 Let's rally, the location for a rally, but we moved it inside for a little more convenience for speakers, for those of you who have been to rallies out at the state house. Sometimes the voices go into the nether world and you don't hear a thing and we really want to make sure that our speakers' voices are heard today. So I thank you so much for coming. I'm hoping more people will come in as we go along so there may be a little bit of noise in the background, but we have a microphone. My name is Martha Allen and I'm working with Vermont NEA on racial equity work. We've been doing work with our racial justice task force for the last couple of years. We're kicking off a toolkit, an online toolkit that teachers and students and administrators will be able to use to promote, to advance racial equity in our Vermont's public schools. And as you all know, we need to do more and more and more of this work every day. So I'm really excited about the speakers we have lined up today. However, life being what it is, we have some changes. If you got a flyer at the beginning, you may have thought the representative Kaya Morris was going to be here. She's unable to be here due to her husband just had surgery and she's doing what we all want her to do and that's looking out after her family member. So we all hope that her husband heals quickly, recovers quickly. In her stead is Amanda Garces, who was kind enough to come at the last minute to talk to you about some really important work that they've been doing. Before we move on, I just want to thank Annie O'Shaughnessy for her wonderful presentation earlier. If you were here for that, I hope you got some good tips. She's a consultant with True Nature Teaching and is working in several school districts in Vermont. The Burlington School District is where I found her. And she does have, you are sharing your PowerPoint, or whatever that is called, whatever you use. So if you need to contact her, I think you had some business cards or something. They can get some for the trustee. Okay, there we go. So if you'd like to know more about what her work, you can find that out there. So more and more school districts are making changes in their disciplinary policies and restorative practices is one of the ones that people are turning to, one plan. And to, well actually I want to do one other thing. Before we get started with our really speakers on the list, we have a special surprise because we happen to be in the building. We happen to be in the treasurer's building and the treasurer happens to be working on a Saturday on something, she'll tell you, but she's here. So I thought I'd let, we invited Beth Pierce to come and just say hi to you. So she's going to say hi, but then we'll get started with our program. Beth. Thank you so much. I was working upstairs on financial statements for year in. So this is a great, great change of pace. I want to say thank you very much for being here today. Thank you for the work you do as teachers because you do so much to help students grow and thrive and be part of good citizens in the future. And I want to say thank you for the good work that you do. It's not always as appreciated as much as it should be. I'm grateful for the teachers in my life that made a difference in why I'm here today because of some very good teachers. So let's give you a hand first. Treasurer's office, we talk about the bottom line quite a bit. And when I talk about the bottom line, I want to make sure that every single person in Vermont is entitled to share in that bottom line. That means that every single person in this state is entitled to an opportunity for a lifetime of financial well-being. And that's something that we believe in. Okay, you like that idea, okay? All right. That's something that we believe in. We work on financial literacy programs. We work on pension programs. We have a new program called ABLE, which is Achieving a Better Life Experience, which is about providing financial independence for individuals with disabilities. We work in so many different areas to try to do this. And we're working on a plan right now to help people that do not have options for retirement. We want to make sure that there's an opportunity for every single person. That means, again, that you should have financial independence, but it also needs to have with it social justice, restorative practices in the schools and in justice system, freedom from discrimination. You folks are on the front line making that happen. I just want to say thank you very much. Thank you for TJ and your work on restorative justice. I just want to say thank you again for that. Let's give him a hand. Back up and do some financial statement preparation. I'd rather be here, but thank you very much for what you're doing and enjoy the conference and learn from that and go out and continue the good work that you've been doing. Thank you. The pleasure appears. Go do whatever that is you do. She is a great advocate for our teacher's pension system or all of our pension system. So that's, I'm glad she's doing whatever that is that she does up there. And it's a good segue to have our first speaker who is our attorney general, TJ Donovan, who actually, this is your office also. So everybody got to come to the office on Saturday. And TJ's been an advocate for working people, his entire career. And as state's attorney, he worked tirelessly to institute restorative justice practices so that many young Vermonters would not fall victim to the correctional system, making any attempt at finding success in society even more challenging. So as attorney general, TJ is, and as attorney general, TJ is now investigating the situation in Bennington involving Representative Kaya Morris. And he'll speak to that a little bit too. So