford these costs (with a great deal of strain and burden even on their finances), the average person simply cannot, which means they are effectively without remedy.

The council subcommittee is arguing that there are other available remedies. In fact, I can think of one and they really cite only one, the police ombudsman, an entity which is completely untested and not codified into the ordinance. The anti-discrimination ordinance intended to look well beyond the scope of police activities. In fact, that was likely only a very minor perceived role for the HRC. Over the years, the HRC has been involved in a very wide variety of cases most of which were not directly related to police activities.

There is to my knowledge no other such mechanism to fulfill the role formerly played by the HRC. What avenues are available for some of the other complaints that arise other than going to court? Does the council insist that the court and litigation is the only remedy? Wasn’t the HRC created precisely as a means to avoid court action?

The HRC was the only body existing that had the ability to both listen to complaints aired in public and investigate and report their findings publicly. The city council has claimed that they have such powers, but the city council does not act as an investigatory body. Their job is primarily a policy making body that acts on recommendations from the various commissions that do the leg work? Does the City Council really want to subsume the role played by the former HRC to both hear and investigate complaints of discrimination not just against the police, but throughout the community? This does not seem a practical stance and yet this is exactly what Steve Souza claimed last fall when this issue arose during the time at which the commissions were reformulated.

Some have suggested that there should be a private/ independent HRC to fulfill this function, but the force of government is precisely what is needed to mediate and resolve issues and complaints of discrimination and there needs to be an available remedy outside of the courts which are costly to both plaintiff and the city and lengthy. In fact, in the language of the anti-discrimination ordinance cited above, the ordinance SPECIFICALLY charged government as having a primary role to play in the enforcement of these provisions.

As it stands now, there is no remedy for complaints in the ordinance. The council has not codified the ombudsman into the anti-discrimination ordinance. And there are no remedies for discrimination complaints outside of police complaints.

Imagine Brown v. Board of Education without the ensuing civil rights legislation to give that decision and subsequent decisions actual teeth that can be used by federal, state, and local governments to enforce civil rights legislation—that is precisely what the current council majority's subcommittee is recommending doing with the Davis Civil Rights ordinance—it lays out provisions but offers no enforcement mechanism outside of the costly court system.

The council majority is in effect making the civil rights ordinance exactly what the authors of it sought to avoid—making it a paper tiger ordinance. For the average person who charges discrimination, there is now no effective means by which to redress their grievances outside of the lengthy and costly court process.

The saddest part I think is that this is a huge step backwards in the fight for civil rights. Davis was once on the forefront in the nation on civil rights, just as it had been on the forefront of a number of progressive issues during the seminal progressive era. One by one the current council majority of Asmundson, Saylor and Souza is undoing the great work of the giants who came before them. And the citizenry of Davis to this point have offered hardly a whisper of protest. Unfortunately it may take a major case to re-infuse our commitment to civil rights in Davis and that is the saddest part. Many in this city believed that this was a hard-earned but accomplished victory. Now the very members who claim to be liberals, are about to undo this victory.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

History Repeats: "Racial Climate Assessment Report" Reads as Though it Was Written Today

As we discussed last week, the school board listened to District Climate Coordinator Mel Lewis discuss the climate action report that he was implementing. Not surprisingly it called for a number of new programs, courses, surveys, and a number of other recommendations to deal with some of the issues of racism, discrimination, bullying, and harassment that the district has now faced for a long period of time.

As many in the room remarked, the programs suggested and the goals themselves are laudable. It was an impressive presentation. We already spoke at length about a pilot program called the safe schools ambassador's program. This was just the beginning of a long series of recommendations for improvement in the school climate.

We had expressed concerns about the Yale Survey that was mailed to the houses of parents and also sent home with students. As we discussed at the time, the survey really did not appear to address the key issues that were facing the school district. Our inquiry into the rationale by the district produced an explanation for this, but did not alleviate our concerns. The survey has been implemented as a generic survey that will yield the district some information that can be compared at the national level. The district personnel did not feel they had the resources or the expertise to design their own and more comprehensive survey. Still, as suggested at the time, this does not address the key issues of racism, discrimination, bullying and harassment and instead asks a series of generic questions that aim to ascertain the condition of the schools and rapport that the principals have with the teachers.

Nevertheless, those reservations aside, there was little in the school action climate plan that one can criticize. That is until Tansey Thomas stood up and spoke about the "Racial Climate Assessment Report" that was prepared for the Davis Joint Unified School District in 1990.

