[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] An opportunity

[Charlotte Green]

Patrick,
Yes, I think a letter to Mr. Hayes expressing our
desire to address issues of racism in our lcoal
community is a great idea.  At some point, I think it
would be good to sit down with Mr. Hayes in a small
group or at an AWARE meeting to discuss those local
issues and how we could work together on them.  We
might do the same kind of thing with local pastors of
African American churches, black educators, and other
leaders in the African American community. I think our
first job is to listen.
It would be a great thing if African-Americans and
whites could work on this issue together!
Charlotte
  
--- Patrick Bahls <pbahls at math.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> 
> 	Hello all,
> 
> 	First of all I would like to thank Kim Kranich for
> her terrific
> follow-up regarding the local media coverage of last
> night's council
> meeting.  She did a great job in holding their feet
> to the fire, so to
> speak, and making sure they get the story right.  I
> completely agree with
> her, in that we should offer the *entire* council
> our heartiest thanks for
> their actions.
> 
> 	I would also like to propose that AWARE and its
> affiliates take
> advantage of an opportunity that essentially fell
> into our laps at the
> meeting last night.
> 
> 	Before lending his support to the resolution,
> Councilmember Hayes
> gave a speech, directed largely to the members of
> the community, in which
> he expressed his chagrin that so many people do not
> often make the effort
> to show up and voice their concerns regarding issues
> of *specifically*
> local importance.  He mentioned specifically the
> issue of unfair drug
> crime sentencing laws, indicating that perhaps some
> of the local issues he
> has in mind are issues regarding race and race
> relations.
> 
> 	During the past weeks members of AWARE have
> bemoaned the fact that
> we do little to counteract racism in our community. 
> We've even set up a
> brainstorming session in order to come up with ways
> to better address this
> shortcoming.  In some sense, I feel that AWARE sees
> itself as a bag of
> solutions looking for a problem.
> 
> 	Well, here's our opportunity to discover what those
> problems may
> be, and to establish a dialogue with the city
> council, the mayor, the city
> attorney, and any other local officials who are
> willing to engage us in
> that dialogue.
> 
> 	I have begun to pen a letter addressed specifically
> to
> Councilmember Hayes, and I think it would be a good
> idea to present this
> letter (with suggested revisions, of course) to him
> on behalf of AWARE in
> order to introduce our willingness to act on these
> matters of local
> concern. Perhaps this would best be done by
> presenting this as an open
> letter to the council-at-large, maybe as a follow-up
> to the thank-you
> statement that Kim has proposed?
> 
> 	I feel that it would be utterly disingenuous of us
> not to take
> advantage of this opportunity.
> 
> 	I will finish the letter to the council this
> afternoon and post it
> to the Peace list so that everyone may comment and
> offer suggestions.
> 
> 	Please feel free to contact me regarding this
> matter -- my e-mail
> is misbehaving today, but I promise as prompt a
> reply as possible.
> 
> 	Best regards,
> 	Patrick
> 
> 
> ------
> Patrick Bahls, VIGRE Research Assistant Professor
> e-mail: pbahls at math.uiuc.edu
> office phone: 217-333-1504
> University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
> Department of Mathematics
> ------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace mailing list
> Peace at lists.groogroo.com
> http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace
> 


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com