Two themes
for CAHRO's work in coalition building emerged from the Silver Anniversary Conference. They are for CAHRO to build a statewide collaboration for our core constituency to share information and build relationships, and to
facilitate the development of a forum comprised of people drawn from critical sectors of society to formulate policies and coordinate strategies to reverse the trend towards a society made up of haves and have-nots.
CAHRO's core constituency are human relations commissioners and staff, people working on community policing and intergroup conflict, people working on improving school intergroup relations, people involved in preventing and
responding to discrimination and those seeking to organize people around the issue of social justice. Through our publications we reach more than 5,000 organizations and 7,000 people working on these issues in California.
They live and work in urban areas like San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, in suburban areas like Orange, Ventura and Santa Clara Counties, and in more rural communities in the Central Valley, the Central Coast, and in
California north of the Bay Area.
Our constituencies are calling on us to link them so that they can share information, consult on strategies, and learn from one another. Even with today's high-tech
communication, our knowledge of issues and awareness of what is happening around us remains localized to where we live and work. Information sharing is one of the best tools for capacity building in our work. For
example it would be useful for people in San Rafael in Marin County to know how concerns about day laborers loitering on sidewalks in the town of Brea in Orange County was successfully remedied, since they are both confronting
issue. We have made some headway towards accomplishing this objective through our website, www.cahro.org, but we have been reminded that the internet is not a panacea and does not replace the need for people working on
similar issues from different areas of California to sit down and converse.
We will begin responding to this demand by facilitating increasing communication among human relations commissions and the three
existing regional human relations coalitions operating in California; the Coalition for Civil Rights in San Francisco, The Multicultural Coalition in the Fresno-Bakersfield region of the Central Valley, and The Interagency
Coalition for Human and Civil Rights in San Diego. Our next step will be to include representatives from state and regional organizations and collaborations addressing intergroup relations and provide settings for the people
involved to build relationships. Fortunately, our Silver Anniversary Conference provided opportunities for many of those who would participate in building a statewide coalition to get to know one another.
The second theme from our conference actually originated prior to the conference, and to a large extent, guided our agenda. It emerged from a retreat CAHRO hosted for sixty human relations and civil rights leader in the fall
of 1998. Workshops analyzing California's vulnerability to "wedge" propositions that foster intergroup dissension concluded that the best defense is a good offense. Participants agreed that the most effective way to
address divisive ideas was to formulate and build widespread support for policies that promoted an inclusive society and addressed the needs of those who are becoming increasingly isolated because of poverty and
discrimination.
Although many of the people attending the retreat were from our core constituency they advised us to look beyond them for critical players. They suggested the need to include people from
the business sector, representatives from labor, people from the faith community, university professors and youth in the formulation of policy so that we did not end up talking to ourselves and limit our access to the broader
community. They recommended that CAHRO use the November conference as a basis for establishing an entity comprised of people drawn from these combined areas to formulate policies and strategies to move California and the
nation away from becoming an exclusionary society.
Fifty-five people representing a broad cross-section of society made presentations at our conference on the topics of coalition building, the widening economic gap and
changing demographics. Some were concerned that their ideas would not be received warmly by a human relations group, others were not sure whether their concerns were shared by people outside of their community. Although
we did not always use the same vocabulary, we shared the same sense of urgency about the need to promote more effective avenues to family and community sustainability and inclusion. More importantly we recognized that no
matter how disparate our backgrounds we could find some agreement on policy approaches. There is a shared concern throughout society about our future and the future of those who come after us. We need to succeed
in reversing the trend towards divisiveness and converge around some compensatory strategies.
We at CAHRO feel much more comfortable about our ability to help establish a broad-based public policy forum now than
prior to the conference. We will now work to raise funds to support the creation of a multi-disciplinary forum that formulates policies and coordinates strategies to re-energize efforts to build caring, inclusive
communities. The interest and enthusiasm of people from the business, labor, faith and academic sectors demonstrated that the time is right.
If you want to support this effort please communicate with us.