Ms. Thomas, a long time community activist, pointed out that this report made a number of great recommendations, but it was never implemented by the school district. In fact, the school district for the most part flat out refused to implement it or even adhere to its voted on policies. The result of this failure of follow-through and implementation is that the only thing that has changed since the report was written was the statewide passage of a law that prohibits affirmative action in public schools-—the finding and recommendations are all there and just needs to be updated to include Prop. 209 (end of Affirmative Action).

As Ms. Thomas said, “I don’t know why we want to start over again, everything that was a problem then, is a problem now. It’s like we’ve gone nowhere… That we form another study group, start another cycle, and it goes nowhere.”

Reading through the report, it is very easy to see where Tansey Thomas' skepticism came from.

Here are some of the specific recommendations that the 1990 made...

"The District should establish... no later than the 1990-91 school year, a district-wide multicultural curriculum committee... [that] should oversee and assist in implementation of the plan within the District. The responsibilities of the committee should include developing staff training programs, curriculum materials, and other similar matters."

"The district needs to employ a specialist in multicultural education who can provide assistance to the administrative staff in the areas of staff development and development of multicultural curriculum materials."

"To promote teacher input, a committee of teachers should be established at each site."

"Job responsibilities of all school personnel should include being knowledgeable of, and attentive to, the educational needs of students from diverse cultural backgrounds... Training should be broad, covering all aspects of human relations and multicultural education."

"The district should promote follow-through, such as peer coaching, where teachers can have other experienced staff observe, evaluate, and provide feedback concerning the implmenetation of teaching principles and methodologies covered in the training."

"A strong consideration in the selection of Mentor Teachers in the District for the next several years should be their skill in multicultural education."

"As part of its affirmative action program, the District should focus on strategies to attract and hire qualified applicants with diverse cultural backgrounds who are trained in multicultural education."

"The district should offer more kinds of programs such as Global Education in which teachers learn about different cultures within the United States and in other countries."

"The District needs to develop ways to help students realize their academic potential... a State task force recommended that local school districts review their policies to deliberately expose minority students to a strong academic background and prepare them for higher education."

"Assessments every two years or on an annual basis, as needed, should be made to evaluate the progress the District is making in improving the racial/ethnic climate in Davis schools."

This report also activated numerous committees and bodies with oversight power over the implementation most specifically the Davis Joint Unified School District's Human Relations Committee (NOT to be confused with the Davis Human Relations Commission chartered by the city). The DJUSD HRC was given the authority to oversee and implement these programs and changes and to monitor progress. None of these recommendations were ultimately followed and many of the recommendations on this list have been launched anew this year in the latest report.

There has not been sufficient follow-through on the racial/ethnic climate issues facing the district. By 2003, the district was forced to confront this issue once again in the face of an angry mob, the result of a long meeting between the Davis Human Relations Commission and the school district, where hundreds of students and parents came forward to press then Superintendent Murphy to deal with issues of racism and bullying at the high school. It was only then that the district would become serious again about these issues and it formed its Climate Coordinator position--a half time position--in response.

As we see currently, the district is doing the exact same thing in essence it did in the late 1980s and early 1990s--developing multicultural curriculum. Mel Lewis discussed last week the development of curriculum, programs, and in fact there is a new course that addresses this topic, “Race Relations and Social Justice in U.S. History,” that has been approved for next year. They are still trying to increase the diversity of the certificated staff--the number of minority teachers remains alarming low despite the acknowledgment of this problem 17 years ago. They are trying to implement and improve mentoring programs.

The achievement gap which will be discussed at length next week as the task force gives their report continues to be a huge problem despite the realization of the problem 17 years ago.

One of the major problems facing the 1990 report was the lack of historical continuity and institutional coherence. There is constant turnover in district personnel, elected officials, and even activists. At the meeting last week, very few seemed to be aware of the existence of this report, in fact, only five years after the report was written, the same could be said. The DJUSD Human Relations Committee was charged with overseeing and monitoring school progress on this report, but that fell by the way-side because by 1994, none of the members on that commission even knew of its existence.

In short, had the district simply implemented the policies from 1990, they would have been in much better shape much faster than they are now.

