You CAN Fight City Hall
In case you're wondering what I'm up to when I'm not blogging, one very important thing has been trying to save the grant-funded, volunteer-staffed community mediation program I've been volunteering for.

One day a week, I do free mediation for LA residents with disputes through the Dispute Resolution Program. It's an amazing program, and I get a signed agreement in almost every single case I do -- meaning successful resolution -- sometimes facilitating the end to awful conflicts that have gone on for years and years.

Bizarrely, the Los Angeles City Attorney, Mike Feuer, whose office the program is a unit in, decided to kill community mediation.

As a City Hall outsider, I don't know why this is, but I suspect it was for some personal or political reason, as the man proclaims himself as a progressive and then kills the program that ensures that even those with no money or power have access to redress for their grievances.

Well, I'm part of a coalition of volunteer mediators -- from Watts to Pico-Union to Brentwood to the sea -- who decided to fight to get Feuer to unkill the program.

And...perhaps unbelievably...op-ed after op-ed, tweet after tweet after tweet, radio show after radio show, and after 55 letters to the City Council, the Board of Supes, the Mayor, and their top aides, plus the Chief of Police and the Police Commission...there was finally word on Monday, July 1, that we volunteer mediators had won -- Feuer had unkilled the program: Community mediations were back!

A wonderful victory!

The problem is, the community mediation program been starved of resources for years -- to the point where we once had 10 cubicles for volunteer mediators to do their free work, and now we have only three. This means mediators who want to work...for free!...to resolve their fellow community members' disputes...are turned away for lack of space.

So our next battle is getting back the program's resources.

I was told by a supervisor that I should now write up what we volunteers want. I strongly suspect that this was a task that was forced on him -- intended by his supervisors as a way to shut me up...to stop me from going on the media to talk about this.

Of course, I turned what was perhaps intended as some sort of media-appearance-diverting busywork into a constructive thing, and laid out exactly the resources we want back.

And here's my letter, which I sent to the City Attorney by email this morning -- Monday morning, July 8, at 9 a.m:

Amy Alkon
(Email address here.)

8 July 2019

To: Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer

Mr. Feuer,

   We volunteer mediators applaud your decision to keep the vital volunteer-staffed free mediation program for community members.

However, for this to be more than an "in name only" restoration of the program, the resources removed from the program also need to be restored.

Importantly, restoration of the program and its resources serves the Department of Justice mandate to address the "access to justice crisis in the criminal and civil justice system" -- and exactly meets the guiding principles for "access to justice" that the DOJ lays out: 

•Offering access to conflict resolution and fair outcomes by all people -- including those "facing financial and other disadvantages." 

•Promoting "less lawyer-intensive and court-intensive solutions to legal problems."

Again, this is exactly the access to justice the The Dispute Resolution Program provides.

Of course, the benefits of the Dispute Resolution Program are not only to the particular citizens whose disputes are resolved through the DRP's volunteer-staffed mediations. 

The benefits of the DRP extend to the greater LA community -- for example, stopping the drain on LAPD manpower when citizens with disputes call the police to come out repeatedly. In the wake of DRP mediations resolving citizens' differences, police officers can fight crime instead of refereeing neighbor-on-neighbor noise complaints and the like. 

In light of this, both maintaining this program and seeing that it has the resources to function is both fiscally and morally sensible...simply the right thing to do. 

The following are the resources to be restored to the Dispute Resolution Program by your office or through action by your office (detailed below): 

•Workspace: Restore the 10 cubicles the DRP had.

There were 10 cubicles with phones and computers for volunteer mediators to work. There are now three. This means that volunteer mediators who want to come in and work for free to resolve their fellow Angelenos' disputes cannot. This leads to long delays in calling back people who call in to the program, which can, in turn, lead issues that could be successfully mediated to turn uglier or even violent.

•Clerical workers: Restore the two clerical workers the DRP had.

Clerical workers previously assigned to the Program have been vital for its successful functioning. As this is a program staffed by a fluctuating group of volunteers, including newly-trained volunteers, clerical workers are essential in everything from supporting forms being filled out correctly and picking up the slack when there are errors and omissions to dealing with computer problems and other such issues. 

