Elizabeth Valdez

• Pressure government, university and local leaders to mandate cultural diversity training for all students.
• Require all students, including minority students, to do volunteer work in the community, thereby promoting a better image for youth in the wider community.
• Require volunteer experience for admission to schools of higher education.
• Get rid of the term "minority", which implies second-class citizenship.
• Require students to go out into the community and study different groups for their own development.
• Portray "diversity" and "difference" as good things, rather than words with a negative connotation.
• Promote public-private economic alliances.
• Since prejudice is reduced by human contact, individuals should seek out and nourish multi-cultural friends and neighbors.
  

Religion Action Steps

Bob Hulteen

• Churches need to hold each other accountable; the public needs to hold churches accountable.
• Since racism is both institutional and the result of voluntary associations of people, it's important for churches to deal with racism at both the personal and political levels. As an example, Hulteen cited the Minnesota Council of Churches' anti-racism initiative, which provides churches with training and encourages discussing relevant church teachings.
• Churches should look for ways to deconstruct institutions that

  "The church really has the responsibility to deal with issues of values--justice, peace, reconciliation." Robert Hulteen, the Minnesota Council of Churches

  support racism.
• They should look at and speak for the common good.
• They should correct lies perpetrated in other sectors of American society.
• Churches should make economic decisions that encourage diversity.
• They should promote diversity in hiring and through their own purchasing power.

• Hire a diverse staff.
• Work to change the attitudes, both of individuals and on the political level.
• Provide support systems for confronting issues of race, immigration, and diversity.
• Be proactive, not reactive.
• Educate the media.
• Help diverse groups of people contribute to the economy by helping them find jobs that pay a livable wage and helping them to improve their education.
• Non-profits can also help diverse groups contribute to our economic and political life.

Pedro Behamonde

• City councils should be more proactive in promoting diversity, for example by becoming active in different communities.
• Government should pass legislation that encourages diversity, for example by encouraging or even requiring businesses to provide services in the language of the people they serve.
• Help to organize people at the grass-roots level so that they can be empowered.
• People in government should participate in cultural events in diverse communities.
• Governments should hire a multi-cultural workforce. In order to do so, they should try to reach targeted populations through local minority publications and other avenues.
• Government should hold unions accountable for helping to promote a multi-cultural workforce, perhaps through lawsuits.
• In order to improve the provision of services to people who do not

  "The ultimate goal is to find ways for multi-cultural students to succeed in high school and beyond." Elizabeth Valdez, Impact Americorps

  speak English, governments should look at translation services provided by both health care providers and the criminal courts.
• Government should find ways to make teachers more sensitive towards issues of diversity.
• Government should build more clean, safe and affordable public housing.
  

• Make city council members accountable. Invite them to your group's meetings. "It's a two-way street," this person said. "If you don't ask, you won't get any answers."
• People of color need to run for office. "If you don't want to run," another person said, "then you need to find somebody else who represents your issues to run. . . . Once you have somebody to speak to on the city council or at the legislature, you'll make changes."
  
  Bob Hulteen of the Minnesota Council of Churches also described a year-long event inspired by Pentecost, the Christian feast commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the Apostles. (Hulteen described the Pentecost as a metaphor for diversity--a Biblical antidote to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, in which God divided people into language groups so that they could not understand one another. "They came with different languages, but all of a sudden they could understand each other," Hulteen said. "They knew what the others were saying even though they were speaking their own languages.")
  
  Every Sunday from Pentecost 1999 (May 23) until Pentecost in the year 2000 (June 11) a different congregation in Minnesota will pray for racial justice and reconciliation. And on Pentecost 2000, churches will participate in a statewide "truth telling" to speak of historical problems--and pray for reconciliation.