What happened to the Keizer Community Diversity Engagement Committee?
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What happened to the Keizer Community Diversity Engagement Committee?
By the time the Keizer Community Diversity Engagement Committee met for the first time in January 2022, it had already claimed the the political career of one City Councilor.
And by April, it lost a key member after the City of Keizer and prominent local elected officials, business & religious leaders welcomed hate-circus ReAwaken America to city property.
And by the end of its first year, the Community Diversity Engagement (CDE) Committee was perusing about a dozen community survey responses - a third of which recommended disbanding the committee completely.
No matter how you slice it, not a great year for community, diversity or engagement in Keizer.
So what did the committee accomplish in its inaugural year?
They adopted a mission statement!
“Exists to foster justice, diversity, equity and inclusion and to strengthen our community through active listening in order to strengthen and encourage civic engagement, understanding and empowerment and to advise the City Council on issues that are critical to connecting our community.”
If I asked you to guess what words in that mission statement were the subject of lengthy debate (according to April 2022 meeting notes), which would you pick?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the CDE Committee fussed over including the phrase “to foster justice, diversity, equity and inclusion….”
Unsurprising because months earlier, former Keizer City Councilor Ross Day imploded his political career over using the word diversity in the title of the committee. In fact, Day insisted in November 2021 that burdening this committee with even a verbal commitment to diversity would lead to attacks.
From the Salem Reporter:
“I can promise you, there’s going to be a trojan horse. There’s going to be someone that’s going to get on the committee and going to go out there and use their position to attack someone,” said Day.
Days paranoid promise never materialized. In fact, very little seems to have materialized as a result of CDE Committee meetings, outside of this mission statement.
A second faint signal of activity from the committee came from a community survey that collected responses in August 2022.
CDE Committee members reviewed responses to the 5-question survey in their September 2022 meeting and found just 28 responses - only 15 of which provided meaningful or complete responses.*
A full one-third (5) disagreed with the actual existence of the committee itself.
Here are some highlights from the these lovely community members who are dedicated to keep Keizer straight, white and stuck in the 1950s. These people went out of their way to fill a survey with deliberately harmful responses meant to denigrate the committee, its members, and their mission.
“I think it (the committee) is unnecessary and foments division rather than unity and inclusion.”
“Remove the community diversity engagement committees. This is an implied barrier to direct access to our council members.”
“It (the committee") doesn’t have to be a person of diversity, not everyone takes sides or feels like they are owed something.”
“Stop catering to and placating special interest groups, including those causing racial conflict in the name of diversity, inclusivity and equity.”
“There should be no such committee. Treat people as individuals - treat people with respect - allow all voices to be heard - make decisions based on evidence and facts, not emotions.”
*Using the Question “What do you think the role of the Community Diversity Engagement Committee should be?” as a control for respondent quality, 13 survey responses are invalid (some left that question blank, some simply restated the name or purpose of the committee…basically any response that wasn’t substantive is a low quality respondent). That means there are 15 viable survey responses.
So while disgraced former Keizer City Councilor Ross Day’s ominous prediction about the impact of using the word diversity never came close to fruition…
You have to wonder if the remainder of his colleagues on the Council were careful to heed his absurd warning.
After all, when selecting members for the CDE Committee, Keizer City Councilors almost entirely ignored the nearly two-dozen applications submitted from community members.
Instead, each councilor (except for Councilor Roland Herrera) handpicked their own selections for the committee - none of the choices having actually submitted an application or otherwise shown interest.
Maybe Keizer City Council was actually worried about Ross Day’s lunatic warning about this committee? Maybe they designed the Community Diversity Engagement Committee to fail by picking friends less suited for fostering or engaging or connecting, and more suited for laboring over mission statements and poorly constructed surveys for the better part of a year?
Maybe “conservatives” like Mayor Cathy Clark and most of the City Council along with others that pull the strings in Keizer, are just virtue-signaling with respect to diversity & inclusion?
And that’s not just hypothetical or speculation.
Back in April 2022, when Clark was under fire for welcoming the christofascist ReAwaken America tour to Keizer (and seemingly providing police protection for the event), she attempted to pull attention away from the hate rally and onto questioning the integrity of the claims of indigenous protestors who held a “Land Back” demonstration during the event held in the parking lot of Volcanoes Stadium - a city-owned parcel leased to the owners of a local christian-themed baseball league.
Clark arranged a very odd and seemingly impromptu presentation at the April 4th, 2022 City Council meeting where local historians spoke about indigenous people and their history. At that month’s CDE Committee meeting the following day, she urged members to indulge in her distraction campaign and “asked the committee to focus on the tribal nations in the future.”
That same meeting, the committee announced the departure of the only member who actually applied to serve. The reason that person left? Because of the way the city embraced the ReAwaken America tour.
I don’t know, man. You tell me if that sounds like Keizer’s power brokers are going to let this committee do actual work. Because it feels an awful lot like pageantry & bullshit to me.