Antelope Valley Human Relations Task Force

Antelope Valley Press – Thursday, January 28, 2010

Mayor’s address focuses on crime, culture, green energy

By GERRY PRICE
Valley Press City Editor/Assignments

LANCASTER — Mayor R. Parris sees his city as strongly Christian, and he’s proud of that.

“We’re growing a Christian community, and don’t let anybody shy away from that,” he told an audience of 160 people, mainly pastors and their spouses, during his State of the City address Tuesday at the John P. Eliopulos Hellenic Center.

He said he wants the community’s electorate to validate a Christian stance in the April municipal election, in which a ballot measure endorses prayers at city meetings, specifically with permission to invoke a specific deity, including Jesus.

While Parris, who is running for a second term as mayor in April, said he didn’t care which candidates the voters favored, “I do want them voting for that prayer amendment,” referring to a measure asking voters whether or not the City Council should seek religious guidance before its meetings.

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ACLU threat may also influence decision

By CRAIG CURRIER
Valley Press Staff Writer

LANCASTER – Mayor R. Rex Parris said his “heart will be broken” if residents do not support Measure I at the polls on April 13.

What else is riding on the vote about six weeks from now remains to be seen, though, as the practice of prayer at City Council meetings and threats of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union may also be influenced by the decision.

Measure I reads: “In response to a recent complaint, with respect to the invocations that contained reference to Jesus Christ, shall the City Council continue its invocation policy in randomly selecting local clergy of different faiths to deliver the invocation without restricting the content based on their beliefs, including references to Jesus Christ?”

Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, last week refused to say whether the people’s support of the measure would change the group’s strategy for a potential lawsuit, but during a November Antelope Valley Press interview he called the City Council’s practice “unconstitutional” and said, “the people can’t violate the establishment clause.”

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Antelope Valley Press – Sunday, February 21, 2010

Here are excerpts from e-mail exchanges between Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris, Antelope Valley Human Relations Task Force chairman Darren Parker, task force vice chairman Bob Forshay, Lancaster City Manager Mark Bozigian, Lancaster Councilwoman Sherry Marquez and other officials. All the e-mails were sent to local news outlets including the Antelope Valley Press.

From Parris to Forshay, copied to Lancaster City Council members, and others, Saturday, Feb. 6, 7:54 a.m:

Mr. Forshay: It is unfortunate that you decided to ignore my request for the contact information of everyone on the “Task Force.” Since you obviously have an e-mail distribution list that you used to send out the notice of the meeting, it seems that this is a simple task. Since the “Task Force” is partially funded by the City of Lancaster, and I am the Mayor of Lancaster, there is no reason I can see why this request was not complied with in a timely fashion. In addition, Mr. Darren Parker advised me, after I was elected, that as Mayor, I automatically had a seat on the Board of the “Task Force.” Shouldn’t board members have access to this information?

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Antelope Valley Press – Sunday, February 21, 2010

Lancaster to return donors’ funding

By BOB WILSON
Valley Press Staff Writer

LANCASTER – Less than two weeks after the Antelope Valley Human Relations Task Force voted to send letters criticizing comments by Mayor R. Rex Parris and Councilwoman Sherry Marquez, city officials are moving to end a 14-year history of handling operational money contributed to the organization.

City administrators’ plan to return the task force’s funds to the group’s donors rather than transferring the funds to the task force. That has, in turn, generated a request by task force President Darren Parker for an investigation by the Sheriff’s Department to determine whether the city has legal authority to do anything with money contributed directly to the organization.

City Manager Mark Bozigian said the two events, the criticism of the mayor and councilwoman, and withdrawing aid to the human relations group are unrelated.

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From the Antelope Valley Press, Tuesday, February 9, 2010:

By Charles F. Bostwick and Dennis Anderson
Valley Press Editors

LANCASTER – The Antelope Valley Human Relations Task Force voted unanimously Monday night to send strong letters of condemnation to Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris and Councilwoman Sherry Marquez over their recent comments about the Christian and Muslim religions.

The vote followed a three-hour meeting attended by nearly 100 people of whom about 40 were regular members of the task force, formed in 1996 by the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale following a rash of racially-motivated assaults.

By the meeting’s start, most of the members of the commission had heart that Parris twho hours earlier had issued an apology that some, if not all,accepted as basically sincere. That was not the case for the terse two-word apology uttered by Marquez at a hastily called City Hall press conference.

At the meeting were Christians such as Bishop Henry Hearns, pastor of Living Stone Cathedral of Worship in Littlerock as well as Parris’s predecessor as Lancaster mayor; at least 20 members of the Antelope Valley Muslim community; at least a half-dozen supporters of Marquez from Lancaster Baptist Church, which she attends; Unitarian-Universalists; Wiccans; members of the organized gay community; Buddhists, and Jewish and Orthodox Jewish representatives. Also in attendance were Lancaster mayoral and city council candidates, and Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford.

“I accept the mayor’s apology. I do not accept her apology,” said Kamal Al-Khativ, exectuive director of the American Islamic Institute of the Antelope Valley in Palmdale. “I am disappointed with both individuals.”

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RON SIDDLE/Valley Press

From the Antelope Valley Press, Tuesday, February 9, 2010:

By Charles F. Bostwick and Dennis Anderson
Valley Press Editors

LANCASTER – Mayor R. Rex Parris issued an unequivocal apology to groups of any and all faiths who he said might have felt excluded by his remarks 12 days earlier to Christian ministers about “growing a Christian community.”

“It was about a week and a half ago that I spoke to the Christian ministerial association and said I wanted to grow a Christian community,” he said during a City Hall news conference. “But in talking to my friends of 30 years, it was clear that a lot of people felt excluded.”

Parris spoke from the City Council chambers podium, accompanied by area representatives of the Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Muslim communities as well as fellow Christians and Councilwoman Sherry Marquez.

What Parris said he had intended was to express that Christians are a community who love their neighbors.

“I sincerely apologize to anyone who felt excluded,” the mayor said.

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