you may have seen or heard the news coverage about Kaya and her withdrawal from the campaign for her campaign for House, for the House. And it's heartbreaking to hear that she was compelled to withdraw from the race because of a number of racial attacks she and her family have had to endure. It's not right. Kaya's work on behalf of the people in the Bennington area and her advocacy for the rights of people of color in Vermont has been stellar. She is a fierce advocate of what we all know is right and her voice should not be stifled. So unfortunately she's not here but we need to send healing thoughts to her husband as she helps him to recover. And we'll begin with our program, formal program and listen to hear from our attorney general, TJ Donovan. Thank you Martha and thank you to Vermont NEA for hosting this important forum and rally to discuss really an overdue but much needed difficult conversation about race in our state. And I think the Kaya Morris experience has exposed an ugly truth that we all know in Vermont. That racism is real in this state and we need to acknowledge it and we need to address it. And I want to thank the previous speaker, Annie O'Shaughnessy, for your presentation. And what you put up on the board about checking yourself. And I think we all need to do that here in Vermont. Obviously a predominantly overwhelming white state and a knowledge that my experience is one that is going to be much different than a person of color. It's going to be much easier. It's going to be with many less barriers and many less roadblocks. And that we all have bias, implicit bias. And we see that in all our systems. And for me, I grew up in Burlington, went to public schools and really had a great upbringing. My first job at a law school, I was a prosecutor down in Philadelphia. And I grew up in the south end of Burlington. And the south end of Burlington, very similar to Vermont, Montpelier, many places in Vermont. It's really nice. There's trees, there's schools, there's parks, there's businesses. I'd walk everywhere, walk to school, walk to the local store, walk downtown, wanted to go to any park I wanted. I'd ride my bike. And I really had a tremendously, it was a gift of an upbringing to grow up in Burlington. And I would suspect that's the view of many who grew up in Vermont. But when I started my career, I was an assistant D.A. in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, as many know, is a minority majority city. And as a baby prosecutor, you'd have to go out to different precincts. And I used to have to go to this place called 17th and Montgomery in North Philadelphia. Any of you are familiar with Philadelphia. But North Philadelphia is a rough area. And the area around 17th and Montgomery was really rough. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. It was boarded up buildings, graffiti, blight, trash. I didn't see parks. I didn't see schools. I didn't see businesses. I didn't see many people. But the people who I did see as a prosecutor, as an assistant district attorney, were young African American men who I prosecuted. Almost exclusively for what we would call a Pwed Charge, PWID, possession with an intent to deliver. Crack cocaine. And I would do this every single day. And the significance of that charge was, depending on the amount, you would either get, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania at that time had mandatory minimum sentences. Whether you'd get state time or what was called county time. And state time was tough. And there wasn't a lot of discretion for a young prosecutor. And a lot of folks went to jail. And every single day, I'd walk through this neighborhood at secret feeding, boarded up buildings, trash. And let me tell you about public safety. Public safety for me is always, it's about perception. Do you physically feel safe? I didn't feel safe walking on these streets. And every single day I'd go in and I'd prosecute these young African American men. And one day I'm walking on these streets, up to the precinct at 17 Montgomery, looking around. And finally, I just said to myself, if I grew up here, I might be doing the exact same things these guys. We are all products of our environment. It does matter about our systems and our institutions in the environment which we're from. Schools do matter. Parks matter. Access to healthcare matters. Jobs matter. Communities matter. And what my experience was growing up in Burlington, Vermont, I did not see anything like that in the area that I was prosecuting these young people. And the point I make is this, to the point about checking yourself. I'm nothing special. But I grew up in a community with parents with resources who had social capital where there was education opportunities, where there were jobs, where there were role models. And I'm the beneficiary of that. And when we talk about the criminal justice system and our system of public safety, we have to be honest and our educational systems, but particularly our criminal justice system, that we have marginalized an entire subset of our population, mostly the poor, mostly people of color in the name of public safety and it has not worked. That the reform has to come, but the reform can't just come from our criminal justice system. It has to come from our community by embracing restorative principles, by checking ourselves, by checking our privilege, by understanding my experience is not the same experience. And I may use different language and dress differently and speak differently. But I believe we all share one thing in common, to be successful, however you define that success, to achieve whatever dreams we may have, but it simply comes down to that opportunity. And does that opportunity actually exist for all of us? We know it