Human Rights Commission Regular Meeting   6/20/2024

this evening.

Thanks.

Patti cannot be here this evening.

Kathryn?

Here.

And Suzanne, I'm going to check, but I think she may not also be able to be here.

And just to confirm, because we just started recording, that Ernest is here, Wolfgang is not here, Mary is not here, Charley is here, Eddy is not here.

I think we started around that spot.

And did you say 642?

You said 642.

43.

Thank you.

Let us please recite our mission together.

May the states act as a strong advocate to justice and equal opportunity by providing citywide leadership and guidance in the area of civil rights.

or members of the public participating virtually, if you experience technical difficulties, you may call 434-970-3115.

And a staff person will assist you.

I have to make emphasis on it because I get that wrong every time.

So 434-970-3115.

Lily, do we have anybody online?

I think Lily just had to step out.

Let me turn around and see what we have in terms of the attendees on the screen.

You don't?

Are you on?

I think you can see it from there, right?

Oh, that other thing?

I got it.

Gotcha.

All right.

But is there, does anybody, is all but commissioners?

That might be true.

All right.

Well, we can't approve.

We can't vote on minutes.

That is true.

Unfortunately, tonight we do not have a call because I'm traveling and things like that.

We will have to wait to a few more minutes and some other things that we have to do.

So we talked a little bit before we got started, so we need to have this discussion on, because we have a couple of things we need to,

to approve that needs to go in front of council in the near future.

So we need to work through how we're going to do that.

The suggestion was for us to have a virtual public meeting so we could approve the minutes and the ordinance that needs to be approved to go to council.

Is that correct?

Yes?

So we need to send that out.

And so one of the things to consider is that we still have to notice it three days in advance.

So we need a response pretty quickly.

Well, sort of the trick is I'm going to be out of town starting on July 3 through the day that I have to come back and present.

to the council on the ordinance.

What day is that?

The 15th, July the 15th.

So I'll come back on the weekend.

July 15th is a Monday when I present.

I have to get everything onto council's agenda and in their packet and approved by all of the folks that have to approve stuff by July 3rd.

But I'm going to be gone July 3rd.

I don't know how we would notice it in time.

You're right.

Yeah.

But that also seems that we get a response as to dates by that point in time.

We're running a risk if we make a decision here.

My next week is very good so I should be solid Wednesday, Thursday, Friday evening.

I think we do want to get this through and I'll talk about this later but I think the value in this is that one it's hard to time everything to get on Council's agenda but also we need to get this in front of HUD by mid-August and this is kind of the window of time if they're gonna do two readings at Council we've got to do it now to get two readings in.

so that we can get this to HUD by August because if we want to get in their funding cycle for this year, we just learned from the director of HUD fair housing programs that the funding cycle this year, they make decisions by October 1st, but they need the materials before then.

So by mid-August.

If we want to narrow it down to, like, what do you think?

Like, what's the window starting after?

Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

What time?

After what?

After 6.

Give people time to get home.

Yeah.

If I bike over by the side of the road, do it from my phone.

It's virtual.

OK.

I'm going to class until.

After five.

After four, because virtually I can sit in my car and do it.

OK.

We are, we can, I'll look at the rules again, but I'm pretty sure we can hold up to 25% of total meetings in the year virtually.

Same rules of public notice apply.

Folks can vote virtually because if it's a virtual meeting and you have quorum and you publicly noticed it, then the votes still count.

So we would still have to do the same things.

We have to call roll, take minutes,

and then basically have a super short agenda that says we probably still have to do public comment.

Vote, public comment, adjourn.

So can you get to us as soon as possible on it happened to be, can it be virtual or does it have to be in person?

Because that will definitely change the timing as far as I don't believe.

I can't be back in town.

I'm 99% sure because we've met virtually for a year and a half and voted on a lot of things virtually.

But I will confirm.

Well, let's operate on the assumption that yes.

So let's say maybe after, you said after 4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, or Friday of next week?

15.

4.15.

Probably say 4.30.

Give me a minute.

Good Starbucks.

You have to really be present.

The rest of us can just vote.

Just kidding.

Is that good for you, John?

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for working that out.

I know that is definitely not in the order of things on our agenda, but I wanted to make sure you worked that out while we were talking about it.

It is top of mind.

And when you began to talk about the proposed amendments and things that

I'll discuss that.

Chair updates, I don't particularly have anything other than just thankful for the panel that came on June the 4th.

I think it was the 4th.

Yeah.

6th.

6th was the 6th.

Yeah.

June the 6th, sorry.

Thank you for the panel that came June the 6th.

I ended up seeing I think Deidre, one of the panelists, at a graduation for I think her little hospital partner, so that was good seeing her and talking to her and just in a homeless situation in Charlottesville

I wish some of the money that was spent on deterring people from laying somewhere was spent on helping them find housing.

I will say that.

The rocks

and some of the things that you see as you walk the mall that are spaces where people could sit or lay and the iron thickets and things that are up is just appalling because you don't want people laying or sitting somewhere and the money I think that people have used to design those things and put those things up probably could have been used to help fund

some of the initiatives here in town to help people that are homeless that are laying out on the mall or in other situations could help instead of doing that.

So I said my piece.

Great, thanks Ernest.

Do you guys, we have a couple of things.

Wanted to hold space for Ginny's presentation during the staff report.

I don't know if I have any particular things to raise.

Lily, did you want to go first?

We have gotten our filing a complaint of discrimination brochure translated into six languages, which is very exciting for the summer of outreach.

Nice.

Yes.

So just send it out to us PDF files.

I mean, I guess for each of us to have a copy or stuff,

You don't have to, I think it's more for, you know, to keep that and save, you know, money and that type of thing that you just give it to us, give it to us.

I can do that.

And I'm working on planning a trivia event for disability pride month in July with Shiel.

And I'll let you know more details about that when

The plans are more solid.

We have most of the dates for the large annual festivals like Sbarroso and Pride, Soul of Seaville, West Haven Day.

I included all of those in the outreach little chart section.

