 And okay, so it's 2 o'clock 1 p.m. I'm gonna go ahead and read and call us to order with the extension of chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting which I'm calling to order of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly, Monday, September 11th at 2 o'clock 1 p.m. will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. And I am going to quickly do a sound check. Again, this meeting is being recorded and I will begin with Dr. Shabazz. So yes, I can hear everyone and I can see everything. Excellent. Okay, and Dr. Rhodes. I can hear and I can see everyone. Wonderful. And Hala. Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, very good. Thank you. What was that, Hala? Oh, just thank you. Oh, okay. Well, thank you. And Jennifer, can you hear us and be heard? Yes, I can. Thank you. Excellent. Okay. And Jennifer, before I just wanted to check with you quickly, the meeting minutes on the agenda, are those up to date? Are we in a good position to go ahead and adopt those or accept those? You're muted, Jennifer. I only do this like 10 times a week. Are you guys, is this your last meeting? Next week will be our last meeting. So we could wait to... So we should wait. Okay, sure. And then I can include these ones too. That sounds great. So before we get started today, I just, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that some folks, there are always some folks that we care about who need our prayers and our love and support. And you might have some folks in mind and I wanted to take a moment for us just in silence to say a prayer or an intention or anything that feels right for you to express your support and love for those folks who may need it most right now. So this is just a moment of silent reflection and then we'll get started. Okay, thank you for that and let those prayers continue throughout the day. All right, I'm going to start by calling our first period of public comment. And I'll take a look here. Okay, so I'll read the public comment statement. And if you'd like to make public comment, please use the raise hand feature and I'll bring you into the room. During the public comment period, the chair will recognize members of the public. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your name, pronouns and residential address. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes at the discussion of the chair based upon the number of people who wish to speak. The AHRA will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment but we will certainly be listening closely. So if you'd like to make public comment, please raise your hand. So I am not seeing any public comment so I'm going to go on knowing that we'll have a second period later in the meeting. And I just wanted to quickly share that I along with Dr. Rhodes joined the Jewish Community Center of Amherst yesterday. They had an excellent presentation on reparations and we had the opportunity to share with the group. It was well attended by Zoom and in person and we had the opportunity to share a little bit about our findings and the sort of upshot that I took away is the commitment by that group to continue to support this reparative justice work in Amherst and that begins with a group of folks there who would like to be present on October 2nd when we present our report and there were other suggestions about that as well. Dr. Shabazz, I received your remarks after the program had started. I would love if it's okay, I'd love to share them with DeVora and Jeff but we can, okay, excellent. So that was great. So I'd like to get us started by just coming to this next session. Can I ask if Irv has any reflections as well? That really means everything to have faith-based communities and other partners coming forward from the community keeping this work alive. Dr. Rhodes, is there any observations or reflections you have? There are two and thank you for asking. The opening film, video by the rabbi giving background on the stolen beam was extraordinarily effective. She was a very powerful, powerful rabbi. I was really profoundly affected by her remarks and her presentation on the stolen beam, the similarities to reparations for Jews that were received by Jews from Germany in terms of what happened in Germany. That was an extraordinary thing. I really hadn't realized that that had occurred but she gave great historical context to reparations and reparative and restorative justice. Unfortunately, I had to leave without being able to make any remarks because my number two grandson called me with an urgent request for my attention as regards any other teenager, it was for the sound and fury, yet signifying nothing. Anyway, I felt really good about the whole thing that I participated in. Is that film available and are anything else from yesterday? That's a great question. And yes, Dr. Rhodes, thank you for sharing that. So this was Rabbi Sharon Brouse who gave this talk on reparations and I have asked Jeff and DeVora who are the co-leaders of the reparations committee at the JCA if they could share that. It's actually in the stolen beam curriculum, Dr. Shabazz. So if you still have that though, it may have been added since you participated but I believe it's available on the JCA's website. Just looking right now. I'm sorry, I've definitely heard in that and it is powerful. I don't know if it's the same one but the actual discussion yesterday, that wasn't recorded, was it? I think they may have recorded it but it was not open to the public. It was for JCA membership. So I'm not sure. We might be able to get it and I'll ask that