doesn't. Because let me tell you, it's something that we all know. The starting line in life, it's not the same for everybody. I got a head start by virtue of who I was and where I was from, but boy do we make it hard when people don't keep up with us. So we have to check ourselves. I want to thank you for acknowledging that. That is a big step in this issue, is checking our privilege and acknowledging our experience is different from others, particularly people of color. And when we talk about our schools, there was a report done by, I believe it was Vermont Legal Aid a couple years ago. And it's a kids of color in Vermont, I think are twice or perhaps three times more likely to be expelled than white kids. Let me tell you something about getting expelled. You're going to end up in the criminal justice system. If you're not going to school, you're going to end up in the criminal justice system. And let me tell you something about the criminal justice system, which includes the juvenile justice system. Once you are part of the system, it is hard to get out of the system. And the juvenile justice system, which needs an incredible reform in our state, in our country is the feeder system into our adult criminal justice system. That we've set up barriers and obstacles and roadblocks, not to rehabilitate people, but to simply keep them marginalized by asking them who don't have access to transportation, who don't have role models, who don't have jobs, who don't have resources, who don't have money to satisfy conditions that even the best of us that live in that middle class existence would have trouble fulfilling. The numbers don't lie. Our incarcerated population in the state of Vermont should reflect our general population. And people of color in the state of Vermont maybe represent 2% of our general population. They represent close to 10% of our incarcerated population. And I'm going to tell you, as a prosecutor, I am guilty of implicit bias. Because, Annie, as you said, what we don't always do, and I'll tell you, we don't do well in the criminal justice system, is we don't see people. And that implicit bias plays out because what you do in the criminal justice system is you're looking at paper. You're looking at where somebody's from. You're reading somebody's name that's going to be different than yours, that you're going to have trouble pronouncing, and then you're going to start making assumptions. And those assumptions are incredibly dangerous when it comes to the criminal justice system. Because that difference of life-altering events where you're on that cross-world where it can go any which way, and you've got that prosecutor who's lived that life of privilege, who hasn't had challenges, who sits in judgment of your human experience, who has very little experience for himself or herself, has enormous power. Am I going to charge you with a felony? I'm going to break two felonies. Maybe a misdemeanor. Am I going to ask for bail because you're not from Vermont? And if I impose bail, what am I going to do? Is it going to be based on my own calculation about what's reasonable? Again, looking through that lens of a middle-class life. Let me tell you something. 500 bucks is a lot of money for a lot of people, particularly a young person. And then when you're in and held with bail, and it's three days, it's a week, and the prosecutor says to you, I'm going to let you out, but I'm going to make you plead to something. And you take the plea agreement just to get out of jail. But let me tell you what that plea agreement has done. It's branded you as a criminal for the rest of your life. Impacts on educational opportunities, housing, and employment opportunities. That the criminal justice system has continually marginalized people because that's exactly how it works. Let me tell you, I was at a college up in Burlington, and it was a Friday. And I asked the students, I said, it's Friday night. It's going to be Friday night. I'm assuming many of you will go out and perhaps commit a crime. Nothing too serious, but on a college campus, that's what we know is going to occur. So what are you worried about? I kind of shrugged their shoulders and said, maybe I don't know, the RA, perhaps campus security. I said, why is it if I went six blocks north into Burlington into probably one of the most diverse areas of our state, and I asked the same question to a group of kids your same age, but perhaps had a different color of skin and didn't go to college. We're on a college campus. And I asked the same question on a Friday night, what are you going to do? What's your biggest worry? The answer to that was the police. And the inequality starts. What we have to do in this state is exactly what you heard Annie O'Shaughnessy talk about. Not only in our criminal justice systems, but in our educational systems, and that is to adopt and embrace restorative principles across the board. That is the one concrete thing we can do in this state because the school-to-prison pipeline is real in this state. We got to acknowledge it. We got to acknowledge that race is real and racism is real. And hate, given what's going on in this country, has been given a license to flourish. And we can have an argument about the First Amendment. And as Attorney General, I've gone around to many high schools with my civil rights director talking about the First Amendment. And we always say this for many cases. It's a fine line. It is a fine line when hurtful, hateful speech crosses over into a crime. It's very fact-specific. The Vermont Supreme Court has ruled on that. But you know what we always tell young kids? How you overcome hate speech is you meet it on the other street corner with more speech about compassion, about inclusion, about love, about