If anybody is available to help with those, that would be good because those are usually pretty long days.

And I believe, do we have a separate time to talk about the panel on the 18th?

I thought we did.

Confirmation of work session.

So you want to go ahead and get me now?

We've gotten confirmation from Petrina Carlson, Cree Deeds, Housing Opportunities Made Equal.

They're definitely coming.

We're talking with people from the Human Rights Commissions and Offices of Human Rights from

Fairfax, Alexandria, and Virginia Beach.

I'm working on confirming if they can have a representative come.

OK. That sounds awesome.

I think that's where it stands.

But thank you for your hard work.

You have very compulsive voice.

Anything else on that?

And then I'll just mention two things.

One that I already mentioned that hopefully July 15th, we will be getting the human rights ordinance on council's agenda, pending our vote here to adopt and recommend.

And that contains hopefully all the things required for certification as a fair housing assistance program by HUD.

And the other thing, just to note, I think we may have mentioned this.

We will be advertising soon for an intake specialist in the office because Saad has moved on to another job in DC.

Super excited for him.

That was a great opportunity.

I know he's been hoping for something like that for a while.

So we're excited for that.

But we will be opening that up in the beginning of July.

I think it will be posted July 1st.

through 15th.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hold on one second.

I bet they've already played West Haven Day.

You think it's on the 3rd?

I thought it was on the 11th.

OK.

I can double check.

OK.

I know I saw a West Haven Community Day.

I saw something.

It might have been something else.

There might have been something else.

All right.

All right.

Yeah, can you stand up in front of me?

Sure.

Beautiful.

Do you want me to stand back there?

Well, you get to control it.

Right.

So thank you for being here today to listen to all of this.

I know it has been a long time coming because I've been working on this research since I think I started demanding it in spring of 2023.

And so, again, if I haven't met you all before in person, my name is Jenny.

I've been interviewing with the Office of Human Rights since about June of 2021.

And so this research has been a long time coming.

I completed it for my senior honors thesis at William & Mary.

I just graduated there majoring in linguistics and anthropology and so yeah today I'm going to be talking a little bit about what the paper itself is about but I'm also going to be talking a little bit more about some comparisons between human rights commissions as well as

Some recommendations that I found during my research that may or may not be helpful to people here.

And just a little bit more information about that thesis process.

So that includes me with my advisor.

Defending that thesis to a committee.

I wrote the big long paper, Todd and all the other members from the office were able to attend, which was really great.

But I did successfully defend that thesis in May.

So it is official.

It's going to be publicly available in about, I think a year is when the embargo ends.

But also in the meantime, if you would like to see that paper,

you just let me know and then I would be welcome to send it to you just be warned it's like 90 something pages so also this is a little bit a little bit more constrained of a presentation about it so the big question that I was asking in my research was how does structure institutionally constrained human rights commissions during the process of adapting international conceptions of human rights

down to the local level.

And that's a big mouthful.

Again, like the bulk of this paper focuses on the anthropological relationships between human rights commissions and overarching systems of human rights.

So a question that I had personally when I was first beginning this research was more like, what are we doing in, I guess this human rights commission specifically, because that's where I based my experiences in,

but what are other people doing too to potentially be how in what ways are they impacting their communities and what ideas are they using to carry out their work.

And so the first thing I'm going to talk about today, well, after this overview, which I'm going to talk about the commission variation.

So in what ways human rights commissions

experience things differently.

I'm also going to talk a little bit more about how I actually did this research.

I'm going to do an overview of the three major sections of my paper and then I'll end with some recommendations.

So what is a Human Rights Commission?

And of course, this definition will be pretty clear to you all being on a commission already.

But actually, the process of defining a Human Rights Commission is pretty difficult.

So up there, I put a board composed of people appointed by their localities government who are charged with defending human rights in their communities.

And so that is what that is.

But also, there is so much variation.

This next slide after this one, sorry, I was

The next one is going to talk a little bit about some of those specific differences, but there's so much variance because each locality is different.

Like this is the locality of the city of Charlottesville.

The City of New York is also a locality.

The county or city of San Francisco is also a locality.

And so they're going to vary a lot in terms of the terms that they use.

A lot of commissions are actually instead of human rights commissions, they might be called community relations commissions or human relations commissions.

And so they might be doing

Similar work, especially on the West Coast.

There are a lot of commissions that are called human relations missions, but they do similar things.

Again, like I said, they vary in size.

And because of that, they vary in the things that they're able to do with their powers.

And so they take on different strategies to fulfill that goal.

But the one thing that human rights commissions do share

is their charge to defend human rights.

And again, like that's a pretty broad, a pretty general task.

So a lot of them do that differently.

So here, I'm not going to read out all of these, but this is just a little bit of a comparison to some of the localities that I looked at.

You can see the differences in population at the top there.

There's also going to be some variation and change with

the time that they were actually established.

So for instance, Prince William County actually did a lot in influencing the creation of Charlottesville's Human Rights Commission and Opposite Human Rights.

Specifically in San Francisco, which was established a lot earlier, they do things pretty similarly to us, but I found that one the most interesting because they have so many people.

One of the localities that I didn't put on here was New York City.

which has a population of over 8 million and so I did not include that one because they run a lot differently like they have one single commissioner that is head of the entire thing of like hundreds of employees and then they have like deputy commissioners that do things but they're more of a of a conglomerate rather than having with the

kind of similar volunteer board to what we have here and what San Francisco and Prince William County has.

As you can see also, even though Prince William County's population is so much higher than Charlottesville, it does have a pretty similar number of staff members.

I said like we have about four, cause we're down one right now.

And then the roles of all of the different staff members in our division can kind of grow and change over time.

Something interesting about San Francisco is that they have so many,

Divisions within their Human Rights Commission that are staffed by the City of San Francisco.

So their Civil Rights Division runs similarly to our Office of Human Rights by accepting complaints and conducting investigations.

There are also non-staffed advisory committees of commissioners.

There's an Office of Racial Equity.

There is an Office for Sexual Assault Prevention.

