P. Diane Schneider -- Part 3 of 3

P. Diane Schneider was a Conciliation Specialist and Acting Regional Director of Region 10 of the Community Relations Service from 1987-2008.

There are 3 parts of this interview and a summary: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and The Summary This is Part 2.

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https://youtu.be/G-nCvVhdCw0

Heidi Burgess (00:00): All right. I want to welcome P. Diane back to talk with me again. This is our third discussion about her work at the Community Relations Service. And remind me the years you were there again? I forgot to look that up.

P. Diane Schneider(00:19): Well, I started in ...1987, I guess. And so I left in the end of 2008.

Heidi Burgess (00:34): Okay. And you were up in the Pacific Northwest region?

P. Diane Schneider(00:38): Yes. Region 10,

Heidi Burgess (00:40): Working as a conciliator and if I'm remembering right, an acting director for a while.

P. Diane Schneider(00:47): Yeah, I was acting director for about nine months and as well as course a conciliator.

Heidi Burgess (00:59): Where we left off, I had asked you about whether there were any changes in policing during your tenure. And you said, yes, indeed. And we talked about, community-related policing quite a bit. And CRS's role in helping that along. The linked question that didn't we get to was whether there were any changes in the justice system during the time that you were, uh, with CRS.

P. Diane Schneider(01:32): Well, I don't know if I can really speak to that. I guess I should mention that the, uh, terminology that we used and that Bob Lamb, my former supervisor used was community-oriented policing, which is the terminology that's used, I think all over the country and probably internationally at this point.

Heidi Burgess (02:03): All right. And you don't have, uh, any thoughts, particularly about the system more broadly,

P. Diane Schneider(02:12): Your sound breaks up a little bit, but I did get your question. I don't really think I could speak to that because there are changes which occur during certain administrations, which are not permanent changes necessarily. And so it's policies that we deal with and we find ways to adapt when we're able to, the changes that occur. And of course, uh, during the time that I was with the agency, we had several directors and acting directors and they had, some of them had widely different views about what CRS is or should be. And some of had different ideas about that. But as far as, um, permanent changes, I don't think that there were legal changes that we could—in the justice system that I could talk about.

Heidi Burgess (03:29): Do you wanna address any more how you at the local level dealt with changes at the federal level that maybe you didn't agree with, generally about it and follow protocol, or were there to try to figure out ways to maintain what you did at the federal level that were different directions, or maybe something you don't feel that you should talk about and feel free to not answer my question?

P. Diane Schneider(04:06): Uh, there are probably some things that I shouldn't talk about, but I suppose I didn't fully realize until Bob Lamb was no longer with us, how much, uh, protection he gave us, uh, in addressing some of the, I guess we would call them political changes that occurred in DC, that some of which interfered with our ability to carry out what was our duty and, and the way that we were able to resolve the difficulties, disagreements, and disputes related to race, color, and national origin. Which at that time, when I was with the agency, it was limited to race, color, and national origin. Although we were able to, for example, we were able to address issues of religion.

P. Diane Schneider(05:10): And I suppose by defining it in different ways, it took me a while to convince my director, my regional director at the time—that language access is related to national origin. And I think it took me about a year to finally demonstrate to him the relationship between national origin and language access. We also, during the time that I was there, we had Janet Reno as the attorney general, who sent some of our staff to address a gender issue, which was not within our mandate at that time. ... But sometimes there were situations where we knew that we needed to offer assistance. And there were times when at headquarters, I don't think that it was realized how important just a personal contact made a big difference in being able to then get into a community and offer the kinds of services we were able to offer.

P. Diane Schneider(06:40): And, uh, Bob of course was very, uh, because of him being with the old school, of course. And that's the way he kind of brought me up, was the old school, 'cause it coincided with my experiences and how communities react, especially to someone that goes around with the federal badge <laugh>. So he did encourage us whenever possible to go on site, to deal with issues. And we didn't have most of the time that I was with the agency, we didn't really have the capability that we have these days with, with Zoom, but I'll tell you, even in my current work, I don't find working on Zoom to be very effective or conducive to carrying out what we need to do.

Heidi Burgess (07:36): And I would think it would be even more [challenging] dealing with people who don't speak English as a first language.

