Around 300 people gathered in person and over Zoom at St. Thomas More on Tuesday for the Orange County Public Accountability Assembly. The room was filled with community members and groups from local churches. A band played music in Spanish as people filled in and turned on their translation headsets.
The event was organized by Justice United, a group made up of about 20 churches, neighborhood groups, and organizations devoted to taking action against social justice issues affecting Orange County. They were there to make sure District Attorney Jeff Nieman and Alliance Health were honoring the commitments made last year.
When Nieman ran for district attorney, it was the first time Orange County had a competitive DA race in over 20 years. Supervisor of the Formerly Incarcerated Transition program Tommy Green said the community realized there was an opportunity to enact change.
“When Jeff Nieman was a candidate, we invited him to our public assembly, seeking to build a relationship of respect and accountability with him. We are here tonight to continue that relationship,” said Green.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Nieman went through each of the thirteen commitments he made earlier this year, including supporting the growth of deflection and diversion programs, lowering bail bonds, providing relief for driver’s license suspensions and prioritizing treatment over prosecution for personal use drug and drug paraphernalia possession charges.
“The DA truly has the power to help someone find healing, another chance or to incarcerate them, which has ripple effects on future work, housing, health, the ability to be part of our community, and more,” said Green. “With so much power, it’s important for the community to also have power and a voice because this power can determine the course of people’s lives.”
During the meeting, Nieman gave specific examples of his commitments like his support of the Orange County Justice Department’s many diversion programs.
After he finished speaking, Justice United members came up with a whiteboard to track his progress, giving a check under the “in progress” or “completed” columns under all the commitments he made six months ago.
Nieman said he was thankful for the pressure from Justice United.
“People are always saying that they want a more fair, just and equitable justice system but most people who don’t work in it don’t pay all that much attention to it, so at a very fundamental level, I appreciate a room like this where we have a room with multiple hundreds of people who say ‘we care.’ Even if they might be putting my feet to the frying pan a little bit, I’ll take it because I’m glad they are paying attention,” Nieman said.
Following Nieman, Sean Schreiber, the Alliance Health Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, reported on the progress the group has made so far working with Justice United. They are investing an initial $500,000 to address the Latino mental health crisis in Orange County by funding programs like the bilingual health treatment clinic “El Futuro.”
“We have been able to make some funding increases to El Futuro that allows them to continue to employ two care managers who can help people navigate and get care in the system,” said Schreiber. “We’ve also, and we think this is part of a longer term plan to bring El Futuro back to the community, were able to put in meaningful rate increases, which calculated out over the year are 46 percent more funding to that organization. So we are really thrilled about the partnership and believe we can do good work there.”
Along with supporting the return of El Futuro to the county, Alliance Health has started to identify other health service providers working in North Carolina and will begin negotiations to bring them to the local community.
“Orange County is looking at building a large crisis and diversion center to deal with people with mental health issues,” he said, “and we were asked to make sure Alliance is at the table in the planning activities to make sure we advocated for having culturally responsive and bilingual services available at the center.”
The assembly was given in both English and Spanish. Community and St. Thomas More member Diana Huerta shared her story in Spanish about why accessible bilingual care is so important.
After migrating to North Carolina far away from her family in Mexico, she says she’s experienced both depression and anxiety. “In the midst of my crisis, I turned to El Futuro for help,” Huerta said. “But there’s always a long waiting list. I’ve had to seek help through private therapists. But due to their high cost, I haven’t been able to finish my treatment.”
Click here to see the exact list of commitments made by Nieman. Click here for the commitments made by Alliance Health.
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