community, about being engaged in speaking up when you see and hear hate. To stand in solidarity with those who have not had the privilege to be born on Third Base. It really is time in Vermont to acknowledge that we are privileged in so many ways. But it's time that we actually invest in a hard work so that we do achieve those goals of unity and equality for everybody. You know what broke my heart in that film was that young woman talking about how difficult it was to be a teenager and that she could be happy as a child but she couldn't as a kid, as a teenager. Thinking about what's her life like? What's going on in her life? I'm a believer also in making sure not only our educational systems but our justice systems are trauma-informed. We have to understand that people are coming out of incredibly complex, complicated environments and are doing the best they can, sometimes just to get to school in the morning. And schools have become much more than just a place to get educated. It's a second home for kids where teachers and administrators are becoming surrogate parents for kids, where kids are getting their meals, are getting fed. I was lucky enough once to go to a presentation about adverse childhood experiences. And my wife is a mental health counselor and she keeps telling me that I got to listen more and so I finally said, okay, I'll go because you got to learn about this stuff. And I went and I listened to really an expert talk about adverse childhood experiences and he talked about the power of perseverance and resiliency and I was listening as I said to him, oh, wait a minute. So I come from a big family, one of six kids, Irish Catholic. I said, I know a little bit about dysfunction. Now we do just fine. Okay, so that's not what I'm talking about. He said, some of these kids, the trauma is so great, it becomes toxic. When you're watching your mom get beat, when you're watching your mom passed out because she's suffering from addiction, when you don't know whether or not you're going to eat tonight or you're going to be safe tonight, that the stress becomes so toxic that it has lifelong impacts, it actually lowers life expectancy, increases the rate for mental illness and addiction. All what's going on in homes across our state. So when we talk about justice, we need to talk about access to healthcare. We need to make sure that those who are the most vulnerable or those kids have access to nurses. I'm a big believer in nurse family partnerships, nurses going into homes, sending a message of wellness, making sure that we have early childhood education that truly is universal, accessible and affordable for people everywhere in this state, that we have robust and well-funded public education in this state where we say to folks that mental illness is not only an issue that needs to be covered by health insurance, that it is an issue that affects entire families. We need to wash away the stigma of mental illness and make sure that children can access mental health care in their schools and their families if they so choose. Because this is what I've learned about being in the criminal justice system. As I said, I grew up in Burlington. I'd be in court and I'd be seeing the third generation of families in the criminal justice system. And here's the thing, they're not bad people. I went to school with a lot of them. They're not bad people. But if you peel back and you trace that arc of their lives and you go back to the beginning, it wasn't easy for folks. It was complex and incredibly complicated. And a lot of those needs that these young kids had were never met by a variety of our systems in our community. But what we can do now is when we talk about justice and equality and safety and a vibrant community for all of us, we can understand the one thing we can do is make sure that people are listened to, people are heard, that people are seen for who they are and that we don't impute and hold them to a standard that they are never going to achieve. But we simply say to them, here's an opportunity. We're going to listen. You know, Annie, I keep going back to your presentation. It was excellent. And the language about the FU moment. What we're saying, it's disrespectful, but the kid's grandmother may have uttered it. Sometimes we get to exercise a little less judgment. Sometimes we just have to listen and we have to let people be heard and to share their experiences and to validate their experiences and to help them and to understand that life isn't equal for everybody. When it comes to this issue of race, that there are historical obstacles and impediments that we have to address those, that we have to be honest with ourselves about our own privilege, that when we talk about equity in our schools, it's equity in our criminal justice system and equity in our community. This is not easy work. This is really hard work. And this is work that it's going to be hard to measure outcomes. We always love to measure outcomes. I once had a conversation with a young African-American guy about Black Lives Matter and it was exactly that quote that Kaia Morris put up, having uncomfortable conversations. And I said to him, well, why don't all lives matter? He looked at me and he said, because if they did, we wouldn't be having this conversation. And that was the best argument I've ever heard. Black lives do matter and we have to respect the experience. We have to listen and we have to check ourselves and that's what I'm dedicated to doing. Thank you for the work that all who are here doing, thank you for being here and I look forward to working with you. Thank you so much. I think that Vermont is extremely lucky and fortunate to have that gentleman as our Attorney General because that is a really powerful position and as we know