P. Diane Schneider(07:46): Uh, well of course that's probably although these days, a lot of people that don't speak English as a first language, do have access to Zoom. ... It's not conducive to very good communication, even if the language is not an issue, just because when you're not present with the person, you miss a lot of nuances that you might not miss if you were in person and working with conciliation and resolution of, of difficulties, disagreements and disputes, uh, nuances are very, very important. And finding, uh, finding a solution.

Heidi Burgess (08:37): So maybe we were better off the old days when you didn't have Zoom to use as a crutch.

P. Diane Schneider(08:46): Well, it comes in handy when you do not have the facility to be able to travel or when, when time, uh, is of the essence. And maybe you can follow up with, with a personal visit, but it, it certainly has its uses.

Heidi Burgess (09:04): [inaudible] ... Was about the education system, whether there were changes in the education system that affected what you did at CRS in relation to racial conflicts in schools.

P. Diane Schneider(09:28): Well, uh, I did not have a lot of those kinds of cases, but we did—and we do have, in the state of Washington, a fairly progressive state government, uh, and superintendent of education is very progressive in that area, which I suppose is probably different from when before I started with CRS. We did do some of the things which had been developed earlier. Uh, I think a lot of it was based on the assessments that were done back during school integration movements. But we were able to set up, in a number of schools, student resolution programs where the students themselves would assist in resolving the kinds of difficulties and disputes that would occur in schools. And so what all we would have to do would be to go and do a little orientation and training for these students and then they could take it from there.

Heidi Burgess (10:58): Okay. Um, the next question really you've covered already. It's how do changes in federal administration, uh, affect your work? And it sounds like there be different directions that you'd go depending on who the president was and what director at the federal level he appointed. And then those policies would trickle down, uh, causing conflicts at some points and probably helping you at other points. Um, do you have anything more you want to add to your discussion on that topic or do we pretty much cover it?

P. Diane Schneider(11:49): Well, of course, you know, we all took a solemn oath to preserve and defend the U.S constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, which, uh, my former regional director, Bob Lamb, interpreted directly and which supersedes of course, any current governmental orders. And I remember him saying a number of times, remember that no government knowingly pays its employees to foment a revolution. Now the keyword here is knowingly.

Heidi Burgess (12:35): Yep.

P. Diane Schneider(12:35): And so it wasn't anything to do with overthrowing the government, it was in carrying out our mandate, which was ordered by Congress. And when there were obstacles placed in our way against doing what we knew was our duty, we had to find innovative ways to do those things.

Heidi Burgess (13:06): And Bob I gather was masterful at that.

P. Diane Schneider(13:10): He was masterful and he knew everyone in the world and he could pull strings just about anywhere too. And I remember, and I think I may have mentioned this one time, I had gone out to a church burning and, uh, came back to the office and the FBI came over to the office and they wanted to interview me about what I had seen when I went down to look into the issue of the church burning. And of course that's completely against the rules. And so Bob said, you know, they want to interview you, but of course they can't. And I said, of course they can't. I said, don't worry, Bob, if they need to take me to jail until they get that worked out, then they can take me to jail. That's not a problem. But the former regional director of the FBI was at that time back in Washington, DC.

P. Diane Schneider(14:09): So he just contacted his old buddy back in Washington, DC and said, you know, your agent here are trying to interview our conciliators who legally cannot be interviewed because the work that we do is confidential. And of course they didn't like that one bit, but I mean, rules are rules. And obviously there's good reason for that. Because if stakeholders felt like we were out gathering information, investigatory information for the FBI or the immigration or someplace, then we would have no purpose at all because who would wanna work with us? It was hard enough to overcome the, the obstacle of being a fed. But then once we got them convinced that we weren't gonna be investigating or making decisions about things, then the last thing we would wanna do would be to divulge confidential information because that was completely against our rules. So, uh, fortunately he was a very strong defender of that and he didn't take any prisoners. <laugh>

Heidi Burgess (15:37): That's fortunate.

P. Diane Schneider(15:39): Yeah. Very fortunate. ... To this day, even though he was not an easy person to work for, but with good reason I'm sure. And I'm sure it's had a great deal of influence in my formation <laugh> as a human being probably.

Heidi Burgess (15:59): Oh, great. Um, who made the decision about which cases you would take and which ones you didn't, were you staffed fully enough that you were able to take most cases that came in the door or did you have to triage?

