Politicians with a conviction history?

According to Wikipedia, the town of Rehoboth in the State of Massachusetts has an open town meeting run by a board of selectmen.  This Monday night, 384 of its 10,172 residents attended and voted down a petition proposed by the board to do a criminal background check on candidates running for a local office.  And I am pleasantly surprised (though "surprised" may be too mild a term here) to read that:

[A selectman arguing for doing a criminal background check on political candidates] was booed for his statement while several residents and other town officials who spoke against the article received hoots and hollers of approval.

Seriously, what is going on here?  I suspect some unusual local politics going on here, not reported in the news article above.  Why did the board of selectmen propose the article?  Was there someone running for office in the recent election that they didn't like and had a criminal record?  Was this person well-liked by the citizens of Rehoboth?  What's going on here?  It's not every day that we see "booing" for those tough background-check-everybody-and-their-cousin folks.  And it's certainly unheard of that we see those working to limit background checks receive "hoots and hollers of approval."

But this episode dovetails well with what a "guest" at the All of Us or None meeting last night mentioned, i.e. that we need a champion for our cause.  We need to work to elect into a political position an individual(s) with personal experiences of facing barriers due to his/her conviction history.  It's an obvious point.  And it should be done.  When I heard it, however, I thought it unlikely that it'll happen in my lifetime.  Well, then again, something like this thing at Rehoboth comes around to make me think.... Maybe it will.

Crossroad at Los Angeles County

At the Southern California Sober Living Coalition meeting last night, Supervisor Ridley-Thomas' office sent a senior staff to advocate for the Supervisor's plan to reopen the MLK Hospital in partnership with the University of California. See the County CEO's latest report to the County.

Before he got the opportunity to advocate for his agenda, we spent about half an hour explaining to Coalition members the significance of the recent County move to expand their employment screening to include an FBI check, even showing a clip of some of us testifying at the Board meeting last week.

Afterward, the senior staff member and I had a little heart-to-heart that ended up confirming my lingering fear, i.e. that Supervisor Ridley-Thomas will not champion our cause at the Board. The senior staff member had sound political reasons for not taking up our cause, and I understand that Supervisor Ridley-Thomas doesn't want to sacrifice his other causes for the sake of this one. Still, it hurt.

So where do we go from here? Litigation against the County to bring its policy in compliance with Title VII? Coalition building with MALDEF, APALC, EJS, ACLU, and LAFLA? Or take to the street in protest?