Humboldt County Human Rights Commission also to take up Brown Act, public restrooms
Staff Report
Humboldt Sentinel
With rebellious encampments inspired by ‘Occupy Wall Street’ springing up throughout California, the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission is set to take up the re-implementation of a protest monitoring program.
Unlike surveillance by law enforcement, corporate cartels or Homeland Security, however, this activity is designed not to intimidate or curtail protests, but to monitor their peaceful coexistence with powerful government and private interests.
The Independent Observers Program, originally created as a partnership between the Commission and the local American Civil Liberties Union, consists of men and women who go out to protests neither to join in them or attempt to disrupt them. Instead, they typically wear light blue hats and vests with ‘IOP’ clearly visible, and stand as witnesses to monitor the interaction between demonstrators and security, whether public or private.
The IOP was particularly active in the ‘timber wars’ of the 1990s when the struggle over the cut-and-run tactics of the junk-bond peddling Maxxam Corporation, which had taken control of Pacific Lumber, was at its peak. IOP members observed a string of protests on timberlands and in the city, marking down when confrontations between environmental activists and security forces became heated and even violent. Although active during the local peace protests that marked the early years of the Bush Administration, IOP fell dormant until recent calls for its presence were made to the local ACLU.
Commissioners are also planning to address the subject of public restrooms across the county — an issue also arising from the Occupy protests, with Occupy Eureka in receipt of an Oct. 20 letter from county administrative officer Philip Smith-Hanes denying protestors the ability to access restrooms in the county courthouse after hours. Occupy Arcata has also sent a request to the Arcata City Council asking for a public restroom near the Plaza. A porta-pottie erected in a veterans park in Garberville was quickly removed at the behest of the local Chamber of Commerce this summer over concerns that it was ‘attracting’ the homeless.
In addition to typical items such as the implementation of police review in the county, the commission’s agenda also includes a discussion of the Brown Act. This long-standing state law is intended to prevent corruption in local and state government by requiring decisions to be made in public session, and only by elected representatives who do not hold a fiduciary interest in the outcome of government actions.
The Human Rights Commission meets the first Thursday of every month at 5 p.m., with this month’s meeting falling on Nov. 3. They take place in Conference Room A on the first floor of the county courthouse.
One day, in the not-to-distant future, a Human Rights Commission will demand explanations from its community’s leaders how they allowed a failed development model of big boxes and the homes they can’t afford, to continue decades after it’s proven that this model manufactures more poverty and the stressed, (abusive), law enforcement forced to cope with the fallout: skyrocketing crime, violence, drug abuse, and homelessness.