Description

One of CIC's primary activities was to hold biweekly meetings called "community dialogues" to discuss broad issues such as racism, police sensitivity, education, and employment discrimination within the city of San Diego. The meetings were moderated by CIC Executive Director Carroll Waymon, and his voice is often the first one heard in the audio recordings. This meeting had a showing of public officials, including new representation from the welfare department and the deputy city attorney of San Diego, along with the usual community members and a number of observers. It opened with reports on some actions that had taken place as requested at the previous meeting, in an attempt to hold members accountable for promises made. The first report was by Waymon, who had met with District Attorney Don Keller. Keller had agreed to go before the San Diego Board of Supervisors and request that the top county administrator be appointed to attend these dialogues. The other report detailed a meeting with the executive director of the 200th Anniversary Planning Committee, to insure inclusion of minority groups at all levels of planning. A meeting with members of the press and television served to open communication about their role in providing good coverage of these meetings. Most of this meeting dealt with recent criticisms by public officials of the Economic Opportunity Commission (EOC) including its Leadership Training Program, one agency established as part of the War on Poverty. The group attempted to focus on different perceptions held by the majority and minority groups about these criticisms, and about the EOC in general. It was concluded that some perceptions and reactions might have been based on faulty information promulgated by the press, and it was suggested that a meeting be held with the Board of Supervisors to ascertain what feedback they actually intended to convey regarding the EOC. Some felt strongly that the results of fact-finding should be released back to the community, in an attempt to prevent the "hardening" of attitudes created by the earlier press releases. The Citizens Interracial Committee continued to experience internal dissonance about their role and purpose, specifically, whether or not meeting merely to dialogue about various issues was meaningful without engaging in action to resolve those issues.