There is nothing wrong with the recommendations made last week, many of them were made in one form or another in 1990. The question remains will the school district have follow-through on these through changes in the elected board members and through times when this is not a hot-burning issue on the forefront of the public's consciousness. That remains to be seen, unfortunately, history has a tendency to repeat and in Davis, the history of race relations has indeed proved that aphorism to be true.

The one burning question we all must ask is how do we ensure that these recommendations--which all seem good and beneficial to the school climate--get implemented, enforced, and that future bodies engage in active fall-through? That seems to be the most daunting task that a collective of well-intentioned people in the school district and in this community must grapple with.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Impact of Proposition 209 Continues to Hamper Minority Students and Educators, Locally and Statewide

In 1996, California voted to support Proposition 209, a measure that would end state mandated Affirmative Action programs.

In July of 2006, nearly ten years after Proposition 209, the UC Board of Regents approved a proposal to study how California's Proposition 209 has affected the makeup of University of California student bodies over the past decade. The results of that study should be out this week.

According to a 2005 San Francisco Chronicle articles, the number of African-American freshmen enrollees fell by one-quarter from Fall of 1997 to Fall of 1998. And the number of enrollees was already an extremely low number when the new law took effect.

While we await the new report due out this week, at a local level, we have been well aware of the impact of elimination of the Affirmative Action laws.

One of the biggest problems has been in the realm of recruiting--because under Proposition 209, one cannot specifically recruit minorities either as students or job applicants. Thus many good outreach programs were shifted and abandoned after the passage of the law.

As we reported last week, one of the approaches that the school district has tried to take to increase its number of minority teachers was to send out recruiting teams to various recruiting fairs across California—especially in diverse communities such as Sacramento, Carson, and Fresno. Locations where one would expect to find a sizable percentage of minority applicants.

As Board Member Keltie Jones mentioned at the meeting last week, even in such areas as San Francisco State, which has a much more diverse population than our local area, the number of African-Americans graduating from the teaching credential program is zero.

The Sacramento Bee this weekend featured an article on the lack of Latino/ Hispanic Teachers at Woodland Community College--a school where nearly 44% of students are Latino.

According to the article:

Latinos represent 44 percent of students at Woodland Community College, but the campus has never had a full-time Latino instructor during its 30-year history, according to the college's records.

Currently, there are 104 faculty members, which includes two Latino counselors and six part-time Latino instructors.

"We're not saying the professors we have are bad," Alfaro said. "But when you have Chicano professors, they know something that an Anglo professor might not."

College President Angela Fairchilds said the lack of Latino professors is not because of discrimination in hiring, but a lack of Latino applicants.

She supports students who want mentors who look like them and who better understand their situations.

"We share their concern about the lack of diversity among full-time faculty on campus, but we are constrained by law in how we can respond," Fairchilds said.

The basic fact of the matter is that as much as many people would like to believe that we are past racism and the effects of racism, we are not. Education needs to be the bridge for many young minorities to cross. However, many find a lack of support and lack of positive role models who can share their experiences.

As the Davis Joint Unified School District fully recognizes, we need a more diverse group of teachers who can help teach, guide, and mentor young minorities.

The results though are not promising right now. Despite concerted efforts, Interim Superintendent Richard Whitmore conceded:

"I think it would be fair to say that those recruiting fairs did not turn up a lot"

Moreover next week, the Achievement Gap Task Force will present its findings. Past findings have suggested that even when you control for the education level of the parents, minority students achieve at a considerably lower rate than white and Asian students. That holds even in the households where both parents are college educated.

While many in California in 1996 seemed to believe that minorities were somehow getting free handouts and being advantaged over other students, the facts are that even with considerably more resources at their advantage, minority students were struggling at all levels of the system--in school, to gain admission to college, and to gain access to the job market. Those tools have been obliterated by the passage of Proposition 209 and now it is left to dedicated professionals to figure out how to compensate. In the meantime, the achievement gap both locally and statewide is widening, not shrinking. Frankly, Proposition 209 is the last thing that minorities needed. It has been a decade since its passage, and there is yet to be any kind of indication that the outcomes that Ward Connerly predicted would come to pass with the removal of affirmative action, have indeed done so.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Incident Represents the Latest in a String

To be honest, I do not even know where or when to start with this, but to be very frank, everyone should be very concerned at this point with the Davis Joint Unified School District. Last summer the Davis Human Relations Commission was disbanded for a number of reasons, most of which had to do with the mishandling of a case involving a 16-year-old Davis High School student of Muslim heritage. And I think if you pin down those involved in the situation from the police to the city council, at some point all will admit that they did not handle it as they should have. What should have been a minor incident became a major incident that eventually led to a city manager, police chief, and a city commission all being fired in one sense or another.