And then a few more that are, again, all staffed

And so something else that was kind of hard to explain in the small amount of text here was the actual relationships that they have between commissioners and staff and also with their government.

That's a big like anthropological thing that I wanted to look at.

In San Francisco, the language was between like talking to people and looking online.

it's more that the commissioners oversee staff and that's sort of like what it is here however in San Francisco because they have so many more staff members the commissioners can have like a little bit less a little bit less actual involvement in the day-to-day workings of the office

And so in Prince William County, something interesting that I found is that they're very adamant that the commission and the chair was to maintain the most active contact with county government.

It's a little bit different in Charlottesville and that I think Todd personally probably holds the most contact with city government.

But something Prince William County was telling me was that it's important for commissioners to be like the first line, like because

Office of Human Rights staff are city employees.

It's up to commissioners to be that personal link.

So a little bit more about the methodology.

So I did this research, what's called ethnographic research that is centered on Charlottesville and my personal experiences here.

Again, I've been an intern for about a little over three years now, which is kind of crazy.

And so I've been doing minutes for the Human Rights Commission pretty much all of that time, which means I've had a really close read short of physically being here the entire time.

I also conducted sociolinguistic zoom interviews with 14 people.

I think there were like 11 interviews themselves, both from human rights commissions in Virginia, and then also a few more beyond the state border.

Participant meeting observations includes this commission meeting, but also it will include, for instance, I went to VHR in the fall,

And I also did some analysis of public documents and because of my training in linguistics, I added like a small addendum that I'm doing a discourse analysis of the website text of one of the commissions in Virginia.

So to talk a little bit more, which probably will not be a little bit, but this is the bulk of my paper.

The first section is about the question of human rights, and this is the most like

Big anthropological question I was asking here.

So when we're talking about human rights internationally, through my research, I was learning about how the United Declaration of Human Rights was written by nations who were already in power in the 1940s.

So they had already been doing a lot of the human rights violations that they actually condemned in that declaration.

And so these countries, these nations, these states that were in charge of determining what international law was and what council does not count as a human rights violation was being actively decided and not everyone was included in that discussion.

So a lot of people that I was reading, they were talking about how

The concept of human rights is used to, it's supposed to be used to relieve suffering of individuals, but in actual practice, it is not always doing that.

So I didn't put it up here, but then there's also human rights federally.

So if we're talking on the level of the United States, there's HUD, there's the EUMC.

And so human rights locally at this level, it does act pretty similarly to state and federal law.

Again, we have our ordinance that comes from state Virginia human rights law and so

There's also the difference in terminology between human rights and civil rights.

So like if you're looking, for instance, at your mission statement that talks about advocating for civil rights and civil rights are directly tied to the law rather than human rights, which can be a lot more floating, which is a concept that I was talking about with a lot of participants as well.

There's also human rights on a personal level.

So for instance, people seeking assistance to act upon their human rights, they may believe that something should be a human right, but it's not protected under law.

But because we use human rights law, we have to actually define what they do, what they can and cannot believe and seek help for as a human right.

It could also be, for instance, commissioners may believe that housing is a human right, but maybe they differ on means to acquire it.

For instance, like maybe they think that housing is a human right, it should mean more emergency shelter, or it should mean providing more support for non-housed population.

The second section, I'm talking a lot about structure as a constraint for human rights commissions.

And so I don't expect you to read any of that at all, but that's a chart that I made for the office for our investigative complaint process.

And so, as you can see, it's a very systemic process in order to

Most fairly treat people who come in with a complaint the same way and having a system for that.

And so structure is a constraint and structure is also in this Human Rights Commission.

As we were talking about earlier, we were talking about like being able to publicly notice meetings or getting the right tech for a certain meeting.

That's also going to be important.

And it's constraint because it makes it more difficult for you all to do your work.

It also can put people who've already experienced discrimination through the system.

So for instance, these people who are coming in with human rights complaints, that means that they've already experienced something.

And so that means like,

Going through this system, going through this process, which can take months or even years, they are having to constantly relive that experience and battle with the bureaucracy to be able to receive some form of mediation or compensation, whatever form that takes or does not take.

So this can also leave commissioners really unclear about the goals of their commission.

And I think in this commission, we've spent a lot of time talking about

Our goals and so over time we've done more with the work plans and define exactly what our annual focuses are and not doing that can be really

Confusing and frustrating because it leaves you all thinking like, okay, well, I have this huge goal to defend human rights in my community.

However, like the exact way that I'm supposed to do it is unclear.

There's like not necessarily always the guidance.

And so that makes it hard, especially, which is a big point also of this paper is that human rights commissioners are for the most part uncompensated.

So that makes the work fall upon the Office of Human Rights staff.

and people who do have more time to be able to commit to this work.

So finally, the third section is about the roles of human rights commissions in activism.

And so when I'm talking about burnout and social justice, the example that I've been using is the experience with the Virginia Association of Human Rights.

And so, like I said, Lily and Todd and I in the previous chair went to that in October.

And so

The chair of the Virginia Association of Human Rights was there.

He was talking about how there is very low involvement, very low commitment to VHR.

And so he was asking us, the people who were there, to be able to dissolve the organization because he had the chair of that organization for

I want to say over 30 years.

And so he was saying how a lot of officers were there more in name.

There's very low participation from individual commissions in Virginia and low communication.

Not many people like stepping up to take on those roles.

And so we ultimately did decide to dissolve the organization.

We still agree that there will be further meetings about the HR and getting human rights commissions in Virginia together.

but not under the official flag of the AHR.

So burnout and social justice is especially prevalent because these are people working to address really huge issues that are often really pertinent personally to them and so they have high stakes in and they're often doing that for little things and which makes them feel like they might not be making the difference that they want to make in their communities.

So I'm also talking a little bit about the difference that I define between grassroots and systemic advocacy.

And so grassroots advocacy is similar to some of these organizations that you all are talking to in panels and things, which I define more as

going like community organizing not directly involved with the law with the government and so I can compare that to systemic advocacy which is more similar to what you all do because you already have a foot in the door you have a direct line of communication with city council with

Staff members technically from the city.