But most importantly, the phones at this Program must be answered consistently, and this is an all-day job -- one that cannot be done by community members providing a skilled service in volunteering for the program.

And clearly, senior staffers cannot be tasked with answering the phone all day, as they are needed to be available constantly to deal with issues that come up, especially with newly-minted trainee mediators. Basically, they do ongoing training and coaching of volunteer mediators throughout the day, doing quality control through making sure that rules and standards are adhered to. 

Additionally, though many businesses are going with recordings and websites as their point of entry for customers, citizens who call in to the Dispute Resolution Program are often unclear on what mediation is and are frequently afraid when they call. Having a kind and effective clerical staff answering the phone is not a luxury for this program, but the first step in giving citizens reassurance that they are going to be dealt with fairly and will have access to just outcomes for their dispute. 

•Conference room and caucus room: Both need to be restored.

Restore the dedicated conference room the program previously had, along with an office/small room for caucuses (private sessions mediators have with each party).

Mediators have been holding caucuses in the hallways, which can seriously compromise confidentiality, and it hurts the credibility of the mediator and the program. This, in turn, can lead citizens to fear that they are not getting high-quality redress for their issues. 

Additionally, when conference room unavailability means mediations must be held on other floors, away from the Program's space, mediators are far away from the wealth of knowledge, guidance, and coaching that supervisors can provide -- even mid-mediation. 

•IT needs to be modernized: 

This is basically the "restoration" of what should have been done --the most basic software upgrades that should have been made over recent years -- but were not.

•Data collection methods need to be upgraded with modern technology.
Efficiently collecting data is an important part of access to justice initiatives from the DOJ. Yet, the Dispute Resolution Program, in 2019, has been stuck with circa 1972 technology -- with volunteer mediators needing to take down documentation of citizens' issues in handwriting on much-photocopied forms and then duplicate some of their efforts by typing some of that information into the computer. However, the DRP's antique computer platform does not have capacity for all of the notes, so there's no way for supervisors to track what's going on in a case without digging into a volunteer's folder, searching for the particular form, and trying to read handwritten notes.

•The web presence for the program needs to be updated.
Information about the program is tucked away in a PDF at the bottom of a page about various programs in the City Attorney's office. An essential part of "access to justice" is being able to use the Internet to find a program that provides the possibility of it, and learn about what it entails. Accordingly, the Dispute Resolution Program needs the funds to set up a web page that does this. 

•The DRP needs a social media presence.
Additionally, we volunteer mediators would like to see promotion of the program by the City Attorney's media person, so citizens learn that they have means to resolve their conflicts -- fast, confidentially, and free, through Dispute Resolution Program mediations.

•Software needs to be modernized.
Right now, documents cannot be shared from one computer to the next -- a common practice in 2019 that even a bunch of college students on Chromebooks can do. This is very inefficient and fixing this needs to be funded. 

•The Program needs seed money in order to get money:  The DRP needs seed money to bring on a person to apply for grant funding.

We see that the City Attorney's office has a person who applies for grants (http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2013/13-1204-s6_rpt_ATTY_07-30-2018.pdf). That person has not found funding for this program, and the program was effectively financially abandoned. 

Clearly, this program needs its own employee to go after grants from big companies and government. This person can be paid initially through the City Attorney's office, and then their salary can be paid through the grants they bring in. 

If there is some bureaucratic reason this is not possible, we ask that the City Attorney or higher-ups from the City Attorney's office sincerely petition the Mayor, the Board of Supervisors, and the City Council to fund this person's salary. The same goes for any other necessary funds for this program.

   It is unacceptable to cut off access to justice for a broad swath of the Los Angeles population -- including the most vulnerable among us. This leads to a drain on LAPD manpower and increases homelessness (that our landlord-tenant mediations could prevent). It likewise leaves the most fragile members of our LA community -- including the elderly and recent immigrants -- without redress.

This is not something that progressive Los Angeles should accept from our leadership. 

We trust that you will make good on restoring the program to its former usefulness at providing justice to all Angelenos.

--Amy Alkon, volunteer mediator, Dispute Resolution Program
(on behalf of the coalition of volunteer mediators)