April 13, 2006

Short Takes

Bad news on Braam

So much for the five-year plan: It’s already off to a bad start in the state’s Braam foster care settlement.

In March, an oversight panel released its first monitoring report on the foster-care reforms required by the settlement, noting that the state has failed to take 32 of the 45 action steps that were required by Dec. 31, 2005, under the implementation plan.

Plaintiff lawyers also cite the state’s failure to request funding in the 2005-07 state budget for required items such as respite care for foster parents, who often leave the program due to burnout.

The reforms are the result of a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of foster children who had been bumped from home to home for years on end without a plan or adequate services.

“ The Braam plan is not optional,” said attorney Casey Trupin with Columbia Legal Services, which has helped launch a new website for foster youth and parents at www.braamkids.org. “We will not allow it to be treated as yet another set of task force recommendations which can be disregarded.”

— Cydney Gillis

Hands off, Vicente

Is it the start of true solidarity? While Mexican immigrants take to the streets for their civil rights in America, members of the United Steelworkers union stood up last week for miners in Mexico.

In a small rally outside Seattle’s Mexican Consulate, the Steelworkers protested the Mexican government’s removal of Napoleon Gomez as head of the National Union of Mine and Metallurgical Workers, or Los Mineros.

Following an explosion that killed 65 miners at Mexico’s Pasta de Concha mine on Feb. 19, Gomez criticized the mine’s owner, Grupo Mexico, for negligence and called for an investigation.

Mexican President Vicente Fox then “removed [Gomez] from office and replaced him with a hand-chosen puppet of Grupo Mexico,” said Gaylan Prescott, an organizer with District 12 of the United Steelworkers.

?Señor Gomez,? Prescott said with a Spanish interpreter, ?is a good friend,?one who supported the Steelworkers? 2005 strike against Asarco by organizing pickets there against Asarco?s owner, which is Grupo Mexico.

“ I saw the news in the TV,” said Rosa Aguilar, a Mexican grandmother who is currently living with her son’s family in Tukwila. “Napoleon Gomez — he supports the workers. Vicente Fox did a big mistake.”

— Cydney Gillis

Reviewing review

The City of Seattle and its police officers’ labor representatives sit down to renegotiate the cops’ contract later this year. Now’s the time for citizens to speak up about citizen oversight of police conduct.

That’s the purpose of an April 18 public hearing on the subject of police accountability in front of the City Council’s Public Safety, Governmental Relations, and Arts Committee.

The meeting is not an opportunity to talk about general safety issues, says staffers at City Councilmember Nick Licata’s office. Instead, the committee is soliciting input about the Office of Professional Accountability, which provides a kind of citizen oversight of the police’s internal investigations into allegations of misconduct or undue use of force. Community activists see shortcomings in the OPA’s process — most recently, in how legal liabilities prevent citizen reviewers of the process from publicly releasing their findings. How the SPD deals with such allegations is a bargaining chip in labor-management relations.

The public hearing starts at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 18 at City Hall.

— Adam Hyla