Landfill fight moves to human relations commission

Harold C. Fields expresses opposition to the reopening of the White Street Landfill.

A group of constituents angered by the Greensboro City Council’s decision to reopen the White Street Landfill and its handling of political redistricting asked the human relations commission tonight to pass a resolution asking the council to reconsider.

The commission meeting, held at Windsor Recreation Center in District 1, had the feel of an extended session of last night’s marathon city council session, which ended at 2 a.m., with one notable difference: The human relations commission responded sympathetically to the citizens, and some vowed to fight alongside the citizens.

“I know in your ordinance you have the capacity to file a complaint against the council,” former Mayor Yvonne Johnson said. “I’d like for you to consider doing that, because this is not only an economic issue; it is a racial issue. We’ve worked hard to bring this community together, and [reopening the landfill] is a dividing factor for the people in this community.”

The first duty of the human relations commission, which was established in the early 1960s to help the city navigate a period of racial turmoil as black citizens demanded equal treatment, that is listed in the city’s code of ordinances is “to study and make recommendations concerning problems in any or all fields of human relationship and encourage fair treatment and mutual understanding among all racial and ethnic groups in the city.”

The ordinance also states that “the practice of discrimination against any individual or group is contrary to good public policy and detrimental to the peace, progress and welfare of the city.”

After the former mayor spoke, Human Relations Director Anthony Wade entered the meeting and counseled the commission to proceed with caution. Only an hour before the meeting he had received a memo from City Attorney J. Rita Danish. Afterward he said the memo was protected from public release by attorney-client privilege and he would be asking the citizen commissioners to come by his office to review it in person because he does not feel comfortable sharing copies without clarification from the attorney.

Wade summarized Danish’s legal advice as saying that the city’s ordinance narrowly defines the duties of the human relations commission and does not include a provision for the commission to investigate the city, and that further it would be a conflict of interest for the commission to do so.

Wayne Abraham, who formerly chaired the body, said the commission made recommendations to council on a number of issues during his tenure, including the conduct of police officers, sexual orientation and the residual effect of the 1979 Klan-Nazi shootings.

“City council didn’t always want to hear what we had to say,” he said. “But it was our job to say it to them anyway, whether we liked it or not, whether they liked it or not. Whether we would get reappointed for telling them the truth or not was immaterial. Our job was to do what was right for the citizens. So I’m asking you, my fellow commissioners and citizens, to do the same.”

Commissioner Michael Roberto asked Abraham how he dealt with restrictions imposed by the city’s legal department.

“I was advised many times by the city attorney not to take action, and I promptly took care of what I needed to do anyway,” Abraham responded. “I think the distinction that you need to draw is there’s difference between you taking action in a resolution and the word ‘complaint.’ So you might not file a complaint against the council, but you can certainly resolve to deal with an issue…. The city attorney’s job is to limit the liability to the city at all costs, but that’s not your job.

“Choose your language carefully,” he added.

Speaker after speaker argued that the decision of the council’s narrow conservative majority to reopen the landfill is racist.

“I need for you, the human relations commission, to intercede for us humans, to go to them and say, ‘Hey, listen, stop, wait a minute, hear what these people are saying,’” said Sharon Hightower, a resident of southeast Greensboro. “Redistricting, early voting, landfill, $5 million grant they took from the east and made it a citywide issue – these things are serious, serious issues. Not only are they racist issues, they’re classist issues. Because if you’re lower income, you’re disenfranchised. And that’s the way they treat us. We make money. We spend money. We pay taxes. We buy homes. We got mortgage payments, car payments. We are valuable people, too.”

Chris Brook, a staff attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice who is providing pro bono representation to landfill opponents, has indicated in a letter to City Manager Rashad Young that African Americans will disproportionately “bear the environmental and economic burdens” of reopening the landfill, explaining that while the city’s overall combined black and Hispanic population is only 47.7 percent, “the community most directly impacted by the White Street Landfill is overwhelmingly African-American and Hispanic.”

“I feel that if dumping garbage on the minority of us for the benefit of the majority of us and doing it in the name of all of us is not environmental racism, what is?” asked Cheryl Hopkins, a landfill opponent from predominantly white west Greensboro

John Jones, a resident of Woodmere Park who lives near the landfill, said, “I heard the gentleman say, ‘There’s a memo that you need to read before you make a resolution.’ I ask myself: ‘Am I wasting my time?”

One commissioner’s response was an emphatic no.

“If you’re wasting your time, then so am I, because that really infuriates me,” said Roberto, a District 4 representative. “I don’t live in your section of town. But what happens to you, happens to me as well. I don’t know how to prove that unless there comes a time when I’m not a commissioner and I have to lay down under a truck, and do what I did back in the ’60s. Because I did that, too.”

Commissioner Janice Reaves, a District 1 representative, quoted from a poem that juxtaposes lies on a throne with truth on a scaffold, and professed faith in God.

“He is not going to let us fail,” she said. “He is not going to let us go back to the 1960s and 1950s.”

Chairman Abdel Nuriddin said the commission will hold a special session to consider passing a resolution on the landfill.

Wade, his staff counterpart, expressed reservations after the meeting. He said the landfill issue differs from an instance in 2009 when the human relations commission passed a resolution calling on the city council to express regret over the 1979 shootings. In that case, he said, the city manager had requested that the human relations commission review the findings of a truth and reconciliation commission. One of the duties outlined by ordinance for the human relations commission is “to perform such other duties as may be assigned it from time to time by the city council.”

Commissioner Michael Picarelli, a District 3 representative who is also the executive director of the Guilford County Republican Party, said the commission needs to walk a fine line.

"My interpretation of what my role is, is to engage the community and be a voice back to the city council," he said. "We should be able to go to the council and say, 'The community doesn't like this.' The gray area is when the commission allows itself to create policy."

With hopes waning that the landfill can be blocked by legislative means, opponents are now gearing up for a fight in the courts and in the streets.

Chairman Abdel Nuriddin asked Johnson to what degree she believes human relations might be strained by reopening the landfill.

“I think they’re going to be strained to the max because the community, one, has an attorney,” the former mayor said. “They are going to use everything legally. When I say, ‘By any means necessary,’ I certainly mean legally. And there may be some civil disobedience as it was in the sixties. But we’re committed that this landfill is not going to open.”

Goldie Wells, a former council member who – like Johnson – lives near the landfill, suggested opponents might use demonstrations to embarrass the council by putting Greensboro in the national spotlight.

“How would it look if the civil rights museum is right here, the civil rights movement started here and then we go out and start some more marching,” Wells said. “And then the world looks at Greensboro. Do you think anybody’s going to come here and start a new business? Do you think anybody wants to raise their children in a city that is racially divided?"