Patricia Gatling, the new chair of the City Commission on Human Rights, made her first appearance before the City Council's General Welfare Committee, outlining her vision for an agency that now enjoys charter status but that has seen its resources trimmed by more than three-quarters over the last ten years.
"The mayor is committed to the vigorous enforcement of the Human Rights Law," Gatling told the committee, but her agency has only been given the money to hire seven new lawyers, which would bring the total to 22. While other agencies are reeling from cuts, there may not be much clamor for restoring Human Rights to its pre-Giuliani staffing levels--especially since it is getting a modest increase this year.
"Seven more attorneys is the right direction," said Craig Gurian, author of a scathing report from the Bar Association of the City of New York documenting the chaos at the commission and offering a blueprint for its rebuilding. "But if they're going to litigate cases, they need substantial new funding." He puts the minimum necessary at $20 million annually, up from the present $3.1 million, calling it "what the Police Department spends every nine hours" and reminding us that human rights is a law enforcement function. Some of the funds necessary could come from the commission assessing penalties of up to $100,000 on discriminators, something the previous commissioner was loathe to do. "There will be a price to pay for discrimination," Gatling said. "The commission will not shy away from imposing and publicizing these penalties to maximize their deterrent value." But she told the council that she could not "give a bottom line of how we will be revenue producing."
"After I read the Bar Association report, I was really scared," Commissioner Gatling told Gotham Gazette, in particular about the backlog of 4,500 cases. But those 4,500 are not really all "cases," she said; most of the backlog consists of old "complaints" that have not yet become cases, and may not turn out to be. She is working with the staff to resolve the backlog quickly, having disposed of a thousand in her first few weeks on the job--even as new complaints continue to come in to an agency that has not had a high profile in recent years. "Our goal is to have a maximum one-year limit between the initiation of a complaint and its just resolution," she testified.
New Yorkers with unresolved complaints at the agency are getting detailed letters from the commission. She said that many are grateful to get any kind of acknowledgement. But it will take time to determine if those who believed they were victims of illegal discrimination feel that they have gotten justice under the law. Gatling noted that those who do not agree with the dismissal of their complaints can appeal them to the commission.
Gatling testified that "the commission is a law enforcement agency and as a former prosecutor, I understand this." Two of her chief deputies, Avery Mehlman, for Law Enforcement, and Cliff Mulqueen, for Investigations, came with her from the D.A.'s office. Gurian noted, "They don't have civil rights backgrounds, but they are interested and serious about investigating and prosecuting these cases."
The commissioner also acknowledged their responsibility to educate the public about the agency and to "improve relations among the city's diverse populations." The ability of the commission to do that job can best be assessed when there is another flare-up in inter-group relations, as the city has witnessed in such incidents as the Crown Heights riots of the early 1990s and the attacks on Arab- and Muslim-Americans in the wake of September 11th. She also committed herself to "initiating investigations," the kind of work that looks at systemic discrimination in a particular sector.
General Welfare Chair Bill DiBlasio (D-Brooklyn) pressed Gatling on the backlog of cases. "I'm an experienced prosecutor," she said, invoking her work in narcotics at the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, "and I'm used to dealing with backlogs." She also told DiBlasio that she wanted to start "a more constant testing effort, so that anyone who thinks about discriminating knows that there will be an investigation."
Shortly after the hearing, the Bar Association's subcommittee on human rights met with Gatling and her deputies. Gurian, the chair, said that the commission is now committed to reviewing its backlog by the end of May. "If that does happen," he said, "it doesn't mean that they all will have gone away, but an important triage function will have been done. Meritorious cases or those that need investigation will see the light of day." He also said that Gatling intended to move toward having some non-enforcement staff members take on enforcement functions.
Gurian said that the present plan is for each lawyer to handle 50 complaints a year, some of which will turn into real cases. "That's unrealistic," he said. He believes that when the commission gets a new reputation for taking complaints seriously, the cases will become more complex and time-consuming. He said that plaintiff attorneys will start referring clients such as those with disabilities who were denied reasonable accommodation where the damages may not be that high, but an administrative process at the commission could resolve it.
