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City of San Diego Hiring Practices

February 1, 2021

Councilmember LaCava
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101 		Council President Campbell
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101 		Councilmember Whitburn
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101
Councilmember Montgomery Steppe
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101 		Councilmember Von Wilpert
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101 		Councilmember Cate
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101
Councilmember Campillo
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101 		Councilmember Moreno
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101 		Councilmember Elo-Rivera
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101
Mayor Todd Gloria
City Administration Building
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101

Dear Mayor and Members of the San Diego City Council,

The work between the Mayor and City Council for our city’s economic recovery provides an opportunity to correct decades-long inequities. Underrepresented citizens and, specifically blacks, are not treated equally when it comes to being hired for full-time positions with benefits.  Many are hourly employees doing the work equivalent to salaried employees but are not afforded the same benefits. The Covid epidemic has exposed a massive discrepancy in the availability of health benefits and the delivery of health services. The City of San Diego can lead the way to correct these unfortunate inequities.

We would like the City Council to request the Mayor to direct the permanent Chief Operating Officer to provide plans from the various departments that describe the current levels of employment along with their plans to adjust current hiring and promotion practices so that current employees can obtain elevated positions that provide benefits. We also request opportunities be opened up for others who are interested in becoming city employees.

Qualified individuals who could be great assets to the City are often denied the opportunity due to lack of diversity on the interview panels, nepotism, and, in some cases, a lack of interest in hiring or promoting the best and brightest. We believe the city is better than that and look forward to your response.

 

Thank you,

Francine Maxwell, President
NAACP San Diego Branch

 

Founded in 1919 after a visit by renowned author, activist and NAACP co-founder, W.E.B. DuBois, the NAACP San Diego Branch is celebrating a century of standing sentry over the civil rights of the people of San Diego. If you need more information about the NAACP San Diego Branch, please visit sandiegonaacp.org/presskit

PO Box 152086
San Diego CA 92195

(619) 431-1633 Phone/Text
[email protected]
www.sandiegonaacp.org

Celebrating 102 years of civil rights advocacy in San Diego

Letter to Family Health Centers Regarding Diversity

Jan 14, 2021

Fran Butler-Cohen
Family Health Centers of San Diego
823 Gateway Center Way
San Diego, California 92102

Dear Mrs Butler-Cohen,

The NAACP San Diego branch requires your immediate assistance with a pressing issue which you may not be fully aware of.

Rather than much needed hospitals, the 4th district must rely on your Family Health Centers of San Diego clinics for healthcare. None offer sufficient after-hour or urgent care services. As such, our citizens are left without access to much-needed health care. This has left many to resort to reaching outside of our community for services, where they are faced with long waits to be seen, or even worse, turned away.

The urgency of the situation is compounded upon the fact that many residents in the 4th district have been deemed to be essential workers and cannot work remotely from home. As such, Covid-19 numbers remain higher in poverty-stricken areas of San Diego where they cannot even get proper health care.

There are only a handful of hospitals in our area where your clinics are prominently located throughout southeastern San Diego. Your clinics and urgent care centers are vital in keeping our community healthier in a time when they are needed most.

Being one of the largest privately owned healthcare providers in San Diego, it is important that we have a strong working relationship with you where the impact benefits those who are most in need of your services. Family Health Care Centers of San Diego must provide expanded services and hours that would help us gain the upper hand with Covid-19 in district 4.

The NAACP San Diego branch requests a workforce diversity study be done regarding your employees. The study needs to be completed and returned to us by the 28th of January 2021.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. We look forward to working alongside you as you lead by example in our community.

Sincerely,

Wiley Lane III

Chairman Economic Development Committee
NAACP San Diego Branch

PO Box 152086
San Diego CA 92195

(619) 431-1633 Phone/Text
[email protected]
www.sandiegonaacp.org

Celebrating 102 years of civil rights advocacy in San Diego

Founded in 1919 after a visit by renowned author, activist and NAACP co-founder, W.E.B. DuBois, the NAACP San Diego Branch is celebrating a century of standing sentry over the civil rights of the people of San Diego. If you need more information about the NAACP San Diego Branch, please visit sandiegonaacp.org/presskit

Watch: SDG&E Townhall

We are grateful for the time of Mr Mitchell and his team.