What does this have to do with the Davis Joint Unified School District? Bear with me on that for a moment. The Davis Human Relations Commission had the authorization according to the Anti-Discrimination ordinance to "investigate and mediate" any alleged violations of the anti-discrimination ordinance. However since the body was placed on hiatus, the body has largely been a ceremonial body--hosting a few community events, but taking no part in the more formal functions it once served.

Therefore, in each of the incidents that have occurred, there has been no body sanctioned by the city that could act on the behest of aggrieved or allegedly aggrieved parties.

In November, we discovered that a Harper Junior High School student had been harassed by his peers because of his fathers' (plural), sexual orientation. The concerning aspect of this is that the initial response at the administrative level was completely inadequate. The Principal in this case was much too lenient initially which created a safety issue and turned a small incident or string of incidents into a situation where the student would be unable to return to school and the school district is being sued, now not by one student, but by two students. The school board did eventually and fairly quickly step up and make strong changes to the discipline policy, but by that point, the damage was done. Could a body like the HRC have stepped in and prevented this case from going into the legal system? Hard to know, but that was one of the reasons it was established to begin with.

On March 1, 2007, the Davis High School principal suspended the Black Student Union at the Davis High School. A huge rift had developed in the group following the resignation of the popular club adviser Courtenay Tessler. Tessler's resignation was due to internal tensions in the group, mainly with some of the parents. Those tensions blew up in the wake of Tessler's resignation and a subsequent meeting that created a power struggle that devolved into "rude and disrespectful behavior" according to Ginni Davis, the association superintendent of the Davis Joint Unified School District. Climate Coordinator Mel Lewis was temporarily named as adviser following Tessler's resignation, but that moved served to just further fuel the flames, part of which seems to centered over a rift between black immigrants versus US born African Americans.

Aside from the fraternal nature of this incident, there are two key issues. First, that there are around 60 African American students but no African American teachers at the school. Second, and related, the BSU had served as a group vital to the student in terms of support, community, and solidarity, and now that outlet is gone. That vehicle has at least temporarily been disbanded to create a "cooling-off" period, however, this has not prevented the tensions from continuing as the students marched in the streets and have held a serious of meetings to attempt to rectify the situation and force the school district to reconsider their policy.

At around the same time, the school district led strongly by an appointed task force, made the determination to close down the most heavily minority and section 8 school in the district. The closing of Valley Oak Elementary school has been covered extensively here. While in none of these incidents would I suggest that racism played a role in the handling of the situation, I would suggest that the handling of each of these was poor. I would also suggest that in the case of Valley Oak, that the fact that this particular school was slated to be closed may have to do with some political situations. There may have been a thought that it would be easier and less controversial to close Valley Oak as opposed to say North Davis Elementary or Cesar Chavez Elementary.

Regardless of intention, the effect I believe will be to put disadvantaged kids at a greater disadvantage. The sad thing was that this was a successful school. I am of the belief that you do not close down successful schools, you find ways to fund them. Already, I am hearing that the proposed closing is having a huge impact on enrollment and parental activities. Moreover, now the parents at Valley Oak Elementary and deciding how to proceed and one option that they are considering is a charter school--which would be a very risky and difficult venture, at best. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a great option, even the one available, the parcel tax, will be exceedingly difficult to pass.

That leads us to the most recent incident involving a Davis High School student, apparently asked to take down a poster of Malcolm X because it contained the phrase, "by any means necessary." The teacher then explained to the student in front of class why the poster was inappropriate. She mentioned a "terrorist" message--which is ludicrous. The student then was asked to give a speech before an assembly, he sent the organizers two speeches, they picked the one that he gave and was told not to mention the teacher, the teacher left the assembly in tears, and the student was suspended for three days. Now the teacher has informed the family that the student is not wanted back in class.

From what I have seen this situation was completely mishandled. There is no way I can see to justify a three day suspension (which carries with it permanent repercussions to the student's academic future) for an incident like this. There is no way that this situation should have been handled as this one was. This once again seems to be a failure of the administration to properly handle a tough situation.

