John Kirby, an Ontario city councilor, turned to history Tuesday to explain his support for keeping the city’s Diversity Advisory Committee.
He did so as the Ontario City Council considered the future of the committee. That fate has been a subject of council and community debate in recent weeks.
But Kirby wanted people to remember the World War II era, when President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order forcing the relocation of Japanese Americans away from the West Coast.
According to the U.S. National Archives, the order resulted in the move of 122,000 people, including 70,000 U.S. citizens to internment camps.
Kirby said Ontario’s then-mayor and the city council stepped up, welcoming Japanese Americans to Ontario.
“We have an opportunity as a community to face a similar issue,” Kirby said.
He noted Malheur County’s diverse population – “people who may be brown skinned, darker skin, maybe speak a language that doesn’t even come from Central or South America.”
He encouraged the council to “go forth boldly but with the ability to be welcoming.”
“I know that among a certain population in Ontario, what I’m saying right now, they’re going to be, they’re ready to tar and feather me.”
–Councilor John Kirby
The council elected not to disband the volunteer committee. Instead, with Kirby’s motion, it voted 7-0 to table action on proposed changes to the committee’s mandate. The councilors sent the proposal to the diversity committee for its own recommendations.
The action capped uncertainty about the committee. At the urging of City Manager Dan Cummings, the council had considered the risk of keeping the committee. There was concern that the city would get crosswise with President Donald Trump and his efforts to scrub diversity efforts from the federal government.
But councilors subsequently got legal advice that the committee could safely continue with technical changes to the city law. Those proposals, now to be considered by the diversity committee, underscore the committee’s role of representing all citizens – and playing no role in city hiring practices.
Cummings said he agreed with the proposed changes.
“I’m not worried a bit about it,” he told councilors.
Kirby said in his remarks to the council that he grew up in Ontario and “I’ve never seen a presidential executive order come down and be the topic of consideration by the city council.”
He noted political opposition to keeping the committee.
“I know that among a certain population in Ontario, what I’m saying right now, they’re going to be, they’re ready to tar and feather me,” Kirby said.
He noted he just won another four-year term to the council.
In a later interview, Kirby noted that Hispanics have long been part of the community but that “there are Mexican haters.”
Councilor Penny Bakefelt noted the diversity of the staff at Four Rivers Cultural Center, where she is the executive director. She said she is “energized” by the mix.
“I’m not for dissolving the committee,” she said.
The council acted in the presence of the entire committee. The volunteer group had been struggling with attendance and vacancies, but two people have been appointed recently and Mayor Debbie Folden filled the last slot Tuesday.
She appointed Katherine Collins, a long-time Ontario resident who is now the development director at the Four Rivers Cultural Center.
“As one whose maternal great-grandfather was Mexican and maternal great-grandmother was Chiricahua Apache, I have been especially interested in indigenous cultures,” she wrote in a submission to the city.
By continuing the diversity committee, she wrote, the city “recognizes that the opposite of DEI – uniformity, inequity, and exclusion – are conditions generally accepted as negative and undesirable.”
During the meeting, another Ontario resident applied to serve. Andi Walsh is a policy adviser for the Portland-based Children’s Institute.
She addressed the council about the importance of the diversity committee.
Walsh described a childhood with parents who had mental illness and substance abuse issues, resulting in her going into foster care.
“No one listened to us. No one asked what we needed,” she said. “The shame I felt then because our family was different and didn’t feel welcomed or like we belonged is not something anyone in Ontario should have to experience.”
Dissolving the diversity committee “betrays the people of Ontario by saying they are not worth hearing,” Walsh said.
Jackie Koehler, Diversity Committee chair, advised the counsel that the committee would announce its annual diversity awards at its next meeting. She invited councilors to attend the session, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 16, and Ontario City Hall.
She told the councilors that their presence “sends a powerful message that Ontario values all of its citizens.”
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