[Ppnews] Celebrate our victory! -- Please attend Civil Service Commission January 17 9:30 a.m.

[Political Prisoner News]

Tuesday, January 17
Press Conference: 9:30 a.m. (Polk Street side of San Francisco City Hall)
Civil Service Commission meeting: 10:00 a.m.
Room 416, San Francisco City Hall

All of Us or None will announce a HISTORIC VICTORY for 
formerly-incarcerated people:

The question "Have you been convicted in a court?" will be removed 
from the initial employment application for the City/County of San 
Francisco.   !!!!!!!

WE WON!!  THANK YOU to all of you, EVERYONE has contributed to this 
this effort.  THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.  The Department of Human 
Resources has agreed to all our suggestions about how to eliminate 
some of the discrimination people with past convictions face.  We 
will be announcing this victory for formerly-incarcerated people and 
for the City of San Francisco at the press conference.  We still need 
to keep up the pressure and build to win our demands in other cities, 
counties, and throughout the state.  And of course we need your 
support.  Many of our community endorsers like Sheriff Hennessy and 
Eric Mar (President of the School Board), Dorothy Ehrlich (head of 
the ACLU), and representatives of the Supervisors will be coming to 
the press conference, and we need to CELEBRATE and re-dedicate 
ourselves to more victories in more places.  We hope you can come to 
the press conference next Tuesday, January 17 at 9:30 on the Polk 
Street side of City Hall, and attend the Civil Service Commission 
meeting at 10 to celebrate and show them we're not giving up or going 
away. THANK YOU for all your support!!!

For those of you who want to know the outlines of what we have been 
pushing for, which is now being adopted as a process by DHR:

The question "Have you been convicted in a court?" will be removed 
from the initial employment application for the City/County of San 
Francisco. This initial application will ask only for job-related 
information like education, job experience, circumstances of past 
employment.  Finalist lists will be compiled after an applicant meets 
minimum qualifications for the job, passes a civil service exam and 
enters the eligible list.  Inquiries into and consideration of past 
convictions will only occur at the finalist stage of the hiring 
process, so tens of thousands of people applying for jobs will not be 
required to disclose this information.  Finalist applicants will be 
required to fill out the supplemental criminal history form and will 
have the opportunity to explain past convictions in an 
interview.  Only convictions related to the job responsibilities will 
be considered. Circumstances of the convictions like age at the time, 
how many years ago it occurred, and recovery and rehabilitation will 
be considered.  If there are laws disqualifying people with certain 
types of criminal convictions, it will be publicized on the job announcement.
Anyone applying for jobs where there is a statutory bar of this type 
will fill out the criminal history form along with the initial 
application, and their applications will be screened out to comply 
with state and federal laws.

This is pretty much what we asked for.  The only demand that was not 
met was that the background check should be limited to reveal only 
job-related convictions.  We had already decided that asking for them 
to define convictions that could be considered "job-related" for 
thousands of job categories would actually not benefit us, so we 
dropped it as a demand.


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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