question. Especially if they have any questions over the little notes that I had prepared and sent. Absolutely. Okay, so I'll see what I can do to get that and I agree that having their support is critical and so I'm looking forward to, one of the things that they were really excited about is that we have recommended the stolen beam as part of our report. And I think that was a really great piece to report on. Good. Thank you. All right. So I want to take us through so that we can come to consensus on a couple of things here. Starting with the report cover and just give me a second. I'm going to pull up some things here. Share my screen. Can everybody see my screen now? Okay, excellent. So this is the report cover as it stands right now and this was put together again by my mother-in-law who's worked on our graphics and who did that wonderful photoshopped photo of us. And so I love your feedback on this. If it hits the mark for you, if there's anything that you would like to see changed, this date will obviously reflect the date that we published the report right now. We just, we have that in as a placeholder, but very open to your suggestions. This ties in actually to the design that she themed for us in the report itself, which I will show, actually let me show that now and then that way you can see how it all flows together. Okay. So you can see here that she's changed, you know, some of the colors and then we start to add some visuals in here. And there is still time for us to, for individual members to provide any sort of visuals that you think might be good to include in the report. But this just gives us a sense of, you know, the look and the feel of the report based on this theme. So you don't have your voodoo picture in there yet? Not yet. I'm going to pull it up though to show everybody. Yes. But that's, that will go in here. You know, what's funny about it, Dr. Shabazz, you would appreciate this. The picture that I took for you was the one where you're with Matthew at the Juneteenth event. And she in her first draft included Matthew in the picture. And that is too funny. So I told him that. Yeah. So, oh, another really interesting piece by the way that it may change, but as I've been meeting with the Coleman family. And of course, their recommendation is related to 26 woods court. They pointed out to me that their recommendation was on page 26 of the report. And they actually asked me if we planned that and I wish I, I wish I could have told them we did. But that was again, the universe or whatever you like to call it. And so this is how the quotes will look with these, you know, in these boxes here. And so I am very open to any feedback we are open. We can make any kinds of changes that you might like to see. If you have additional visuals, we can certainly include those. So I'm going to stop. I'm going to go back to the visual standard and things. Relative to this is really quite, quite beautiful, quite professional looking and do really appreciate it going back to the, to the front cover. I am very, you know, partial to that the kind of historical. Landscape of the town that is, that is presented there. And then the, the seal is the one the seal is a real question mark. You know, I haven't shared my own perspective about the seal and its relationship to the, the seal that the Harvard Law School dropped in terms of its relationship to the royal, to the royal family, the enslavers of Belinda X or Belinda Sutton, who is one of the historical cases of reparations that we have documented and was in the original article by Ta-Nehisi Coates. There is a linkage of our seal with the seal of the former seal of Harvard Law School, which is related to the royal crest, the crest and seal of the royal family. But that's another point that I just would question its placement kind of in the center of things. There, the other issue is I wish I was, found myself wishing for something that reflected the, the African American presence, historical presence in, in Amherst in, again, in a larger sweeping landscape kind of way like this image here. I've seen various individual images and, and, you know, but to find something that is as sweeping like this, that sort of symbolizes the, the physical presence of the entire town from a moment in time. We just, unfortunately, that's part of the harm and that we're responding to. We don't have very much, there isn't anything visual that I can think of that reflects that. There are certain individual families, individual moments, Civil War veterans and so on that we can see certain images of, but nothing quite like this. I thought about the mural in the West Cemetery because that is a very inclusive one and does have and includes some very important aspects of the black presence in Amherst. But, you know, I didn't, I didn't recommend it because in some ways to me it's, it's just one kind of glimpse of the town that's not as, as historically poignant as this one showing the whole town kind of in the valley. So all that to say, I will, you know, send a few things that come to my mind, not so much for the cover, but, but perhaps for inclusion at some point, but, but overall to really, to really praise the, the wonderful professional work here. Thank you. Thanks, Dr. Shabazz. And if I could ask you a follow up. Do you see an opportunity to include something short in the report about the town logo? So yes, we're including it here because it's the town of Amherst and this is the current logo as it stands, right? But is there an opportunity for us to then say something about that in the report somehow? You know, I have