Minutes of the 5/4/15 Community Action Team for the Dialogue to Action Project

NOTE: For more information about this project, contact Chia Lor at district1chia@gmail.com or by calling 651-578-7400.

This meeting was held at the East Side Freedom Library and was attended by 21 members of the Saint Paul community including 5 youth from District 1. The meeting is open to any community members who would like to actively participate in developing the dialogues planned for this fall between youth and police, and between community members and city departments. 

Welcome by Peter Rachleff of the East Side Freedom Library, with an explanation of what the library is intended to represent to the community – a resource on racial and economic justice and its history.

Attendees introduced themselves.

Opening quote by International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)  President Richard Beary following the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo.: “At this crucial time, it is imperative that law enforcement and community leaders, both in Missouri and through the United States, make every effort to reduce tensions and ensure a peaceful and lawful response to today’s decision.  Only by working together to create a constructive dialogue can law enforcement and community leaders establish effective police-community partnerships that are at the heart of safe communities…”

Ground Rules for the meeting were reviewed and participants were asked if there were any additions or modifications. None were proposed.

The history of the project was reviewed – the four action steps from the 2014 Cross-Cultural dialogues were named (develop an Ambassador Team to spread the word about the dialogue process, conduct intergenerational dialogues, develop education around local government and the importance of voting in local elections, and these community/city department dialogues). Police officers in attendance asked about whether there has been any discussion of what has already been going on to improve and support good relations between the police and the community. These existing efforts will be highlighted in this project.

Work to support this project was identified and a request was made to have a lead for each set of work:

1. How do we partner with schools and churches that have existing youth groups? – C. Ware identified as lead
2. How do we use social media to get the word out? – several youth stepped up to work together on this
3.   How can we pull together the history of police and community relations? J. Lozoya and M. Edwards will be leads from the Police Department
4.  How do we provide the food and social needs when the dialogues happen? Fundraisers, donations, potlucks? – several youth stepped up to think about this, also B. Leach can act as a resource
5.  What about community partnerships outside of the district councils? – K. Hallstrom, J. Bandemer, also district council partners can assist with this
6.  How can youth recruit other youth? – several youth stepped up for this task, but district councils can help make initial connections to other existing youth groups
7.   How can we make sure that there is transportation available to the dialogues? This will be an on-going discussion.

We want to assure that the dialogues are a diverse and representative cross-section of our city – by ethnicity, by age, by gender, by geography. We need to recruit with this in mind.

We already have a strong and supportive relationship with the police in developing this dialogue. We need to turn our attention to the other department(s) and community dialogues. After much discussion of the pros and cons, the overwhelming vote was to focus on the Department of Parks and Recreation for the second set of dialogues. This decision was made because of the level of direct impact this department has on community members. The question was also raised as to whether this dialogue was to be with policy makers or with front-line staff. We will need to determine this as we get buy-in from Parks. C. Lor will meet with Parks administrators along with community members that will include youth. It was emphasized that not only park users but those who do not use the recreation facilities be included in the dialogues. Potential questions to ask include – what is privatization or partnering of facilities and why is it happening as it is? What is the relationship between the partners and the community? How does the city track activities or hold partners accountable for the use of public facilities?

We then turned to looking at the dialogue curriculum for the Police and Community Dialogues. It currently contains 5 sessions – 1) set the framework and get to know participants and how their experience has shaped their relationship with police, 2) history of police and community relations and interpretation of what each of us thinks is happening, 3) what are expectations of police and of community members for each other? 4) Look for different ways to improve on relations between community and police, 5) explore potential action steps and decide on the action steps we want to take. The organizers/sponsors of this project want to make sure that a session is added that discusses racial dynamics – taken from the original cross-cultural dialogues.

We divided into 5 groups, each taking a dialogue session and thinking about what would work, what we might keep and what we would want to change in the curriculum. Time ran out, so we will report back on the groups at the next meeting. (NOTE: this curriculum will also be modified to fit the dialogues with Parks.)

We finished the meeting with a privilege walk to highlight the differences in the lived experience of white residents and residents of color in our community. We discussed the impact of this activity on our perspectives, and came together by looking at the actions each of us has already taken and continues to take to narrow the gaps in our experiences.

Next meeting will be at the Western District Police headquarters, just off University Avenue at Hamline Avenue, 389 Hamline Avenue North, on Monday June 1 from 5:30p to 7:30p.