"They said that they're eager for good cases," Gurian said. "They've started to do testing." The commission hasn't looked for discrimination in recent years. But when it does start finding bias, according to Gurian, "they can't think you can cap the amount of resources" devoted to securing justice. "They understand that they are coming into a situation where the reputation of the agency is sub-optimal. They will have to fight hard to be taken seriously."
Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly Gay USA on Channel 35 on Thursdays at 11 PM.
With a new commissioner under a new mayor, the New York City Commission on Human Rights may be on the verge of reversing the steep decline in resources over the last ten years that has left it unable to cope with a huge backlog of complaints, and rendered it almost invisible to the public.
In a story in the Village Voice ("Whatever Happened to Human Rights," Feb. 20), I wrote about how the commission suffered from the fiscal crisis of the Dinkins years and the neglect of the Giuliani administration. My story was prompted by the two-year study of this decline by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, "It's Time to Enforce the Law: A Report on Fulfilling the Promise of the New York City Human Rights Law", showing how the budget and staff have been cut more than 75 percent since 1992. The detailed report, which relied on many Freedom of Information requests to the commission, makes fifteen recommendations to the commission and several more to the city's Law Department regarding its role in enforcement.
On paper, the city has one of the strongest human rights laws in the country, but enforcement has been weak. Plaintiffs with some egregious cases of discrimination can use the law to go directly to court if they can interest private attorneys in their cases and some have recovered multi-million dollar settlements. But if the recoverable damages are likely to be small, as would be the case when someone is denied entrance, for example, to a restaurant -- most lawyers will pass on the case. That is when it is up to the commission to investigate, a process that can take years even if they find "probable cause," i.e., likelihood that the plaintiff will prevail in the long run.
The Bar Association investigation into the commission found that cases drag on for so long that in 2000, more than 100 of them were lost. The commission simply could not locate the complainant.
Some of the aggrieved give up before they file their complaints. Jackie Timo was in a taxi this past December when her woman friend rested her head on Timo's shoulder. "We went five feet and the driver told us to get out of the cab and that we were an 'abomination,'" she said. The Taxi and Limousine Commission referred her to the Commission on Human Rights. She tried several times to telephone them, and kept on being put on hold, until she was finally told that her complaint would not be taken over the telephone; she would have to schedule an appointment at their offices, which would take at least an hour. "I'm an activist, but I gave up," she said. "This is a completely inaccessible system."
In another case, discovered by the Bar Association, the complainant did file. A longtime tenant in a two-family house cared for his 90-year-old mother, who returned home from a hospital stay requiring home health care. The white landlord objected because the aides helping the woman were African American. Instead of doing an investigation, speaking to witnesses, and going to court to get injunctive relief and stop the harassment, the commission has yet to act on this case that was filed in the Spring of 2001.
Craig Gurian, the principal author of the Bar Association report, said, "I'm hopeful we'll be seeing active involvement from several civil rights groups soon" in terms of organizing a campaign to restore the commission to a functional level. Six civil rights groups have sent a joint letter to the mayor and leaders of the New York City Council urging implementation of the Bar Association report--including a substantial increase in the commission's budget and greater use of its power to impose civil penalties. The groups are the Eastern Parazlyzed Veterans Association, Lambda Legal Defense, Puerto Rican Legal Defense, and the city chapters of the National Employment Lawyers Association and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
The initial response from almost anyone at City Hall to the idea of increasing the budget of an agency in this season of severe cuts is negative. The City Commission on Human Rights was down to $3 million and is in for a $300,000 increase in the mayor's preliminary budget, but these funds may not offset a drop in federal funding. While not being cut is the dream of some agencies, Gurian said that an adequate job cannot be done for less than $20 million a year-"the least expensive important problem in the city that can be solved."
When I asked Deputy Mayor for Operations Mark Shaw if the administration had considered restoring any area that the Giuliani administration had neglected, he said he didn't know. Council members, besieged by demands to restore local services such as parks, libraries, and senior centers, may be prone once again to letting the needs of discrimination victims slip through the cracks. But many new members come from civil rights backgrounds. Councilmember Alan Jennings (D-Queens) said that this issue "is on the radar. If the commission is not effective and has no teeth, why bother having it?"