And so there are benefits and drawbacks to each of these types of activism.

Systemic advocacy is going to put you closer to the room where it happens.

A lot of those people are often having personal experiences and the things that they are advocating for.

Sorry, but then systemic advocacy can also bring you further away from the people you might be trying to defend.

I think I said that right.

Yeah, so this creates a lot of interesting dynamics.

Commissioners are supposed to hold power, but they're doing so with limited time, limited capabilities, so it's difficult.

So all of that being said, this was actually a pretty small part of my paper.

I believe it's like the sixth appendix or something on it, but I wanted to be able to connect all of this work.

to actual real world uses.

And so I wrote down a little list of recommendations that may not specifically apply to you as a commission, but they're things that to keep in mind and just generally might contribute to the success of the Human Rights Commission.

So the first one is going to be adapting to a more hybrid form of activism that combines elements of both grassroots and systemic advocacy.

And this is something that you all are definitely doing.

I use the panel that you all did last month as a big example, because you all are in the unique position where you are able to communicate directly with the community.

That's what you have what comment and everything for.

But you're able to use the needs of the community that they're directly telling you.

and raise that to city council.

So another example I didn't list here was like the legislative recommendations and knowing your role in having systemic advocacy and knowing your role in being able to leverage that while staying connected with the community.

I also talk about systemization.

So we all know Todd is very great at creating those systems and those spreadsheets.

So one thing that we've been doing, which I think we've talked about before, is using the database to track the amount of time that we're spending with individual complainants and using that to be able to find out what other needs there are in the community that the Office of Human Rights might be taking on.

So the second recommendation is going to be about engaging young people.

And so one conversation that I had with the participant is how younger generations may be more interested in different forms of advocacy.

I will say like in a lot of the commissions I researched, the average age of commissioners tended to be a little bit older.

And I think that is largely because that form of advocacy and that's form of systemic advocacy is very like

Knowledge, institutional knowledge base.

You don't have to come in knowing about the law necessarily, but you have to be already interested in it, which is not something that people necessarily always are.

But younger people could have more time to commit.

It could also prepare them for more careers in human rights and getting them interested.

So I was looking a while back and I did see that this commission had a UVA student liaison program.

I believe that was done in 2018.

I believe what happened with that is that the organization at UVA who was managing that was gradually like lost communication with them.

I want to say that was what the case was.

But that resolution is still up.

It's on the website.

I know that the Prince William Human Rights Commission has a Student Leadership Council that is directed by one of their staff members.

And that is a really cool program because it takes high school students and gives them the opportunity to explore human rights issues and have some agency

in crafting solutions and giving them the opportunity to directly interact with the Human Rights Commission, which both exposes them to human rights work early and then also gives the commission the ideas on things that they could do.

And so in this commission specifically, I know they're talking about having young people on the commission.

Let's see, we have the UVA liaison program.

Having minors under 18 can sometimes be complicated.

But there's nothing stopping, for instance, a UVA student from being a commissioner, especially because here the term limits are two years.

And so that could be possible.

So the third recommendation is to be mindful of the needs and size of the community.

This is probably something that most people, most commissions are already doing, but just finding it, I think is important because both trying to take on more than one can, more than what would be realistic can result in further burnout, but also not doing enough can also create burnout because you were talking about how to live up to expectations and putting energy into something

without seeing the results that you want.

So it's important to seek those creative solutions despite the systemic restraints.

This goes back to my first recommendation as well.

A lot of, for instance, Human Rights Commissions focus on community outreach over investigations.

Like for instance, the Virginia Human Rights Commission does not have an investigative agency at all.

They completely focus on community outreach.

Another example of this is are the current ordinance revisions that we are doing and trying to be more clear about defining the role of the commission.

I know in the past we've also, I think it was the ordinance rather than rules and procedures, but we have decreased and increased the number of commissioners on the commission over time, which can also create some easier or can create challenges, but also make it easier, for instance, like keeping a quorum.

So the fourth one is to ensure that leaders are passionate, committed, and empathetic.

And this is something that a question that I asked every participant was what makes for the ideal commissioner slash what makes for the ideal Office of Human Rights staff member.

And without fail, everyone was always saying that being committed is most important, which again is difficult, especially if it's a newer commission and there is a lack of institutional precedent.

Because for instance,

use the example of Prince William a lot.

They do not have turn limits so they there have had the same chair for again like over 30 years and so he over there brings the institutional precedent like he knows how things work and I know here that we do have turn limits I think that are decided by city government rather than the commission itself

But finding ways to welcome in new people and also get them in the loop and having people that are passionate and willing to go above and beyond.

Yeah, I also put the example of VAHR because like, I mean, I can just say like VAHR, Curtis Porter has been like the chair slash the president of both organizations for all this time.

So he's doing a lot.

And so the last recommendation I have is to build networks within and across HRCs and their related agencies.

I was really happy to hear that y'all are reaching out to some other commissions for next month's panel.

I think that's really exciting because making an effort to know like what other commissions are doing, especially ones with similar sizes or similar capacities can give you some really great ideas.

And also just on a personal level, I know again, a lot of you have just this,

Two term limits, but knowing each other's working styles and finding methods that will help you work the most cohesively as a team and having effective conversations can be really helpful in getting things done.

And again, like looking at other localities that could be in Virginia, I think I had a pretty

Like using Todd a lot, but getting in contact with other localities across the United States.

Again, especially some smaller ones, like it was hard getting in contact with New York or San Francisco, but some of the ones where like the email will just go directly to their actual inbox, that can be great.

So yeah, maintaining relationships with other commissions and commissioners.

Again, VHR as a formal organization is no longer a thing, but getting groups of people together and making the effort to organize and share stories and share experiences and strategies can be really helpful.

So in conclusion, the overall conclusion of my paper, which again was not the total focus of this presentation, but this kind of advocacy comes with its challenges because we are taking such a contested concept and taking it down to the local personal level.