P. Diane Schneider(16:23): Our staff was very limited by the time that I came to CRS. Um, and we, we did have to, we had to limit where we could respond. And there were times when we did not have the same opinion that headquarters had about what we should respond to. And there were times when we would actually have the time and the personnel to respond to something and we would be told by headquarters, oh, that's not jurisdictional when we would define it as jurisdictional. So, uh, there were often difference of opinion about that.

Heidi Burgess (17:06): And Bob wouldn't manage to prevail.

P. Diane Schneider(17:10): Oh, when Bob was around, you would prevail.

Heidi Burgess (17:14): <laugh> What did you do if you had more cases that you wanted to handle than you had personnel to handle, how did you juggle or balance, or did you do all of 'em, but not as much time with each as you would've liked?

P. Diane Schneider(17:37): Uh, to some degree. Yeah. Um, we would have to see if sometimes cases were related to other cases in the area. Uh, sometimes there were ways of addressing things on our way to somewhere else. <laugh>, uh, and there were some things that could be done by email and by fax, sometimes we were able to share models, even if we couldn't be somewhere in person, we could share information and models and we could also mail out literature that was published by CRS. Although some of it was so dated, we couldn't, we couldn't really send it out, 'cause it would be embarrassing to send it out. There was one time, there was a translation of a police community relations booklet that was, was translated into Spanish. And it was so awful. I had it retranslated into literary Spanish <laugh>, but the agency never got around—

P. Diane Schneider(18:53): I don't know if they didn't have funding or what they, or they just didn't trust my expertise. They never did republish it, but the original booklet in English was very useful for police-community relationships. And I thought that it was critical when we were able to have translations of some of our materials. And we did that very little, but one of the things that I did in my spare time, not as a conciliator, but in my own spare time was the National Black Police Association, um, had published a leaflet on what to do when stopped by the police, which was pretty good. And I ran into a really bad translation into Spanish over in Pasco, Washington. And I thought, well, that won't do, so I got that translated into Spanish. And then I decided there's no reason to stop there because it was a very useful tool and educational as well.

P. Diane Schneider(20:10): So I had it translated into, I don't know, probably about 15 languages, I think. And of course I shared with the National Black Police Association, 'cause they were not limiting themselves to African-Americans at that point, they were reaching out. And of course there were a lot of, um, Latino, African people as well. So I sent them always, whenever I would have a new translation of something, then I would send them the copies. And I also kept a big file cabinet in our office with resources and I had models, and I had some of these translations, and a lot of these things, um, our latest regional director that we had before I left, decided and told our staff there to throw out everything that was more than 10 years old <laugh> and never sent anything to archives either.

Heidi Burgess (21:15): Oh.

P. Diane Schneider(21:15): So some of those things were lost. Some of them accidentally got put into my materials when I came home. ... It was very to see all of the resource material that was actually disposed of on orders of the regional director.

Heidi Burgess (21:43): Did you ever partner with other agencies or hand off—you were talking about the school case where you were able to, uh, train kids and then essentially hand the dispute resolution off to them. Were there other agencies that you were able to work with and then maybe local, um, community relations agencies that you could give a little bit of guidance to and then hand it off so that you could go somewhere else?

P. Diane Schneider(22:15): We were always willing and eager to do that, partly because we knew we couldn't be around forever and we couldn't be everywhere all the time. So whenever possible we would orient people and we would give training. For example, there were quite often people that decided—or groups that would decide that they needed to do, uh, demonstrations or marches. And we did quite a bit of orientation of training of March Marshals and uh, how to organize marches and demonstrations. And CRS even published some brochures, giving the basics of those kinds of things, which we could use in addition to meeting with some of the folks that were doing that, 'cause obviously we couldn't get to every march or protest that existed. And we did get to some of the major ones and were able to, um, do some—we thought—pretty effective training for March Marshals. And, and to try to avoid the kinds of conflicts that can occur either between the police or other officials or just the citizenry that may not be in agreement with whatever the, the March, was promoting. And of course not every protest March would be jurisdictional for us, but once the people got that kind of training and orientation, and what they did with their training, uh, was up to them of course.

Heidi Burgess (24:12): Right. Was this the sort of thing that was shared nationwide? It would seem to me that if you created a brochure in your region, it would be useful in all the other regions or is this still kept pretty much on the regional level?