City Council General Welfare Committee chair Bill Di Blasio (D-Brooklyn), who has oversight of the commission, was not familiar with the Bar Association report on the human rights commission, but committed to reviewing it.
Mayor Bloomberg has appointed Patricia Gatling, a former first assistant district attorney in the Brooklyn DA's office, as the new chair of the human rights commission. She is already doing the kind of outreach and consultation that her predecessor refused to do. But without new resources, she will not be able to clear up the backlog of more than 4,000 cases.
Civil rights leaders like Howie Katz, former director of the New York region of the Anti-Defamation League, are hoping that the commission will also resume a high profile during times of intergroup tension. "There was a rash of anti-Muslim incidents after September 11th," he said. "The first agency that should have been out there was the human rights commission to foster tolerance, build bridges between communities, and bring down the level of hostility directed at the Muslim community. But they were nowhere to be seen."
Whether commission will be able to do its job again may depend on the outcome of the next few months of budget negotiations.
Three of the police officers convicted of violating Abner Louima's civil rights in 1997 when he was tortured and abused by Police Officer Justin Volpe had those convictions overturned on February 28 by the Second US Court of Appeals. Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network told the Associated Press that the ruling was "a shocking display of how the judicial system continues to fail to protect citizens from police abuse" and that the court "in effect says that Volpe acted alone when that is not only not the evidence, but physically impossible."
Officer Charles Schwarz was ruled to be entitled to a new trial. The court held that there was insufficient evidence to convict Officers Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder. Volpe continues to serve a 30-year sentence and does not deny his culpability.
Louima sued the city and the Police Benevolent Association and secured an $8.7 million settlement in the case. Eugene Nickerson, the federal judge in the original trials, died on New Year's Day.
Sylvia Rivera fought police harassment at the Stonewall Rebellion, sparking the modern gay rights movement in 1969, and was fighting with more mainstream gay leaders this year over inclusion of "gender identity" in the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act pending in Albany. After a life of struggle, she died of liver cancer on February 19.
Born Rey Rivera Mendoza on the Lower East Side, at the age of ten in 1961 she was thrown out onto the streets where she survived through sex work. She was delighted by and participated in the militancy of gay people at Stonewall, but, as a drag queen, quickly found herself marginalized in the gay movement that emerged-as radical as it was. She founded Street Transvestites (now Transgender) Action Revolutionaries in the early 1970s.
While transgendered people were not explicitly included in the city gay rights law that was enacted in 1986, Mayor Giuliani insisted that they were already covered under an interpretation of the existing human rights law. Nevertheless, there is a Council bill that would add "gender identity and expression" to the categories in the city law. The amendment is supported by Mayor Bloomberg, has 26 council co-sponsors, and is expected to pass this year.
After a packed funeral service at the Metropolitan Community Church on Tuesday, February 26, some of Rivera's ashes were scattered at the Stonewall bar in Greenwich Village and another spoonful into the Hudson River, along which she often dwelled as a homeless person. In recent years, she lived at Transy House in Brooklyn, a residence for transgendered people, where she was known as "Ma."
Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly Gay USA on Channel 35 on Thursdays at 11 PM.
New York City has been the scene of a St. Patrick's Day parade or procession since 1762. Sometimes there have been as many as three on the same day due to splits within the Irish community.
The most prominent split in recent years began in 1991, when the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization first applied to march in the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade run by the Ancient Order of Hibernians. They were put on a waiting list, supposedly because the city limited the length of the parade. When Mayor David Dinkins offered to let the parade run longer to include all on the waiting list, the Hibernians refused the gay group's application. Their argument, eventually made in court, was that the parade is a Roman Catholic celebration and that homosexuality violates Catholic teaching. After some furious negotiations, the more liberal Division 7 of the Hibernians agreed to play host to the gay group within their contingent. Though the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization was not allowed to carry their banner, they were joined by the mayor, who usually marched at the front of the parade. They were cheered along the parade route but mostly jeered. A beer can was launched at Mr. Dinkins head and he wrote in a New York Times op-ed that it reminded him of marching through Birmingham, Alabama on a civil rights protest.