The school board despite some controversy did the right thing when they "fired" Superintendent David Murphy in early March. However, what appears to be in order is a thorough house cleaning of many of the administrators that were hired under his tenure. Each of these situations except for the Valley Oak one, stem from an initial mishandling of a situation by a site administrator. In some cases an overreaction and in another an underreaction.

The initial mishandling set the tone for future interactions and the sad fact is that somehow the district has been unable to extricate itself from the problem once the initial incident was mishandled. Will that continue in the latest case? Will this end up being another lawsuit and drawn out incident? Too early to tell, but the district needs to take the initiative early on in this case and prevent it from being an ugly legal battle. There should be room from compromise and room to work out an acceptable arrangement, but the trajectory on this latest incident does not appear headed in that situation.

At some point the board needs to step in early and prevent this from becoming a lawsuit and from harming a promising student's academic future. It is very important that they act soon. In the meantime, we have to all ask ourselves why these situations continue to occur in our community. At the recent Caesar Chavez event a couple of city officials asked me point blank why there were so few (no) minorities in attendance? The same was true at the MLK day event. It is a simple answer to unfortunately a very serious question. Meanwhile just last week, the Davis City Council took another step toward re-writing the city's anti-discrimination ordinance. And people wonder why so few minorities attended events that used to be the most diversely attended events in the city.

People will accuse me, as they often do, of exaggerating this stuff even as more and more minorities tell me that they have to move out of Davis for the sake of their children and not wanting them to grow up in an environment of what they perceive to be intolerance but worse than that, indifference by the majority of the people to what is actually going on. I fear that this situation is about to come to a head. I would hope that those leaders in this community would be able to step in and prevent it before it reaches a boiling point.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

City Continues Move toward Stripping Anti-Discrimination Ordinance of Key Power

When the Davis City Council in June of 2006 put the Human Relations Commission on hiatus, one of their stated reasons for doing so was that the commission had gotten off track from its mission of promoting tolerance and understanding. While this is a laudable goal in any community, it was not the full charge and duty of commission.

The council subcommittee of Stephen Souza and Ruth Asmundson then sat down and re-wrote many of the charters of the commissions. One of the bigger changes was to be to the HRC which was to be precluded from investigating police issues and to have a primary purpose as an educational rather than an investigational commission.

It was not until newly elected Councilmember Lamar Heystek brought forward the language from the city's seminal anti-discrimination ordinance, that the council realized there may be inconsistencies between the new authorizing resolution of the HRC and the city's anti-discrimination ordinance passed in 1986.

At issue is Section 7A-15(C):

"Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of this ordinance may file a request to have the Human Relations Commission investigate and mediate his or her complaint. The Commission may adopt rules of procedure to accommodate the needs of such investigation mediation. A complaint to the Commission shall not be a prerequisite to filing a civil action under this section, and the findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action."

As Souza admitted as recently as last Tuesday, he had not read the ordinance when re-writing the rules and in fact, despite serving for many years himself on the HRC, was unaware of the ordinance at all.

This issue came up again on Tuesday, when Lamar Heystek pulled a routine item off the consent agenda that would have approved the minutes to a recent HRC. Councilmember Heystek then then put forward a motion that was seconded by Mayor Greenwald to assign city staff rather than the subcommittee to be in charge of reconciling the two documents. That was voted down by the council majority by a 3-2 when they passed a substitute motion allowing the subcommittee once again to do that work.

Councilmember Heystek respectfully but firmly pointed out to the subcommittee that they lacked legal training and moreover they had originally missed the provision. Councilmember Souza's defense was that they were not even aware of the provision, to which Heystek responded that proved his point.

The anti-discrimination ordinance was originally adopted into law by the City Council on Feberary 26, 1986 and approved by Nichols-Poulos, Rosenberg, Tomasi and Mayor Ann M. Evans and opposed by Jerry Adler. It was then affirmed with a vote by the people of Davis.

It is clear that the intent of the council majority here is to weaken the seminal anti-discrimination ordinance and remove from it the authority of the Human Relations Commission to investigate complaints.

