Former area man takes top civil rights post
Dominican heritage also shapes Perez
WASHINGTON — Thomas E. Perez knows the family saga well.
He knows all about his paternal grandfather, the Supreme Court chief justice in the Dominican Republic who resigned to protest the dictator's ethnic cleansing. And all about his maternal grandfather, the ambassador who stayed in exile in the United States knowing he would be killed if he went back home.
And he knows all about the father he lost at age 12, a doctor at what is now the Buffalo Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the other fathers from Buffalo who were always there for him in the wake of that tragedy.
Perez, 48, brought all that knowledge with him to the stage Friday as he was sworn in to a position where a sensitivity to hardship will go a long way: assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights.
With three of his four siblings — two Buffalo-bred doctors and a psychologist — looking on, Perez took the oath for what's widely considered one of the most politically perilous posts in Washington.
Reflecting on it all in an interview a day earlier, Perez looked back on his roots in Buffalo and what they mean for him in his demanding new job.
"What makes Buffalo great, and always has and always will, is the people," Perez said. "What I learned growing up in Buffalo was the importance of hard work, the importance of community. Buffalo has had tough times, but the people are very dogged — and civil rights is about being dogged."
Doggedness seems to run in the family, too.
Perez's paternal grandfather, JosePerez-Nolasco, resigned from his Supreme Court post in the mid-1930s after Dominican dictator Rafael L. Trujillo established a policy to wipe out the nation's Haitian population.
Perez-Nolasco's son, Rafael Perez-Lara, was doing a medical residency in Toronto at the time … knowing he could not return home to the Dominican Republic.
"You couldn't kill the chief justice of the Supreme Court — but you could kill his son," and that's just what Trujillo threatened to do, said Dr. Jose G. Perez-Brache, one of Perez's physician-brothers, who works at Kenmore Mercy Hospital.
Things were no easier for Perez's maternal grandfather, Rafael Brache- Bernard, who resigned as Dominican ambassador to the U.S. to protest Trujillo's genocidal policies. He ended up exiled in the U.S.
"He and my other grandfather were a moral compass," not only for the family, but for "an entire nation in exile," Perez said.
Many exiled Dominicans settled in New York City. But Perez's father liked Buffalo's beautiful summer weather and its family-friendly atmosphere, and decided to raise his family there. He took a job at the VA hospital, and he and his wife settled in Snyder.
"We were the Chamber of Commerce for all Dominicans in Buffalo when I was a kid," Perez said. "There weren't that many Dominicans living in Buffalo then, and every time a new family came, we got a phone call."
But then, suddenly, Perez's father died of a heart attack at age 52. The family that had provided a support system for Dominican immigrants suddenly needed a support system of its own … and Buffalo was up to the task.
Perez had plenty of friends, "and their parents were always there for me," he said. At Canisius High School, "the father-son breakfast would come along, and there would be five calls from people saying: "Hey, you want to come with us?'‚"
Perez's three brothers wanted him to come with them, too, into the medical profession, but that dream ended when Perez witnessed his brother Bob performing surgery.
Perez promptly fainted, and when he came to, he made a firm declaration: "I'm not going into medicine."
Instead, after graduating from Brown University, he chose Harvard Law School.
"It seemed to me that all the change agents in America were lawyers," Perez said, adding that he did make one concession to his physician brothers.
"I promised them all I would never be a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer," he said.
Perez turned his attention to civil rights, serving in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department and as an aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. He also served as Maryland's secretary of labor, licensing and regulation and on President Obama's transition team.
That background made him a natural choice to be the nation's top civil rights lawyer, charged with enforcing laws aimed at protecting Americans against discrimination.
Given the nation's fraught and frightful racial history, the job has been a political lightning rod for years. Two of President Bill Clinton's nominees for the post, Lani Guinier and Bill Lann Lee, sparked bruising confirmation battles, and Guinier ended up withdrawing.
The well-known and well-liked Perez fared somewhat better.
From the left, the the New York Times editorial page advocated a lawyer with a more controversial record on immigration issues, calling Perez's nomination "a little-noticed act of political faintheartedness."
And from the right, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., noted Perez's work with a Maryland immigrant advocacy group and his opposition to English-only policies.
"I think Mr. Perez is a fine man, but I think his viewpoint is a disaster for the future of this country in terms of what is a civil right and what isn't," Coburn said on the Senate floor last month.
Perez, nevertheless, won confirmation Oct. 6 by a 72-22 vote, meaning nearly half the Senate's Republicans voted for him.
Perez said he took pride in that bipartisan vote, saying it signals a commitment to a reinvigoration of a department beset with difficulties during the Bush administration.
Nearly 70 percent of the division's lawyers have left in the past few years. And a Justice Department inspector general's investigation showed why: From 2003 to 2007, Bush political appointees gave key career jobs to conservatives while blocking other qualified candidates.
"I'm hoping to accomplish a restoration and transformation of the division," Perez said. While rebuilding the staff and the morale, "we need to ensure the division is capable of handling the long-standing civil rights challenges that regrettably remain timeless: the cross-burnings and racially motivated murders and nuts-and-bolts discrimination that are still all too much a part of daily life in America."
Beyond that, "we also must ensure our capacity to respond to emerging civil rights challenges and ensure that everybody has an opportunity to succeed."
Buffalo attorney Larry Vilardo, a longtime friend of the Perez family, says he is sure Perez is up to the daunting task.
"He's extremely bright, very thoughtful and committed to serving those whom he sees as needing to be served," Vilardo said. "Plus, he has a heart of gold. He's the perfect person for the job."
U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. emphasized the same points during Friday's swearing-in ceremony.
"It goes without saying that Tom is an excellent lawyer, but he's so much more than that. He knows that partisanship has no place in the protection of civil rights. He knows the division's mission is vigorously and faithfully protecting the civil rights of all Americans."
Perez's siblings were in full celebratory mood at the swearing-in ceremony, and they will be back in Washington soon for another ceremony: the unveiling of a plaque in honor of his grandfather, the exiled ambassador, at the Dominican Embassy.
To the man now charged with protecting Americans' civil rights, that is a fitting honor for the grandfather who lost his home and career standing up for the civil rights of all Dominicans.
"I was at the embassy for an event, and they had pictures of all the ambassadors post-Trujillo," Perez said. "I said: "How about one pre-Trujillo?'‚"
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