The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

National Advisory Board - CommUNITY 2000

National Advisory Board

The National Advisory Board brought a wealth of knowledge, experience and national perspective to the project. Because of the stature of many of the members, the board also was a repository for an outstanding network of contacts in the civil rights and fair housing arenas and beyond.

Board members made these contacts available to the national and local partners, giving them additional help in addressing community tensions associated with fair housing rights.

Roster

The Advisory Board members were:

• Honorable Nathaniel Jones, National Advisory Board chairman, and Federal Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
• Ronald Chisom, executive director and co-founder of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond.
• David Eisner, vice president of America Online's Corporate Relations Department and the AOL Foundation.
• William Johnston, former senior associate for police and community programming for Facing History and Ourselves in Brookline, Mass., and a 31-year veteran of the Boston Police Department.
• Dan Kessler, executive director of the Birmingham Independent Living Center in Birmingham, AL.
• Dr. Jack Levin, Brudnick Professor of Sociology and Criminology and Director of the Brudnick Center on Conflict and Violence at Northeastern University.
• Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League since 1989.
• Moises Loza, executive director of the Housing Assistance Council.
• Zixta Martinez worked on behalf of the National Fair Housing Alliance from 1995-1999.
• Bernadette Morris, co-owner and founder of Sonshine Communications.
• Rose Ochi, former director of the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice.
• Gary Orfield, professor of education and social policy at Harvard University, teaching in the Graduate School of Education and The Kennedy School of Government.
• Robert Pike, executive vice president of the Allstate Insurance Companies in Northbrook, IL.
• Juliet Saltman, professor emerita of sociology at Kent State University, from which she retired in 1987.
• Mary Scott Knoll, executive director of the Fair Housing Council of San Diego.
• Madeleine Trichel, executive director of the Interfaith Center for Peace.
• Mary Ann Viverette, chief of the Gaithersburg, Maryland Police Department.
• Stephen Wessler, director for the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence at the University of Southern Maine.
• Clarence Wood, director and chief executive officer of the Chicago Community Trust Human Relations Task Force.
• Barry Zigas, executive director of Fannie Mae's housing impact division.

Comments of the Board Members

What follows are the perspectives of a few of the National Advisory Board members as they reflected on their impressions of the first phase of CommUNITY 2000:

Honorable Nathaniel Jones, National Advisory Board Chairman:
"Community 2000 was a means of reaching people to significantly change attitudes. Whether we're talking about housing, churches, schools or the justice system, this project provides a means of touching people, of giving them information to help them understand.
"In addition to consent decrees and mandates, you have to reach people so that they will become advocates. If people are educated in racial cocoons they are ill equipped to function in the real world. CommUNITY 2000 goes at it from the ground up so that people will take an expanded view.
"As for the Advisory Board, we provided a reinforcing effect for those who were, more or less, in the trenches. Meeting with us gave the local partners an opportunity to come up out of the trenches, step back and see how they fit into a broader picture."

Madeleine Trichel:
"I felt the Advisory Board was underutilized. I felt we could have been used more frequently to educate other people. But the projects that CommUNITY 2000 funded have done wonderful work. "This was a great project. I would love to see it continued and spread to more cities."

Michael Lieberman:
"In the fair housing field, CommUNITY 2000 filled a void. I'm not aware of any other projects like it. When people think about housing, they don't think about hate crimes.
"Now, CommUNITY 2000 is open to the charge that, with the exception of the website, there is a little too much focus on hate crimes and not enough on specific housing-related programs. Also, did CommUNITY 2000 successfully answer the question, 'What's unique about housing-related hate crimes? What's unique about community tensions in a housing context?'
"These are legitimate questions. But the fact is that this project put housing related hate crimes on the map. You can't really criticize the project for being a trailblazer."

Gary Orfield:
"HUD gave the CommUNITY 2000 project modest support for a limited time to figure out how to solve problems of neighborhood race relations that have been deeply rooted in our cities since the great African American and Latino migrations.
"Though residential segregation is at the very root of inequality in a society where 80 percent of people live in metropolitan areas, there has never been a large, sustained investment of resources in its eradication."

Steve Wessler:
"What CommUNITY 2000 did was focus attention on hate crimes in an area where there is not normally a focus. I know from years of work in the prevention of hate violence that a very large number of hate crimes occur in neighborhoods. CommUNITY 2000 acknowledges that fact for the first time."