something written up and it sort of reflects on both the, what I have reflects on both the, the name, the seal and just various ways in which the, the very projection of the town is so colonized, is so marked by a certain, to be blunt, a certain anti-black representation of, of the town from the name to the seal. It's, you know, if you just pull the curtain back a little bit and engage the history, it's really quite staggering the how it, how it, we're linked from the name and the seal directly to genocide and to slavery. So yeah, I can send that on and folks can, can, can maybe think about it, but it doesn't matter if it's in this particular reported not to me. It's, it's an ongoing challenge for us as, as Sandy Darity said when he came and gave his talk, it's an ongoing challenge. So we ever really deal with the way from the name and the, and this, and this current seal, the town continues to be linked to, to slavery and, and, and genocide. Okay. Wonderful. Yeah. But if you would send that along, I'm, I'm sort of envisioning we might be able to include a final note in the report and that final note might tie, tie what, what you have, we could tie what you have into that. I'll do that. Excellent. Thank you. And just wanted to check in Dr. Rhodes or Holla, do you have any comments or feedback on the report cover or the style of the report at this time? Dr. Rhodes, I see you've unmuted. I can't hear you. So I just want to make sure are you trying? No, I don't have any comments on it. Okay. And Holla, how about you? Are you, do we, I guess what I'm asking is do we have a general consensus on this theme and the style to move forward with? We do. I'm in agreement with some of Dr. Shabazz's comments around bringing in the larger, wider scope of some of our black history and also it's not as captured or present. And then I'm really curious about the crest design, but right now it's Amherst emblem. So yeah. That's not a lot to offer, but that's my two cents. Thank you. Awesome. Wonderful. Okay. All right. So I'm going to take this down to share. Okay. Great. So the next thing I have here for us to think about and review is, well, let me, before I go any further, let me just give us another sort of overview of the timeline here. So by the end of the day today, we will have the most updated draft of the report ready to send to you as an assembly here. We sent the last report out to, as we spoke about in our meeting, several people who gave some really good feedback. Mostly all were black residents, including Dr. Jemisin, who was a former AHA member and she really gave some excellent feedback, which we've incorporated into the report. Dr. Barbara Love gave some excellent feedback. And as Pat, there were, there were lots, there was actually a great response to the call for feedback, which is, which is excellent. So what we've done is highlighted in the, in the draft, what is new language from the last time that you've seen it. So you can sort of go right, right to that and review it. So the idea would be basically this week is our final review of the report and we will come to our meeting ideally next week prepared to approve the report. And then we will be ready to publish the report with about say a week and a half advance to the town council meeting. The town council president has agreed to a special public comment period on October 2nd for our presentation. And so folks will have the opportunity to listen to our presentation. And I hope we might be able to have a comment period before and after the hope is that folks that the, that the report will being that it was published a week and a half prior have had the chance to review it. And be, if they, if they would like to comment on it, have that opportunity. So we have a couple of things that we need to fill in one being the acknowledgments section of the report. So I have started a list of people who I think in organizations who I think that we want to acknowledge in the report. And instead of going through that with you all now, I'll send it out. And if you have anybody that you would like to add to that, please send that directly to me and to Jennifer. Only please. And then we also have here. I'm just realizing that. Okay. So the, the last piece of the report that we haven't really discussed as a committee is the charge. The successor body charge. And I had a really interesting conversation that I wanted to share with you a little bit about. Just to kind of get a sense for, I mean, I think the charge has a template that we will be following. And I'm just trying to find. Let me just, if you could just give me one moment and I'll try to find that. All right. So this is what I'm about to show you is actually the charge for the HRA. So this is not. This is not, I just want to give you a sense of what is included in a charge. And I think all of you have seen these charges before. But we have sort of the basics upfront. That indicate the number of voting members. The term of the appointment. You know, all of this kind of. You know, stuff. And then we come down. We have composition. This is kind of, this is really just to show you like that it's basically a one page. Charge that outlines what the purpose is. What the composition is. And so I wanted to share that in this conversation I had. There was. Encouragement for the HRA to. Consider its composition. And consider that having. At least one person on the committee that has. Had some experience with. I guess managing a fund is the most direct way to say it. Managing some, some kind of fund. Or a similar type of fund to the funds that we have