 and we're now live. Greetings. So I guess we'll be kicking things off. Welcome to the Durham's first ever budget healing. To kick things off, I want to introduce Durham's own Ms. Nina Freelon. Lift every voice and sing to her ring with the heart of the tea. Let our rejoicing rise. Let it reside full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing full of the hope that the present has brought facing the right huss. Let me for a second and give my momma some love. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Yes, yes, much love. I love, I love, I love you. And we're singing along with you. Thank you. Thank you, my darling. It's a pleasure. Good to start with a song. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Well, much needed, much needed. Thank you. Listen, y'all, we got some healing to do. So, you know, we got to start with James Weldon Johnson. We got to honor our ancestors. One of my mentors, Boba Chuck, before he ever did any event, he asked the elders for permission to continue. So I want to start in that legacy and ask my elders, for those of y'all, 60 plus, do I have your permission to continue? Have my permission to continue. You do. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. All right, I want to start with a land acknowledgement and pay respect and recognize that this land we're on here in Durham is the traditional territory of the Okanichu Band of the Suponi tribe. And we are here because this land is occupied and out of respect for the original people of this land. Even those of us whose ancestors were forcibly brought here, it is our collective responsibility to name that whose land this is and interrogate the colonial histories and present day implications of this and to honor, protect and sustain this land. And shout out to Mama Omi Shabe, Bernie Scott, and Elizabeth Paquette of the Feminist and the Colonial Politics Workshop for putting me onto the importance of starting always with the land acknowledgement. This year, we recognized the centennial of the destruction of Black Wall Street and Tulsa, Oklahoma, the massacre of Black families, the burning of Black businesses, churches and homes. And as a nation, we've got some healing to do. Here in North Carolina, we had our very own massacre, mass murder, a coup d'etat, only one in our nation's history, and a thriving Black community in Wilmington, North Carolina, and are still to this day living with legacies of white supremacy throughout the state. North Carolinians as a state, we've got some healing to do. Here in Durham, we had our very own Black Wall Street with Mechanics and Farmers Bank and Mutual Life Insurance Company. And it wasn't burned to the ground by fires and white mobs as it was in Tulsa or in Wilmington, it was bulldozed and erased and Black folks were displaced by public policy, policies like urban renewal or what James Baldwin called a Negro removal and redlining and other racist policies. And this didn't just happen in Durham, it happened in a Black neighborhood in Portland, Oregon called Albina. It happened in Detroit and Chicago and Oakland. They use their public policies, city councils, municipal governments to erase and displace Black folks and have caused harm to the Black community. So I wanna name that we have some healing to do here as a city and every year we pass a budget. When it's time to pass a budget, we do what's called budget hearings. This is different. This is a budget healing because we have some healing to do in Durham. We have some healing to do around these past harms that I've shared. And again, the living legacies of racism and white supremacy and policies that have disproportionately affected my ancestors, I'll speak to now in the Black community that my mom was singing about through the works of our cherished elder ancestor, James Weldon Johnson in the Black National Anthem. So as a member of Durham City Council and in solidarity with our wonderful city manager, Wanda Page, who is a product of Durham grew up here, raised children here and is a product of this community, this beloved community. We are coming to y'all, the city of Durham as children and now elders of this community to recognize the harm and to make amends and do right by the people of Durham. For me specifically, the Black people of Durham moving forward through the policies and budgets that we pass moving forward. I want you to know that the word healing was chosen intentionally and we do not take it lightly. So this will not be a one-off engagement. We realize healing will take time, it will take years. And so therefore this will not be a one-off engagement. We are dedicated to being accountable to our community and we are proposing a quarterly engagement four times a year to check in with y'all, our beloved city throughout the year to get your guidance, to get your input and to show up to get your thoughts and help us shape what we do with your money. These are your tax dollars and we want you to have a seat at the table, not just when it's time to pass the budget but throughout the year. So yes, this will be the first of many budget healing events and that's it for my remarks. I just want to thank the city manager for working and thinking through this with me and I'm really excited about today. I didn't introduce myself, sorry, my name is Pierce Freelon and I'm a member of Durham City Council representing Ward 3. Should have started with that but I'm a little nervous and a little excited. So thank you all for being here. We appreciate your presence and I will pass it on to our staff who will take it from there. Thanks. Thank you very much council member Freelon for that warm, warm welcome and Nina Freelon for your beautiful, powerful