O.C. Group Puts Forth Plan for Racial Peace

SANTA ANA —  Civic leaders on Thursday launched Orange County’s most ambitious program ever to promote racial harmony, declaring that they plan to push for community policing, an education curriculum that reflects the county’s various ethnicities and employment programs that encourage the training and hiring of diverse local residents.

Dubbed “Recommendations and Plans for Transforming Orange County,” the report by Orange County Together outlines 21 broad goals to foster mutual understanding among county residents.

Officials of the broad-based community group, which was formed last June after the Los Angeles riots, also announced that they will develop specific “action plans” in the coming months during the program’s second phase.

Whether this clarion call will spread widely and broadly throughout the county’s civic and business communities remains an unresolved question.

But Thursday it drew some immediate positive responses: One business leader pledged $25,000 for a youth leadership training program; representatives of several school districts pledged to make their school curriculum more reflective of the diversified population, and a few law enforcement officials endorsed some aspects of community policing for their cities.

The report also drew immediate support from local minority leaders and at least three members of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, who said the report’s recommendations signaled a new era for race relations in Orange County.

The Los Angeles riots were “our wake-up call,” said Harriett M. Wieder, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. “The most significant difference (in this report) is the fact that there will be an ongoing dialogue between people who have never talked to each other.”

Supervisors Thomas J. Riley and William G. Steiner, who were present at Thursday’s launching at the county Hall of Administration, said they also support the effort. There were only two dissenters from more than 200 participants in the yearlong effort; both described the recommendations as tried-and-failed liberal solutions.

The group’s recommendations follow a program of frequent community forums, meetings among business leaders and various grass-roots organizations, and even visits by local civic leaders to riot-torn areas of Los Angeles.

Orange County Together was formed last June to forestall the kind of social upheaval that flared in sections of Los Angeles last year. The group received a $100,000 grant from the local chapter of United Way and support from the county’s Human Relations Commission to generate public discussion and draft its first-phase report.

Following through on the recommendations and later implementing some of the action plans are crucial to the effort.

On Thursday, United Way President Merritt Johnson said he is continuing discussions with a major California foundation and several local corporations that have “a good self-interest in keeping this community healthy for business.” He is asking them to give at least another $100,000 for the program’s second phase.

Johnson said United Way and the county’s Human Relations Commission plan to have monthly progress reports at their meetings “so that these plans won’t gather dust on a shelf.” The two agencies will “nudge and lean on” various groups to implement the “action plans,” he said.

There was considerable applause when H. Fred Mickelson, a Southern California Edison vice president, pledged $25,000 from his company to develop “grass-roots leadership.” He vowed that Orange County Together will “keep the pressure on” by implementing specific plans to combat racial prejudice and inequities.

The report proposed changes in five areas--creating community coalitions, improving police-community relations, diversifying education, broadening employment opportunities and celebrating diversity. It also sets deadlines for achieving these broadly defined goals and identifies specific interest groups that might work to achieve them.

One goal, for example, is to initiate race-relations programs in local schools where racial relations are strained, according to Rusty Kennedy, director of the County Human Relations Commission.

Kennedy said the Human Relations Commission and other groups planned to bring together administrators, teachers, parents and students from neighboring high school districts “to build intergroup understanding.”

“We’re seeing self-segregation of the various races, stereotypes of ethnic groups depicted in graffiti, hate groups distributing hateful (literature) on campus, and (racial) conflicts that spill on and off campus,” Kennedy said. “There’s a crying need to reach out and bring these kids together so we don’t end up like Bosnia-Herzegovina--neighbors fighting neighbors.”

Similarly, a representative of the National Organization for Women said her group would be willing to work toward increasing the representation of diverse groups on city councils, school boards and other elected positions in the county.

“We have a lot of experience in mobilizing people,” she said. “When do we get together to start” this effort?

In endorsing the community policing recommendation, Steiner said he had seen how the city of Orange--where he served as councilman--had reaped “a big payoff” by implementing such a program.

Garden Grove Police Chief Stanley L. Knee said his city planned to adopt its own community policing efforts, adding that other law enforcement agencies in the county have similar plans.

Knee also suggested that Orange County Together should implement its recommendations “in a single city and then replicate it.”

Msgr. Jaime Soto, vicar for the Hispanic community in the Diocese of Orange, said he supported the recommendations, adding that “we have something at stake in seeing that they are implemented.”

Ho Chung, who last year became the first Asian-American to serve on the Garden Grove City Council, also supported the recommendations and hinted that the group should go further by backing an effort to have an Asian studies program at UC Irvine.

Chung, who is also leading an effort to start an international trade and cultural center in Garden Grove, had other words of advice for leaders of Orange County Together, who have proposed a multicultural center for the county.

“It’s not going to be built unless you can attract business,” Chung said. “If they can’t make a profit,” they will not participate.

Speaker after speaker praised the recommendations, but later in the day two participants in the yearlong discussion groups set up by Orange County Together issued a minority report.

One dissenter, Matthew Cunningham, described the recommendations as the “same old liberal solutions by some well-intentioned people.”

Cunningham, a press secretary for state Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange), said the group’s leaders are “making out the problems to be a racial problem rather than a breakdown of morality.”

“I’m not saying that (racism) didn’t happen in the past,” Cunningham said, noting that he was not speaking for Lewis, “but we have to emphasize policies and practices that promote individual morality and individual responsibility instead of race-based solutions, which will go back to solutions of affirmative actions and quotas.”

Improving Race Relations

Highlights of Orange County Together’s plan to provide economic opportunities to more minorities and to improve race relations: * Changing the workplace: Promote hiring a diverse work force in business, government and nonprofit organizations. * Develop multicultural center: Provide learning opportunities among diverse groups. * ‘Community policing’: Start service-oriented, problem-solving partnership between law enforcement agencies and the community. * Create partnerships: Have businesses and public schools develop programs to increase students’ skills and employment opportunities. * End the abuse: Stop vilification and hatred directed at immigrants, gays, lesbians and racial, religious and ethnic groups. * Promote grass roots: Organize multiethnic projects to broaden base of participation in decision-making process of community institutions. * Reduce hate crimes: Build collaboration between law enforcement and victim groups.