here. And so I wanted to see what people's reactions. If any were to that. I think that would be a particular recommendation. And then also if there were recommendations beyond that. For the composition. And how specific we might want that to be. There. There are. I'm aware of a couple of models that. We might want to consider and I kind of get my thoughts together. For instance, the United Way. And the United Way in Hampshire. Which I was on their board of directors. At a. Person or persons. Who were the fund managers for their funds. But they were not. A member of the board of directors. And. But they. for that fund. And it was interesting obviously that they were not board members at all, but they had experience in managing funds and advising on funds. I mean, yeah, well, if we had that person would be great. Anyway, that's one model. And the other model obviously is you could directly have a person on the committee who served in a similar function. And the other third one is you could subcontract that out to a group who does fund management. I see Jennifer's hand is up. So maybe she's going to add to that, Jennifer. Yes, I was going to. You could also have someone like a subcommittee that does finance only, right? That's really interesting because one of Dr. Jemisin's recommendations was that the makeup of the successor body be large enough that subcommittees were possible. So for example, a subcommittee for to work on a private fund or a subcommittee to work on, like Dr. Shabazz was saying, getting institutional support or whatever it might be. So you're suggesting that there would be a subcommittee that would deal with the financial aspects of the fund? Yes. Okay, what other folks think about that? And Dr. Rhodes, I really appreciate the three models that you just suggested as well. I think that any one of those is, I mean, if there was an actual member, that would be interesting. You know, if there was a member that, and maybe there would be reason to have it in one of the other models that you suggested. So I'm really curious. I mean, there are groups out there who have their funds managed by fund managers that exist in this valley, that exist in Northampton and in Amherst. There are people who, that's what they do. And there are nonprofits who avail themselves of their services. It doesn't cost anything. So that can happen. That's a possibility. I mean, so one of the ideas is we could write into the charge that whether it be through membership, whether it be through, you know, a subcommittee that with its focus on that or some other way that we recognize and encourage that the makeup of the committee includes some expertise on that. But I want to see what Hala and Dr. Shabazz have to say about that with anything. No pressure. I do agree that it makes sense to either have a subcommittee or someone on the committee. Yes, be financially savvy and know the ways of interest and inflation and the things that I don't know as much about. I know that when Dr. Rhodes mentioned an outside manager, I'm glad to know there are some that do it for free because I know some that take like 10% and I wouldn't want us to go there. But if there are some that free, but then I'm like, we are also in a municipal government. So I don't know if nonprofit, like, I don't know that interaction. If we could, yeah, maybe find a way to keep it in house somehow, I think feels in my gut in Amherst is most related. But that's why I, you know, I'm a little I process lower than others because the million things come at me. But that's my initial response. Awesome. Yeah, I share that. Dr. Shabazz, do you have anything to just want to be clear that we're which what fund are we referring to the municipal fund only in this case? All right. So and this is in the context of the report where we're on funding where we're talking about the accelerated the acceleration idea and and other aspects towards getting to the 2 million. Is this right? No, no, this is simply in the composition of the charge for the successor body. This person recommended to me or strongly encouraged us to consider the possibility of including in that composition, a person who has some expertise in managing funds such as this one. You know, and I just I thought it was an interesting recommendation. Yeah, so let me say this, first of all, again, I'm still of the mind that a lot of feedback and things that we have, all of this is public records, I I still think it would be great to make to have some expanded appendix that allows for all of this information to be preserved and to be, you know, available for future folks who will, you know, look to the report for guidance for the ongoing work. My own view on the charge to the successor body is I'm not sure how directive we ought to be about. Well, so we're talking about the makeup of the group and the numbers of the group and, you know, envisioning the work of the group and, you know, the and whether as part of the makeup, you know, how much of it is sort of functional areas like this person is will have expertise in that or that person will have some expertise in some other area. And then there's also question of the relationship of identity and of our standards, you know, the lineage, the racial identity and the residency. Well, I guess it's all going to be residents of Amherst, but, you know, how much some of that should guide the makeup of the group, but but to the specifics of recommendations around like areas of expertise that are reflected. Yeah, I guess I don't have a problem with recommending that one of the members be someone with that kind