…..and what went down at the Annual Montgomery County “Friendship Picnic”?
Montgomery County Council President Evan Glass (Democrat, At-Large) made some local headlines this week by proposing [via a letter to Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich] a “task force” to “tackle the incidents that he described as “disturbing and frightening.” Per the letter:
Council President Evan Glass said in a letter to County Executive Marc Elrich that the task force would “promote safety and combat hate crimes,” including those targeting Black, Asian American, Latino, religious and LGBTQ+ communities.
Montgomery County already has a Montgomery County Committee Against Hate Violence. It is organized under the County Office of Human Rights. The Committee is already hitting its ‘diversity’ target as well:
The Committee consists of 15 voting members and six ex-officio, non-voting members. Each voting member must reside in the County. The voting members must broadly reflect the geographic, economic, and social diversity of the County. At least nine voting members should be identified with ethnic or other groups frequently subjected to acts of hate/violence in the County.
What does the Committee purport to do? Per the County’s own website:
The duties of the Hate/Violence Committee are to develop and distribute information about hate/violence, promote educational activities that demonstrate the positive value of ethnic and social diversity; advise the County Council, the County Executive, and County agencies about hate/violence in the County, and recommend such policies, programs, legislation, or regulations as it finds necessary to reduce the incidences of acts of hate/violence.
Doesn’t this sound pretty much precisely what CM Evan Glass is proposing with his “anti-hate task force”? Are we just duplicating efforts here? And is this admission that the committee isn’t effective?
Glass said the Justice Department has funding, training and technical assistance for state and local agencies and community organizations to help with the rise in crimes on the basis of race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.
The Montgomery County Office of Human Rights web page is a bit of a hodge-podge of things (such as a “life changing” all-inclusive tour experience through the American South, see screen shot below), but on it we found a video of the most recent ‘Committee Against Hate Violence’ Meeting.
The link to the YouTube hosted video (appears published on February 23, 2023) implies it is the “February 2023” meeting but it appears to be from January 11, 2023 per the video tag in the bottom left corner of speaker’s screens (also below).
Anyways, if a viewer skips ahead to the 2 hour, 5 minute and 57-second mark, what commences is a discussion on Montgomery County (aka the taxpayer) pre-paying for food from various people as part of the “free” Montgomery County Friendship Picnic in Wheaton, MD, and needing to get reimbursed ($2,100) for services not rendered.
Montgomery County Office of Human Rights Director James L. Stowe tries to approach the situation delicately. It sounds like a person, “Ann”, who appears was contracted to provide ethnic food for the picnic, did not meet County Health and Food Safety guidelines required for food servers participating, and thus was prevented from serving food at the Friendship Picnic event by an inspector, presumably a County employee.
“Committee Against Hate Violence” member Vanessa Morris says that getting the County refunded by Ann (for amounts already pre-paid) might be difficult. She “wasn’t at the event”, but notes that this situation [of being disallowed to serve food that was pre-paid for] led to conflict at the event and accusations by some people there at the Friendship Picnic of “personal” attacks towards Ann, spilling into attacks towards “women and minorities”. Morris also notes that the food in question was “chickpeas, not chicken” as the inspector seemed to think.
Committee Chair Lisa Taylor later chimes in to say she was there [at the picnic] and doesn’t recall a ‘hostility’ towards women or minorities in the exchange but does worry about the “optics of the big bad County pushing down on a small woman-owned business, asking for their money back.”
Again, this is all presumably happening at the Montgomery County Friendship Picnic. Sponsored by the Committee Against Hate Violence.
The discussion then veers into whether the County is seeking reimbursement from another vendor at the event as well, who only served “about 50%” of their hot dogs and hamburgers because of County Health inspector concerns as well. Committee Chair Taylor notes that only about 50-60% was “served” because of health inspector checks, but that “we ended giving it out anyways.”
We’ll spare you the rest of the enlightening discussion on the vagaries of contract law.
What on earth happened at this picnic back in September? What in the blazes is going on with the County Committee Against Hate Violence? Shouldn’t CM Glass be going there first and working with them, before trying to set up yet another “task force” to combat hate?