Already we have seen numerous cases arise where the HRC's in the past would have played a vital role and this HRC has been silent. Moreover, we have also seen several events where the diversity of Davis is no longer showing up. Someone noted this to me on Cesar Chavez day and my terse response is what do you expect, many felt disenfranchised when the HRC was originally disbanded. Many do not feel that minorities are welcome in the city of Davis. Little that has occurred in the past now almost year has changed those feelings. This proposed alternation of the anti-discrimination ordinance would be yet another step in that direction. The day cannot come soon enough when there is a new council majority that puts an end once and for all to this nonsense.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Whither Human Relations Commission

Somebody asked me last week if I was planning to go to Thursday night's Human Relations Commission meeting. I went to the first two--and it was a good thing that I did because at the second meeting, Guy Fischer showed up and told the story of his son's harassment. I have not been to one since and this was no exception. I looked at the agenda and there were two items about events, one item about the Thong Hy Huynh Awards, and one event on a Forum that they were deciding what topic to have it on. Those were their actions items which told me what I needed to know--they were taking no action.

I do not blame this on the membership per se, because they are doing exactly what the City Council had in mind when they disbanded the former Human Relations Commission back in June (where my wife had served as chair). Unfortunately, I have only a limited amount of time these days and I have to choose my meetings very carefully.

The anti-discrimination ordinance grants the human relations commission with the power to be an investigative body rather than an educational body.

Section 7A-15(C) of the Davis Anti-Discrimination Ordinance:

"Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of this ordinance may file a request to have the Human Relations Commission investigate and mediate his or her complaint. The Commission may adopt rules of procedure to accommodate the needs of such investigation mediation. A complaint to the Commission shall not be a prerequisite to filing a civil action under this section, and the findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action."

At one point the HRC was going to review this code to see if it needs revisions. I do not know what came of that.

On the other hand, there is a strong role to play even if the HRC is to be merely an educational rather than an investigative body.

This point came up in another discussion based on comments on the Sacramento Bee website in comment section following an article on the Fischer case. (See my commentary from earlier this week on those comments).

If one reads the comments there, there is a string of anti-gay comments. The school board has implemented a series of strong rules that impose a zero-tolerance policy against harassment. But it seems obvious that what is happening at the school level reflects a deeper seated societal bias against gay people--even in portions of progressive communities such as Davis.

A number of the protesters last week against Freddie Oakley were from Davis. People are entitled to believe that homosexuality is immoral or that the lifestyle is wrong. However there is a line between an expression of political and religious preferences and an expression that is simply hate speech--some of the protesters crossed that line and some of the commenters on the Sacramento Bee drove it into a gully of hate.

The school board can change the rules at the district level but what are they going to do about society? In past years, this is where the Human Relations Commission would have a strong role--helping to educate the community and bringing awareness to this problem. In fact, this is where this human relations commission could still have a role because they are after all now an educational body. But the Human Relations Commission found out about the Fischer harassment case in November (at the same time as myself) and other than the chair of the commission going to the School Board meeting, to my knowledge they have not done a thing.

The City Council wants no eggs broken by the HRC after what happened last year. But the history of social change and the movement for social justice call for eggs to be broken and milk to be spilled in order to change the trajectory of society and the mores of citizens.

Fredrick Douglass writing in 1857 recognized this as well anyone:

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

The heroes of the Civil Rights struggle did so by creating turmoil against established authority.

For a body to be effective in producing social change, they must upset the current order.

The bottom here is that there remains a strong place in our city and in our governance for a body that can both educate the public and raise a ruckus to further the cause of social justice. The city council last year severed our government from such a body. While they were concerned about divisiveness in the community--how do you teach people that it is wrong to discriminate and hate gay people without causing divisiveness? How does one stop discrimination without drawing the ire of those perceived to be discriminating? How does one teach tolerance without going after those who are intolerant? How does one teach love without going after those who hate? Even the strongest teacher's of passive disobedience and non-violent resistance recognize that in order for you to turn someone from hate with love, it inevitably requires confrontation and confrontation means that one must spill some milk.

It will take this city a long time to recognize what they lost when the City Council disbanded the Human Relations Commission. At some point they may realize that maybe we gave up too much...

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Davis’ Commitment to Civil Rights Suffers

Rahim Reed said it all on Thursday--Davis thinks it is a progressive town but it is not. People have buried their heads in the sands as incidents of racism, racial profiling and other episodes have occurred on repeated occasions.

While these incidents have occurred, the residents of Davis are largely in denial about them. The average person does not know what minorities face on an everyday basis.

During the course of the past year, person after person has come forward documenting cases of differential treatment of minorities as opposed to whites. African American students came out in masse several times to complain about racial profiling incidents where students have been repeatedly pulled over by the police for no apparent reason. The collective response from the majority of Davis has been to back the police and deny any allegations of wrongdoing. The majority on Council aided and abetted this mindset, turning the community against those making the allegations and turning the Human Relations Commission into a scapegoat for stirring up discontent.

