River City Hall: Celebrating a year's actions in seven days

It looks like posts here that are linked at Inland Empire Craigslist are being removed again. If this keeps up and if this blog were a book, it might be on this list.

While we're on the topic, it's that time of year again to think about books. Banned and challenged books.





During the last week of September, there's an event called "Banned Books Week" which is hosted by the American Library Association. The Riverside Main Library in downtown usually participates in this annual event and one of the exhibits it often puts on display is a jail filled with books that have been banned or challenged most often by public school districts over the past 20 years. You should definitely check it out if you are in the area. No doubt, you will find a book or two inside that cage that you read when you were younger.


More information: ALA: Banned Books Week



And what are some of these books? The list for previous years has included Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The most recent list consisted mostly of series books which have hit the Young Adult publishing industry like a storm since the 1990s. They've bumped most of the classics off of the list except for Robert Cormier's excellent book, The Chocolate War, which like its sources of inspiration, Lord of the Flies and A Separate Peace along with Rye has lived on this list since its publication. The Chocolate War which jump started the Young Adult genre in a new direction in 1975 was the most recent book to be banned at all middle school libraries in the Riverside Unified School District several years ago.


Challenged more recently was the very dangerous tome, The Adventure of the Super Diaper Baby again by the Riverside Unified School District.


(excerpt, Susan Mernit's blog)


A school board member and a grandmother in Riverside, California propose to ban Dav Pikley's The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, part of the Captain Stinkypants series written by Dav Pilkey and published by Scholastic, because the book has poop as a character and doesn't meet their critical standards (always a good reason to ban a book, doncha know).

The book..." has poor grammar, poor spelling, poor content, and it's an extremely poor example of what I would want my student to learn," said Gayle Cloud, the school board member. "I think Dr. Seuss would be rolling over in his grave."

BTW, Riverside is the school district that banned the highly regarded The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier from middle school libraries in the Riverside, California, Unified School District after a district committee decided the book was inappropriate for seventh and eighth graders to read without class discussion.
What fools.






Also this week, is something called Race Equality Week. It's an annual event sponsored by the Human Relations Commission and it will be kicked off by a presentation at this week's city council meeting. There will be events held in the city this week celebrating this event but a lot of reflection when it comes to remembering what still needs to be done.


I'm not sure what to make of an event that celebrates racial equality for one week out of the year. The events sound good, but shouldn't it be Race Equality Week all year? Is it in Riverside?

I've learned that the more Riverside's city government becomes concerned about racism within its own ranks or has it brought to its attention, the more that city officials hold multi-cultural festivals, erect monuments of civil rights activists in the Main Street Square or hold events like this one. So far, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, jr. stand in the pedestrian mall, as reminders of the importance of the continued work that is necessary for a just society. Both also were arrested numerous times for civil disobedience during their lives. One was in part, inspired by the other and both had families who felt at times part of what the family's patriarch was doing and at other times left out of having them in their daily lives.

The multicultural festivals as they are called are designed to help celebrate different cultures around the world, including the many that are woven into Riverside's fabric. Yet, does the impact that they have last longer than a day including to the city officials who attend them?


Not that I don't think these events and statues aren't great or that they aren't important. They are as celebrations, commemorations of achievements made in the areas of civil rights and embracing ethnic and racial diversity. However, they serve as reminders as well and not always of positive events in this city.




For years, the city held Race Equality Week events at the same time members of its own workforce fought in both federal and state courts to take their racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation law suits to trial.





In 1997, at least 17 Black city employees representing departments from Public Works, Parks and Recreation, Public Utilities, the City Attorneys office and the Human Resources Department among others filed law suits in U.S. District Court after years of meetings held with city officials and representatives from different departments including the city manager's office.





The racist environment these men and women described particularly the infamous corporate yard was one difficult even to imagine. Feces smeared on city vehicles, Black dolls hung in effigy, KKK and other racist slurs and symbols scrawled on walls and an assault by White employees against a Black employee at the corporate yard who tried to remove the racist graffiti. Fortunately for him, he held a black belt in Karate and was able to defend himself against injury.





Failure to recruit openly for positions, failure to offer equal standards of promotion for Black and White employees and laying off Black employees or refusing to give them promised full-time positions when they were hired as part-time employees were common occurrences reported in almost every city department. In fact, statistics from the city showed that in 2002, Black employees represented 22% of the part-time work force and about 5% of the full-time work force.





