I want to bring the attention to Fresno’s mayoral race specifically how Jerry Dyer
has been refusing to attend public forums hosted by the community.
Recently he backed out from the #Fresno4All Mayoral Candidate forum. A forum hosted
by several organizations that work with under-represented communities.
As the former police chief Jerry Dyer agreed to come.
The former police chief despite
agreeing to participate has decided to not participate in the forum on January 30th.
Why did he decide not to.
That's a great question for a Mr. Dyer and his campaign.
Do you think that you know he feels like this wasn't because
he feels a lot of these organizations that you're talking about does he feel
they're too liberal.
I think that's a good question for Mr. Dyer and his campaign.
Do you feel that way.
I feel that this is a critical election
for the fifth largest city in California if you want to be the leader of the
fifth largest city in California you show up and you show up for all Fresnans
Jerry Dyer went on to release a public statement saying:
Now keep in mind that Jerry Dyer is running
on a campaign slogan “One Fresno.” Yet, when the South Fresno community organizes
a public forum to hear from all mayoral candidates, and all candidates agree to attend
Dyer decides to back out at the very last minute.
Dyer confirmed his attendance months ago. The organizations spent hours mobilizing residents to attend.
The fact that Dyer said he feels “unsafe” to show up to the forum because
of the PEOPLE who will be there, speaks volumes.
We know that youth, people of color,
and immigrants were going to attend. People from South Fresno.
It makes us wonder which “One Fresno” is Dyer referring too?
Meanwhile the Janz campaign has been working to connect with people of South Fresno.
I invited Mari from the Janz campaign to come on our show to share more about their efforts.
Hi Mari, what do you do for the Janz campaign and what is your role?
Hi Sergio, I am the campaign manager campaign for the Andrew Janz for Mayor.
I basically handle everything from scheduling to
events to campaign strategies stuff like that.
Can you tell us what's happening this
Saturday it sounds like it looks like the Andrew Janz has a full day doing
several what I've noticed there's a canvass kicked off in the morning and
then there's some meet and greet with the Hmong community at 12:00 and then
there's another meet and greet at 2 p.m. at West Fresno then at the end of the
day there's East Fresno community meet and greet at 4 p.m. so a lot of meetings
happening through our city from with different groups so what
what is the purpose of this, why is this happening?
We realized that these
are some of the most underserved communities now obviously like they need
to know Andrew is and Andrew needs to know more about them especially the Hmong and
especially the West Fresno area. We've gone there couple
times and they've expressed how very little they know about him and so I
think the more that they are exposed to him the more they realized what a great
fit he would be as mayor.
What does Andrew hope to accomplish you know going
on to these communities and listening to the Hmong community and to West
Fresno know what is his hope for coming out of these meetings.
I think mostly he wants them to know more about him I think there's a
big misconception about Andrew especially in these communities
that don't know him who think that because he's a prosecutor
that he you know it's very similar to Dyer which is not true at all
he's literally probably the furthest thing from Dyer possible and so I think
he really really wants them to see how progressive and how much he really does
want to help their communities and that's why he's running.
All these meetings are open to the public correct?
Yes all of them.
So if you are interested in getting to know Andrew Janz and asking him some questions
some questions that you think are very important come to these meetings this is
a great opportunity by the Janz campaign to to come out and meet him and
to ask him questions get to know him a little bit better and from there you
could decide if he's worth you're vote.
Marie thank you so much for coming.
