The Council discussed racism in FPSE and whether the Council should apply to be the Neighborhood Leadership Team (NLT) in the Sustainable Neighborhoods Initiative  

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Minutes of the November 27, 2001 board meeting
Approved January 22, 2002

 
Attendance and minutes
   Present: Sr. Leah Holzum, Kim Jayne, Eugene Fowler, Diana Green, Sarah Green, Ernestine Isaiah, Lisa von Stamwitz, Brian Wilson, Serena Muhammed, Pamela Talley, Bob Babione, Dan Scott, Don DeVivo, Anne Thompson, Joan Botwinick.
   The October minutes were approved as submitted.
  
Announcements
   Two residents reported that the sheriff's office was allowing the destruction of furniture during the "set out" process. No one else reported experiencing that.
Discussion
   The Council discussed racism in FPSE. Bob suggested that a committee work on this and said that Serena had offered to help locating resources. The committee would meet regularly and members would have to be committed to following through. Action would be research and doing things in the neighborhood. Some observations were: there is a need to involve the leadership in the community to see where they are coming from; the neighborhood is split and there is a lack of trust; we seem to elect leaders who do not work for our goals and do not work in the interest of the low-income black families.
   One issue is that the statue of Christopher Harris has been kept out of FPSE although many felt it is an important symbol that should be kept in the neighborhood as a reminder and as a motivation for improvement. Also, there is a decreasing percentage of white families and some white families may be feeling discrimination. According to the 2000 census, the black-white ratio changed from about 60-40 in 1990 to about 80-20 in 2000.
   In a related matter, Serena is trying to pull together a meeting of all community stakeholders so they get to know each other better and share information on what they and their organizations do.
Neighborhood Leadership Team
   Should the Council apply to be the Neighborhood Leadership Team? Even after general discussion and distribution of materials from ARCHS, the general feeling was that more information was needed before individuals could make an intelligent decision.

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