voice. My name is Leela Pedersen. I'm an executive fellow working with the city of Durham through a nonprofit organization called Fuse Corps which partners with cities and counties on a range of issues, including racial and economic equity. I'm honored to have helped plan this event in coordination with city and county staff as well as our partners at North Carolina Central University. Thank you to everyone who has helped to make this event possible. Just a bit of housekeeping before we get started if you could keep your mic and camera off for the first portion of the event, you will have an opportunity in the latter half of the event to come off to turn your camera on, turn your mic on and to engage with your fellow residents in Durham. Now without further ado, I will turn it over to our partners and friends at North Carolina Central University. Dr. Jim Harper is the chair of the department of history at North Carolina Central University. And following Dr. Harper's remarks, we will hear from Dr. Henry McCoy, director of entrepreneurship at North Carolina Central University School of Business. Dr. Harper, take it away. Thank you, Lila. Good evening. I'm Jim C. Harper, the second chair of the department of history at North Carolina Central University. I would like to thank Durham city and county officials as well as Mayor Pro Tem Gillian Johnson, Councilman Freelon, Bertha Johnson, Lila Peterson and Sharon Williams for collaborating with North Carolina Central University and the Durham community with these budget healing events. Events like this help provide the Durham community, especially people that have often been left or felt marginalized with an opportunity to find equitable solutions to participate by bringing ideas and strategies to the budget process. I will begin my remarks with a brief overview of the significance of June 10th. And thank and by thanking Mayor Schuyl for issuing a proclamation in honor of June 10th on yesterday at the virtual city council meeting. My colleague, Andre Van, University Archivist at North Carolina Central University also gave a few remarks. June 10th is celebrated on June 19th. The name June 10th is derived from a combination of the month June and the date 19th. African-Americans have celebrated this date as an independent state or Emancipation Day since the 1800s. President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, which declared that all persons held as slaves within rebellious states shall be free. Then on January 31st, 1865, the 13th Amendment was passed, which abolished slavery and the Civil War ended on April 9th, 1865. It was not until two months later, June 19th, 1865 that the last enslaved people of Galveston, Texas were notified that the war was over and they were free. It was a symbolic day that commemorates the emancipation of slaves in the United States. From this point forward, the newly freed people would gain opportunities at times to fully exercise their rights. While many of these opportunities were often deprived or refused, there were times where those opportunities led to the development of thriving residential and business communities. We call those communities Black Wall Streets. Durham's Black Wall Street became one of the wealthiest Black Wall Streets in the nation. Durham was not the usual Southern city entrenched in the history of racial and class bias separation. It was sparsely populated by farmers until the railroad routed through in 1853. Tobacco warehouses sprang up along the tracks, creating a demand for an increase in Black and White laborers. By the early 1900s, the HATI community became the epicenter of the majority of the businesses and homes for African Americans. Durham became a model for entrepreneurship, self-help and the name HATI was meant to suggest the symbolism of the independent Black nation of Haiti and reflects the principles of self-help and autonomy. The businesses were personified by the people who worked to develop Durham as a city for enterprise for African Americans. You saw a difference here, says Andre Van University Archivist in North Carolina Central University who co-authored a book called Durham's HATI. Van noted that Durham was different. He believes that there was more cooperation between Blacks and Whites in Durham than other Southern cities. The HATI, the HATI of the Black Wall Street era ended with urban renewal. But we must recognize the fact that a group of marginalized people were presenting an opportunity to take a seat at the table. They seized the moment. We are in a similar moment as Durham city and county leaders have opened the budget process with the inclusion of marginalized groups to participate at the beginning of the process. It is time to bring forth our thoughts and ideas to this process so that the federal funding can be used to bring racial equity while following the guidelines of the recovery fund. This is an opportunity to have a seat at the table. Let's together take full advantage of this opportunity to take part in this equitable decision making process to engage historically underserved communities to help the people of the Durham community who are in need. Thank you. Now Dr. Henry McCord will bring his remarks. Thank you, Dr. Harper. And thank you all for joining us this evening. We appreciate the public leadership for allowing this partnership to be formed with North Carolina Central University to bring opinion into the conversation. As Dr. Harper said, he's kind of set the stage for where we have been, how Durham essentially rose to become this prominent Black Wall Street. And as we've seen over time, particularly the creation of the highway, the 147, Durham has seen this Black Wall Street wither down. And