 Susanna earned a Juris Doctor degree concentrating on International Human Rights Law at New York Law School. While there, she also directed a civil liberties education program for young people from minority and low income backgrounds. Earlier, she studied anthropology and philosophy at Fordham University. At Fordham, she earned the Reverend J. Franklin Ewing Award for writing on the relationship between global human rights violations and the proliferation of HIV AIDS. Susanna is a first generation US-born Latina. She observes that she has always been passionate about promoting open access to government for all people, regardless of their background or place of origin. She is fluent in Spanish. Among the activity that Susanna enjoys in her free time is making homemade soap. The title of today's talk is Doing and Undoing. Please join me now in welcoming Susanna Davis. Thank you. It's so wonderful to be here and thank you for that generous introduction. As Michael said, I'm Susanna and I am here to talk to you today about everybody's favorite topic, discrimination, right? It's a great way to end a Friday. You know, it's interesting. I have gotten so accustomed to doing these events virtually and I don't necessarily feel like I'm speaking to a group of people. I feel like I'm speaking to myself sometimes. But one of the things that I have always enjoyed is knowing that there are clusters of you watching perhaps from the same room and discussing with one another a point or a chart or something like that. And seeing things in chat, if chat is available, or just being able to have question and answer with you all afterwards. So if you want or need to interrupt for any reason, please do. If you would like me to slow down or speed up or repeat something, then I would be happy to just say the word. And without further ado, I think I'm going to just share a few slides with you. I'm going to try to keep the slide part brief. Let's see if we can make this work. Okay. All right. So I hope you all are seeing a slide that says doing and undoing. I can't see you to verify that you are seeing it. So I'm going to trust that you are. So let us begin. I would like to talk a little bit about doing and undoing and I know that sounds a bit strange, but so much of racial equity in all forms of equity really revolves around creating new good habits and also doing away with some of our previous not so good habits. It means taking on new positive change and making our way away from some of the less favorable and less equitable policies that we used to enshrine. So I want to talk first about what equity means and what's the difference between equity and equality and then we'll start talking a little bit about what that could look like in the month. First let's talk about equity and equality. Now, some of you may have seen this graphic before it's a very popular one, and it's supposed to describe the difference between equity and equality. On the left, you see three people standing on crates to look over offense at a baseball game. That's supposed to be equality. They're all given the same tool to accomplish a goal. But as you can see that's not really working out for the person who's very short who even with a crate still cannot see the game. But what's depicted is supposed to be equity, which is allocating resources according to each person's needs, right? So one person doesn't have any crate, which is actually okay because it doesn't appear that the person needs one. And the person who's very short needs more than one crate and now that person can see over the fence. Now, it's a fine graphic. I enjoy it and I think that it does a great basic job at explaining the concept, but it does have its limitations and I do just want to point those out quickly. First, the concept behind this graphic implies that there's something inherent about a person that makes them need certain resources or a crate. In other words, you need crates if you're shorter. However, when we talk about other forms of equity like race, ethnicity, sex and gender, there's nothing inherent about us as people that makes us automatically need more assistance, more resources or different resources. There's nothing about me as a brown person that says I need remedial classes in science. There's nothing about me as a woman that says that I somehow am not, I don't know, not capable of entering a science field or that I'm not capable of doing advanced analytics or something. So that's one of the limitations of this graphic is that it implies that it's inherent characteristics about us that require us to need different or more or less of a resource. When in reality, the differences that have been created based on race, ethnicity, gender and sex are largely arbitrary. Somebody a long time ago decided I don't like people who look like you. And so now we're talking about the redistribution of crates when in reality we wouldn't have needed to in the first place. Another limitation of this graphic is that you have to ask yourself, what about folks who can't necessarily stand on crates at all? Right. It's not necessarily accessibility inclusive. It implies that the crate is a solution for everybody. When in reality, if you had a participant who maybe uses a walker or a wheelchair, then this remedy of a crate wouldn't even be sufficient, even if they had enough. There are more limitations to this graphic, but I'm just going to highlight one other one, which is a big one. So often people are so upset about the distribution of crates and the allocation of resources. Well, you have two crates and that's not fair. They treat life like a zero sum game. And for that reason, people are so caught up in saying that's not fair. He gets two