Awareness is goal of Human Rights panel

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- While the New Ulm Human Rights Commission may have seemed like a "paper tiger" to many, the commission's new chairman, Mark Lindquist, is hoping to make it "more aggressive" in meeting the needs of a community which is becoming more diverse year after year.

The 15-member commission is administrative in nature, because it has no enforcement power nor is it "in the loop" for receiving rights violation complaints from law enforcement units or businesses.

Two major goals for 2002 are to increase awareness within the commission and to increase awareness of the commission's existence within the community, Lindquist said.

"We'd like people to be better informed and understand the complex issues associated with ensuring people's basic ability to access their human rights and protecting those rights," Lindquist explained.

In order to do this with the commission, Lindquist is proposing to reach into the past to prepare commissioners for the future.

"In the past, we would have speakers come in and talk about some such activity on a regular basis," Lindquist said. "So we would have a lot of meetings where somebody would do a presentation to the commission. That was helpful for the commissioners to understand different issues."

Lindquist gave as an example how the commission tapped a local resource at Martin Luther College.

"We brought in Glen Thompson and some of his international students to find out what their experiences have been in New Ulm. It's not a great, huge sample, but it was nice to hear that those kids basically had good experiences here," Lindquist said.

The commission wants to get back to that approach, Lindquist said, but it's also going to try to do more in community outreach programs like that held Tuesday on learning more about Islam. It was a joint venture of the Catholic Diocese of New Ulm and the Human Rights Commission.

"We have some concerns after Sept. 11 about how people are going to deal with Muslims," Lindquist said. "What are they going to think about them and do they even understand what they're about?"

The chairman sees this as an approach for other nationalities, as well.

"We already see a lot of Hispanics coming into our stores because New Ulm is a regional trade center. While it's obviously not a Mankato, it's a place that people from Sleepy Eye, maybe Madelia and from around the region are coming to shop. Folks in New Ulm will have more interaction with people that don't necessarily look or sound like people they're used to dealing with," Lindquist said.

"The notion that you live in New Ulm, and you're not going to deal with Muslims just isn't true. In fact, we had a Muslim student on the commission for a while. We're increasingly a global society and rural communities like New Ulm are increasingly becoming integrated."

Lindquist also notes there is a sizeable Somalie community in and around Mankato.

"Sooner or later, lots of New Ulm residents of different backgrounds are going to be in our stores. So part of our mission and part of what we're hoping to accomplish more of is an educational outreach within the community to address the changes going on around here," Lindquist said.

"Are they good, or are they bad?" Lindquist asks rhetorically. "I don't know. That's not necessarily for us to say, but it's our people you're dealing with so they should be accorded the respect and dignity that people should be accorded."