P. Diane Schneider(24:29): CRS published and still has it I think in their, on their website or in their archives, ... planning for, uh, marches and demonstrations. And also, uh, I think the title is, is "So you're a March Marshal," or something like that. And that's a national brochure. Uh, of course we could not publish things ourselves nationally, but we could share them with headquarters and then it was up to headquarters to decide whether that would be something worthy of sharing or not.

Heidi Burgess (25:13): Okay. Um, my next question again, you've kind of talked about. Did CRS ever face pressure to "stay in your lane" and not interfere with other, uh, federal agencies? It sounds to me like it's more the other way around with the FBI story, not staying in their lane, but did you ever get pushback because you were inhibiting other federal investigations or actions?

P. Diane Schneider(25:52): I can't think of any specific, uh, instances of that. We tried to maintain amicable relations with not only federals, but also state and local jurisdictions as much as possible, just because we were offering our services. But like Bob said, many times, you know, the wise man speaks once and if no one listens, then he goes away. We didn't actually always go away though, because someone else might be asking for our services in the same area. ... This would not be, I guess, it wouldn't be productive to try to insert ourselves. But what quite often, what would happen, and what Bob always said too, is, you know, you can offer your services and then you're thoroughly rejected and you're gone. And then suddenly, they get themselves in so deep that then they're asking for your services and say, "well, we'll do what we can, but you know, if we had been able to offer some preventive kinds of services, then it wouldn't have got to this stage."

P. Diane Schneider(27:19): And we wouldn't have the difficult job that we have now to try to put out fires when we could have done some preventive kinds of work ahead of time.

Heidi Burgess (27:30): Right.

P. Diane Schneider(27:31): So that was the kind of thing that we would usually do. Although obviously we would respond whenever there was a surfacing of ... publicized, especially surfacing of those kinds of tensions and conflict, but certainly to the degree possible, then we would offer preventive kinds of things whenever from our assessment, it looked just though things could be escalating, but our vision was quite often not the same vision as those of, of people in, positions of power.

Heidi Burgess (28:16): Right. Uh, my next two questions, I think maybe aren't so relevant to the time that you were in CRS, 'cause they came along afterwards, one's on social media and the other is on "fake news." Um, did social media play a role when you were in CRS or had it really not gotten to be a thing yet?

P. Diane Schneider(28:45): It didn't seem to be a thing yet. I mean, of course we had emails and we had, uh, billboard kinds of things, but we didn't, we didn't have near the social media. Uh, and everybody didn't have a cell phone. We didn't have cell phones until late in my career. ... There's the rumor mill, which didn't need social media. And so in some groups, and even up to today, uh, word spreads real fast. And "fake news" spreads real fast too. So fake news always existed. It just probably didn't get as spread as worldwide as it is today. So it was it, uh, even then, sometimes, it was difficult to root out the cause and try to get a correction in there to reduce the tensions about things that aren't really real. But uh, certainly, I mean, as a concept it existed, but not to the degree. Although now with social media, it's easier to disseminate corrections, I guess.

Heidi Burgess (30:18): Yeah. There's truth to both sides, I guess. When we did our earlier CRS interviews, which back in the nineties, uh, several people talked about efforts to set up rumor control teams.

P. Diane Schneider(30:32): Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Heidi Burgess (30:33): Did you ever do anything like that or otherwise try to deal with preventing rumors or nipping them before they spurred violence?

P. Diane Schneider(30:47): We would. And because of what was done previously in CRS, we did have a structure for setting up a rumor control. And it was actually written out as to how we can set it up. So we could hand that out when we were explaining. And usually that would be started with some people that were concerned about that issue and who were willing to form a rumor control group and who would call who, and then what would be the structure of who who would call who and et cetera. So we did have that as a possibility and it just, depending on, the circumstances, you know, I mean, we had to use a lot of different tools. We couldn't always use a hammer 'cause not everything was a nail.

Heidi Burgess (31:42): Any other, uh, approaches to dealing with rumors other than setting up a local team to vet them?

P. Diane Schneider(31:55): Well, if we found someone who was influential, who was spreading rumors, then it was always—and Bob was so good at that, too. He would meet with people that—I admired him for his ability to speak with them, <laugh> sometimes. But just to be able to meet with the people who were spreading these kinds of things, to determine where, what they thought came from and whether there was any way that they could be assisted in seeing maybe the benefit in looking at things from more than one perspective to see if there might be more than one aspect to what they were—and of course it depends on the subject 'cause things are so diverse. It would depend entirely on what was going on and what the availability of some concrete evidence or proof that could be provided. And whether we had someone who was able, like Bob, to approach the person in such a way that they would actually listen and converse without saying, "oh no, no, no, you're one of those people."