crates and I only have one crate and all the crates. No one's asking themselves, why is there a fence to begin with? The crates are really a workaround to get past an obstacle. And the obstacle is the fence. Why is there a fence? Is it to keep people out? Because they couldn't afford to go to the game. Why can't people afford to go to the game? Is it to protect us from a fly ball? And if that's the case, can't we use a chain link fence that we can see through or netting or something else? So a really important point here is not to get lost in the details of this zero sum mentality, the way that people think of society. If you're winning, then that means necessarily that I'm losing. It isn't that way. In reality, we're all so caught up working, thinking about the workarounds that we're not thinking about the obstacles that require workarounds in the first place. Here's another example that I like a lot. Again, similar concept on the top, you see equality. Each of the four people is given the same exact bicycle. And as you can see, that's not working out well for the very short person, the very tall person, or the person who uses a wheelchair. On the bottom, you see equity, which is where every person is given a bicycle that's appropriate to his or her or their size or need. Now I want to talk a little bit about the picture of Vermont and what you're looking. And I just want to do a quick check that you all can still hear me and that I didn't get lost in the ether. Give me a sign, anyone. Am I still here? Do I exist? We can hear you, Susanna. Okay, great. Thank you. I get nervous about these things. You know what, I was doing a talk on the eighth for the Vermont Bar Association, and I started my slide and I got about 10 minutes in. And then they said, hey, we didn't hear the last 10 minutes because we lost power over here and our computer shut down. So start over. Okay, so we're looking at a population pyramid for Vermont. A population pyramid is a tool that we use in demography because it helps us to understand the picture of who's here and who's going to be here. It's a really great future planning tool. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. First, let's talk about what you're looking at. So you're looking at colored bars. Some are blue and some are purple. On the left, you're seeing females in Vermont. On the right, males. And then the bars that are at the bottom represent younger ages. So the bottom most bars are under five years old, and then five to nine and then 10 to 14 years old. The bars at the top represent older ages. So the very top bar is 85 plus, followed by 80 to 84, 75 to 79, et cetera. So that's what the population pyramid is showing us. The reason that this is so great is because the bars tell us the size of the population based on sex and age. So what we're seeing here is that towards the upper third of this population pyramid, we've got a lot of people in the 40s to 60s and early 70s age ranges. And if you notice, we don't have that many people in the 25 to 39 range. And we've got even fewer in the under 15 range. Now, why does this matter? When you're looking at a population pyramid for a particular society, whether it's a state or a town or a country, if you see a pyramid that is very top heavy and narrow at the bottom. That means you've got a larger older population and a smaller younger population. And what that means is it tells demographers and policy planners, hey, you know what? A lot of people are going to be answering retirement age soon if they're not already there. And the number of people who are going to be entering the job market is shrinking. We have to make sure that that smaller number of workers can support a larger population of people who are likely not to be working anymore or vice versa. Maybe you've got a midsection that's very narrow and then a youth section that is extremely big, which indicates an explosion in birth rate. That's really important because what that tells us is, hey, listen, when those young people move up a few years and enter the job sector, we better make sure that we've created enough jobs for them by the time that happens because it's not, you know what you get, right? That's right, riot. So population pyramids are extremely useful because they help us to plan for the future based on the growth and shrinkage of a population. What we're seeing here is that Vermont, we've got a lot of people in the 40s to 70s. We have fewer people in 20s and 30s and even fewer at the younger ages. And if you notice, there's a bit of a bump out here between 15 and 24 years old. That's around college age. The reason for that is because Vermont attracts a large number of college age students to come to school here, but you notice it shrinks again right after that. Why? Because they're leaving. So this tells us a few things. One, that we are attracting people in late teens, early 20s. And two, that we're not retaining them. Here's another one. This is interesting. This shows Vermont, these are the other states in terms of the number of women under 15 that they have as a share of the population. Now, I know that's a weird thing to say, women under 15, we don't usually refer to adolescents as women, but this is a term that's used in economy, in economics. So take it up with them. And so women under 15, the reason that we even measure that is because actually it's a surprisingly strong predictor of future growth from an economics perspective. So what you see are colored dots representing the 50 states, way at the front is Utah, and way dead last actually is Vermont with the fewest women under 15 as a share of the population. It's not a great indicator in terms of future economic growth. And again, this