The Riverside Police Department had many problems with alleged racism among its ranks as well, with law suits and complaints being filed during the 1990s.





Also around 1997, three men of color in the Riverside Police Department, now-retired Lt. Alex Tortes, now-retired Lt. Ron Orrantia and current Lt. Darryl Hurt filed cases with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging discrimination in promotions.





In 1999, a group of White male sergeants filed grievances with the city protesting the promotions of Tortes, Orrantia and Meredith Meredyth, a White woman, to lieutenant positions.





In 2000, Officer Roger Sutton filed his law suit alleging racial discrimination in connection with a reassignment he received in 1998, harassment and retaliation. Over 5 years later, his case went in front of a jury and that jury awarded him $1.64 million because its majority decided that nearly all of his allegations except one had been proven.



Several years later, there was some grumbling by several White lieutenants after the promotion of Jim Cannon to captain. Cannon was only the second African-American to be promoted into that position and is the department's highest ranking Black officer. The first one, Lee Wagner, left the department in the mid-1990s. Some say, he was forced out of there. He currently works as the chief of the Riverside Community College District's police department.



The department obviously wasn't ready for a high-ranking Black officer. Hopefully that has changed or is changing. After all, it's now the 21st century.

The city as a whole obviously wasn't ready for Black employees who would protest unfair treatment in its ranks. Parties of the law suits involving Sutton and those involving the 17 Black employees all reported incidents of retaliation allegedly against them.

Sutton said that while his vehicle was inside a secured parking lot for employees only, it was keyed while he was in a lengthy interview with internal affairs representatives. He reported being ostracized by his peers and relegated to cleaning closets in the personnel and training division. Both the judge and the jury said that the evidence providing retaliation proved to be the strongest in the entire case and this alleged retaliation continued to at least April 2004, according to trial testimony.

The 17 plaintiffs in the federal law suit saw their numbers drop when their own attorney worked with the city to scare them into dropping out by doing exactly what they are doing now to property rights activist Ken Stansbury. They threatened these plaintiffs with the city's attorneys fees if they either lost their case or won a verdict less than the settlement offer even though at the time there wasn't any on the table.

Every plaintiff received a copy of this letter from their own attorney and many dropped out citing fatigue from the litigation or family hardship until only eight were left.

Two of the litigants who worked in the public utilities division faced an investigation conducted by Best, Best and Krieger Attorney Bradley Neufeld at the cost of $17,000 according to a CPRA request. Another employee had filed a complaint against the two men and it's the first known case of the city hiring an attorney to perform this function. The link on Neufeld includes his extensive background in labor litigation on behalf of cities and counties.

Most of those remaining in the law suit settled with the city several years ago bringing their law suit to a resolution after nearly a decade.

Around that time, whatever had been at the corporate yard and the police department searched for new grounds to haunt. Was City Hall its newest front? And what of older haunts where racism is to be a memory of some past life?



"I have a dream..."

---Martin Luther King, jr. from the speech of his most quoted by city officials

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."

---Mahatma Gandhi



"I have an African American joke to tell you."

---allegedly said among members of the city's work force, 2007



Art Alcaraz

Tranda Drumwright

Jim Smith

Pedro Payne



To be continued...









In Riverside, there's going to be a 10 story business tower downtown and construction is set to begin on it soon, according to the Press Enterprise.

If you want to rent space there, you'd better have a thick wallet. Rents start at $3 per foot. But then if you don't have a lot of money, the future downtown may not be for you anyway.






Never a dull moment in Colton politics as there's a recall effort against Mayor Kelly Chastain, according to the Press Enterprise.

She's getting some assistance against this effort by labor unions representing Colton's police officers and fire fighters.


(excerpt)


Fire Capt. Doug Blinkinsop, a Colton Firefighters Association representative, called the recall divisive.

"Recalls are an action of final resort that should be saved for those who have done something criminal or who are abusing the public trust," he said. "This is clearly not the case with Mayor Chastain."

Colton Police Officers Association President Kyle Kershner said his organization also stands behind the mayor.

Kershner said the recall proponents have criticized development projects such as the proposed Colton Super Block on the west end. With the utility tax expected to end in four years, these projects are needed to keep the city solvent, he said.