Heidi Burgess (33:24): I never met Bob, but I have a feeling that he was, from your description, and I've heard other people talk to him, he'd be very hard to write off.

P. Diane Schneider(33:33): Well, he described himself as the biggest, blackest man you ever met, which wasn't precisely true, but his personality was. And uh, he would, he would be very, very hard to write off.

Heidi Burgess (33:54): I'm sorry I never got to meet him. Changing subject again—were you still with CRS when the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd hate crime legislation was passed or was that after you had left?

P. Diane Schneider(34:15): Well, I believe that was probably about the time that I was on my way out. 'Cause we were following it very closely, you know, ever since Shepard was killed. Uh, you know, we were following that issue very closely, but I can't remember exactly when the legislation per se, was passed.

Heidi Burgess (34:44): When he was killed, obviously the legislation wasn't in effect yet.

P. Diane Schneider(34:48): Right.

Heidi Burgess (34:50): Did CRS get involved in the protests that happened after that anyway? Or did you say, "Nope, that's not our jurisdiction. We can't do that."

P. Diane Schneider(35:01): We were not involved in Region 10. Oh we had very, very little staff at that time. And we were not involved in those issues at that time.

Heidi Burgess (35:21): Um, one are the questions I'm asking again, of people who were there later, and you may know the answer to this, maybe not: that act greatly expanded the scope of CRS's coverage.

P. Diane Schneider(35:37): Right.

Heidi Burgess (35:38): Did it also expand the funding available or did it just stretch CRS all that more thin?

P. Diane Schneider(35:45): It stretched CRS even more thinly. And uh, I think there was also a lack of the proper kind of orientation for the staff to be able to more effectively address those issues. 'Cause there are differences in approaches. ... We had been able to inject ourselves into issues—like I had mentioned before, into issues that were supposedly religious issues, but because they often involved either race or national origin, but ... we just didn't have the staff, and we didn't have the knowledge, and we didn't have the training. And of course we couldn't very well go somewhere claiming that this was within our mandate when it wasn't.

Heidi Burgess (36:54): Makes sense. And do you have any idea of whether they have done training and gotten staff who have expertise in that area now? Or are you not in contact and don't really know?

P. Diane Schneider(37:09): I don't know. I've been in contact with some—and I continue to be in contact with some—of the former conciliation specialists. But as far as the current conciliation specialists, I haven't had anyone reach out to me. And of course the last thing that anybody on the job wants is for some old folk to be contacting and telling them how they should do their job. Even we had our, uh, their director Grande Lum. When I went back, I think for the 50 year commemoration, or something, and I was mentioning something about Bob Lamb, et cetera. So then when it came to giving us out these certificates that he was giving, then he called my name and he said, I was the one that was trying to tell him how to run the agency—which I thought, well, that's not very conciliatory of a director of that agency to say that. But, and certainly it hadn't been my intention to do that. I had heard that he was trying to write a book about CRS. So I thought that information I had might be valuable after 20 years with the agency, but obviously not. <laugh>

Heidi Burgess (38:32): Sorry to hear that we've been working with him.

P. Diane Schneider(38:40): I know you have. And it may be that he's come around.

Heidi Burgess (38:45): Must have been an off day or something. Not sure.

P. Diane Schneider(38:50): Well, I think it was the fact that all of these people are coming in that used to be with the agency and they're not working with the agency anymore, and those are not my responsibility. And here they are trying to tell me how to do things, and I'm the director, so they shouldn't have to do that.

Heidi Burgess (39:12): I think you're right. That at least now, he's very interested in the experiences of the past. And he's the one who, um, started this second round because he said he said he found the first round, so valuable, um, that he wanted to do a second round. So again, I'd like to think it was a bad day.

P. Diane Schneider(39:38): Perhaps, perhaps, um, or maybe he was just joking, but yeah, he didn't know me. So I'm not in habit of joking with people that I don't know.

Heidi Burgess (39:58): Um... do you have any more advice? You foreshadow all of my questions. Do you have any more advice for people—you just told me they won't want it—but coming into CRS about how to navigate the CRS bureaucracy?