so I want to give you for a moment some context to where we are today and particularly hope that this context will help as we enter into these different breakout rooms and think about how the investments should go. Think about as Councilman Freeline said that this is not a one-off situation. We want to continue having this conversation. We want to continue moving forth and we want this to become a key part of how we move forward on a regular process. And so I will go through a few slides and hopefully we can set a tone here. So one thing I want to set part of the tone is thinking about this idea of where we are currently in Durham. This is a headline that ran about three years ago with the New York Times that called and revived Durham Black Residence Acts is there still room for us. And it speaks to, of course, what we're seeing in Durham where we see incredible demographic shift of people moving into Durham, capital coming into Durham and what that means. And certainly in the weeks past, we've heard of new announcement for businesses and companies coming in, which can be a good thing but only if it connects to overall community. And so anyway, I want to really start out with some aspect of the current situation and where we are. Now, these are actually some quick facts and I intentionally brought the fact from several years back. These are quick facts from 2017 and they've evolved a bit. But I wanted to set some context that we didn't get to this place overnight and part of the challenge with communities is the fact that just like wealth begets wealth, poverty and despair begets poverty and despair. And so just from a context of the importance of what you're doing right now, we're speaking to this community that we call Durham and a budget speaks to the values of that community and it speaks to the needs of that community. So let's talk quickly, particularly about the Durham's black community. Durham's black community essentially is roughly about 37, 38% of the overall community of Durham. There's been historically, the black community has sometimes been the greatest population. It's been even with the white community, but as more wealthy whites are moving in, that population is declining. Poverty amongst black is around 23%. That's compared to white Durham, which poverty is at 8.4%. We look at the overall Durham, then the poverty rate is right around 18%. And so you see African-Americans have a pretty large portion of the overall poverty population. Now in terms of looking at the number of blacks in poverty, when you look at the total number of poverty folks in Durham, you're right, a little above 52,000 folks. Well, of those 52,000 folks in poverty in Durham, about half of those people in Durham in poverty are black. If you add the Latino population to that, then it takes it up to about 73%, which means that when you look at all the folks in Durham who are in poverty, about 73% of those people in poverty are either black or brown. So it just shows you where poverty really lands. And from a Durham County standpoint, you think about the fact that we often think about, those who are in poverty or those who are suffering, they have access to resources. But the reality is that only really less than half of those who live below poverty level actually receive food stamps. And many of these families are single female households. And so you get a sense of what the Durham population looks like and what some of these challenges are. Finally, from this standpoint, we have a large portion of the population of children in Durham that are minorities. So 71% of the children between zero and eight years old live in Durham or from a minority group. That mirrors what's happening across the United States as more and more people of color are becoming the majority of the United States. The reason this is incredibly important, not only across the United States, but in Durham is because these individuals who have grown up now are going to go into a teenhood, they're gonna go into adulthood. And it's gonna be as a community, us who have to figure out where do they fit into society and how do we make sure that they get an equitable shot? And so when you look at that, over a third of the black Hispanic children between zero and eight living homes at or below the poverty level, whereas only the 8% of the white children do. 57% of black children and 86% of Hispanic children, zero to eight live in low income households, yet only 14% of white children do. And finally, when we look at Durham public schools or the school age children, 71% of black and 75% of Hispanic third graders in Durham are economically disadvantaged, whereas only 15% of white children are. And so it gives you some aspect of understanding where we are today, but certainly you can't disconnect these outcomes to this idea of the budget challenges of the past and how they have felt inequity on communities. I wanna show this chart, this is a index that I've put together, really focusing on what we look like when we, if you took a snapshot of Durham and the United States and North Carolina and equity, the green line means that if everybody was equitable based on their population share, that green line, it would be flat and we would all be getting our share of the overall economy. When you look at the yellow line, that's the US population. Looking at the number one, that's the white population, number twos African Americans, three American Indians, four Asian Americans, five Hispanics. What this tells us is that when it comes to a share of the overall economy, that whites get above their equitable share in the United States, blacks get below their share. American Indians are roughly at parity, Asians slightly