is another way that we can look at demographics to help us predict or avoid future measures. Now you're looking at another bar chart, and I promise there's only a couple more graphs. You're looking at another bar chart right now that shows median age as of 2015 across the United States. Vermont is way, way on the left. We are the second oldest state in the nation with a median age of 42. We are second only to Maine. And I'm going to show you another one now. This is a bar chart that shows diversity. Again, 2015, and you'll see Vermont is all the way on the right, second to Maine. We are the second widest state in the nation. So second oldest and second widest state in the nation. But you know what? Those two data points by themselves don't tell the full story because when you break that down by racial group. Then what you'll find is that while the median ages for white Vermonters and indigenous Vermonters is in the mid to mid and late 40s respectively. All other Vermonters of color have median ages in the 20s. Now this is really important because what this shows us is that as we consider all of the policy and social programs that we're going to be implementing or maintaining or revisiting in Vermont. We've got to ask ourselves, are we really reaching the right population? Are we reaching everybody who needs to be reached? For example, people in their mid 20s, that's the next generation of entry level professionals. That's the next generation of recent graduates, new home seekers, young parents and rolling their children in schools, right? New taxpayers, et cetera. So when we think about wanting to strengthen the housing market and the labor force and daycare, childcare and education and career readiness, et cetera. All of these things have in common that they focus on youth and that youth in Vermont are more likely to be of color. And this tracks with what we know at a national level, which is that younger people, millennials and Gen Z are the most racially diverse cohorts in the nation's history. So what you're looking at is a line graph that shows a teal colored line, that's this top one, and a purple line, that's the bottom one. The purple line represents the percent of seniors in Vermont who are people of color. You see at 2015 it was about 2.5% of seniors in Vermont were people of color. However, the percent of youth in Vermont who were people of color was hovering around 10% in 2015. Now, in Vermont, just like around the country, people are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. In fact, communities of color are driving population growth. In the last decade and change, almost all of the net population growth in the United States, that's 92%, 92% of population growth in the US came from people of color. And in a lot of instances, it was those communities of color who prevented population decline. Now, I'd like for you to think about the towns in Vermont and about whether they are having stagnation or shrinking of the population and the impact that that has on those towns. Being able to slow down or stem or avoid population decline is incredibly important. And right now in the United States, it is communities of color who are leading the way in that effort. Let's talk more about Vermont specifically. We talked so much about Vermonters and real Vermonters and what does it really mean to be a real Vermonter? And does it matter and why does it matter? What you're looking at is a photo. I show this all the time because I thought it was very moving. This is a photo of my neighbor's car, actually. I was going out on an outing last year in the springtime and I drove past this and couldn't help but to stop and take a photo. This is the car of my neighbor and they are a young white couple from another New England state. So they probably have a lot in common with people from Vermont. And yet this was during COVID when people were very, very antsy and anxious about people from out of state being in Vermont. And they actually had to write a message into the dust of their rear windshield and I'll read it for you. It says, we live in Vermont waiting on new plates. You see this young white couple from a neighboring New England state had been living in Vermont already. But because of delays with DMV processing, etc., they still had their out of state tags. And they were so worried about being harmed, harassed, threatened or ostracized for having out of state plates in Vermont that they felt like they had to write this caveat on their car. Because they've internalized that narrative of real Vermonter versus outsider versus flat lander. The idea that you don't belong and that you'll never belong because you're not really from here is so pervasive in this state, so strong that even people who have a lot in common with Vermonters still feel afraid just to be here because of that. And if it's like that for a young white couple from New Hampshire or from Maine then imagine what it's like for a person of color from Massachusetts or New York or Northern Africa. So stigma really has a huge impact on people. Now I'm going to share with you a little bit more about how those narratives get internalized because they're not just internalized by us, the so-called outsiders. They're also internalized by people who are within the privileged group. And in this case, I'm going to tell you about internalizing the narrative with respect to race. A lot of people have this idea of who should get treated well, who should get treated poorly and oftentimes those narratives hinge on things like race, ethnicity, poverty, sex, age, ability. So you're looking at kind of a weird blurry image. I'll sketch it out for you. This is a scene in an airport. This was, I want to say last