But luckily there are people who are willing to do that work and put in the effort to define and work at it and come down to that individualized level and translate it back up.

This research attempts to answer some pretty complicated questions.

It also brings up countless more.

Like if I had more time, I would definitely do a more cohesive comparative analysis of a lot of human rights commissions.

I would ask more questions about the institutionalization of human rights.

It's like there's so much.

And because it applies to so many things, both in international law, the systems of comparing with

International States down to local states and local levels, personal levels.

But the research has a lot of real life applications, hopefully, as you can see, and there's a lot of opportunity for real world change as well.

So those are some references.

And then, yeah, do you all have any questions?

I'm just curious to see.

Those are just images.

Yeah, no, my paper references, I think, is like seven or eight pages.

Again, like if you'd like, I can send you that paper.

Yeah, it is really long, but yeah, the references are... Yeah, I'm just curious, you know, what theories you engaged with.

Yeah, in my lit review, I was looking at a lot of

Human Rights Scholars, I want to say Donnelly was a big one.

I was talking a little bit in the beginning about human rights and relativism versus universalistic conceptions of human rights.

That's really great.

I think the point about the institutional constraints is really critical because it

We in fact are not addressing human rights here, right?

Yeah, and then civil rights, like tracing it back to the civil rights movement is coming from human rights, of course.

Like you can only address housing insofar as someone has been discriminated against in seeking housing.

But nobody can come to you and say, I am unhoused and it is my human right to be housed, which is something I would like to file a complaint.

Right.

Which is what a true and I mean, that's a that's a U.S. problem.

Todd probably that I'm looking at you, right?

And that's something too that like in the past year or two we've talked about more because like when Todd and Lily and everyone were talking about shifting a little bit away from that navigation in the Office of Human Rights that meant turning down people that we were previously kind of like herding through that system often about housing but like having to say like oh yes you do think housing is a human right however like we don't

Any other questions for anyone?

I know for me, you made comments about having power to do things and

is not really able to do something that feels like it's making an impact.

Also the comment that was made or statement was made about the burnout, I could definitely see that.

Also getting to young folks

trying to get to younger folk to take that and do, I mean, it's, we kind of do it in protest, but not as much in this atmosphere of it, you know, cause we do a lot of, like I said, we did lots of civil rights, but,

A lot of good information.

It's interesting to see how many that the

that the Virginia Commission is dissolving.

It seemed like it's because they just don't feel like they have these people that want to do the work.

I never feel like I want to be a part of something just to have my name on it.

And I could definitely see that because there is so much work to be done, needs to be done that

The thing with burnout too is that something that I didn't mention is how so many commissioners their actual line of work and their actual paid profession is also in the line of human rights and so like when you have something like that and then have this volunteer commission that meets sometimes and but you feel like you might not be having the impact that you want that can further burn out as well because like you know you have your entire busy life that again you

You're always in, you know, even in your day job, you're inundated in your, yeah, that makes me tell everyone.

Will you be publishing this?

Yes.

So since I successfully defended thesis in May, I put an embargo on it for a year.

And so it's going to be on my school's scholar works web page in about a year.

So that will be publicly available.

Yeah, I think that's the reason that there was an embargo, just in case I decide to.

Currently, I don't have plans to.

Especially because it's so long, my advisor was telling me that means I need to shorten it by like more than half, which can be, which can be, it can definitely be done.

And yet it's a way to disseminate information that could be useful to others that can help them do well.

Now I'll stop.

I thought about this too.

They're friendly academic members of the commission.

Right.

Yeah, it'll be available as like a senior honors thesis.

But then also like there were a few papers that I found that were written by people personally connected to commissions.

But those were people from New York City,

or things like that.

No one else has any questions?

I was like, Todd said that I was like, oh, are you OK with the way I represent you in this?

That did take a while.

Thank you, Jenny.

Is that in business matters?

It's not in business matters.

I guess it does.

And does anybody hear it from Tom?

I guess so.

If you can tolerate yet another PowerPoint, are you ready?

Let's go.

Let's do it.

We're going to get through it.

Let's see.

Remind me, who is here for the last review of the ordinance?

Were you all three here?

Charley, this might be the first time you've seen this.

What I wanted to check in with you.

So I've got the same PowerPoint from last time.

I can go through it fairly quickly because three of you have seen it, but I want to make sure that you're aware of what's in it as well.

And then there's a few things where I've added updates so that you know any changes that we've made since the last time we talked about it.

Try to be brief.

Thanks for running the show twice now.

So why are we doing this?

One of the main things is what we're trying to do right now with amending the ordinance is to enter into a fair housing assistance program with HUD.

And that does a number of things for us.

That means that any

Any cases that are jurisdictional to our office that get referred to the federal office or in the state fair housing office would come to our office and we can handle those locally.

Also provide some training and capacity building for the office.

So there's some good advantages to doing this.

It's also mandated by the ordinance as it currently reads.

So that's another reason why we have to do it.

and other things we're trying to do with this particular version of the revisions to the ordinance just to make it a little bit more understandable and straightforward to implement.

We've been trying to revise the investigative process to include what we've learned from experience of doing the work in the office.

Sometimes these things are crafted theoretically.

When you start to put them into practice, you realize the holes and the gaps.

And I think we've tightened it up quite a bit.

So hopefully it will make more sense for anyone coming in and trying to do this work in the future.

Some of the major things we did, we added a table of contents and page numbers.

Surprised those weren't there, but they weren't before.

Just general corrections throughout.

And then our main sections on enforcement and investigation, sections 2-437-1 through 3, just making those, again, clearer and more understandable across all of the five protected activities that we work under.

One of the updates that we added this time after speaking with HUD, what was it, last Friday?

We went with the new director of the fair housing assistance programs at HUD and they added citations to federal code that demonstrate substantial equivalence to federal fair housing law throughout.

So we did that, hopefully make the review by their board easier.

Okay, so we'll go through major section by section.

What are the changes that we made?

This particular one, 2-433, we refer to it a lot in our annual report.

