Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Human Rights Commission somehow gnaws through the leash and will hold an open house this Friday.


(Full disclosure: The missus is a member of the Human Rights Commission)

After a daring escape from a dusty shelf in the rear of the city's "be seen but not heard" garage, alongside the bin where economic development plans are stored, the Human Rights Commission is having an open house on Friday afternoon at the Carnegie Center (3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.).

As I wrote earlier this year:

No one's happier than me to see a freshly enabled HRC. This blog was advocating such a revival during the Garner administration. But I must admit it seems strange to have such a nice, shiny new car and keep it parked in the garage. For something that's been here for more than a year, there's already an aura of disuse. It seems almost as though the HRC was reconstituted for no other reason than to serve as laudatory sidebar on a metaphorical website.

The open house aims to introduce the HRC to the public, and familiarize residents with the mechanism for filing complaints.

We've already located on potential area of inquiry: Walkability as a civil rights issue.

It's unfortunate that the HRC has been corralled by city government's incremental, institutionalized, decades-long timidity, but perhaps this will change.

The HRC isn't the only example of "not to be touched" at the current time: After all, there's also this: Mike Ladd: 17 months to receive 2 weeks pay, and other shovel-ready Ethics Commission topics.

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