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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-11-06-HRC-min.pdf Town of Lexington Ad-Hoc Human Rights Organizing Committee Minutes of November 6, 2007 Meeting Draft 11/11/07 Submitted by Deborah Strod Attending: Al Zabin(Chair),Nora Aroyan, Chris Casey,Margaret Coppe(arrived near end),David Horton, Hank Manz, Deborah Strod, Linda Vine Mr. Zabin called the meeting to order at 5:40. 1. The first topic discussed was"What do the Selectman hope we produce?" Mr. Manz stated that the initial hope had been that the Lexington No Place For Hate Steering Committee (LNPFHSC)members would have played a large part in a revised structure. He is not sure how many members will wish to continue and anticipates needing to recruit new participants. The Selectmen hope that the Committee will put forth a structure which supports the work, addresses both the privacy needs of human rights incidents and the need for public proceedings of town committees under Open Meeting Law; and not"reinvent the wheel" in the process,but rather examine what other towns/cities have done, and what Human Rights work is extant in Lexington. 2. Mr. Horton distributed and discussed a brief history of the No Place For Hate program in Lexington(see handout). To be certified, a town needed to do 2-3 activities per year, and the original focus was activity-based; the Steering Committee came later. Sometimes the LNPFHSC would look for things which others could do, rather than managing activities themselves; sometimes they would manage or partner with others. Mr. Horton pointed out that it was never clarified how much the Steering Committee was"steering" versus"operational;"he also said that the sense was that the focus was "more ADL than ACLU" as the LNPFHSC would not have supported a Nazi group marching in town; and the issue of confidentiality, though generally handled without complaint, did not have an official mechanism. The focus included but also went beyond addressing racial bias, and included work on bringing small groups of citizens together to focus on a book, or on dialogue. The LNPFHSC also partnered with other groups to support broader efforts such as the Martin Luther King Day celebration. The Ad-Hoc committee agreed that,while very productive, the LNPFHSC had suffered somewhat from an unclear relationship with the town and that more structured support from the town would have been helpful in some situations, particularly in the most recent one which resulted in the town asking the ADL to take Lexington off its list of NPFH communities. 3. The committee discussed existing Human Rights work in Lexington. The committee discussed the town's Incident Response Team, set up under the Town Manager's office with technical assistance from LNPFHSC and three community volunteers who initiated the idea. The IRT responds to human rights and relations incidents. The IRT is an expansion of the town's emergency response team, so that staff and community representatives, including the interfaith clergy association, can work together to respond appropriately to incidents in the community which are not completely handled by informal or official processes. Members of the LNPFHSC have played a role, along with the other IRT members, in reaching out to individuals who have been involved in incidents of bias or civic disruption. Tailoring the response to the wishes of the victim(s)(in terms of public and private responses),and providing personal support, were seen as important aspects of this work. There is also an effort to disseminate facts and achieve some rumor control. Chief Casey said that there are a lot of community resources which come to play with the ebb and flow of conflict resolution needs; the IRT is pulled in 2-3 times a year when those other resources have not been able to ease a situatin; in 2005 when the Westboro Baptist Church was picketing institutions in town, the group met 7-8 times. The town's Disability Commission, and Fair Housing and Human Relations Commissions, Council on Aging, the Department of Social Services and the Human Services Commission, as well as Diversity Committees at individual schools,the schools' prize for diversity work, and the no-longer existing Committee on Racial Equality(whose work in setting up the Martin Luther King Day celebrations was taken on by an individual last year),the LexFest diversity celebration all were named as existing work. The committee noted that each effort is an independent effort. 4. The Committee discussed Human Rights work in other towns. Mr. Manz described the other towns' committees as having a broader mandate than the LNPFH program. These other Human Rights Organizations address not only bias incidents but also housing and access issues. In general they are set up under a Town Manager or a Mayor,but not under a Board of Selectmen. The Committee reviewed material from the Belmont and Newton Human Rights Organizing Committees, and the Massachusetts Organization of Human Rights Committees, provided by Mr. Manz. Newton's Human rights work was introduced into their by-laws in 1973. There is a Commission of 9 members and an Advisory Council, which meet together monthly. For those incidents requiring privacy, a case number is assigned, and public discussions can be held without names being discussed. Mr. Manz had the rough sense that out of about 100 items dealt with,perhaps 2 would require closed meetings (such as developing a strategy for addressing planned protests by out of town organizations). Mr. Manz offered to arrange for representatives of the Belmont and Newton Human Rights organizations to attend the committee's next meeting. Ms. Strod took the first minutes, and Mr. Horton volunteered to take the minutes for the next meeting. Questions which the committee collected during the meeting: 1. How many towns participate in the MA association of Human Rights Commissions? 2. How did Belmont use the NPFH program and what have they done since the vote to disassociate from the program? 3. What is the infrastructure in Newton and Belmont, what is their charge, how do they get new members, what are the terms of office? It is clear in Newton from the by-laws, but the committee would like to know more about Belmont, and more about how it plays out in Newton. At 7:30pm a motion to adjourn was made by Mr. Manz and seconded by Ms. Strod. The motion was approved unanimously. Future Meetings: The Committee agreed to meet on November 13, 2007, 5:30-7pm November 20, 2007, 5:30-7pm and November 27, 2007, 5:30-7pm