CdA human rights director resigns

The director of Coeur d’Alene’s Human Rights Education Institute recently resigned, saying he and the board have differing views about the direction of the institute.

Rhys Johnson’s July 22 resignation comes just eight months after he was hired, ending a nearly two-year search that netted more than 70 candidates.

“They weren’t matching me, and I wasn’t matching them,” Johnson said Tuesday.

Yet Johnson said his short stay in Coeur d’Alene was successful because he helped create a vision for human rights that went beyond the story of how Kootenai County conquered and bankrupted the Aryan Nations.

“I’ve helped to enliven the idea of human rights now that the Nazis are gone,” Johnson said. “But I don’t see a future for myself in this institute.”

Board member Mary Lou Reed called Johnson a “wonderful visionary” but said that developing the institute is going to take time and a lot of groundwork is still needed.

“I think his vision perhaps was more global than Coeur d’Alene,” Reed said. “We are still thinking a little more regionally. It’s slow. We are going to have to move in a little bit more of baby steps.”

The board hasn’t yet decided whether it will launch another worldwide search for a director. Johnson’s assistant, KJ Hackworthy, will act as director through December, said board chairman Jerry Gee.

The nonprofit institute was created in 1998 to provide educational opportunities about human rights, not just in schools but in the public. It is currently raising money to match the $1 million donated by Greg Carr, an Idaho native and former chairman of Prodigy Inc., to realize its vision and build a center, to be located in the former railroad battery building at the edge of City Park.

“In a perfect world we would love to have this be an international center to provide information and celebrate diversity and human rights,” Gee said. “To get there, there are lots of key steps that need to take place. We are still in our infancy – still trying to take those first steps.”

Johnson and the board agree that one of his major accomplishments was helping the Lake City High School Human Rights Club put on the World Dollar Day fund-raiser. The club designed the fund-raiser around the idea that most people – including students with only a small allowance – could afford to give a dollar.

“Human rights can be as small as giving a dollar,” Johnson said.

Johnson, 39, came to North Idaho fresh from an assignment to build a judicial system in East Timor and had spent nearly a decade working in the war-torn Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. At the time of his hiring, he said that human rights is about ensuring that hate never can get another foothold in the Northwest. And it’s about focusing on a larger definition of human rights, which can include everything from poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, domestic violence and women’s rights, hesaid. He wanted the institute to develop an education program that would work with school districts, and to provide workshops and speakers to help people understand acceptance. This also would help communities absorb and respect diversity, he said.

Even though Johnson has worked with international conflicts, he said strife exists locally – not just over race and gender issues, but over environmental and other issues, too – and that people must begin to communicate with each other despite their differences.

Johnson said he is applying for jobs across the globe, from New York to New Zealand.