The Committee Against Hate and Violence (CAHV), not to be confused with the new Anti-Hate Task force, meets on the second Wednesday of each month. The 15 voting committee members are appointed by the County Executive and subject to confirmation by the County Council. In addition to the 15 voting members there are also 6 non-voting members. As described on the website, the duties 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.
Last February, CleanSlateMoCo published a piece titled, CM Evan Glass Proposes Anti-Hate task force, but then what is MoCo’s Committee on Hate/Violence really doing?
The article highlights a YouTube video of one of the committee meetings and a discussion and controversy around the reimbursement of ethnic food vendors for a sponsored picnic.
Amazing, this article caught the attention of at least one member of the committee as CleanSlateMoCo was a topic of conversation during the March 2023 meeting (meeting minutes).
Page 5 of the minutes:
We do not know what was said during the conversation, or what aspects of the article were “troubling” for the committee. However, we do know that they took immediate action. The first thing they did was removed the video of the committee meeting that was featured in the article from YouTube.
The second thing they did was held a motion during the April meeting to no longer record meetings. Shockingly, the motion passed.
It appears that they also really cut back on the details they provide in the minutes of the meeting, making them much less informative for the general public.
So today if you want to know what the Committee Against Hate/Violence is discussing, you must attend the meeting in person.
Welcome to MoCo transparency, where if you shine a light, they make it much darker.
