Wizard raises some good points in her post but did say my comments seemed to say I was not willing to listen to people at the Indian event.
For background: This event was set up after a large group of Indians came to City Hall a couple months ago to discuss incidents with police. There were many people in that audience and I wanted to hear them. I canceled two meetings to be with this group and spent about an hour and a half. Unfortunately most of the citizens who came could not present their points to me because a couple leaders took most of the time. So at that event I said I was sorry that those who came could not speak and we would have another event in the community, in which they didn't have to come downtown, and I could hear their stories. The Indian Center event was planned to be a place where I could hear these individual stories. We also had the head of Internal Affairs there, and representatives of the Civilian Review Board there, so individual incidents could be reported and investigated. I wanted them there because I felt it was important for us to not just hear the reports but property investigate them. The event had some very good moments. However at one point Clyde, who was not on the agenda, spoke for an extended period of time. He made some good points about what has happened over time but much of this had been covered in great depth at the event at City Hall so again the citizens in the audience who wanted to talk were not able to have their chance. I did not "leave early." I was scheduled to be there for one hour and the organizers knew that in that hour I wanted to hear from the citizens who had not yet had a chance to bring their ideas forward. The speeches by Clyde and others took about 2 1/2 hours. The organizers were reminded several times that I was only supposed to be there for an hour and wanted to hear the people but finally at the 2 1/2 hour mark....an hour and a half after I was scheduled to leave....I finally had to go. I am often in situations in which programs run long, it's part of the job, but I considering how much work we went through to make it clear I wanted to hear from citizens in this hour...and the fact that I had been up since 4:30 because I was at the hospital with the family of a shot officer at 4:30 a.m......I finally had to leave. TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
