By JESSE DAVIS
THE GOSHEN NEWS
GOSHEN —
It’s been a long, unsure road for the Goshen Community Relations Commission, but the group is finally hitting its stride.
The roots of the commission’s history dig all the way back to 1997, when city officials, the Goshen Ministerial Association and others organized the first Diversity Day in response to a Ku Klux Klan rally held at the Elkhart County Courthouse. The event continued each year, helping to lead to the Feb. 7, 2006 ordinance that created the commission, made up of five mayoral appointees and four Goshen City Council appointees.
“We began on the basis of a profound misconception, which was the assumption all along that there would be federal money for a community relations commission officer for a trial period of three years or something like that,” commission president Joe Liechty said. “The CRC was effectively an advisory committee to this person we were going to hire with federal money. And we met before this person was appointed, created a sense of identity, and then it gradually became apparent that this was not going to happen.”
According to commission member and former commission president Richard Aguirre, the administration of President George W. Bush kept adding requirements in order to receive the funding, until fulfilling one of the requirements would have placed the CRC in violation of state law. Funding for the program dried up and Aguirre said he has recently read it is unlikely such initiatives, under U.S. Department of Justice administration, would ever be restored.
Liechty said the commission was in denial for some time, still expecting the funding would eventually come through.
“I think there were two things that kept us going through that period,” Liechty said. “One is Diversity Day pre-existing and (commission member) Sreekala (Rajagopalan)’s radical commitment to that, and the other was...Phil Thomas, who continually had excellent ideas, was willing to invest time in different ways, much of it voluntary.”
Among his work for the commission, Thomas completed a study of intercultural issues in Goshen.
A call for funding
Another major step forward for the commission came from the help of Councilman Harlan “Chic” Lantz, who commission member George Smucker said joined the commission as a skeptic.
“It wasn’t long until he became an enthusiastic supporter of the kind of work we were trying to do,” Smucker said. “It was organized for maybe a year or two when he went to the City Council and told them ‘You know you’ve got this commission, but you haven’t given them any money, and we’re not getting this grant. You expect them to do something without any funds?’”
Lantz was successful in securing annual funding for the commission from the council, reaching $24,000 in funding for 2011. The organization had already been receiving donations for Diversity Day, but decided it would be wrong to use those funds for the commission’s work at large.
“The next really important thing was when we hired Darin (Short) just over two years ago,” Liechty said. “It was the eventual confession that there were just limits to what a group of pretty busy volunteers can accomplish. So Darin has served both the roles of trying to put ideas into the mix, but more than anything of acting on the ideas that the commission has had. That’s just been invaluable.”
Aguirre joined the commission around the same time as Short, originally appointed as Rajagopalan’s deputy with the idea of succeeding her before he became the commission’s president.
Staying positive
With the leadership of Aguirre and the aid of Short, the commission made its next strides forward, creating a strategic planning visual in July 2009 listing positive community relations as the center goal. Radiating outward were more minor goals, with an outer ring of actions to work toward the middle. Among those actions were supporting neighborhood associations, crating opportunities for dialogue and creating and updating communication mediums.
Another major step was made following the aftermath of a city council vote on an ordinance amendment that would have added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the city’s community relations ordinance. The amendment was voted down.
“We were badly divided as a commission about which way that should have gone,” Liechty said. “There was some bitter feeling about it and it kind of raised the question, can we work together or not?”
The commission’s discussions that followed led to the creation of a statement of principles that now guides its efforts and discussions. Those principles are: Respect for each other and respect for each other’s rights, open communication and engagement, honesty, a safe community, acceptance that change has positive and negative consequences, tolerance of differences and support for equality and freedom from discrimination.
“That process,” Liechty said, “was very healing.”
Looking ahead
The most recent efforts of the commission have been through a new neighborhood mediation program, which may soon go into a second six-month pilot period. Other goals of the commission for 2011 include the following:
• Encouraging the community to take ownership of the statement of principles and use them in their interactions.
• Create a greater financial and administrative stability for Diversity Day, which despite its history is still a year-to-year program.
• Work with other similar organizations in the area.
• Help fund more programs with similar goals such as the Peacemaker program that teaches children discipline through martial arts.
• Help facilitate non-partisan positive political dialogue.
“The overarching goal is community development,” Smucker said, “... When we can talk with each other without shouting, we’ve accomplished something very fundamental in the community.”