P. Diane Schneider(40:18): Well, I think it wouldn't hurt to be able to get in communication with someone who no longer works with CRS, who isn't afraid that it will interfere with their job or their reputation, just to ask for advice, or ask how we manage to do things, or how we would handle certain situations. Because I think it's kind of threatening to sometimes to talk to another person in the agency, partly because it's such a small agency, even though we like to think it doesn't exist, there's jealousy and there's competitiveness, and there's the fear of somebody, one-upmanship and those kinds of things. Which, when we go out on a project, usually all of that disappears and we settle down and we do our job, but it still exists. So I think it would be very helpful for a person in CRS to just talk with someone who used to work with CRS. And if that person doesn't seem to be helpful, talk to another person.

Heidi Burgess (41:43): ... Once we publish all of this on the internet, people might be able to, they could definitely get a hold of Bill or myself, and then use us to try to get in touch with some of the people that we've interviewed. We're not gonna put any contact information up on the website, obviously. CRS, I would guess, doesn't have, old timers' contact information. How hard is it to find you guys?

P. Diane Schneider(42:23): Well, if someone looked on Facebook and they looked for a page called "CRS Remembered," they might find a lot of people that used to work for CRS that are connected there, and they might even get an idea just seeing what different, uh, people have published kind of where they're coming from and see whether that looks like it might be helpful to them or not.

Heidi Burgess (42:55): I didn't know about that, but that sounds like something that I'll be interested to check out as well.

P. Diane Schneider(42:58): It was Mike Hernandez who had set up that group originally, and I thought it was an excellent, excellent idea. And even sometimes what we do and what I've done on occasion is even though it's mostly made up of us old folkies, I'll publish things that are historic, uh, issues that anyone in CRS should be aware of the history, just because of the fact that quite often the communities that we work in have long, long memories. And they know about issues that occurred that maybe some of the younger folks may not know if they haven't been involved in that community. So by learning more about the history of some of the different communities that we've worked with, they can get a better idea of how some things should or should not be approached in order to help resolve those kind of conflicts.

Heidi Burgess (44:06): Great idea. Um, it's amazing the way you're one step ahead of me. A question about mentoring, um, how did you learn, uh, the ropes in order to do your work well at CRS? Clearly the answer is Bob Lamb.

P. Diane Schneider(44:30): Clearly.

Heidi Burgess (44:31): Also maybe not for you, but for other folks, what you just said of going out to people who were there before—any other source of mentoring that could be useful?

P. Diane Schneider(44:47): ... The way that I got started with CRS was because I had been causing trouble in the community and, uh, came to the attention of Thelma Carranza, who was a conciliator in Region 10 at the time. And then she introduced me to Gil Pompa when he came to Seattle for a conference.

Heidi Burgess (45:24): Was he director at the time?

P. Diane Schneider(45:25): He was director at the time. Yeah. He died in office as a matter of fact. ... Thelma, then of course, when she saw the issues that I was dealing with, she said, "well, is there some way we could help?" And so she offered some assistance, which I didn't have anything against feds <laugh> well, some feds maybe, but <laugh>, but certainly—feds sparing gifts? Why not? <laugh>

Heidi Burgess (46:01): Right.

P. Diane Schneider(46:01): And so I thought her help was, was valuable. And this just dealt with treatment of Hispanic offenders in the correctional system, 'cause at the time I was working in the Department of Corrections and I had raised that issue just because of some of the work that I was having to do. And I think we talked about that a little earlier about that. And ... someone in one of the high mucky mucks was telling me that the need had not been demonstrated that we should be concerned about language access, et cetera. So I was able to gather all kinds of resources. For example, the state of New York had published a big manual about dealing with the Hispanic offender, which came in very handy for me as a resource. And there were a number of other kinds of resources that I just—I'm a natural collector of things.

P. Diane Schneider(47:08): That's why my house looks like a library, probably, but uh, I just, I never met a book or resource material that I didn't love, you know, so <laugh>, so ... that to me was great. Just having resources and access to material and knowing where to find material. I went to Puerto Rico and met with the director of their Department of Corrections. And I said, you know, the Department of Corrections in the state of Washington has people at that time on probation and parole and they have all of these materials. So I'd just like to see how you do your paperwork so that I can make some comparisons and maybe make some suggestions back in the state of Washington. And she was very helpful, very happy to meet with me, and talk to me, and show me samples, and talk. So I thought that was a great resource too.

