Human Rights Commission Gets New Charge, Continues Work on Immigration 

After years in development, the Amherst Town Council approved a new charge for the Human Rights Commission (HRC) on June 1, 2026. 

“The mission [of the HRC] was to ensure that no power goes unchecked and that all residents are afforded equal protection under the law,” said chair Rani Parker. “Those are strong words. We actually cannot ensure anything… but I think that what we’ve tried to do or what our agenda is now is to educate people about human rights.”

In addition to Chair Parker, the HRC includes Vice Chair Alex Taratorina and members Rizwana Khan, Jayendran (Jay) Pillay, Milan Clark, Mattea Kramer, and Silas McClung. 

The new charge tasks the commission with promoting human rights and anti-discrimination through education and community events, “Serv[ing] as a forum for residents to give voice to their concerns,” and acting as a resource for the town council, town manager, and human rights director upon their request. According to the charge, the HRC can “make referrals regarding any concerns, complaints, or questions of discrimination, unequal treatment, or human rights violations brought to the attention of the commission to relevant bodies,” including local and state officials. 

Parker says that the first draft of the bylaw was already in development before she joined the commission in 2022. She notes that there was a delay between when the bylaw was presented to the council in 2024 and when it was redirected to the Governance, Organization and Legislation Committee (GOL) for review in 2026. 

“There were at least two occasions when I went to the town council to present the human rights report or to discuss it and said…‘our bylaw is sitting around, you know, why haven’t you taken it up?” Parker said. She added that several councilors said they hadn’t seen the bylaw and that she received no response when readdressing the issue later. 

“I asked the town manager why it’s being delayed, and he said he didn’t know. So it was just very confusing to me and I was very grateful that when the new town council came on board, it was one of the first things they took up. So immediately they moved it to the GOL, which is what’s supposed to happen.” 

Parker described GOL’s work on the bylaw as “conscientious,” and says it was completed within months. 

Over the course of its development, the language of the bylaw was edited for legal clarity as “people on GOL felt there was legally unclear language like [reference to] microaggressions and macroaggressions.” Parker added that this language came from KP Law, Amherst’s legal counsel.  

“I think that [GOL] made a genuine effort to make sure that the bylaw was simple, concise, clear, understandable by a wide range of people…I thought the intent behind the changes was good. And I think the result is good. But it doesn’t really change anything we do.”

The procedure section outlining how the commission would function was also removed as it was decided the commission could decide for themselves how they operate, including how human rights complaints are filed and addressed within certain legal parameters. 

Under the existing procedure, when a complaint is submitted, it is reviewed only by the Human Rights Director, Pamela Nolan-Young, who is also the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Only complaints reported within 180 days can be investigated by the town. 

According to the 2025 HRC annual report, the investigation into a complaint includes meetings with the HRC director and all parties involved in it. The director then writes a report based on the information shared and presents the report to HRC co-chairs “prior to the disclosure of the report.” 

Nolan-Young added that complaints can also be referred to state agencies, including the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the District Attorneys’ Office, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), and the Massachusetts Office on Disability. State agencies like the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) also have statutes of limitations for filing a complaint. At the MCAD, filers typically have “300 days from the last discriminatory act” to allege a complaint. 

The commissioners do not see the actual complaints filed with the director, in an attempt to keep them as confidential as the law will allow. According to Nolan-Young, “state law prevents the process from being completely confidential.” This is likely due to Massachusetts public record laws that permit some information from filed complaints to be available to the general public once an investigation is completed. 

“Members of the commission come and go…I guess there’s less trust in us than in town officials,” Parker said. “It could be that if you’re a town official and you violate…confidentiality, some action can be taken, whereas if you’re a human rights commissioner and you violate confidentiality, you’ve violated it. There’s no consequence. So, I think there’s some question about how much to trust us, the commissioners, with information that may be highly confidential.”

Parker said the HRC generally only sees the summary the DEI department releases to the public at the end of each year. In 2025, the HRC asked to be informed monthly if new complaints have been filed, a request the director has been complied with. 

Parker says that the DEI department has raised concerns regarding the workload of these complaints being entirely on a department staffed only by Nolan-Young and Assistant Director Philip Avila. 

With the agreement of the town council, the HRC created a fund to hire a certified mediator that could be used as an alternative to filing a complaint with the HRC director. Parker says the fund is separate from the town’s budget in order to ensure independence and will be funded through fundraising on behalf of  the HRC. “We want to be sure we have the resources to handle it and it doesn’t all fall on DEI.”

Parker added that mediation could potentially be a resource for complaints not filed with the director within the 180 days the town allows. 

“Often for those of us who have experienced violations…you’re not able to go and talk about it immediately,” Parker said. “It’s often something that hits you at some deeper personal level. And it takes a while to process, sort it in your own mind before you can go and talk to a stranger about it.” 

The HRC will continue to shape their procedures, including the timeline for mediation, at their yearly retreat on September 5, 2026. 

In addition to offering mediation, the HRC plans to document non-confidential complaints from Amherst residents, as outlined in their three-year action plan. Year one focuses on human rights training and education, while year two concentrates on documenting public complaints. In year three, the HRC plans to evaluate these responses for trends and offer responses including “training, Restorative Justice, fixing capital accessibility problems, mediation and more.”

“Any person of color in this town will have a story to tell. Why not document those stories? . . . And then if [violations are] happening in the same places or if they’re happening at the same…businesses–if we see repetition, if we see patterns, then we were thinking maybe we could take action…we would offer the business the chance to learn about human rights and to work with us to fix their issue, whatever it is.”

Immigration and ICE
The HRC is continuing to focus on immigration by educating community members about their rights and offering resources as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity intensifies across the country. 

On June 8, the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee (CSSJC) and the HRC met with the town council, Town Manager Paul Bockelman, and Amherst Police Department (APD) Chief Gabriel Ting where committee and community members raised concerns about the town’s response to elevated ICE activity. 

According to reporting from the Indy, Bockelman and Chief Ting reasserted that Amherst cannot interfere with ICE activities as doing so could result in legal consequences. They added: “the town will document and report illegal actions by federal agents and maintain public safety, but that prosecution of those actions will fall to the district attorney and attorney general.”

Parker said that the town’s response to concerns regarding ICE “struck some of us as being rather narrow.”

“When you’re faced with an unprecedented situation, there’s really a question of who you’re going to be at that moment…I wish I had heard more about the support for us and the understanding of us and the efforts being made by our safety institutions to see what they could do…beyond what the AGO [Attorney General’s Office] said.”

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t follow the rules…but I think that, as we said, this has not happened before. So we really have to challenge our minds, our brains, and our hearts to come up with how we’re going to deal with this. And I didn’t see that. What I saw was, you know, these are the rules, and we’ve been told the rules, and we’re staying within the rules. But you can stay within the rules, and you can do more.”

Parker added that the HRC sent a list of questions that were not answered at the June 8 meeting to the town manager for clarification and developed a two-prong strategy for moving forward that includes working with the APD “to see if, somehow, we can move them to do more,” in addition to organizing a meeting of community members and organizations to informally discuss these issues. 

“It’s a very strong commission, and that’s what we ought to be, especially at this time in our politics,” Parker said in regard to the HRC. “It’s really important to have people understand human rights law and how things work and we have many strong people.”