year, perhaps maybe the year before, but I'm pretty sure it was last year. If you can see my mouth pointer then you'll see I'm hovering over one person who's a police officer and then another person who's a police officer. And then a gentleman who is white on the ground being wrestled with, slash, arrested. And I'm going to play for you this clip. I might play it twice because it happens kind of fast. It does have audio and it goes something like this. And this is the gentleman being arrested who's speaking. This is one of the ways in which we internalize the narrative about who deserves respect, fair treatment, due process, and courtesy, and about who's expected not to get those things. And the outrage that happens when you are treated poorly like other people are. Here's another one. This is a bit of a longer clip. It's about 47 seconds. And it's from a wonderful, wonderful woman. Her name is Jane Elliot. And if you haven't heard of her, I strongly recommend that you check out some of her work. She's an educator and an asset. I'm sorry for the beeping in the background, by the way. There's a, there's a tray out like a tractor, a digger. There's a lot of construction happening outside. Jane Elliot is an activist and an educator. And she has, this is another clip about how narratives and stereotypes about power and entitlement get solidified. I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens. If you as a white person would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand. You didn't understand the directions. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. Nobody's standing here. That says very plainly that I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens. If you as a white person would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand. You didn't understand the directions. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. Nobody's standing here. That says very plainly that you know what's happening. You know you don't want it for you. I want to know why you're so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others. Right. I hope you were able to hear that sorry I accidentally played it twice. Again, this is another discussion about undesirable treatment and how much we're willing to tolerate when it doesn't affect us versus how much we're willing to tolerate when it actually does impact us. Think about civil liberties violations that have happened in different eras in America. Maybe late 19th century, maybe the 60s, 50s, water hoses, attack dogs, batons, hanging and think about what happens when those things are done to people who are members of dominant groups who are powerful. Now I often hear people say well you know it's not our fault, it's not America's fault, it's not anyone's fault, this is just how things are, it's how they've always been and I get that. I do. But the thing is things don't have to stay the way that they are just because that's how they've always been. In fact, we have a duty to do and be better. And one of the ways in which we tend to placate ourselves into thinking that we're doing alright is to say well at least things are better, at least they're better than in ex-country or well they could always be worse, at least now you can sit at the same luncheonette. We often like to compare ourselves to others who may be worse off. And that's one of the things that we call anchoring. Now a number of you may have heard of anchoring or if you haven't heard of it you at least know what it is when you see it. I'll give you an example. If I tell you that I, you ask me what I want for dinner and I say I want 12 cupcakes for dinner. You're going to look at me and say that is absolutely outrageous. Why don't you eat a salad and one cupcake? And that's great because I got a cupcake. I wasn't really expecting you to give me 12, but now at least I got one. And we do this all the time, job, job negotiations, right? Start high, start low, meet somewhere in the middle, pale as old as time. But anchoring happens in a lot of other ways too. Ways that can confuse and obfuscate the progress that is or is not being made. So what you're looking at is a comparison of incarceration rates. In Vermont, that's this yellow line here to the United States which is this long gray line. Now when you look at the comparison between the U.S. incarceration rate and the Vermont incarceration rate, it looks pretty good for Vermont, right? That's anchoring because we're comparing ourselves to the U.S. But when you compare us to other so-called industrialized countries, then you realize we are still way off the charts. But as long as we're always looking at someone who's doing worse than we are or someone who's perhaps a little further behind than we are, then it's easy for us to be complacent in the misguided belief that we have no more improvement to do because we're perfect. And I love Vermont. Truly I do. And I'm grateful and happy to be part of this community. And yet because I love this community so much, I want to help it be as lovely and as wonderful as people believe it is. So we started out talking about doing and undoing. And you know, I love these words from Curtis Ogden. He's over at the Interaction Institute and he sums it up so well. He says, the work for racial equity is about undoing as much as it is about doing. We do not simply build new culture or behavior on top of old, especially in situations that are characterized by oppression. Some things must be released and this letting go does not come easy. So I'm going to stop the screen share. I'm going to stop talking. And I am going to invite, I see numerous hands and a bunch of questions I cannot wait. Let's do it. Do we have questions? Let me ask a question