of financial or fiscal experience. I guess I hadn't thought so much about that because my feeling is that the investment and the leadership over the the fund itself under general municipal governance, you know, finance kind of governance, and there really won't be it's more on the disbursement end of it than on the, you know, the investment end of it that we're likely that a successor body would maybe have much to do with it. But I'm so I'm kind of trying to adapt my thinking now to the idea that maybe there is more for the successor group to be engaged with around the question of finance and finance. And so, yeah, I guess I'll continue to still kind of get my head around it, but but it isn't definitely I can say at this moment it is an interesting suggestion about that being an area of expertise that that you might want to define as, you know, the role of one of the one of the members that that's a very interesting idea. Yeah, and I think, you know, you just reminded me that this person spoke about the disbursement and a person who has experience like funding programs, for example, in a community. And some of the recommendations that we have made are regarding leveraging our funds with, for example, another committee's funds. So like we might want to have somebody on the committee that has experience with grant writing, for example, or completing applications that the CPA would find acceptable, for example, it's like this person would have some skills or experience in knowing how to disperse and sort of leverage funds with the use of other available municipal funds. So I'm going to kind of like try to think about all of those pieces, including Dr. Shabazi identity and lineage standards. And if you have particular thoughts, that feels a little more straightforward. But if you have particular thoughts, anyone on the committee, please do send them to me so that we can get that sort of more firmed up. Okay. All right. So and so there's kind of those two pieces of homework that homework, homework, we've never signed homework, but those two pieces of take home to think about the acknowledgments and then the the the pieces of the charge. And then the final thing that I wanted to talk with you about is the press release. So whether or not our wonderful communications director was leaving, I think that we would have probably wanted to have some agency over the press release. And of course, with Brianna leaving, it also makes that more urgent matter for us to consider. So we have drafted, we have a first draft of a press release. And I wanted to bring it up to share with you. I'm sorry it wasn't sent to you in advance, we were sort of working on it today before the meeting. Let me see here. I had it pulled up and now. Sorry, just one moment. Okay, we go. All right. So I'm just going to allow us to take a couple minutes to read through this while we're here. And while you're reading through it, I'm going to send it to your emails as well. So you have it. And keep in mind, right now we have one quote in here by Dr. Shabazz. And I wanted to ask you if so my thinking was that we would have a max of three quotes, if that many. And in looking at the California reparations report in their press release, we used that as a template for this press release. And Congressman McGovern came up pretty strongly for me as someone that we might want to ask to be included, to have a quote included, given that he supported our work and then particularly because he wrote the letter to President Biden, that he might have a quote to offer us. So why don't we just take a couple minutes, read through this and I'm going to go ahead and send it all to you now in your email as well. You should all have it in your email now as well. Could we try and change right there at the top from that first sentence, the AHRI report responds to these needs with a structured approach that commits us to do. So deleting marshals to an AND. Well, it's just bringing it down to commit. So deleting the all we can do in our town. Oh, I see. Okay. And just get okay. Perfect. Sorry. Boom. That commits us to do all we can. This is awesome. I love that. So I know Dr. Shabazz is reviewing it and Hala and Dr. Rhodes or Jennifer, if you have any thoughts on this or if you need me to scroll back up, just let me know. I think I was wrestling with the first in line in terms of the Amherst residents that have ancestors enslaved first in line versus like prioritized first. I don't just the wordsmithing right there. If it's everybody is fine with it because I know we're doing concentric circles. So maybe that's why my brain says line circles. What's going on? You're absolutely right. Yep. Please go on. I don't necessarily have the answer, but that just jumped out at me because although it is linear, it's also nonlinear. That's a small teeny little edit. Yeah. That's really, because we're not, where is that? I'm trying. I'm not good at finding things on the spot. Where was that? It's close to where the FYXX is right above the the X right here. Pursuante, it begins with pursuant. Yes, right here. Yep. Okay. Should be for, yes, where I have it highlighted. Yeah. Yep. I think that's a really, really good point, Hala. And it could be the focus we could say, because if we're thinking circles, right? The center circle is the, is the sort of focused, most focused. But yes, that we can think about that and see how we might change it to better represent the concentric circle idea. I don't know if anyone else has any. I agree, especially the should be first in line. It sounds like the, you know, the soup line or