he's making inroads on the national level with his work as Attorney General and I think we have, we're in good hands with him. Thank you, TJ. Our second speaker is Amanda Garces, a member of the Vermont Coalition for Ethnic and Social Equity in Schools. You can straighten me out on all this in a minute. The vision of this coalition is that all Vermont children should have a safe and welcoming school environment that is free from racial and social bias and discrimination and promotes their ability to contribute to a racially, culturally, and socially just society. Amanda worked with Representative Morris and other legislators on H794 which directs the Agency of Education to convene an independent majority people of color at the advisory board comprised of advocates from diverse ethnic and social groups, experts in ethnic studies and representatives of Vermont education agencies and associations. The charge of the advisory board is to develop statewide ethnic studies standards for adoption into existing statewide standards for public kindergarten through grade 12. That's something that Amanda does. And so I'd like you to welcome her and she will fill you in on the details of all that work. Thank you very much. Hila Watson, an Indigenous Australian elder once said that if you have come to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. And I ask you, are you ready to work for racial justice and true equity in our schools? Yes. I'm standing here not for Kaya, but with Kaya. Her courage to be part of the legislature and work on so many racial issues even when she knew how uncomfortable people will feel and the backlash that came with that, she did it because she was a true leader because her fight is our fight and she stood with us and now we stand with her. I'll tell you who we are in a minute, but for now let me give you a little bit of context. In 1996, the Vermont Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights received concerning reports about racism in our Vermont schools. They finally began investigating and convened two community forums, Interview Administrators, Educators and Parents. And in 2007, they compiled this report. In summary, the report found, and I encourage you all to find it online and read it, that racism in Vermont schools was pervasive. Let's let that sing it. Racism in our schools is pervasive. In 2003, they did a follow-up report and they found that although some changes were made and attempted, the problem persisted. And here we are in 2018, almost 2019, and if we were to do another report, our findings will be the same. We know that. It's true. We don't need a report to tell us that the problem persists. And it persists because we know racism has been woven into our social fabrics. We know that racism in our schools is embedded in our books and better in our routines. It teaches our children. It hides behind diversity events. It forces children to bear the heavy load of teaching others about themselves. People of color, black, Latinx, Asian, immigrant, refugees, indigenous communities have always demanded change. We have been told time after time that it's not about racism, that they're just kids, that we're overreacting, that we don't have enough proof that we have been told things happen. And they do happen. They're happening to Kayamur. They're happening to children all over Vermont school. They're happening to our families across the state, and it breaks our hearts. It damages us. It breaks us, but we get out and resist. And we keep resistant, and we will keep resistant. And if you want this to stop, and if you have the seed in your heart to see the change, you need to start with us. Not for us, but with us, because what you do without us, and for us, you're doing it to us. In July of last year, the Oregon Legislature passed HB 2845, Mandating the Establishment of State White Ethnic Studies on Oregon, K-Truthel. We decided we should be the second state to pass such similar bill, and in November we had our first meeting and created the Vermont Coalition for Ethnic and Social Equity in Schools. It's a coalition led by people of color. People represent in the disability rights community, the LGBTQIA community, because we do believe that our liberation is bound up together. We drafted the Ethnic Studies and Social Equity Working Group Bill and sent it to Kayamur, who introduced it despite the fact that it was laid on the game. We spent months coming to a consensus bill with the Agency of Education. There were consensus about language. We had concerns about excluding the white men from European descent from the bill, but we persisted. And the result was a bill with a language that represents the heart of the problem. It is a language that names things for what they are. Some people do not support because they think it was a mandated curriculum. It is not. What it does, as Martha points out, directs the Agency of Education to convene the advisory committee. It has advocates from diverse ethnic and social groups, so representatives from the communities that they are representing. Experts in Ethnic Studies representatives of Vermont Education agencies and associations. The charge of the advisory committee is to develop the ethnic standards to be included and adopted into current educational standards. If we think about Ethnic Studies as a separate thing, we are already kind of going in circles. It has to be embedded into the art everyday. We cannot have an African American month, a Latin X month. No, it has to be embedded. We are tackling the framework used to create a curriculum, a framework that until today still does not represent our histories and contributions. I did not read a book that reflected my existence until I went to college, and that's shameful. I could only