Mayor fails at diversity
By Josh Resnek
In the city of Everett today the population is 92% minority, with the multi-cultural nature of the city increasing everyday. There is very little evidence the city has done anything to encourage this.
Nowhere is this absence of interest in racial balance for the city government more evident than in the city’s most public place, city hall.
In fact, the evidence, that is, what one sees when one gets beyond the nearly entirely white veneer of the employee force of city hall, points to the mayor ignoring the minority population of the city in his archaic, backward and racist hiring policies. He pays lip service to being for everyone in Everett in his public statements.
This is a bold faced lie.
“Everyone” in his lexicon means all those who are not from minorities. They need not apply.
The mayor could care less about minorities.
He has proven this year after year for longer than a decade.
He shows very little real interest in minorities populating the city hall workforce.
City hall’s workforce should not be one group or another occupying all the lesser and better positions.
It isn’t fair. It isn’t just. It is simply wrong to exclude so many for their race or their color.
The mayor is misguided and backward, and very likely bigotted to have such a lopsided almost exclusively non minority work force.
He can’t blame who he’s hired for the imbalance. The employees working their jobs and hired to them by the administration have done absolutely nothing wrong.
Even they understand things must change before city hall exposes itself as being morally bankrupt under this mayor.
I wonder what it is that allows him to look the other way when it comes to hiring minorities?
What is it about him that allows him to say so loudly to himself, “I don’t want minority city employees.”
How can he feel comfortable excluding minority people from the city payroll?
How long will he allow the city to be a failed place when it comes to racial equality and a mixed workforce of multi-culturals and whites?
His failure to hire men and women of color to jobs at city hall is almost criminal these days.
If he cared about minorities, he would hire more of them to jobs at city hall.
He’s had ten years as mayor and there are three city employees of race and color working inside city hall.
I could be off by one or two but I count three.
One of them, a black woman, works near to the front desk, “So it will look as though the mayor hire’s black people,” she has complained to her friends.
She’s worked for the city for seven years, has applied for three jobs to better herself, but has been rejected.
What is that all about? She’s quite bright. Competent. She’s the whole package. What is her problem?
She’s black in the mayor’s white veneered kingdom where he treats his employees like slaves forcing nearly all them to keep their loyalty to him for giving them their jobs instead of giving their loyalty to the city.
Is this her problem?
I hope not.
The mayor will never admit to coercing department heads to hire certain people, to fire others, to not hire certain types of people.
The election of Gerly Adrien has not produced an ounce of genuine outreach to her from the mayor.
I heard he had her up in his office for a one or two hour lecture about how she ought to act and what she needs to do and who she should be speaking with and who she should be avoiding…”or you will get nothing done with me.”
I believe this. Gerly will say nothing about it to me.
I guess he was trying to impress her with the way democracy really works in Everett.
The city’s ticket topping councilor at large is black.
He and his cousins and colleagues worked against her. If they didn’t work against, they just didn’t care to see her win, which is bad enough.
He didn’t want Jimmy Tri Le to win, either.
Has the mayor got something against the Vietnamese in this city? What about Stephanie Martins?
Does he want to own the vote of the only Latina on the council? Who knows.
In neighboring Chelsea when you walk inside the city hall, you immediately notice the workforce is mixed, even weighted toward Hispanics, which is representative of Chelsea’s population mix.
During the 1970’s and 1980’s Chelsea’s population became dominantly multi-cultural and largely Hispanic.
City Hall remained the last bastion for public racism and exclusion by the city government.
Whether all of us like it or not, Everett’s city hall work force is the way Chelsea’s was during the 1970’sand 1980’s.
Everett’s city hall workforce under this mayor is a bastion for racism and exclusion.
The mayor needs to commit himself to hire more minorities or face the simple fact he stands against them.