Thread: Commission pondering anti-hate hotline

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/l ... 48,00.html

Boulder commission pondering anti-hate hotline

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News
October 6, 2005

A hotline to stamp out hate sounds like a terrific idea to some Boulder residents, while it frightens others to the core.

And some just sigh, saying it's Boulder being Boulder.

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On Oct. 17, the city's five-member Human Relations Commission will decide whether to adopt a proposal for a hotline and the $30,000 or so of taxpayers' money that would be required to operate it for six months.

If adopted, the hotline number would be publicized and residents would be encouraged to call any time they felt they were treated in a discriminatory or prejudicial way.

The idea grew legs after Phillip Martinez, 38, of Lafayette, was charged with second-degree felony assault and ethnic intimidation in connection with a June attack on Andrew Sterling, 22. Sterling, a black man who lives in Boulder, said he was walking home on June 3 when a man in a van yelled a racial slur, leaped out and punched him twice in the face.

To Paul Danish, a former City Council member and county commissioner, the hotline sounds like "a solution looking for a problem."

Danish said a single incident of alleged racism is insufficient reason to establish such a hotline.

"It's a little much to say, based on that (incident), that Boulder has a problem with hate," he said.

Boulder, like most cities, is moving in the right direction, with far fewer incidents of racial slurs or discrimination than there were 20 or 30 years ago, Danish said.

"I can remember some real bigotry" in trips to other states decades ago, Danish said. "Racism was much more ingrained in America than it is today. And Boulder always had much less of it than elsewhere. And that's true today."

But Bill De La Cruz, a former Boulder Valley school board member, says Boulder is a city in denial about discrimination.

The hotline would give people an opportunity to document incidents, he said. It probably wouldn't lead to prosecutions, but it would catalog the type and number of such incidents to give Boulder residents a better view of their city, he said.

De La Cruz, who is of Mexican, Spanish and Indian descent and has long hair, recalled an incident at a Boulder bank two years ago.

He said he was trying to deposit $2,000 for a friend and take out $100. He was prepared, he said, for the teller to say that he couldn't give him the $100 because the person with the account needed to be present.

Instead, said De la Cruz, the young teller said, "How can I trust that you'll give the money to the person it belongs to?"

De la Cruz said he got an apology from the bank president and the teller admitted he made a judgment about him based on his appearance.

"A hotline would be a way to document those types of behavior, a way to move beyond what people think of from anecdotal information," De la Cruz said.

Charlie von Schlesien, of Niwot, said the proposal is a strike against the First Amendment. She worries that there is an anti-white "reverse bigotry" going on and suspects the hotline is being pushed by people in favor of illegal immigration.

This is Boulder Colorado where you have the LIBERAL University of Colorado where they have a Indian wannabe professor named Ward Churchill who says 9-11 was justified! This is Boulder where the public schools are some of the very best in all of Colorado and where they love bi-lingual education and affirmative action and they have sanctuary laws I believe BUT 92 PER CENT of the people who live in BOULDER are shiny white and a house there costs like $300,000 a year AVERAGE so what you have in Boulder are a bunch of so called LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PROGRESSIVE ELITES who talk the talk but don't walk it! Very few minorities can even live there including ILLEGALS! These are stuck up intellectuals the same like Howard Bozo Dean who run the Democratic Party! The Democratic Party used to be for working people, union members and they had morals on abortion but no more! They have gone wacko and MAD!

As bad as Bush is about immigration the Democrats are WORSE! LA RAZA< MALDEF<ACLU<SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER CARECEN< et al are all in the same bed with the liberal Democrats! Again, what part of the word illegal and deportation and enforcement do they not understand?

There are a few Republicans and conservatives in Boulder...maybe two or three? I would not trust Richardson and Napolitano DEMOCRATS in Arizona or New Mexico as Tancredo says put up or shut up!