Forging New Ties : Glendale Forums Let Residents Air Their Differences

The way past participants tell it, Meeting No. 1 resembles the beginning of a junior high dance party: Everyone slinks against walls and avoids eye contact. The silence is stultifying.

Separated by race, class and age differences, most of the 60 Glendale residents have never talked to one another before. The city’s Community Forums program has brought them together.

During the next six weeks, the participants will gather weekly to talk about issues ranging from immigration to the media. They will meet in each other’s living rooms, get into shouting matches and share personal experiences.

The city’s eighth annual Community Forums program starts Wednesday. For the first time, the City Council has allocated funds for a professional mediator to run the forums, paying $5,000 to a New York-based human relations organization.

City officials solicit nominations and applications each year for 60 residents who are selected to represent a cross-section of Glendale’s rapidly changing population. During the six-week program, participants split up into groups of 12 to 15 and meet in each other’s homes, discussing topics such as public safety, prejudice and Glendale’s identity.

The community forums are an older, more elaborate version of the city of Los Angeles’ “Days of Dialogue” programs. Three times in the past year, Los Angeles residents have convened at scores of sites to discuss issues of race, violence and society. Los Angeles’ one-day workshops were first organized in response to racial tension fanned by the 1995 acquittal of O.J. Simpson.

Glendale’s forums address a changing and often tense racial climate as well, City Manager David Ramsay said.

“One of the unfortunate aspects of having a sudden increase in immigrants in a relatively homogenous community is that we have problems with the lack of integration. We’re just trying to get people of diverse backgrounds together in each other’s living rooms, simply communicating.”

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Arnold Margolin, a television writer-producer and retired reserve sheriff’s deputy who participated in a forum last year, remembers a heated exchange that occurred when fellow participant Wanda Dorn told of being treated rudely by a police officer because she is African American.

“I felt she was generalizing and smearing law enforcement,” Margolin said. “So we got into it, voices got raised, and I think we scared our facilitators.”

Dorn said that had the same discussion occurred outside of the forums, it might have erupted in contentious accusations. But the mediator and other participants kept the disagreement in perspective.

“Actually, I think it was the beginning of my friendship with Arnold [Margolin],” said Dorn, who a year later still keeps in touch with a couple of co-participants and a mediator. “The most amazing thing was that we all disagreed, but we always looked forward to seeing each other the next week.”

Participants in that group decided to sweeten the deal with food, prepared by each week’s host.

“We learned that everyone’s food had surprising similarities,” Margolin said. “We had Armenian pastries, which were incredible, Mexican food and good old American home cooking. It became an icebreaker to talk about other people’s cultures.”

Kandy Wendell, a city employee, was also in his group. She best remembers a debate sparked by a white participant’s harsh words against immigrants. These comments particularly upset Wendell because there were Armenian immigrants in the group.

“I asked them how they would feel if Glendale was suddenly occupied by a foreign army and had all of its infrastructure, electricity and sewers torn up,” she said. “What if they had to pack up a suitcase and leave to Armenia, where they didn’t know the language? How would they feel?”

Councilwoman Eileen Givens said though forum attendance has been fairly diverse, she is hoping to improve in that area. “We probably don’t know how to tap into the ethnic communities as well as we should. We have to get smarter about reaching people.”