The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that parades are protected by the First Amendment and can include whomever they wish. In 1998, the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization lost a federal suit against Mayor Rudy Giuliani over the right to demonstrate up Fifth Avenue prior to the parade. The court said that the police department's contention that such a demonstration was a threat to public safety was not unreasonable. So the cops have to handle the arrest of scores of protestors trying to march instead.
The Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization is still excluded from the Manhattan St. Patrick's Day march. Parades in the Bronx, Staten Island, and Brooklyn also keep Irish gay groups out. But a St. Patrick's Parade and Irish Fair was started in Queens in 2000 that welcomes all comers. This year, it will be held on March 3.
At one time, a politician's place in a St. Patrick's Day parade was an indication of his or her status in the Irish community. Now, given the gay boycott of parades that exclude gay contingents, a politician is judged by whether or not he or she marches at all.
As mayor, David Dinkins stayed out of the parade after his 1991 experience. But in 1993, his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, ordered the arrest of over 230 demonstrators supporting the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization on St. Patrick's Day.
There was a time prior to his mayoralty that Rudy Giuliani himself stayed away from the Manhattan parade because of its anti-gay policy. But as mayor, he proudly marched up Fifth Avenue with the Hibernians, often going over the route several times.
Candidate Mike Bloomberg boycotted the Manhattan parade in 2001, but plans to march this year. His spokesman, Ed Skyler, told the Daily News that "the mayor believes the best way to change an organization is from within," which raises the question why Bloomberg resigned from discriminatory private clubs just before running for mayor.
Councilmember Christine Quinn, an out lesbian who has been arrested supporting the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, said, "If the mayor actually analyzed the history of the struggle, he would see that his decision is wrong. Many people have tried to work with the Ancient Order of Hibernians from within and it has been proven that it doesn't work. Well-respected Hibernians have tried and couldn't. No reason to believe this mayor can."
New York's US Senators are split. Chuck Schumer boycotts exclusionary parades. Candidate Hillary Clinton marched in both the inclusive and the exclusive St. Patrick's Day parades in 2000 and found a reason to be out of town last year on March 17.
Gov. George Pataki marches in the Fifth Avenue parade. State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, who wants Pataki's job, hasn't marched in a St. Patrick's Day parade up until now ("I haven't been invited," he told Gotham Gazette), but said, "I haven't made up my mind," about this year's parade.
Aine Duggan, a spokesperson for the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, said that hers is a "hopeful" group, but they do not even communicate with the Ancient Order of Hibernians. "We understand Bloomberg's interest in marching because we share it," she said. "But we will only march in it if it is inclusive. If they discriminate we would ask him not to march. We need to give them the motivation to work with us." Her group is asking sponsors to withdraw from the parade and is forming a coalition with Razem, a Polish gay group that is excluded from October's Pulaski Day Parade.
The Manhattan and Queens parades are both dedicated this year to the fallen heroes of September 11th. The Fifth Avenue parade, on Saturday March 16 this year, has as its grand marshal Catholic Cardinal Edward Egan, an opponent of civil rights protections for gay people. The Queens parade is highlighting the life of Father Mychal Judge, the fire chaplain who died at the Trade Center, who was a gay man who supported gay and AIDS causes. Brendan Fay, a lead organizer of the Queens event, said that a contingent of fire fighters from Drogheda outside of Dublin is coming over for his parade. While he is disappointed with Bloomberg's plans to march on Fifth Avenue, they welcome the Mayor's participation in the Queens event.
The Fifth Avenue parade has had its share of internal controversy this year. Its president, William Flynn, a former grand marshal, resigned in frustration in August over resistance to his attempts to bring order to the group's fiscal dealings. He also favored resolving the dispute with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization. State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office is conducting an investigation of the parade committee.
The Giuliani administration had a policy in recent years of detaining anyone arrested in a demonstration for at least 24 hours. A lawsuit from private civil rights attorney Jonathan Moore, joined by the New York Civil Liberties Union, led to the reversal of that policy. Moore says that those unreasonably detained within the last three years can sue and expect a settlement.
The Bar Association of the City of New York issued a scathing report in December chronicling the decline of the City Commission on Human Rights over the last ten years and making recommendations on how to breath some life into it. The report can be read on the Bar Association's website.
Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly Gay USA on Channel 35 on Thursdays at 11 PM.