something. And so, yeah, if we could get more of the centering concentric circle idea now, that would, that would be more and more consistent. Yes, indeed. Okay. Great. That's great feedback. And, and so, you know, think this is, I think something that is important to read it again, please, and just see, like, because this is an energetic, it's all energetic as well as physical, as well as all of the things. And so, but it's possible that some people will only read this. So we have to really consider that if somebody is only reading this, have they taken away what we would want them to take away? Have they understood and can they sort of internalize what we have said? And does it reflect our report? So I'm going to stop that. And I just, I also wanted to see if folks had any other. So we have used various channels in terms of press, right? We have a whole press list. We've gone, you know, through the town, we have a whole bunch of people that we send things out to. I'm just wondering if you have particular thoughts, like, okay, when we approve this report and we're ready for it to hit, and it's going to be published. What is there a particular order we want things to go in? How do we want this to flow out? And, you know, that's something you can touch base with me about at any time, but I just wanted to plant that seed. Let me water that seed a little bit with this. And the engage Amherst page, I would think that would be one venue for, you know, put as a site for not only because we could always put a link on our regular town of Amherst page, but I think if we could put something there on the engage Amherst page that also then provides maybe some space for feedback. And I would say as well, if the members are in agreement with this, you know, if somebody wanted to take a deep dive and they could go into the town's records to the bios of all of us that were submitted to town manager Bokelman, but maybe we would just want to have some link, whether in the document or in the engage Amherst page, where all seven of us and our, as well as our, you know, supporting staff from the DEI office could just have a sentence or two, if folks are agreeable or interested in that, that, you know, highlights who we are in relation to the work we've in regards to this work of the AHRA. I think we would be honored to do that for you all, since we've been here since day one, you know. Awesome. Yeah, I think that's a really wonderful idea. Jen, do you, so with Brianna not there, who will be updating the engage Amherst page in the interim? Um, I think that that is a whole other story. So, yeah. Okay, well, we'll touch base on that, yeah, at some point, but that's sort of why I'm thinking we want to do as much as we can on our end. I love the idea that Dr. Shafaz has. If you would like, you know, to, and again, I'll send an email out requesting that feedback, one to two lines, and however you would like, whatever you'd like to include in that. And then I think I love the idea of having the ability for people to share feedback, a space for feedback. I think that's really, really great too. So, all right, I'm going to just pause and open up a second period of public comments. Since I do see we have a couple more attendees and I will, since we have new attendees, just quickly read the statement again. And if you'd like to make public comment, please use the raise hand function or pound nine, if you're coming in by phone, pound or star nine. During the public comment period, the chair will recognize members of the public when called on, please identify yourself by stating your name, pronouns, and address. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the chair based upon the number of people who wish to speak. While we will not engage in a dialogue, we will certainly be listening closely and can oftentimes answer questions, clarifying questions. So, if you'd like to make public comment, please go ahead and use the raise hand function or the star pound nine. Okay. So, I'm not seeing any hands. And at this point, again, just to recap where we're at here, so I will be sending to you by the end of the day today, hopefully the latest version of the draft report, it will probably be the closest to finished as we'll get. So please do thoroughly review it. Anything that's been added since the last draft will be highlighted in yellow. And then I'll also be sending out some other pieces of where I'll be looking for feedback from you that we talked about earlier in the meeting. And next week, ideally, we will come to our meeting prepared to vote on our final report. And then as I said, we'll decide if we're ready to let it go the following day, perhaps or a day or so after, and then we will be presenting to the town council in terms of the presentation to the town council, I think I mistakenly said we would only have one last meeting next week, but I think we will want to meet one final time before the town council presentation. I started working on a slideshow and of course, we'll want everybody to be involved in the presentation to the town council on October 2 to whatever, you know, the desired participation in that is. So are there any other questions, comments, announcements, or anything anything else? Dr. Rhodes, since I don't see you, I just want to make sure you could hear you could still hear me. Okay, maybe Dr. Rhodes stepped away. I'll check in with him. So any other questions, comments? All right. Well, wonderful. So onward we go. I'm going to adjourn the meeting at two fifty seven and thank you very much and we'll see you soon. Okay, bye bye. Bye everyone.