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To: Tom Murillo, Interim President of DCARA Board and Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, Speaker Pro Tempore

Reinstate Raymond Rodgers As Director Of DCARA

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We, the undersigned, The Deaf Community of America, demand Deaf Counseling Advocacy and Referral Agency (DCARA) Board to reinstate Raymond Rodgers as Executive Director. We stand by our demands that the Board must also apologize to DCARA’s Staff, the community and resign their positions effective immediately.

Why is this important?

Raymond Rodgers, Executive Director, was on paid leave until he was terminated after 80 days. The DCARA Board failed to keep open communication and were not transparent. They struck fear and intimidation upon staff who made demands for the Board to step down. The board failed to listen to Bay Area Deaf community, who voted at March 15, 2019’s town hall meeting vote of no confidence in the existing Board and demanded they all resign. Raymond Rodgers was hired over two years ago and worked hard to keep DCARA fiscally strong, expanded staff, services, and programs, and initiated new social entrepreneurial projects to better to serve Deaf, DeafBlind, Deaf Disabled, Hard of Hearing & Late Deafened clients. He recently worked with the C.A. Coalition of Deaf Agencies to get a long overdue increase for their organizations, thanks to Assemblymember Mullin’s leadership. On February 22nd during the full staff meeting, Raymond stood up alongside his multicultural staff who had serious concerns about the former Board President’s racist comments, which she mentioned in her personal video message (VLOG) using DCARA platform as the Board President and shared on Facebook before it was immediately taken down. The multicultural staff called the Board president in and she admitted her mistake and acknowledged her intentions to apologize to the community and resign. Other board members defended the Board president’s actions as well as made racist and oppressive comments in front of the entire agency staff. Recently, the Board recently hired a person who was unqualified to begin with, and they did not do a background check. The community discovered he has a history of sexual assault and exposed the allegations. Ultimately, the interim executive director was asked to leave. Once again the Board failed in the eyes of the Deaf Community. This farce must end!!! The “ghosts” in the background pulling puppet strings must go!

Today the Board of DCARA continues to ignore, dismiss, insult, and subject DCARA’s staff to ongoing racism and hostile behaviors. The Board continues to evade all demands for information preferring to hide behind silence. We can not allow this to continue. It has been 84 Days. This must end now!

We, the undersigned of Bay Area Deaf Community demand the Board to reinstate Raymond Rodgers as DCARA Executive Director.