SDG&E Townhall

naacpsd #naacp

Got questions about what goes into your bill?

Wondering about utility undergrounding?

Come get answers from San Diego Gas and Electric.

(General questions only; specific energy bills/properties will not be discussed.)

Presenting for SDG&E:

  • Mitch Mitchell, Vice President
  • Warren Ruis, Community
  • Tashonda Taylor, Operation
  • Adam Pierce, Rates
  • Kellen Gill, CCA Communications

Op-Ed: Yes to Reparations for Slavery

November 18, 2020

Yes to Reparations for Slavery

The NAACP San Diego Branch applauds Assemblywoman Weber’s proposal to create a commission to study reparations for the enslavement of more than 4 million Africans and their descendants from 1619 to 1865. As recognized by Weber’s Bill, AB3121, the true costs of slavery and the systematic racism that followed, continues to reverberate, denying African Americans economic prosperity, educational opportunities and the full panoply of rights guaranteed under the U.S. and California Constitution. 

As recognized by the United States with victims of the Holocaust, Japanese internment camps and Native American victims of “manifest destiny”, the United States has a moral and legal imperative to study not only how individual and corporate slaveowners wrongfully benefited from labor and lives of enslaved people, but to compensate for the economic and cultural damage caused by 400 years of systemic racism. These three historic examples of reparations can help us understand how to confront USA’s “original sin.”

In 2000, the US government (Clinton) signed a treaty whereby Germany agreed to set aside 10 billion Deutsche marks to compensate all United States victims of the Nazis. Both the German Government and German companies (most notably Deutsche Bank AG, Volkswagen, and BMW) contributed equally to a fund known as the “Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future” Fund. Such treaty ended series of class action lawsuits known as the “In re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation” to compensate Jews and non-Jews specifically for slave and forced labor they performed for German industry during the war. One of the lawsuits resulted in a $1.25 billion dollar settlement by Swiss Banks for victims of the Holocaust. Before the treaty was signed, President Bill Clinton established the “The Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States,” to investigate U.S. assets acquired after 1933, and to determine whether any U.S. assets were originally the property of European Jews.

In 1988, the US government (Reagan) signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which provided $20,000 in reparations (tax free) to the surviving victims of the Japanese Internment Camps. This bill paid nearly 62,000 surviving victims. Before the passage of this law, the US Congress created a special commission to examine the issue of reparations and recommended that compensation be paid, concluding that the evacuation order, based on war hysteria and racial prejudice, violated Japanese families’ Constitutional rights. 

In 1946, the US government passed the Indian Claims Act of 1946 to thank Native Americans for their military service in WWII. The US government created the “Indian Claims Commission” which allowed First Nation tribes to bring claims (such as takings of land) against the United States. By the time the Commission was adjourned in 1978, the US Government awarded $818,172,606.64 in claims. 

The government should study reparations for the enslavement of African Americans.  Reparations are not only moral imperative but can also be justified under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protections of the laws.” 

While the 14th Amendment was not ratified until five years after the Emancipation Proclamation and three years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, it precepts are still applicable today.  African Americans were wrongfully deprived of their life, liberty and property by a cruel and inhumane institution.  It is now time to restore, the extent practicable, such life, liberty and property that was wrongfully taken by slavery. 

Undoubtedly, there will be pushback from those who do not understand or refuse to recognize the unjust enrichment that slavery provided to the Nation.  But, we must overcome such prejudice and attempt to repair our Nation’s “original sin.”  Creating a task force to study reparations is an important first step that was taken both by President Reagan and Clinton. The NAACP San Diego Branch will continue to support Dr. Weber’s efforts in Sacramento to heal our Nation. 

Legal Redress Committee
NAACP San Diego Branch

The Disparity Study Must Be Transparent

November 4, 2020

Mayor Kevin Faulconer
City Admin Building
11th Floor 202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101
Council President Gómez
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101		Councilmember Cate
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101		Councilmember Moreno
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101
Councilmember Bry
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101		Councilmember Kersey
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101		Councilmember Sherman
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101
Councilmember Campbell
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101		Councilmember Montgomery
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101		Councilmember Ward
City Admin Building
10th Floor
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101

Dear Mayor and President and Members of the San Diego City Council,

We were pleased to meet with some of the team heading up the City’s Disparity Study last week.  We appreciated their experience, frankness, and eagerness for input.