above and Hispanics below. When you look at that same chart, this light blue for North Carolina, you see that whites are a bit above in North Carolina or a bit above those in the United States and North Carolina blacks are a bit below those in the United States. American Indians and Asians are roughly the same. Hispanics are slightly above it. So what that means is that from an equity standpoint, North Carolina is a bit more inequitable for African Americans, for example, than they are across the United States. This last line, this purple line, this represents Durham. This shows the inequity in Durham. And again, it's a relative chart which means that when one group grows up, another group goes down. If this was equitable, this line would be flat, but you see that whites in Durham are pretty significantly above this green line, this equity line. Blacks are pretty significantly below and so forth, you know, American Indians and Asians are right at parity and their Hispanics are below. And so I wanted to give that context to just show you again where we are as a community. And I wanna, and this is what that looks like in actual numbers. And I usually try to explain this to folks because you only have a few moments. And think about this like bank accounts. If you look at kind of race and equity in the United States, you know, whites would have about $92 out of $100 in their bank accounts. You know, North Carolina whites a bit above, you know, that about $112 in their bank account. Whites in Durham would have about $196 in their bank account. You see the black population would be in the US, about $48 below in overdraft. Think about like that. North Carolina about $76 in overdraft. And in Durham, Durham is the African American population, Durham as relates to their economic well-being is almost twice the below the overall North Carolina score. Hispanics is another obviously key population. Durham, Hispanics in Durham are worse off than they are in North Carolina and the US. And so what this essentially mean is that interestingly enough, even as Durham thinks about itself as an equitable community and a strong community, in Durham, we are more economically inequitable across these races than we are in both North Carolina and across the United States. And these bars out here just shows essentially the gap between the races. The 116, about 116 percentage gap is across the United States, about 139% gap between races in North Carolina. It's about 236 percentage points gap between the races in Durham. And so you get a chance to see just how inequitable Durham is even compared to North Carolina compared to the United States. And that shows that even as things are going well for some it's going terribly wrong for others. So I wanna finish this off just given a little assessment. I did some assessment several years ago, I did interviews with some folks in the public sector and private sector, community sector. And so what I found was that the public sector, when you ask, well, what do you really want as a public sector? What came out was this idea of increased safety, increased affordable housing, increased citizen success, this idea of shared economic prosperity which the city of Durham has adopted, increased growth and increased tax base. That's what the public sector wanted. When I talk to people in the community, I wanted to expand the conversation. I talked to residents in the community of Durham, particularly African-American community of Durham, seniors, churches, business and youth. What came out of that was some of very similar things. What does a community want? What a community wants increased safety, increased quality, affordable housing, both low income housing and workforce housing, increased community services for themselves, for their children and for their neighbors. They want to increase civic voice feel like that someone will listen to their needs and wants. And not only if you have resources and money, they want to increase the investment equity, meaning that both public and private dollars are invested in these low income communities and they create nearby amenities. Also want to increase financial mobility, quality and living wage jobs with opportunities to advance. Geographic agency, they do not want to get pushed out of the community, but they want the agency to say, I want to stay or I want to go. And then finally, everybody wanted a successful Durham. And so finally, as we think about the current approaches and challenges, and I think hopefully this will help kind of guide some of your thinking as you think about this budget conversation. What I found was that when we think about Durham and investing the issues that we have, we often view the individual and community as the problem as opposed to looking at the overall system. And so that's important to recognize. We often also try to innovate to solve symptoms of problems and not really the root of the problems, which is also part of the challenge of actually achieving success. We solve those solutions instead of looking at holistic approaches. And so we look at these kind of very narrow areas that we can focus on as opposed to realizing that all these pieces are really fitting together. We create plans often, we create commissions, we create bodies, but we don't really execute on the plans that come out of those commissions or body or things that put forth. Also, there's no silver bullets. We often won't, there's one thing that's gonna solve everything or these one or two things. But as I often say, it wasn't one or two things that got us here. It was a litany of things. That's gonna be a litany of things that gets us out of here or that it would take to get us out of here. Economic