And when we talk about your roles as commissioners, there's like, I think, A through F, I think, are the labels in that one.

They just basically define the things that you do as a commission and what your obligations are under the ordinance.

We merged some of the stuff from the section 2-434 and 2-435 into 2-433 just to make it simpler to read because those things seem to be related to items in 2-433 so it's easier to follow, easier to plan around when we're talking about our annual goals.

The other thing we did

I went ahead I think after our discussion last time we talked about there's a clause in there that says we will do we may conduct research.

It also said in there that you will do a research project.

was every two years, which seemed really impractical for the commission, but leaving it open to do so if you need to based on whatever's going on in the community seemed reasonable.

So we struck out the requirement that you would do a project every two years and left it open that you could do that if you need to.

So there's that.

So that's struck.

And I don't know if you had any thoughts on that.

Are we good with that change?

Okay.

I think council will accept that as well if you're endorsing.

Let's see, and this is just the two sections that define what the Office of Human Rights is and what our role is.

Nothing too fancy, didn't change anything since the last time we talked, but just to be clear for those who haven't heard this before, we aligned these two sections to mirror those of the commission.

So defining what is the office, what is the role, just like we did with the commission, what is the commission, what is the role.

And in here, we also added a clause that just noted that we can hire staff as needed.

Just to make sure that we have that authority codified in the ordinance.

No big deal there, but important to make sure that's clear.

And then

We made, again, slight revisions to the community outreach piece.

In the commission section, it talks specifically about human rights discrimination and or equity as your outreach focus and your guidance and awareness piece.

So we wanted to make sure that our role in the Office for Outreach also reflected that so that it could broaden that role.

In this section, so section 2-437.1 is all about employment discrimination complaints.

Again, we just clarified the process a little bit in terms of our intake and complaint filing.

We added a clause to address situations in which former Commissioners are party to an inquiry of discrimination.

And we had an update that when, because we had a recent question about this, when we find a complaint that's non-jurisdictional, what we will do is, previously it said referral, which implied that there was some sort of formal process because we don't actually have formal agreements with any of the state or federal agencies.

So instead we would inform the individual the option to file because

Since there's no conduit for us to directly refer, we will provide them with all the information they need to file on their own because we can't do it for them.

So there's that piece.

And that's the one update that we changed since the last time we talked.

And then again, previously we talked about, we added a section called Further Action that just defines what is required of the individual in terms of providing current and updated contact information to the office.

And we also just consolidated the procedures for non-responsive complainants and respondents so that we had a method of closing complaint.

Okay, then the big section that's relevant to our application to the Fair Housing Assistance Program, this is 2-437.2.

Again, parallels the employment investigation section.

So we tried to make the procedure as closely similar to that other section as well as the other protected activity sections as possible.

And we updated the subpoena authority and all those sections, but started here because that was a requirement under HUD.

We now have the ability to subpoena witness testimony, which we didn't have before.

And again, we can't grant the subpoenas ourselves.

We would work with city attorney's office to seek that authority through the courts.

Let's see.

We also had to remove all the deference to Deputy City Manager in decision-making processes.

This was something that HUD said we had to be able to self-contain certain decision-making processes throughout the investigation and complaint process.

So we did that.

And what else did we do here?

I'm trying to read.

Yeah, just all their small, minor revisions that they wanted to see in the language to maintain what we call substantial equivalence to federal fair housing law.

The update from last time we talked, we added those citations throughout this section and in the other parts of the ordinance just to make sure that it was clear how things aligned with federal code because that was super important for substantial equivalence and the approval process for the FAP.

Yeah, so some of the things, for example, that we had to strike was, let me try to remember, there's certain things in

I have to remember an example.

If there's a need for city attorney intervention in something that we were going through an investigation, something pops up, we're like, ah, we need this city attorney to act immediately on this particular thing.

We would raise this up to the deputy city manager who would then raise it to this person and then go over here.

They said, no, you need to be able to talk to your city attorney directly.

If we, in practice, actually consult with everybody so everybody's on the same page, that's fine.

But it needs to say that you can initiate that action immediately and drop it.

But you have the power to do it.

You have the power to do it.

Yes.

OK. Yeah.

That's one example.

And there's just a few of those little, it's kind of a minutia.

And if you go through and you can find all those references, you'll see what it is.

But it was important for HUD to see that direct line.

Good question.

OK.

2-4373 is basically the investigation section for all the other protected activities, including public accommodation, credit, private education.

And again, we just wanted to make sure that this section mirrors all the other sections in terms of process.

What we don't want is to have a bunch of different processes for the different protected activities.

So this is very closely

mirrors the employment section.

And then we also added that same clause in there about we will inform people of the option to file a state or federal agency rather than referral because we have no mechanism to make a referral directly.

Okay, this one, just to make sure that this was in there, this is important for substantial equivalence.

We already had basically a non-retaliation clause, but we also added information about

How you can actually file a retaliation complaint if you have already filed a complaint with us on a protected basis.

Next thing, okay.

This is the thing we got into a bit of a discussion about.

This is where really the rubber meets the road for the commission.

This talks about basically your role in public hearings.

And if you recall, last time we discussed kind of these three options, and I updated the chart here to sort of reflect where are we now.

That middle one I struck out because that was the sort of most expansive possible function of the commission in terms of its public hearing, but it also is the most burdensome.

In that, it allowed for things like introduction of new evidence, cross-examination, all that stuff that we talked about.

That's pretty heavy to manage, and it's also potentially traumatic for the parties involved.

Had we already gone to the Virginia Fair Housing Board meeting prior to the last meeting?

I can't remember.

Well, so we had an opportunity and this kind of informed and reassured us that this might be the best way to go forward.

We went to a Virginia Fair Housing Board meeting and it was an interesting process because while they actually render findings in a public meeting, so

In our case, the Director renders the finding.

Complaining can appeal to you all if there's a finding of no reasonable cause, or if there's a finding of reasonable cause, you can vote to hold a public hearing on that finding to see if there's any recommendations you want to make as to next steps.