"If the utility tax ends, Colton will have to rely on the development programs being considered by this council to continue to provide the public with the services you expect," he said.





But groups of city residents who are calling for the recall say that Chastain has misused her position, pushed for projects that they oppose and has created conflict with outside agencies that the city deals with.

It will be interesting to see what happens next with this ongoing development in the political hot bed of Colton which has seen one councilman indicted on charges and a police chief ousted by its city manager and police unions.




The Press Enterprise's Readers' Forum included letters this week expressing concerns about increasing demands for utilities in Riverside, the city council's decision to rescind electric rate increases and the gang injunction in the Eastside.




Richard Konda, of the San Jose Mercury Newshas urged the city government of that city to not continue to undermine the role of the Office of the Independent Auditor.

Barbara Attard, the current auditor has done the unmentionable, which is to address the possible oversight of the department's investigations of officer-involved deaths.

A group of city officials including the mayor and a councilman who once lead the San Jose Police Officers' Association want to limit that scope to include only deaths caused by onduty shootings, not by tasers, other devices or other causes. This is particularly a thorny issue for both sides at the moment given that five individuals have died shortly after being tased by this city's police officers since 2004.


Mayor Chuck Reed, Vice Mayor David Cortese and Councilman Pete Constant, not to mention Chief Rob Davis all want Attard's office to not investigate all incustody deaths or in Davis' case, any deaths at all during a time when public trust in the department is heading towards its nadir.

The city attorney in this city wrote a memo bolstering the position of these three city officials which is blatantly false. It's not like that has never happened before in other cities but like in these other cities, the attorney which will have to represent San Jose in any civil rights or wrongful death law suit involving the police department is working for his or her bosses.



(excerpt)


San Jose residents deserve better than this proposal. The point isn't to assume that a death is the fault of the police department. Everyone recognizes that police officers have a tough job, and that they have to use force - even deadly force - in certain situations. By having an independent review of a death involving the police, the community gets an additional assurance that police officers acted appropriately. In cases where they did not, the city benefits by having an independent analysis of what went wrong. The city attorney's opposition to such a review will only increase community mistrust of the police.

Four years ago, a San Jose police officer shot and killed San Jose resident Bich Cau Tran because he mistook her vegetable peeler for a dangerous weapon. Her death led to changes in how San Jose deals with officer-involved shootings. Today, it is time for our city to take the next step and institute a similar review for deaths following the use of Tasers and other police actions. Unfortunately, Reed, Cortese and Constant would take us in the wrong direction.






In the Los Angeles Times, there's this survey about whether or not the city should pay out a $1.5 million settlement to a Black fire fighter who sued alleging racial discrimination and harassment?




Also in that publication is an admission by the University of California, Irvine chancellor that he botched the situation involving the hiring and unhiring of Duke University Law School Professor Irwin Chemerinsky.


Nope, it was not outside pressure that led to Chancellor Michael V. Drake's decision to rescind his hiring of Chemerinsky, he said. Nor was his decision to reverse his reversal.


(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)


This is certainly something that I bungled, and I regret it completely and totally," he said. "I am always trying to do what I can to enhance the institution and have it move forward. It's awful that all this has blown up like this. I couldn't regret it more."

After Chemerinsky's firing prompted a national uproar, Drake flew to the professor's home in North Carolina over the weekend, talked through his differences with the professor and rehired him Monday.

But the chancellor acknowledged that his incomplete explanation of why he soured on Chemerinsky last week is not likely to mollify his critics.

"The why of it is straightforward, but I think it's going to be unsatisfactory," Drake said. "It was a personnel issue and there are a lot of things that go into that. We as a university have a policy that we don't talk about personnel decisions.


Chemerinsky, who is well-known for his articles on police issues, will be receiving a pretty generous salary of $350,000 a year while at Irvine.

Better not let word of that get to Riverside City Hall or someone's going to be asking for another pay hike.






The All-Blacks knocked Scotland out of the Rugby World Cup, but the coach wasn't all that happy. They may face off against the Wallabies in the quarter-finals.

For those who watched the Wallabies face off against the Eagles in a non-test match in the mid-1990s that was held at of all places, the corner of Blaine and Canyoncrest, they were pretty formidable then as they remain now.