integration must go both ways and be circle of meaning that from an economic standpoint, resources have to come into the black community, not just go out of the black community into other communities. And so that's something key. And finally, in thinking about, as you go into your separate kind of quarters and think about these different components of the budget and how they fit together, it's often important in communities that there is this idea of community-led and benefited community economic ecosystem. Meaning simply that the community has an opportunity to really weigh in on how these resources are invested and do so in a significant way. Also, the idea of creating open mobility and improvement without forced displacement of the community. So how do you increase the opportunity for people in these communities, in the African-American community, low-wealth communities to actually connect to the economy? Equity and growth do not have to be countered in one another. So as we think about the companies that we are welcoming to the community, how do we connect those and opportunities to the black community, which also can mean not just income producing jobs, but also entrepreneurship and things that nature. And then finally, the goal, I think, of any budget is to really, again, think about this connectivity to what we want to see as a community. And Durham should want to see a place that's safer to live, to work, and to play. And so thank you very much. And I hope that you have incredible healing process. And we look forward to hosting future events like this. Thank you, Dr. Harper and Dr. McCoy for helping to set the context for this evening's discussion. Now I'm pleased to introduce Bertha Johnson, Interim Deputy City Manager, who will provide a brief overview of the budgeting process and talk about the historic opportunity that Durham has to fund community-driven solutions to recovery. Bertha, the floor is yours. Thank you, Leela. Good evening, everyone. I also want to recognize my partner at Durham County on this initiative, Claudia Hager, the Interim County Manager. I want to also recognize our city manager, Wanda Page, and our elected officials. So if you could just turn on your cameras and give us a wave. Thank you. So you've heard us mention the federal ARP funding. I wanted to take you to our website. Since we don't have a lot of time tonight to give you a lot of information verbally about that, I want to share with you the location where you can get all the information you want to know about ARP funding, as well as point out what is available uses and our timeline for spending. So the City of Durham anticipates receiving a general allocation of over 51 million. Durham County anticipates receiving over 61 million. These funds can be used to help offset revenue losses resulting from the pandemic, as well as fund other community needs. The broad categories are here, support public health expenditures, address negative economic impacts caused by the public health emergency, aid communities and populations, hardest hit by the crisis, provide premium pay for essential workers and invest in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure. We have a proposed timeline here for allocating these resources. This, again, as a proposed timeline, we actually are going to be sharing this with City Council, which some members, which some are on this meeting tonight, when we have a discussion on Thursday. But our general timeline is we've started the process already, obviously with you all tonight, but we've also had some engagement with internal staff as well. So April through June, we'll engage city departments and the broader community to generate proposals for funding. July through August, city staff will vet the proposals and Council will review them. All of the proposals will be posted here on the website, which is why we wanted to make sure you know where to go. We wanna be transparent in terms of the proposals that come to us. Also, the system by which we use to prioritize those proposals. In September, we will ask City Council to vote on the proposals for the first half of funding, which is 25 million we've already received. October through December, we'll begin allocating those funds based on City Council's decisions. And I say City Council, but of course, the County Commissioners will have a process as well. So again, final decisions about funding will be made by the elected officials in a public meeting. However, we will know and we will ensure that racial equity will be an important criteria that we use to decide how to allocate these federal funds. We have specific staff at the city and the county whose job is to ensure that racial equity is prioritized in all of our work across the city and the county. I wanted to introduce these persons to you tonight. We have Sharon Williams with the City of Durham and Kali Rashad Henry with Durham County. We will ask that they turn their cameras on as well as drop their email contact in the chat box so that you can reach out to them if you want to talk with them or have them talk to you about your programs and services. So we'll give them a minute to drop their email in the chat and wave to you all. So again, this webpage, if you go to thedurhamnc.gov website and you go to Budget and Management Services or you type it in the search bar, you can find this website. We will continue to update it with information. Again, we'll have all the proposals on this site as well as the scoring matrix as well as how the projects, the proposals ranked. We will continue. You'll probably hear from us. Not only in these events as we talked about, but we will continue to do a community engagement throughout the