imagine how much less pain I would have endured if I found Gloria and Saldúa. If I would learn about Chicano movements, the United Farm Workers, if I had seen Latin X communities represented as resistors, not as victims. The intention of this bill is to ensure that the contributions of ethnic and social groups historically marginalized and excluded from our society are finally lifted. Our bill is clear that the task will benefit all students and promote the types of qualities that ethnic studies seek to incorporate in practice. Additionally, the bill does include tools to increase cultural competency and at the same time provide content and methods that enable all students to explore safety questions of identity, race, equity and racism. By intentionally naming the ethnic and social groups in this bill, we are highlighting the order and timely importance of naming the fact that this marginalization exclusion has gone for too long. In this bill, we are not student advantage groups, rather than bringing the opportunity for students to reflect and critically think about systemic racism in what they already have. We will work hard to have this bill reintroduced in January. We hope you can walk with us, not for us and that you're ready to stand. You can sign up to support efforts. I have a signing sheet. You can seek out leaders in our communities that are doing this work, support that youth in schools making change, raising Black Lives Matter flags, organizations like Black Lives Matter of Greater Burlington, the Root in Brattleboro, the Rootland NWACP for Montrose for Justice in Palestine, Migrant Justice, that there are more. There are people of color leading. You just need to listen to them. Educate yourself and your heart. Have the courage to see the implicit bias. And when it comes time to show up to pass this bill, be there. Let our liberation be bound together and work to make this change. Thank you. It's really heartening to hear Amanda speak and I hope that we can all work with her as they move forward as we move forward with that bill. We have a little mix up with our schedule today and we happen to have the Lieutenant Governor here right now all dressed up out of his organic farmer clothes and into his Lieutenant Governor clothes. So Lieutenant Governor Zuckerman is here. He's our Social Justice Warriors and I'd like you all to welcome him. Thank you Martha and if you only knew the change of clothes is in the car actually from the farmers market to heading down here and it's an honor to be asked to speak to be a part of this. You know, I am mostly aware and always learning about the various privileges that I've had as first being a white male but also being a white male from a privileged background. My dad was a doctor I grew up with an amazing education system I grew up in one household one house for 18 years before going to college if people can't learn to recognize the benefits they have then they're not going to be very capable of understanding the challenges that others face and I've often tried to think in that way as I learned to listen and hear and absorb the experiences of others it's being Lieutenant Governor is an incredible experience I hear things from people all over the state I hear stories from folks to whom actions happen and I also hear remarkable statements from individuals that they don't even know what they're saying and I'm going to give you an example from just this very morning at 8.20 I was still setting up the farm stand market a person came along to buy some goods which is wonderful except it doesn't open until 8.30 and you're always trying to get everything done having started at 4 in the morning but sure of course I'll sell that to you and I said by the way I'm also your Lieutenant Governor she said oh what party are you from to me once you're serving party should not matter but I will answer whatever question people ask I said well I'm a progressive slash Democrat she said oh well if you would become a Republican I could support you and I said okay why you know what's the issue and she said well the Democrats want the black people to take over this country that was this morning now that's one of the most difficult things I have heard admittedly and it just happened this morning interestingly enough to be here today but I thought I'd pass that on that um what I take from that before leaping across the table I said well you know I don't really think that's what we're talking about we're talking about equality and fairness and justice and uh it didn't really seem to resonate for her but um but what it reminds me of is a critical important factor that many many people still don't understand not just their own biases which as I've indicated from the beginning I will continue to learn until the end of my life I'm sure just for me personally but in our education system and in our daily social construct how many people also just don't know the history of where we got to where we are today the fact that white people have 70% home ownership Latino culture 48% black culture 50% why? well because after World War II home loans were not given to our veterans of color but they were given extremely low rates with government's assistance so our white service folks people have no idea of that history and there's a lot more I could go on for hours and others could teach me hours more beyond that but so many folks do not know any of that history and it's partly from our history textbooks it is taught from the white male colonial perspective I was lucky enough Howard Zinn's book was my textbook so maybe that explains something but you know that and I'm sure there are imperfections in that book as well but the reality is most people most white people do not know the history that has gotten