MCCR hosts listening session for Salisbury community

SALISBURY, Md. – Community members came together to make their voices heard at Maryland’s Commission on Civil Rights virtual listening session.

Topics like housing discrimination and diversity were touched on, and commission director of education and outreach, Candice Gray said this is the state’s way of addressing some of its most pressing issues.

“Our listening sessions are so important, because even if it’s not under the Maryland Commission of Civil Rights’s jurisdiction, we collaborate with our partnering agencies to see that we start communicating about this, making it a big deal so that we can see some change,” Gray said.

MCCR pulled Salisbury PFLAG into the conversation and executive director, Mark DeLancey said it helped spotlight the issues that impact the LGBTQ+ community on the Shore.

“It seems that the whole western side if Maryland was very unaware with a lot of things that were going on with housing, economics, the employment climate and things that,” DeLancey said. “They’re just unaware of such issues that hit home for not only them, but are hard for us to deal with here, but make us unique.”

DeLancey hopes future sessions will pull other community leaders in, to contribute to the conversations.

“We need to make sure that we’re having an honest conversation from a medic standpoint, from a police standpoint, from a housing standpoint, and all of these issues need to be addressed because sometimes people just don’t know,” DeLancey said.