community for the next month or so. I also want to let you know that if you have friends or neighbors who were not at this meeting tonight, we will have a link on the webpage where they can go and submit their ideas on the website just like you'll be submitting your ideas tonight. So at this point, we want to have as much time as we can for engagement. So I'm going to turn it back over to Leela Pederson to introduce the breakout sessions. Thank you, Bertha. Before we move into breakout sessions, we are going to pause, take a deep breath, and to guide us through a short healing meditation, I'm honored to welcome Mia Wilson, who is the Executive Director of Spirit House, a multi-generational black women-led cultural organizing tribe with a rich history of using art, culture, and media to support the empowerment and transformation of communities most impacted by racism, poverty, gender inequity, criminalization, and incarceration. Please join me in welcoming Mia Wilson. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for that beautiful introduction. Leela, as you said, yes, my name is Mia Wilson. My birth name is Nancy Jean. My pronouns are she, her, and queen. I come from Wilson's, Wallace's, Darden's, and Sykes through Ronald Wilson Sr. and Elmyra Darden Wilson. I am a warrior. I am a healer. I am a shape-shifting cultural alchemist. And I'm here today and every day to live into my purpose and to fulfill my highest destiny. And I do that through the work of Spirit House as the Co-Director of Spirit House, which is a Durham-based black Southern women cultural organizing tribe committed to our past, present, and future healing and transformative justice for the sake of our liberation and our freedom. So I want you all to take a really deep breath with me right now. Some of the statistics that were shared with us earlier as a black woman, it landed really hard on me. It landed hard in my body, even though we know that these statistics are real and that they exist. Seeing them on the screen can still be jarring. What I did right now was introduce myself through a practice that we use in Spirit House called, Where I'm From. We use this practice to remind us and to boldly name the things that have shaped us, the things that live in our bones, the things that we either don't often think about or that we can't do. We walk into our community, every building, every room that we walk in, black people. I'm speaking mostly to you this evening so that we can take some time before going into these breakout sessions to think about and expose and shed the conditioning that we have carried that says our people, our histories, our legacy, our lineages are either non-existent or hold no value, that our sources of power and our strength are only useful as labor and entertainment. This intentional program sometimes overt is actually a form of cultural suppression and for centuries and across the globe, it has been strategically used as a tool to support laws and policies and practices that minimize and criminalize our people, our values and our culture. Think for a moment as was brought out earlier about whole neighborhoods right here in Durham that were redlined and intentionally under-resourced by the federal government because they were in the words of the federal government infiltrated by the Negro. Think for a moment about how many times in our recent history right here in Durham, children have been threatened with suspension from school for wearing head wraps, African-centered head wraps. Children have had to cut off their natural hair and hairstyles in order to play sports or to be accepted into predominantly white institutions. What is it like here in Durham to have the police called on you for playing horseshoes in the neighborhood that you grew up in or playing drums or dancing to hip hop music in the neighborhoods in parks that your families have lived in for decades. These legacy or heritage neighborhoods as they've been called have been spaces for our places to learn to live, to love and to find joy in spite of the neglect. But they have had lasting long-term effects and can be seen in all of the disparities in every sectors of our lives. These are the effects of systemic racism. And so for a few minutes today before we go into breakout rooms to discuss what repair and justice looks like for us, I want us to take a collective of fully bring all of our people into this space who may not be on this Zoom this evening and to make room for an expansive imagination that grows out of our most healing cells. All of us, you can participate in whatever degree feels most comfortable for you but know that our visions and our energies expand far beyond the physical spaces that we're in. So even our breath and our dreaming together in this moment will impact the ways that we are healing and shaping our city. So I want you to take a moment and just sit up tall, plant your feet on the ground, have your backs as straight as you can, your shoulders down, hold your head up and breathe deeply. Imagine for a minute that a three-fold braided string or cord that some of us know to be spoken of in the Bible is put us together. We've been taught that that three-fold cord is hard to break. For tonight, we're gonna imagine the strands of that cord as those who came before, those who are now and both are come or what we like to call our past, present and future through line. Imagine that cord rooted in Durham's rich red clay soil traveling through the bottoms of your feet and extending through the top of your crown into the heavens, anchoring you to your roots and connecting you to expansive possibilities. Allow the strength of that through line cord to pull you up a bit. Take