East Bay Municipal Utility District Director April Chan offered her temporary resignation as vice president of the board on Tuesday while investigations take place into alleged racially motivated conduct involving an artist.
“She may not have called me a derogatory name, but a lot of people associate class with race. And when you’re not dressed well as a Black person, sometimes you are thrown into a particular category,” Tiffany Conway-Cornelius told Bay Area News Group on Tuesday about her alleged interaction with Chan. “I didn’t deserve that treatment. … I deserve some respect.”
On March 27, Conway-Cornelius entered a district parking lot to remove a 16-piece art exhibit titled “To the Bay, With Love” – a year-long project donated to East Bay MUD for Black History Month and Women’s History Month. She said a district staff member had given her approval to park in one of the director’s parking spaces while she uninstalled the work.
Conway-Cornelius said Chan approached her as she gathered additional moving blankets for her art from her car. Chan reportedly asked Conway-Cornelius what she was doing there, what her name was and who she was working with. Conway-Cornelius claims Chan then told her she was going to report the artist to security.
“I don’t really know what her thought process was, especially after I told her what my purpose was for being there,” Conway-Cornelius said. “Maybe she just didn’t know that they had an art program. I don’t know.”
Chan reportedly returned with security to confront Conway-Cornelius, an action the artist thought was “ridiculous.” Conway-Cornelius said she then demanded Chan’s information and stated she would be filing a complaint against the district’s director.
“That’s when she got really beside herself and walked up to a cabinet where they have pictures of board members,” Conway-Cornelius claimed. “She pointed to herself and basically said that she doesn’t report to anyone except the people that voted for her.”
Chan said she could not share her experience of the incident, citing representation by legal counsel.
At Tuesday’s East Bay MUD meeting, Conway-Cornelius released a scathing account of Chan’s actions, claiming that Chan weaponized the district’s security to “erase (her) humanity.” She called for Chan to re-examine her relationship with anti-Blackness and classism if she is to move forward as a representative of the district.
“It’s very troubling to me that Director Chan felt her position as a member of the board justified her narcissistic behavior as she attempted to put me in my place and as a person of color,” Conway-Cornelius said during the meeting.
Chan apologized for the incident and volunteered to temporarily resign as vice president of the board during investigations of the incident. But, she said she felt hamstrung for not having the opportunity to present her side of the story during a public meeting.
“I just want her to know that it was never my intention to hurt her feelings or challenge her worth as a person. I am truly sorry if my actions made her feel demeaned or disrespected,” Chan said. “Please reserve judgment. I can’t really say anything right now (because) there are pending investigations. So that is my plea to you.”
District Board President Marguerite Young initiated the discussion of the incident by reminding her colleagues of their 2020 resolution committing themselves to racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
Chan’s attorney, Vernon Goins, took umbrage with Young’s opening statement invoking Floyd’s name in the context of discussing Chan’s actions, describing it as “insulting” and “disgraceful” to the understanding of racial profiling and discrimination. The board, he said, should have taken up the item in closed session, where the situation could be fully investigated before punishing Chan. He blamed Young for making a public spectacle of the complaint.
“There’s nothing anti black about someone disagreeing with someone else,” Goins said at Tuesday’s meeting. “At this inflection point in history, for a particular board member to use this as a way to weaponize the organization in order to bring this to the level of racism — it’s just quite sad.”
Chan voluntarily resigned from her position as vice president until third-party investigations into the incident are complete. A motion by Board President Marguerite Young to strip Chan of her role as chair of the planning committee failed.
The East Bay MUD Board of Directors will reconsider disciplinary actions against Chan at a May 13 meeting.