But what they did, it would actually make the decision in the public meeting

And they gave people five minutes to sort of present their case or their side of the story, whether it be the attorney or the respondent or the actual complainant themselves.

And what was clearly kind of viscerally uncomfortable about that was you might have a complainant who feels very passionate about the situation that they experience.

And it was harmful to them, once again, having to talk about it, talk about it in this formal setting in front of about 20 people and then be told, sorry, there's no reasonable cause.

And so the idea of replicating that

Here felt like I don't really want to introduce that trauma into our process.

And so also talking with you all about having to manage basically what would be similar to a court process.

But in here, I heard that that might not be what you want to do with your power.

And so what we kind of reduced this to was a review of record.

So what that means is any

Any case that comes before you as an appeal of no reasonable cause or on finding a reasonable cause that you vote to hold a hearing on would be a review of the existing investigative report and the finding.

And in fact, something to point out here is that

Because it's not clear, I couldn't find clear reference to this in state or federal code other than I know that there is an obligation to protect confidentiality.

We're actually going to redact the report and the investigative or the determination and the finding so that it takes out all the personal identification in those documents.

So basically, you're just reviewing the facts with anonymous names.

So you're just looking at this thing without having to consider the actual

identifying information of the person and then make a decision on the facts.

So there's a clause in there also talking about that, but that's what you would do in your hearings is review that documentary information, not receive new evidence, not receive testimony, not cross examine witnesses in a public meeting, but still be able to render an opinion and recommendations.

on those investigations and findings.

Does that make sense?

So we're kind of in option three.

That was the intent.

We also had talked about should there be an option for the respondent to appeal a finding a reasonable cause, which is obviously would have an impact on then I would assume that every respondent would probably try to appeal.

And the recommendation from HUD was you may not want to get involved in that, especially if

You already have the option to vote on whether to hold a hearing on a finding of reasonable cause, because you might actually overturn it after reading the record, which would be in that respondent's favor.

And I think I heard some mention of that in the last meeting as well, is that why would we have both options when we're already going to vote to review the record?

So anyway, so the column three there is what

We have proposed in the ordinance, if you read it now, and I think it's a pretty streamlined process.

It should still be an effective process in terms of appeals and also an effective process for you to review a complaint while protecting the sort of confidentiality of all parties and still being able to issue recommendations to counsel on whatever you decide and it's best to enforce the ordinance.

So does that make sense for that piece?

I know it's just like I'm condensing a lot of information orally into something that's pretty long in written form.

But I think that this is the best way to describe it.

I have a question about the confidentiality to you.

So I'm not against it.

Good question.

But you have a public hearing.

And so I could not get clear definition in time for getting this in front of you guys, clear definition as to that sort of like seemingly contradictory statement within the ordinance.

So what there is clear, there is clear law that talks about in state level that talks about the obligation of governments to not disclose information.

And I remember in previous consultation with city attorney's office when it was about

A request from a complainant and respondent to receive a copy of the investigative report.

And so I said, do I send them the open report with everybody, all the witness names, everything?

Do I send that to them or do I need to redact?

And the advice was to redact based on the protection of identity under state law.

My feeling was it's a little bit of a conservative approach here in the sense that, well, let's go with that route here.

If it inhibits your ability to understand the case and understand the record, then I think we need to revisit it.

But we haven't gotten there yet.

So I think it's enough to be able to understand the elements of the case and the evidence.

And then, obviously, it's going to be published in your agenda packet because it's a public hearing.

So it protects that confidentiality.

Again, if we get new advice on this, this is a minor piece in the ordinance to amend if we had to amend again.

I just wanted to make sure that that wasn't a barrier to getting the fair housing piece done in a timely fashion.

But yeah, it's an important question.

It's something I'm still wrestling with.

I don't have a perfect answer on that yet.

Any other questions about that?

Oh, more.

Other things that we, yeah, I already talked about these things, but these are the things that we, the updates that I just mentioned.

Just removing that ability to cross-examine interview evidence, adding a clause that will redact the personal information, and again, removing that option for the respondent to file an appeal on a finding a reasonable cause.

So,

What's next?

Ah, questions, more questions.

Yeah, we can, you know, we can always pull that thing up.

It's in the agenda packet.

If there's any piece of this you want to see how it's actually written,

And obviously we can't vote on it tonight because we don't have a quorum.

I feel like this, you know, having the two PowerPoint presentations, commissioners can watch again if they need to.

You've got the ordinance both in its previous version when we presented it earlier, I guess in May, and then this version, which is kind of the last piece, their last final revision.

Yeah, I'm just going to suggest once we do find out a date and a time that we send out the PowerPoint and the ordinance itself to everyone and just press upon everyone else and something I have to say to you.

For those that did not attend, please read through, go through, and if you don't want to read through, go through.

And if you have questions, you can email, call, whatever.

Any other questions from commissioners?

All right.

Next discussion or questions regarding CEP involvement in May the 4th.

So if you look just beyond the ordinance, Lilly has put the questions that you guys brought

So what we need to do is, I know all of these are probably important, but what I would like to do is come down is, what do we definitely want to ask?

I would love to check in to make sure that

with Ashley to make sure that we're okay with what we're asking.

True.

All right.

First part of the documents.

I feel like that this is a key piece of it, that we should ask for all documents.

And I thought Todd's suggestion previously that we ask for a copy

All of the responses to FOIA requests that have come in related to this.

Because that's just done.

You've handed it over to other people.

Handed it over to us.

Yeah.

That'll be faster.

Anything on that?

These all seem like very important questions.

There are important questions and happy to be overruled.

The feeling is that we, that being just a little bit streamlined might help us.

And while I very much want answers to these questions about the events of May 4th, CPD was not in charge, whatever else we think, right?

And so they don't seem like the right people

Those, I think, at least the first one came from me and I'm completely comfortable striking that.

I think it's fine.

I think that, you know, the documents are really important and that the questions about events leading up to May 4th.

No, I'm sorry.

Where are we?

