01-14-19 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING January 14, 2019 work they have done and also the work that is being done throughout the State of Indiana. I'm proud to state that I'm a member of Delta Sigma Theta(DEO) National Sorority, the South Bend Alumnus Chapter. On February 26th, we, throughout the State of Indiana, will be having what is called Delta Days at the State Capitol. One(1) of the position papers that we will be presenting is dealing with hate crimes. We are committed to working closely with our elected officials. We will probably have sixty(60) or so Deltas, as we are called, there who will be really dealing with this issue. Hopefully, we will have a positive outcome. I am encouraged as the governor has made some very strong statements. We will hold him and other elected officials accountable for ensuring that Indiana will become one (1) of those states that has passed such an enactment of law, so we won't have to deal with hate within our community. We know we will,but we will have some laws in which we can deal with it and hold those individuals accountable for their acts of hatred within our society and state. Again, thank you so much. I also wish to thank all of you who are in the audience for your work and also being present as we move this particular resolution forward. Councilmember Tim Scott stated, It was years ago that my three (3) colleagues to the left of me voted for the GLBT Ordinance change in South Bend and that was long overdue. We just did the Pledge tonight, and justice for all is a part of that pledge. We truly need to live by that. Thank you Councilmembers Broden and Voorde for your work on this and everybody else's work on this. When you read that, we are down to the last five(5) states. We don't want to be in the last five(5) states. I take pride in South Bend being a leader. It has come a long way with changes in Administration, no disrespect to old Administrations, and Council Members coming on. We've made changes and have moved forward. I remember years ago there was a phrase that came from the senior Ferlic and that was that forward-thinking communities include everybody. We need to do that. We need to send that message downstate. We've done a couple resolutions in the past and I was told before, by our Legal Department, that we don't send messages downstate. That is not what we should do. I really pushed to say,no,we are going to do that. One(1)was on the Religious Freedom Act, we did send a message downstate on that. We represent people in the City of South Bend. When you hear strongly from them, we need to use our position on Council to send that message. While it is just a resolution, it means a lot when you can send that downstate or even send it off to the US Congress or Senate. I'm very proud of that precedent that we've started. This being the time heretofore set for the Public Hearing on the above bill, proponents and opponents were given an opportunity to be heard. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, offices located on the 14th floor of the County-City Building, South Bend, IN, stated, I promise to be brief. I wanted to take the opportunity to add my support. I want to thank the Council for taking up this issue and the sponsors for their leadership. I appreciate the acknowledgement of Christina Brooks, our Diversity Inclusion Officer who I saw just a while ago. She, unfortunately, had to be at another community meeting but I know this is very important to her as it is to all of us in the office of this Administration. We believe that this is not the first(1St) time that South Bend can be a little bit ahead of the rest of Indiana. We hope that by stepping out in front of this issue, it is one (1) more consideration for the Indiana General Assembly to do the right thing. It is long past time for Indiana to join most of the rest of the United States on this issue. As it was eloquently said before, this is not about legislating thought. This is about sending a message that harm coming to people, for reasons of hate, is doubly bad and doubly harmful to our community.As to whether there is a need for this, I believe there always was but there is a national increase, as spotty as the data may be,there is a clear pattern of a national increase and an increase here in our state in hate crimes and hate incidents. We're not here to apportion blame for that, we are here to come together around the need for that to change. If there is any spread of anything convincing in the objections that have been made to this legislation, I think it comes from the idea of freedom because our society and our country is, to our credit, unusually accommodating of the idea that people should be able to say or believe what they want. So much so that we protect people's ability to say and think detestable things. But it would be a very narrow idea of freedom that thinks that this means we cannot take action on hate crime because hate crime is about harm to other people. It is not just about what you think, it is about what you do. I would argue that freedom from hate is more important than freedom to hate. That is the conclusion that most states in our country have drawn, and I hope ours will as well. It is also uplifting to see so many members of the community here to support this resolution because I think it reflects the diversity that is the strength of our community. It is very much South Bend's values to state that whoever you are, and 6