Activist Blasts Rights Council, Plans New Group

Denouncing the Glendale Human Relations Council as an do-nothing organization, a former chairman declined pleas for his re-nomination last week and vowed instead to establish a separate civil-rights group in Glendale.

“I want to belong to an organization that believes in taking visible action. I’m not interested in essay contests and cookie sales . . . and, unfortunately, what I see here is an organization of inaction,” former chairman Ray Reyes said at the end of a tumultuous council meeting last Thursday.

His remarks came after three of the council members asked Reyes to continue serving as chairman. Shortly after Reyes declined, council member Geri Brown was elected chairwoman.

The non-governmental organization polarized last month after Reyes insisted upon sponsoring a controversial debate with a Glendale-based white supremacist organization. That forum at the Glendale Central Library dissolved into a brawl between racist and radical groups before it could begin, prompting city officials and some members of the Human Relations Council to condemn Reyes for embarrassing the city.

Meeting Disintegrates

Reyes’ critics in the group--about half the membership--called for his ouster as chairman and submitted their own slate of four officers and nine directors for the election. The three-hour election meeting last Thursday then fell into disarray.

Don Renterria, a Reyes backer, lashed out at members who drew up the anti-Reyes slate. “The way I feel right now is that you’re excommunicating me!” Renterria shouted.

“Your style isn’t what’s wanted here,” retorted Scott McCreary, a leader in the movement to oust Reyes. McCreary has described the former chairman’s tactics as too confrontational.

Following Reye’s refusal to continue to serve, the anti-Reyes slate won on a 7-6 vote, although several of the winning nominees did not attend the meeting.

Brown, the new chairwoman, had been elected to head the group after its formation last fall, but relinquished the position to Reyes in February after she became too ill with cancer to serve. Her disease has since gone into remission.

During Thursday’s meeting, in an apparent attempt to mend the philosophical rift, Brown offered to forfeit her nomination if Reyes would agree to resume as chairman.

‘We Need His Passion’

“I am asking Mr. Reyes to reconsider. We need his leadership, we need his passion,” she told the group. At least two others also asked Reyes to stay.

But Reyes, standing at the back of the room, his arms folded over his chest, declined the request with a shake of his head and a simple, “No.”

“There’s no way I could go back 25 years,” Reyes said after the meeting. “They want to spend time changing the hearts of the persecutor and I want to spend time raising the hopes of the persecuted. It’s not to say they’re wrong--we’re just different.”

McCreary was elected vice chairman, while members Scott Cole and Gerry Rankin became secretary and treasurer, respectively. McCreary said the council’s primary goal will be to re-establish credibility with Glendale officials.

The vote was preceded by a presentation in which Reyes, a veteran Latino activist who heads a counseling service for minority and low-income students at Glendale Community College, criticized the city’s affirmative-action policy. He said the municipal payroll lacks minority representation at middle- and top-management levels.

“What we have, my friends, is literally the vision of a pyramid. . . . There is color at the bottom but, as you gradually get to the top, it seems to get bleached out,” he said.

Reyes went on to propose several recommendations to the city, including a management-trainee program for minorities and a plan to hire more minorities for the Glendale Police Department.

Call for Postponement

But his call for council adoption of the recommendations was cut short after the Rev. Jim Anderson, a council member, suggested that the group postpone a vote until a copy of the report and recommendations could be sent to the full membership.

That move, Reyes said, made him finally decide to leave the group.

Reyes said he will quickly organize a new group to lobby for the rights of minorities and women. The group’s first action, he said, will be to present City Council with a detailed critique of Glendale’s affirmative-action policy.

The Glendale Human Relations Council, which was founded in 1963, was disbanded in 1980 but resurrected last November partly in response to racist graffiti scrawled on the walls of a Brand Boulevard delicatessen owned by a black woman.