a deep breath and allow your body to be held by the strength of your past, present and the future through line. This is your space of pride and dignity. Now bring attention to the edges of your body, your front, your back and the sides of you. Remember to keep breathing deeply and see if you can make yourself bigger. Fill out the width of your body through your edges. So many of us, black women, folks from the LGBTQ community, all marginalized people, we have been conditioned to be small, to shrink, to not take up too much space, to not expect or ask for much. The shrinking is not something to be ashamed of, it has kept us safe. But right now, in this moment, where you are in a safe space, I want you to take a moment to breathe and fill out the fullness of yourself. Take some time to feel what it feels like to have life flow through your body. Take up the space that is yours to take. If you feel up to it, you can stand up, you can stretch a little bit as you're breathing. Be grateful for this beautiful vessel that houses your spirit. This works when you don't ask it to. Your heart is beating, your lungs are breathing, your belly is turning, all things that continue on their own so that your life can be sustained. Be grateful that even in your toughest moment, your brilliant body makes sure that you exist. Breathe. Now bring attention for a moment to your past. Focus on the back of your neck, the small of your back, the tingling that sometimes shows up right behind your ear or the butterflies in your gut which we sometimes call our intuition. Many cultures around the globe believe that these spaces are where your ancestors connect, the places where their whispers live. Take a breath and open to some of the people who came before you that made it possible for you to be here. Who's legacy are you continuing by being here today? I want you to remember that no person, none of us, got to this existence alone. Each of us have ancestors who chose to fight or surrender and survive or put their life on the line and die so that we could be here. If you go back 10 generations, that is over 1,000 people tied to your very existence. These are the people who have shared who dare your DNA code, an energy code that is alive. The people whose stories you carry in your blood and your bones, whose battle scars are the very birthmarks you were born with. Know that they are with you in this process. They are with you today to speak your voice, your truth and let everyone know what you know is necessary for our healing. Take a deep breath and feel what it feels like to know that someone fought for you and say thank you. Thank you for your love, your commitment, your sacrifice. Thank you. And now I want to extend this moment out forward to your future. Seven generations ahead where those we are fighting for today will call our ancestral names. Our children's children's, our nieces and nieces, nephews, nephews, the children for the future for whom you will be an ancestral whisper. Take a moment to breathe into the truth that you are contributing today to the world that they deserve. This is your legacy. Know in your bones that you are so much more than this moment. I'm going to finish my time with you all this evening with an excerpt from one of my favorite stories. I'm going to read it to you. A tribe member, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gums, also a Durham resident, from her book M archive after the end of the world. She writes, they looked each other in the eyes every time and did not leave each other without singing a prayer, touching hands into the ritual, a tradition newly sacred after the memory of the epidemic. And of course, none of that would have been possible if they didn't remember to look themselves in the eye every morning or to chant the name of the prayer or to track their dreams for keeping and sharing. There is a sacredness to every day, every time. It means again and again. It means all of us. It means this moment, this time, you and me, we are here. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you to all of you. Thank you, Mia, for that opportunity to contemplate the past, be grateful for the present moment and find hope for the future. Thank you. We are going to start transitioning into our breakout rooms. But before we disperse, I would like to take care of a few housekeeping items and make sure that everyone has what they need to fully engage. And I will also make sure that you have the information that you need to provide when you registered. In each room, city and county staff will help to facilitate the discussion and ensure that your ideas are recorded. In the chat, you will find a link to the jam board. That we will drop now amongst the. Well-do accolades to Nia Wilson. Thank you once again. Please click that link. Open it up in your browser. If you are able. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat. In your breakout rooms, your facilitators are going to help you navigate the jam board platform. There may be additional city and county staff in your room who are serving as observers to listen and take note of the ideas that are surfaced. Please know that the ideas generated in these breakout rooms will be shared with city council members and county staff. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat. 40 minutes to discuss the needs in your community and generate ideas for how Durham should allocate the over $100 million coming to the city and county. From the federal government as a result of the American rescue plan. So we will do some zoom wizardry. And send you all to your breakout rooms now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat. We will see you back here in 40 minutes.