us to where we are today and in the words of Bob Marley if you don't know your past, you don't know your future so a lot of it is about education and it's about our own learning and our own teaching our own listening and our own giving and each of us in our roles and in our daily opportunities have different opportunities to do that I feel fortunate in the role I have I've got a microphone a little more often than other people I try to use the office to help with some of that teaching that we showed that's been co-sponsored by environmental groups justice groups labor groups because as was spoken of earlier I'm sorry I missed the first speaker many injustices are interwoven and the first movie was 13th for those that haven't seen it please do that's about the 13th amendment to the constitution how we essentially have moved slavery from the south to our prisons there's a lot more to it than that but that's the 5 second sound bite and the fact that you can not pay or pay people pennies on the dollar for their labor if they're in jail which is one of the reasons why you have such a high incarceration rate and then it's exploited by states and governments and private enterprises and again our prison incarceration rate as many here already know extraordinarily disproportionately weighted towards people of color for the exact same crimes that white people commit and are not put into jail for I've had people into my office with a weekly FaceTime half hour town meeting and I had students from school nearby when their black lives matter flag was raised to talk about the issues that young people are facing in our schools we each have to use the podium and the opportunity we have here from your own personal experiences or from your expertise if you're someone who is trained in this topic to please let me know what more I can do as Lieutenant Governor I no longer can sponsor legislation but I certainly would have sponsored that legislation in my time in the House and Senate I also want to ask our media friends some have left but to really think about how stories are told how the criminal justice system is portrayed how individual events are told not even always criminal based I was at an event last weekend on the waterfront in Burlington there were about 200 people and it was a blessing of the water with a native Lakota leader and she led the prayer and the ceremony and then they had three or four of us speak as well and the story that was told was that there was a demonstration around water and they had me quoted which I don't mind being quoted I'm a politician don't really mind but but there was no mention of the spiritual native leader and what water means and has meant to our existence for the whole time of our existence and the connectivity of humans to clean water was not in the story and when those stories whitewash what happens time and time again then people don't learn not only the history but they don't even learn the present and the voices that are out there and not just white men with ponytails so which has its own issues but in so you know I come here to learn I thought I was going to be here after Tim to hear him when he arrives and my understanding is a flight delay so he is coming I think because I still have so much more to learn myself we all do but one of the things I also want to mention I don't know how much time do I get we're going to show a film we're going to show a film but we love hearing you that's okay so two quick things I opened the legislative session two years ago first time as lieutenant governor you get to say your piece once at the podium then you're a moderator so you can never reveal your cards you have to be all neutral when I opened up my opportunity to be lieutenant governor I gave every single senator an heirloom dry bean seed and I said to them each one of you has a bean you can choose to keep it for the two years or not you can plant it one person collected a few and plant them but each one of these seeds whether it's a big seed or a little seed whether it's a black seed a white seed a seed with brown spots a seed with yellow spots every single one of them has the full genetic potential to be a thriving plant and produce a bounty of further offspring in that case but a bounty but the soil that seed is planted in the environment that seed gets during its lifetime because if it rains at first and it germinates but then it's dry for example kind of this year a little bit it may not live to its full potential if it's planted in poison soil it may not ever germinate but inside that seed is all the potential all the ambition all the genetic capacity to thrive but it's the soil and the environment around it that's going to determine its future and sure some seeds can do a little better in dry some seeds can push through if there's some adversity but on average the environment matters and I think our job as elected officials is to make that environment as nurturing for every single seed that's out there and when I think about our schools I think about our children and they are our seeds what is the environment we're going to give them to thrive and that's why I think we're here today and why the NEA has sponsored this event because I know the teachers in our state are trying to create the best environment for every single child possible they don't always have the tools they don't always have the resources but I know that's what they're trying to do and so I want to also thank the NEA for sponsoring this and working all over the state and with the legislature and with advocates and with individuals to continue to try to make that environment better because that's what we can all do keep making that environment better so that each person can thrive to their fullest potential thank you