Williamstown Sees Surplus of DIRE Committee Applicants
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday heard from several residents interested in filling three vacant seats on the town's diversity committee.
After just three of the original nine members of the Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee opted to serve past its first year of existence, the Select Board, after consulting the remaining members, decided this summer to restructure the DIRE Committee as a seven-person body.
But after seeing a bumper crop of applicants on Monday, Chair Andy Hogeland said he was rethinking that decision, opening the door to naming more than seven members to the committee in time for its next scheduled meeting on Sept. 6.
At the outset of Monday's meeting, Jeffrey Johnson, who served on DIRE last year as an appointee of the Select Board and stayed on the diversity panel as its Select Board representative after his election to the latter group in May, told his colleagues that DIRE would not meet as scheduled on Aug. 16.
That took a little pressure off the Select Board, which had planned to fill out the seven DIRE seats Monday in time for the committee's meeting next Monday.
After hearing from several interested residents, including one who appeared to decide to apply during Monday's virtual meeting, the Select Board opted to hold off on making the new appointments until at least its next meeting — tentatively scheduled for Aug. 23.
Earlier this summer, the Select Board appointed Randal Fippinger to one of the vacant seats on the DIRE Committee, giving it a quorum (assuming seven total seats) for a meeting on Aug. 2.
After the remaining DIRE Committee members and the Select Board spent weeks calling for applicants, they got their wish on Monday. Seven candidates appeared at Monday's meeting to make their cases for inclusion on the panel, and an eighth, who did not speak at Monday's meeting, also has submitted paperwork for consideration.
Luana Maroja was the first applicant recognized in the meeting. The Brazilian native talked about how her multicultural background would benefit the committee.
"Where I was raised, things are much harder than in the United States," Maroja said. "It was an extremely patriarchal society where even my mother would say women should not be allowed to work. Living in a society free of those barriers is essential.
"I value DIRE's goal of increasing participation in town."
Deborah Rothschild also shared a lot from her personal history, talking about her life as a child in the Jim Crow era in Miami, where a beloved family employee who she considered part of the family was "abducted, beaten, branded and left at the side of an orange grove," when she was 15.
After 28 years as a curator at the Williams College Museum of Art, Rothschild has devoted much of her free time to voter registration efforts from New England to her native Florida.
"I always thought Williamstown didn't need me," she told the board.
"I always thought of Williamstown as a tolerant and fair place. But if it isn't, I want to be involved."
Carrie Greene touted her experience in local government as a longtime member of the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee, work that earned her recognition with the town's Scarborough Salomon Flynt Community Service Award.
"Over the years, I've tackled issues of equity and inclusion, discrimination and access, leadership and accountability," Greene said. "I've grown to appreciate the importance of sound policies and protocols."
Tamir Novotny offered to bring the perspective of his work in the racial equity arena on a national scale.
"My career has been primarily in national philanthropy," he said. "For three and a half years, I ran a group called Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, where our membership was over 50 percent people of color, two-thirds women and over 10 percent LGBTQ. We retooled our strategy from being a young professionals organization to being an equity focused organization with a power-building agenda."
Applicant Huff Templeton told the Select Board that he wants to see the DIRE Committee return to its original mission after it was sidetracked by the issues surrounding the Williamstown Police Department over the last year.
"I'd like to see Articles 36 and 37 [from the 2020 annual town meeting] through," Templeton said. "I was one of the co-authors of both articles and a petitioner at last year's town meeting. I think we need to remember the reason DIRE was formed. That it was in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. I think we need to center Black voices in the community in a way that hasn't been done before."
Included in the applicant pool are at least two residents who identified as people of color.
Nat Romano said her identity also includes being a "working class person" and a "person on the LGBTQIA spectrum."
"In light of the massive changes that have happened on the planet and in our community over the past couple of years, [diversity, inclusion and racial equity] are very important issues," the 2005 Williams College graduate said. "I agree with bringing more attention to how people feel, the sense of belonging in this community, and how that is oftentimes culturally or ethnically or racially problematic."
Shana Dixon told the Select Board she knows what it is like to grow up as a Black person in a predominantly white community, Gardner. She moved to Williamstown more than three years, she said.
"I just want to be a part of something and have my voice heard, having two sons in the community, both bi-racial, and having to deal with so many issues being in Williamstown and being a person of color," Dixon said.
After beginning in July 2020 as the town's first majority person of color committee, DIRE currently has one person of color among its four appointed members. Johnson identifies as multiracial; the other three members are white.
The Select Board went into Monday's meeting having read the applications from most, but not all of the current applicants for the DIRE Committee. One resident who applied but did not speak at Monday's session is Andi Bryant, who told the board in a letter that she is a "4th generation townie" who hopes to bring a "moderate voice" and "guardrails" to the committee.
Bryant's letter also focused on an aspect of inclusion that she feels has been neglected in the current town discourse.
"I am a walking billboard of the effects of classism in this town," Bryant wrote. "DIRE has been charged with addressing this issue, and in the first year it was not addressed properly, if at all."
The Select Board on Monday took no votes on the DIRE Committee applicants or the possible return to a nine-person committee.
It did decide on Monday to send a letter to the Legislature encouraging passage of a bill sponsored by state Rep. John Barrett III that will enable homeowners throughout the commonwealth to strike from their deeds language related to restrictive covenants, which were enacted in the 19th century and early 20th century to prevent houses from being sold to non-white residents.
In other business on Monday, Hogeland updated the board on the progress of an independent investigation of the Williamstown Police Department that the Select Board voted to fund.
The investigation started by looking at allegations raised in a complaint to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (and later federal lawsuit). It since has been widened to include a look "other things going on in the police department" and a review of the WPD's internal investigation of the illegal use of the Criminal Justice Information System by department personnel, Hogeland said.
"As you know, we're also waiting on CJIS to get back to us to see if they have any comments and questions [about the WPD's handling of that offense]," Hogeland said.
He said he expects the independent investigator's report "soon" and hopes to make as much of the report public as possible without exposing any personnel records that may be included.
Hogeland also acknowledged press reports about the termination of a Lanesborough police officer for misuse of the CJIS database. He said it sounded like the Lanesborough case was "a much more serious set of circumstances" and cautioned against "comparing one case to another when they seem, on the surface, to be fairly different."
Tags: DIRE,