In the meantime, on one of the few occasions when the local chapter of the ACLU spoke out last spring, they were roundly criticized with a series of columns from local columnist Bob Dunning, who, aided by legal advice from the very agencies under fire in the Buzayan case, argued repeatedly that there was no wrongdoing in that case. Who gave him the legal advice? Lawyers for the Davis Police Officer’s Association and Lawyers from the District Attorney’s office—both of whom are being sued by the Buzayan family. That case is currently in federal court and moving towards depositions. And yet people used Dunning’s arguments as reason to dismiss the allegations and exonerate the officer involved.

The degree and heat of the criticism caught local leaders of the ACLU off-guard and they have largely been muted to the other problems. The latest siege on civil rights is occurring right now, quietly, almost unreported in the mainstream press. In October, the HRC met for the first time under new membership. One of their first tasks is to evaluate the 1986 Anti-Discrimination ordinance, after it was brought to the attention of Councilmember Stephen Souza, that the authorizing resolution of the HRC passed earlier, was out of compliance with language in the Anti-Discrimination Ordinance.

At issue is a paragraph that specifically authorizes the HRC to mediate and investigate cases of alleged discrimination.

Section 7A-15(C):

"Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of this ordinance may file a request to have the Human Relations Commission investigate and mediate his or her complaint. The Commission may adopt rules of procedure to accommodate the needs of such investigation mediation. A complaint to the Commission shall not be a prerequisite to filing a civil action under this section, and the findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action."

During the past year, the community complained that the HRC had gotten away from its mission. They saw the language in the charter that the mission was that of “promoting tolerance” in the community. However, what they did not know was that the HRC was specifically authorized to do exactly as they had been doing—investigate cases of alleged discrimination. The City Council was unaware of this charge either. The revelation came as a shock to Souza in the October meeting.

Unfortunately as is often the case, the only way to make change is to rock the boat. Martin Luther King, Jr is a hero to most Americans but he rocked the boat. Rosa Parks rocked the boat when she refused to give her seat up on a bus. You cannot make changes in society without rocking the boat. No one wants their boat rocked. No one wants their comfortable illusions shattered. But sometimes it is necessary. The HRC learned the hard way that sometimes when you rock the boat, you toss yourself into the rough waters.

Unfortunately it appears that the new HRC has learned this lesson all too well. The preferred solution by the Council seems to be to do away with this section of the ordinance and weaken the protections to the landmark Anti-Discrimination ordinance. And the new HRC appears ready to let them do exactly that. Once again civil rights in Davis are under fire. Very little has been said about this danger. However, it appears that the Davis commitment to civil rights remains quite weak.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

New HRC: Welcome to the Real World of Davis

Last month the new Human Relations Commission met for the first time and began to try to think about its new charter. Many of the members I do not think really understand what goes on in Davis. But last night they got their first taste of the real Davis.

First, the Principal from one of the Junior High Schools came and told about an incident where a student was harassed by over a dozen of his classmates who attacked him with anti-gay statements. From listening to the Principal it sounded as though the school was taking many necessary steps to rectify the problem. But then the father spoke up and told us that only a few of the culprits were suspended for their action. More alarmingly is the fact that the student returned to class a few days later and was harassed again. So he was pulled out, and came back again, and harassed yet again. Now the student has missed three weeks of school. They were attacking this kid with anti-gay slurs because he has two fathers. Both fathers came and told about the situation and both expressed concern about what they saw as the lack of response by the staff to this situation.

Despite the claims of the HRC Chair, John Dixon, this is not merely an issue of the school district. The harrassment of the student has also occurred off campus to the point where the harassers have followed the student home and even vadalized his home.

The response to the parents concerns by the HRC was mixed. At a personal level members expressed shock and dismay. Shelley Bailes was outraged. But Chair Dixon expressed the fact that this was now largely an educational body. Other members seemed uncomfortable with those prospects.

This dovetailed into an agenda item raised last week by Heystek that the resolution re-authorizing the HRC was at odds with the anti-Discrimination Ordinance. One of the tasks set forth by the council for the HRC was to determine whether the two are incompatible and what should be done including the possibility of re-writing the anti-Discrimination ordinance, one of the most sweeping in the country. The other possibility was to recommend to the council to re-write the resolution to be in compliance with the ordinance.