Heidi Burgess (48:14): What I'm hearing—the thread that I'm hearing going through all three conversations is the importance of reaching out, and working with, and building relationships with just as many people as possible.

P. Diane Schneider(48:27): That's true. That's true.

Heidi Burgess (48:31): Um, my last question—and you've given me a wee bit of a hint on this one, too. Uh, have you written an account of what you did at any particular case that appeared in publication? Or do you have any other publications that you'd be willing to share that people might find interesting? You've already shared your poem, and I don't know whether I asked you whether we could publish that or not. I think it was copyrighted somewhere else. Was it not?

P. Diane Schneider(49:05): Well, it was published in, the New York Times, but I suppose after all this time—that was back, I think 2019 or something—I don't think there would be a problem publishing it unless you were trying to publish it for profit or something. ... I have published, I think a couple of articles for the American Translators Association. Um, and, uh, and this has been several years. In fact, I did some presentation for interpreters the year that the 9/11 attacks occurred. I went to the American Translators Association conference in California and the next month I was sent to New York City <laugh>. But the presentation that I gave at the time was about, uh, hate crimes and what we should know about hate crimes, because not only are immigrants, potential victims of hate crimes, but people who associate with them who assist them, people who interpret for them, can also find themselves in that, uh, bailiwick.

P. Diane Schneider(50:30): And so not only is it important to be aware of that kind of situation, but also to know the difference between bias incidents and hate crime incidents and maybe form groups, if this kind of thing is happening, to keep track of the numbers of incidents and the types of incidents that occurred. And we have—I think we, I don't know if they still have it at CRS, but I probably have it someplace in my files, uh, a checklist of the kinds of things that ought to be documented, even if they're not possibly crimes, but also that could be documented as well as reported to law enforcement, uh, when things like that happen because statistics are important, even if there's not necessarily a conviction or a definite outcome to any specific incident.

Heidi Burgess (51:36): It's also important to know how to prevent that sort of thing and protect yourself from it.

P. Diane Schneider(51:45): Being aware of what it is. So yeah.

Heidi Burgess (51:49): Conciliators, if they're gonna go on the ground in places like this, clearly trying to diffuse the situation, I could see where they would become targets themselves.

P. Diane Schneider(52:00): One of the things we did in Region 10, and I don't think it happened in every region, but, uh, Bob thought that it was important. And I thought it was important that we always had plain tags. We didn't have government tags on the cars that we used when we went into communities. Because if you have government tags on a car, nobody's gonna know you're the good guys, right? They'll think you're the immigration or you're the FBI, or you're the federal marshals. And so they might damage the car or something. Well, that's not gonna help anybody. And it certainly wouldn't help us to do our job. So there are subtle kinds of things that way you can park your car closer. Otherwise you'd have to park your car a mile away and find another way to get someplace.

Heidi Burgess (52:53): Right.

P. Diane Schneider(52:54): But yeah, ... there are things like that, but ... mostly, what I publish are translations of novels into English, but, uh, I think what I've published has tended to be with the ATA. I think I also did one for NAJIT, national, uh, interpreter justice and translators. What is it called now? That's terrible. Once you get to where you only use acronyms, you forget what the full title of the organization is, but it's for judiciary translators and interpreter organizations similar to the American Translators Association. And of course I belong to the local chapter of the American Translators Association, too, which we call NOTIS, the Northwest Translator and Interpreters Society, which used to be two groups. And they finally joined into one group, 'cause at one time, it was also WITS, the Washington State Interpreters and Translator Society.

P. Diane Schneider(54:15): So <laugh>, but that's where—even though when I was going to, when I was taking my grad studies, they didn't have a field yet, quite defined called community organization, organization development, which nowadays they do. But, uh, we were oriented and focused in that way, which of course helped me a lot in CRS because I really thinks that organization development is much closer to what CRS needs to do to do a lot of the prevention work that can be done, uh, rather than once we have a full blown dispute and ... rioting in the streets, which happens as well. Then it's a little hard to reduce the heat level.

Heidi Burgess (55:12): Right. All right. Well, you have made it to the end of my questions.

P. Diane Schneider(55:21): Really. I hope I haven't gone overboard too much.

Heidi Burgess (55:24): Definitely not. This has been delightful. And I've really appreciated getting to know you.

P. Diane Schneider(55:30): Well, I've appreciated getting to know you as well.