500 signatures reached
To: David Martin, Melvin Patterson, Mary Telford and Rosalyn Ramos:
Community Open Letter in Support of Current DCARA Board
We, the Bay Area Deaf Community and our supporters, call on you to immediately withdraw your legal actions and accept the wishes of our community for new leadership on DCARA's Board and the continuance of DCARA's Executive Director, Raymond Rodgers.
We are members of the San Francisco Bay Area Deaf Community, which includes Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Late-Deafened, and DeafBlind people. We write this open letter to you in regard to the Deaf organization that is dear to all of us, Deaf Counseling Advocacy and Referral Agency (DCARA), because we believe that you have placed the organization in great peril.
DCARA is a critically important nonprofit agency that serves the SF Bay Area Deaf community by promoting and advocating for the rights of full access to American Sign Language and English, education, employment, and cultural identity of, by, for, and with our community.
In February 2019, Judy Gough, the then DCARA Board President, posted a video-blog on her personal Facebook page in which she directed racist comments toward a Black Deaf American man and his daughter. Deaf community members and DCARA’s staff confronted the Board with the intention of educating them on racial microaggressions and encouraging awareness of implicit bias. The Board, that some of you were part of, reacted in anger and denial of their racist behavior, supported Gough, and retaliated by firing staff members. By these actions, your Board created a huge backlash in our community.
Those who take racist actions, and those that support them, have no place in the Bay Area Deaf community, and no business being in a leadership role at DCARA. At a Board and community meeting on May 21, 2019, three of the Board members (including two of you) entered into an agency agreement in which the Board agreed to resign and allow a new Board to be selected by a diverse, community-led recruitment process. Five new Board members were selected by this recruitment committee, were installed in September 2019, and have been successfully leading the agency ever since.
We are members of the San Francisco Bay Area Deaf Community, which includes Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Late-Deafened, and DeafBlind people. We write this open letter to you in regard to the Deaf organization that is dear to all of us, Deaf Counseling Advocacy and Referral Agency (DCARA), because we believe that you have placed the organization in great peril.
DCARA is a critically important nonprofit agency that serves the SF Bay Area Deaf community by promoting and advocating for the rights of full access to American Sign Language and English, education, employment, and cultural identity of, by, for, and with our community.
In February 2019, Judy Gough, the then DCARA Board President, posted a video-blog on her personal Facebook page in which she directed racist comments toward a Black Deaf American man and his daughter. Deaf community members and DCARA’s staff confronted the Board with the intention of educating them on racial microaggressions and encouraging awareness of implicit bias. The Board, that some of you were part of, reacted in anger and denial of their racist behavior, supported Gough, and retaliated by firing staff members. By these actions, your Board created a huge backlash in our community.
Those who take racist actions, and those that support them, have no place in the Bay Area Deaf community, and no business being in a leadership role at DCARA. At a Board and community meeting on May 21, 2019, three of the Board members (including two of you) entered into an agency agreement in which the Board agreed to resign and allow a new Board to be selected by a diverse, community-led recruitment process. Five new Board members were selected by this recruitment committee, were installed in September 2019, and have been successfully leading the agency ever since.
Why is this important?
In an attempt to regain power you have authorized the filing of multiple lawsuits against DCARA and its new Board members, which attempt to throw out the May 2019 community agreement and the September 2019 election of the current Board. Due to your utter lack of transparency and involvement in the racist incident during spring 2019, you have lost the trust of the Bay Area Deaf community. You should not use the legal system to disenfranchise the Deaf community and forcibly takeover this important nonprofit organization. We, the Bay Area Deaf Community, call on you to immediately withdraw your legal actions and accept the wishes of our community for new leadership on DCARA’s Board and the continuance of DCARA’s Executive Director, Raymond Rodgers.
Here's DCARA Timeline Website:
https://sites.google.com/view/fightfordcara/home
Here's DCARA Timeline Website:
https://sites.google.com/view/fightfordcara/home
How it will be delivered
We, Fight for DCARA committee, plan to deliver the petition to Liann Osborne and Raymond Rodgers' lawyers.