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</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Tuesday, January 17<br>
Press Conference: 9:30 a.m. (Polk Street side of San Francisco City
Hall)<br>
Civil Service Commission meeting: 10:00 a.m.<br>
Room 416, San Francisco City Hall<br>
</font><font size=3> <br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>All of Us or None will
announce a HISTORIC VICTORY for formerly-incarcerated people: <br>
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</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>The question "Have you
been convicted in a court?" will be removed from the initial
employment application for the City/County of San Francisco.
!!!!!!!<br>
</font><font size=3> <br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>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!!!<br>
</font><font size=3> <br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>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:<br><br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
</font><font size=3> <br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>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.<br><br>
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<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
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