Two of the members including Bailes and Vice Chair Najme Minhaj seemed very uncomfortable with doing this. Arthur Clinton and alternate Thomas Hagler (who was acting as a full member with only five regulars there) seemed comfortable with the idea that the council could change the ordinance.

This is a real threat to the anti-discrimination ordinance--a landmark ordinance written in 1986 that authorizes the HRC to be far more than just an educational body and authorizes it to mediate and investigate acts of discrimination. The previous HRC, despite what certain members of the community said and what certain councilmembers stated, was actually acting within their full authority.

There were members of the new HRC that were clearly caught within a quandary of the obvious intent of the majority of council to roll back the duties of the HRC and the obvious need to address acts like the one they listened to last night.

At the end of the day, the new HRC is going to realize exactly why the old HRC did as it did. They are going to hear complaint after complaint come forward and become increasingly frustrated if they indeed change the ordinance to remove the power from the HRC to investigate.

The most refreshing thing was to listen to the comments of Rahim Reed. I had not seen him or met him in person, and so it was unclear where he stood on a number of issues. Reed is the Vice Chancellor of the Officer of Campus Community Relations. He's an African American man, and he stood up there and said what a number of us have been saying for the past year. Davis thinks it's a progressive community and an educated community, but many citizens simply bury their heads in the sand and don't see the problems that exists with racism, with racial profiling and with incidents such as last year's with the Muslim teenager. It was music to my ears to hear this man say this. I wish he would have gone before council in February and said this. I wish he would have gone before council in April and said this. I wish he would have gone before council in June and said this. But he said it last night in November and it was exactly what the new members of the HRC needed to hear.

The new HRC is going to learn very quickly what the real Davis looks like in the very underbelly that no one wants to admit exists. The HRC is the body that deals with it. As people attacked the HRC and the Chair last year, I kept wondering how they would react if they witnessed what the HRC witnessed. If they had to listen to parents and community members coming before them time after time with the same stories of harassment and intimidation. And in many ways I was very grateful that this new body got a taste of this before they decided whether to recommend to the council to remove the last of their formal powers to actually investigate complaints of discrimination. We shall see where that goes, but I have both hope and dismay after watching the meeting last night.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

WILL CITY COUNCIL ALTER DAVIS ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW?

Those who only read about the Davis Human Relations Meeting in the newspaper last week may have missed the big story buried under the lead.

"[T]he commission has been charged with reviewing the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, created in 1986. Dixon appointed a subcommittee to look at the ordinance to see if any changes are necessary."

The article does not mention why they are reviewing the city's seminal ordinance that incorporates one of the most sweeping anti-discrimination laws in the nation into the Davis Municipal code.

At issue is Section 7A-15(C):

"Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of this ordinance may file a request to have the Human Relations Commission investigate and mediate his or her complaint. The Commission may adopt rules of procedure to accomodate the needs of such investigation mediation. A complaint to the Commission shall not be a prerequisite to filing a civil action under this section, and the findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissable in a civil action."

Councilmember Lamar Heystek brought this section of the anti-discrimination code to the attention of the HRC and Councilmember Souza (a former chair of the HRC himself) who recently helped re-write the commission's charge, was completely unaware of this section of the city's Anti-discrimination Ordinance. The commission sub-committee is charged with determining whether the city council should alter the anti-discrimination ordinance adopted into law by the City Council on Feberary 26, 1986 and approved by Nichols-Poulos, Rosenberg, Tomasi and Mayor Ann M. Evans and opposed by Jerry Adler.

Now recent history of the HRC begs the question--why was the City Council seemingly completely unaware of this section of the ordinance? This is not a mere academic question, one of the reasons that the City Council disbanded the HRC in June was the claim that they overstepped their bounds. When in fact, according to the Anti-discrimination Ordinance, the former HRC not only had the authority but were in fact mandated to investigate the charges of racial bias in the police department by members of the public. Far from exceeding their authority, they were acting within the direct letter of the law. And for doing that, they were disbanded.

The more pressing question now is will the HRC recommend to abrogate their own authority and duties that are authorized under the Davis Anti-Discrimination Ordinance? And will this community allow the City Council to weaken perhaps the most seminal piece of legislation in our city's municipal code?

---Doug Paul Davis Reporting