Among the issues we raised today was our desire for the Study process to be transparent.  To that end, we request that the City share each and every draft of the study with the public as they are received, and not to wait until the formal public comment period to share results.

It was not so long ago that the City-funded Traffic-Stop Disparity study was heavily edited before publication, and many changes made that the community felt amounted to a City attempt to “spin” the study into a direction more favorable to the City.  Changes were even made to key study parameters that had a real effect on the quantitative outcomes of the study.

While we recognize that draft documents may contain errors, we strongly believe that to err on the side of transparency is the only way that the community will believe that justice is being done.

We, the NAACP San Diego Branch and the Urban League, pledge to work with the City to see that drafts are received in good faith, and to work with the City to correct any errors or misunderstandings that might occur.  We do NOT pledge to work with the City to do damage control if the City forces suspicious changes into the study BEFORE it is released to the public.

Please, in these times of difficulty and tension, trust is at an all-time low.  Showing exemplary transparency now is the best way to start repairing that trust.

Sincerely,

Francine Maxwell, President
NAACP San Diego Branch

Arts & Culture Funding

APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN FOR Organizational Support Program (OSP), Creative Communities San Diego (CCSD) AND Cares Grant Initiative (CGI)

Upcoming Workshops: Introduction to Arts and Culture Funding Opportunities hosted by Council Districts-

FY22 RFQ Workshops: OSP & CCSD– Join staff as we take a deep dive into the RFQ and guidelines. 

CARES Grant Initiative Workshop- Join staff as we take a deep dive into the application. Register by clicking on link below:

Office Hours SIGN UP– These 30 min meetings are meant to provide 1:1 support to help you apply.

Fiscal Sponsorship 101– Join if you’re a project producer or a fiscal sponsor and want to learn about applying for funding.

Access all application materials here: https://www.sandiego.gov/arts-culture/funding

Arts & Culture Funding

IT’S TIME TO APPLY!

FY22 Arts & Culture Funding Applications now available!

What funding opportunities are available?

  • Organizational Support Program (OSP): General operating support to arts and culture nonprofits
  • Creative Communities San Diego (CCSD): Arts and culture project support to any nonprofit (fiscal sponsors may be used for projects without a 501c3/501c6)

What’s new this year?

  • Match requirement reduced to 1:1!
  • More workshops!
  • Using a fiscal sponsor? We can help!

What do you need to know? 

RFQ Application Timeline: October 12, 2020 – November 13, 2020

Access all application materials here: https://www.sandiego.gov/arts-culture/funding

Resources to help you apply:

Upcoming Workshops: Introduction to Arts and Culture Funding Opportunities hosted by Council Districts–

FY22 RFQ Workshops: OSP & CCSD– Join staff as we take a deep dive into the RFQ and guidelines. Register by clicking on links below:

Office HoursSIGN UP– These 30 min meetings are meant to provide 1:1 support to help you apply.

Fiscal Sponsorship 101– Join if you’re a project producer or a fiscal sponsor and want to learn about applying for funding.

Check out our website to find resources to apply including technical assistance materials and more: https://www.sandiego.gov/arts-culture/funding

HABLAMOS ESPANOL! Porfavor contacte a Karla si necesita ayuda en español: [email protected]

Let’s take a moment to discuss how we got here…2020 has been a year like no other. And here you are, applying for funding for 2021/2022 when you may not even know when you can open your doors or if you can produce your festival. We’re here to help. We’ve lowered the match requirement to help you with cash-flow. We’ve increased our technical assistance and we’re eager to work with you, one-on-one. Did you know, you can work with a fiscal sponsor if you don’t have a 501c3/501c6 ? You can! Attend our Fiscal Sponsorship 101 workshop where we will cover how to apply with a fiscal sponsor. And, if you are a 501C3/ 501c6 and want to become a fiscal sponsor, we invite you to join the workshop as well! We are available to provide support in Spanish throughout every step of the process. Si necesita ayuda en español, estamos disponibles para apoyarlos en cada paso del proceso.
 Let’s make 2021 and 2022 the best it can be. We’re here to help!