So maybe we ask about the documents, we ask about how CPD,

What about, I mean, limits placed on officer interaction?

What rules did officers affirmatively agree to perform?

Those are all my questions.

No, I think those seem like questions that I would think would be really important to ask.

Because the limits, you know, that's all going to change on how they perceive

Oh, okay.

Right.

Well, do we want anything about, I mean, questions about what kind of training did they have?

I don't know.

Are we trying to get to a goal of like a, do we want to strike 20% of these questions?

Yes.

Okay.

We have all these questions and they're not going to answer them.

They're going to, and you know, we're trying to get you the information, you know, so

I would make it even fewer, honestly.

I think asking for the documents, asking for an accounting of the costs, like, we want you to tally up, like, these costs.

And then

We can follow up with that by asking the chief to come and we can ask him all the questions if we wanted to do that, right?

Very good.

Yeah.

Because I would assume, if we were truly given all the documents, that things like what limits were placed, what roles, that was not all done orally, I would assume.

So you would imagine that the answer to that would be in documents, if they were weaponry, right?

So that's three documents.

Can it be the first, just the first four questions, and then

You know, any documents resulting from FOIA requests, you know, or something.

I don't know how to word that, but something like that.

And then just leave it at that so that at this phase, we're just kind of doing this general fact-finding.

Yeah, that's fine with me.

So what I'm going to do is are you ready tomorrow?

Tomorrow, yes, we're in.

So I'll come down tomorrow and you can construct this to make this to get us out.

What time would you like to come down tomorrow?

Yeah, I don't know.

It depends on your schedule.

We have meetings in the morning, but yeah.

Afternoon?

After 2, whatever works.

Pickleball and then police.

2 p.m. tomorrow?

first two.

Worked.

Thank you.

All right.

And your work plan check-in.

Check-in.

So we are June the 20th.

We could not.

Yeah, that is done.

Thank you.

We could not vote on this amendment.

So can you make a note that we need to set up a virtual meeting to approve that?

OK. Did Virginia Air and Human Rights Commission hold a conference?

Yes?

No?

OK. All right.

Work session on June left.

Cover that?

Awesome.

I like those duns.

Hey, can we put that postponed to virtual special meeting in red?

All right.

We just got to get that done.

So moving on to July.

No meeting on July 4.

No meeting on July 4.

And our regular meeting is on the 18th.

And we have some

You guys have done a great job of getting some good panelists to come in for that.

I wish there was a way we could get more people in the house when we have panelists.

Something people are missing out on, the ability to ask questions and to get information

So, you know, I don't know what we can do to get the word out of who we have coming on the 18th.

Write it.

We could also do the, I don't know if we have time to do the TV thing again.

Oh, Channel 29?

Yeah.

Yeah.

OK.

I get back from vacation on the 10th.

I think that's a Wednesday.

So 11 or 12 if there's an opening.

I don't mind going down.

Especially how we would love to have people come in.

So August, 1st of August, we're going to talk about our legislative recommendations for that meeting that we have on the 17th, and then our regular meeting on the 15th to adopt those recommendations.

All right.

And I'm beginning to get those ready to be presented to City Council.

All right.

So work session.

Letter D would confirm that we are not going to meet on 4th of July.

OK. That's good.

Or that week.

On top.

On top as well, yeah.

I'll be away as well soon.

All right.

Any other questions about the work session?

Do we have any new business?

No?

OK. Models of the public.

Anybody on?

No?

All right.

I don't think it's really anything actionable, but I've just been really sitting with thinking about the problems that we heard about with unhoused folks and the specific sort of

Intersectional, I guess is the word I want to use.

I mean, housing is a human right, like the end, but there are populations that are even more impacted and who are not in the center of who's getting services.

And yeah, I don't know that there's anything we can do about that as a commission, but there's no way to come in and make a complaint, right?

Just feeling the void of that, the burden of disability and, you know,

It was at four o'clock at the same time I had a meeting I had to be at, unfortunately.

Yeah.

I think it was good.

Overall view of what's going on out there and made some key points about, yes, the need for various tiers from shelter to transitional housing to long-term affordable housing, but also the need for outreach so that we are connecting with people who are out there.

So I'm hoping that council heard that.

Yeah.

And I think that that kind of thing, you know, you've heard that as well here, just reinforcing some of that, you know, if it takes funding to do these things like helping council hear from you all as well, like that ability to reach folks who are very vulnerable out there and connect them to the resources and hopefully develop those resources so that they can be connected is key.

So, yeah, but yeah, it's hard when we can't

Right, but I mean, there is just the normative work.

Just part of human rights work is just expanding norms.

And do we make statements about our findings with these panels?

Is that possible?

Is there a public statement or a press release or something like that?

That's good.

We get this information, but we don't really disseminate it back out to how we received it and how we felt about it other than here.

after the meeting at times but you know if we had you know not just a newsletter or something that would go out in connection with yes let me no no no go ahead I know you already have a newsletter and stuff and I know I'm adding more work

And it might not have to be a newsletter, it could be a video, a PSA or something that we could do in the office or something.

I don't know, just kind of thinking out loud, but there's something we need to continue to keep

So to go to them and say,

So maybe take it away from me.

I think it could also very easily be incorporated into the newsletter.

I usually do an overview of what you talked about in your last meeting in each month's newsletter.

That's what that look was.

But also think about what, like Jenny said, about different commissions having different relationships with officials.

Ernest, I think that is something, you know, you were talking about the May 4th stuff and just checking with Ashley, like, you know, making sure that she hears from you or mayor hears from you to say, Hey, these things are important.

Like you could pen a letter, you know, supporting these things.

Like we heard these things brought up during that presentation.

We also heard these same things in our

meeting, not only with the people who presented at council, but also the people, different people who presented similar things here to us.

You can present that viewpoint in those ways.

And that letter could also get published in the newsletter and people who agree with you may come to public comment and reinforce it.

So there are ways to amplify the message.

That's good.

We're here to support you.

All right.

Any other commissioner updates?

All right.

Today is supposed to be the longest day of the year.