KTLA News: "LA County Chicano Coalition press conference on discriminatory hiring practices" (1974)

of the East Los Angeles Community Union Edward The Cho coition of Los Angeles County with its 57 member agencies the GI Forum the league of United Latin American citizen and numerous other Spanish speaking organization charge the Los Angeles County human relations commission with discriminatory hiring practices in the bypassing of the number one candidate for the position of human relations director the number one of three considered candidates for this important human relation position was 13 Civil Service qualifying points over the second candidate and 17 points over the third candidate the lead of United Latin America l l you will be getting some extra uh we're get we're trying to duplicate some more of the ready okaying hiring process presided over by a consultant firm higen rather and Company who who were hired by the the present composition of the of the commission appointed by the Board of Supervisors fails to reflect the ethnic compositions of the county and that very lack of adequate represent automatically ensures the exclusion of a Cho in this crucial position the facts show that The Cho community comprises 18.6 of the County population while the next largest minority is represented by the black community having 11% County representation in comparison the com composition of the 15 member human relation commission is reflected in its membership by seven anglos five blacks two chos and and one Asian the commission has complete autonomy to present the gravity of this problem the failure of public officials to recognize the projection of years we hereby publicly state that we will use all and every method available to use in order to stop and prevent subtle and overt acts of discriminatory nature against the Mexican-American community and all other person who suffer the same or similar injustices irregardless of source we are in the process of investigating the legal resources such as injunction to withhold the appointment until a thorough investigation by the grand jury can be called and until the commission itself reflects the racial ethnic composition of the county and is able to fairly and impartially consider the facts as outlined in the statement and appoint the next human relation end of quotes it is our contention that the human relations commission is symptomatic of the Los Angeles County government's exclusion of chos in employment policymaking um commissions and legislative bodies that that was the reason that we stated that I think it's rather obvious because they're at this point in positions of uh I don't think the questions were the same I don't think anybody asked were you able to speak Spanish about whether or not just what is deserved of the Cho Community more no less did the three candidates go before the entire commission or just a portion of commiss cor no the entire commission who is the the uh who chairs the commission who's the president uh that's the chairman is Jose Mones Jose Montes that's right does Mr Mones or he stated that the only way that he saw that this type of a situation could be avoided in the future was for the supervisors to appoint more chos to the uh commission do you have any specific and again I hate that would Prejudice uh Mr ortis