The Morgantown Human Rights Commission

The city of Morgantown has a Human Rights Commission. I've met some of the members, all dedicated, optimistic, and trying to make Morgantown more "inclusive." The commission's website says "The purpose of the Human Rights Commission is to provide leadership for addressing community interaction and fairness concerns. It works to ensure that the City is not only providing services, but maintaining ways in which a community can live together inclusively, functionally, and justly, despite differences, complexities, and conflicts."

The Commission ran a survey last year that asked respondents what their issues are in Morgantown about inclusivity. We were not eligible to participate because we live outside Morgantown's city limits, as do most people in this county. Many reported that they felt the city was not welcoming to people of color, those with disabilities, and LGBT people.

Last night (Wednesday, March 25), the Commission held an open meeting to discuss the results of the survey and come up with ideas that could be implemented by the City Council. We will be residents of Morgantown, within the city limits, when we move in May, so I felt qualified to go. We were divided into four groups: housing, transportation, jobs, and help for the disabled.

I picked transportation to deal with. We were chaired by Don Spencer, a member of the Commission, an acquaintance, and a genuinely good person. We were maybe ten in our group, mostly women, some from an advocacy group for the disabled, a man who is the head of the local Chamber of Commerce, and someone from the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization.

We had lots to talk about. Many of the streets here are too narrow to acommodate a sidewalk , the very limited bus service doesn't run weeknights and Sundays. The PRT, our once futuristic driverless rail system, is run by West Virginia University. It's great, but doesn't run as well as it did in the early 1970s, when it was created, and certainly hasn't been expanded. It also doesn't run Sundays, and was off all last summer for repairs. Sidewalks downtown were upgraded in the last few years with fancy lamps and "street furniture," but advocates for the disabled say it is now impassable for people in wheelchairs to move safely down the street. There is a lack of door-to-door transportation for elderly and disabled people to get to medical appointments. Even the meeting last night, at a city park, was not accessible by transit.

Joe Statler, a state legislator from our district, came over to our table. I couldn't stand it. Statler is one of two of our five legislators who signed on to a resolution to ask the US Congress to hold a constitutional convention to ban recognition of any rights for same-gender couples. "Inclusivity" indeed. I got up and walked away from our table. I couldn't stand listening to this jerk talk about transportation issues, or anything, for that matter.

I listened to the housing group next to me. Their group was predominantly African-American. They felt that landlords discriminated against them, there was a dearth of decent low-cost housing ( decent middle-class housing, too, from our house search) no public and very little subsidized housing. They felt landlords only want to rent to  WVU students.

Eventually I calmed down enough to rejoin our group. I wrote on the form where they asked for problems and solutions, that our problem was "bigoted legislators" and the solution would be to call them on it from the city council. Don offered to introduce me to Statler, as a conciliatory gesture. I had met Statler at the League of Women Voters debate in October. Last night, he denied signing on to other anti-gay legislation ( I can check that out) and said he didn't really understand the resolution banning recognition of same-gender marriages. He said "I'm just a farmboy. I don't know about this stuff." He's 70. I said "I'm from an insular suburb, but I got out and learned about the world. Don't use your background as an excuse." Maybe those weren't the exact words exchanged, but something like that.

I also confronted the Chamber guy. He wants to raise the sales tax in Monongalia County to pay for transportation projects. I pointed out that raising the gas tax would be a better solution, since sales tax hurts poor people more than the rich. They didn't think the state would go for that.

I'm too old to have to put up with bigots and make nice to one-percenters from the Chamber of Commerce. I also have to learn to be much calmer, in order to get along with people, but also to maintain my own health.

I'm not sure Morgantown's Human Rights Commission can actually accomplish anything other than make people with little or no influence feel they have some. I don't doubt the sincerity of the people on the Commission, I just don't know if the Commission has any power.