to get us started. Susana, is there any data or evidence that you could point to regarding people of color and people of less represented groups? How many come to Vermont and then don't stay very long? They move on after a certain period of time. I was just wondering if that might be a factor worth considering. Thank you. Yeah, it's a great question and it's absolutely a factor worth considering. One of the groups we are looking at with that is the refugee community. As you know, Vermont has a large refugee community and what often happens is that people will come and they get settled here and either it's too expensive to be able to afford a house here or they don't feel welcome or they're not getting the services they need or their children are getting harassed in school and they're being re-traumatized. And they often end up leaving to places like Ohio that have established communities of people from their home country. And so that's one group where we're really seeing that happen a lot. And again, I mean, there's a very strong entrepreneurial streak with the immigrant and refugee community. So when we lose them, we're not just losing community members, we're losing youth who are helping to stop our population decline and keep our schools open. We're losing small business owners or would be small business owners. And we're losing a lot of the cultural flavor that makes Vermont as charming as it is. Another way that we can track in and out migration, I mean, you can do it through things like tax records, but then there's confidentiality stuff. But the overarching theme here is how many people are leaving, yes, but also why. And the why is more difficult to get at. But oftentimes it hinges on the same thing. Feeling of safety and security, housing affordability, and general economic opportunity. Thank you. A member of the audience asks, what was it that drew you to Vermont and to take your current position? You know, I have lived in a 50 mile radius my entire life. And it's great generally, but most recently I had been in New York City. And that commute will wear you down. Those subway rats are just not it. So what drew me to Vermont was fresh air. And I also, I am somebody who is not a big fan of government overreach. And so I was looking for a place that was a little bit less oppressive than my home state of New York, even though I do and always will love New York. But right now, I think we're just gonna have to be friends from a distance. Okay, a questioner asks, where do we start the change? Where do we start the change? If you haven't picked your song of the day today, the song of the day today is gonna be Man in the Mirror, Michael Jackson, start the change with you. And I know that sounds cliche and it sounds very trite, but everybody has a different vantage point. Everybody has different capacity, right? You might be a current educator or a former educator. Maybe you're retired. You know what? Start with that. That's something you're good at. Do that. Take training and then give training. Or say, hey, you know what? That's not about the accurate depiction and accurate teaching of history. And that's something that I'm skilled at and I'm gonna do that. Or you might be a current or former attorney. In the state of Vermont, there are as many attorneys over the age of 80 as there are under the age of 30. If you're somebody who has legal skill, maybe that means taking on some pro bono cases or giving some workshops, you know, maybe like street law workshops, which is where you can help community members understand their rights, et cetera. You know, you might be someone who's in health care. So you know what? Maybe that means doing a volunteer session at the local clinic on proper nutrition or something like that for people who are experiencing socioeconomic disparities. The point is, start with what you know. The other thing is, and I always say to people, step zero is lower your guard and open your eyes. It can be very difficult to talk about these topics, particularly for white people, well no, particularly for non-white people, but also for white people because a lot of people get very defensive. And, you know, the point of it is not to say, you're a horrible person. You should feel bad about yourself and feel guilty for privilege. I'm not saying feel guilty for your privilege. I enjoy so much privilege in this life and I'm able to own it and accept it and not wallow in the shame of it, right? And I use myself as an example, right? I have privilege, educational privilege that a lot of people weren't able to, you know, attain the same accomplishment. That's not to say that I'm smarter than anybody. It's just that, you know, I was willing to make poor life decisions by borrowing more money than a person should be allowed to borrow for that education, right? Or, you know, I have privilege that I speak English with this accent, right? A lot of people like me don't. And so it leads to a lot of stereotyping. I have privilege that my parents are here legally. So there's a certain fear that my family does not have, especially under the last by the administration. So if somebody like me who is young and broke and brown and female and child of immigrants is able to list privileges and be okay with that, you can do that too. So if you're a member of the dominant group, maybe you're male, maybe you're affluent, maybe you're white, maybe you're cisgender, maybe you're any of those things, it's cool. So just start with lowering your guard about it and recognize that you may enjoy a lot of unearned privilege in your life. And that's not to say that you're not a great person, but it is to say that you're tacitly approving of a system that is designed to disadvantage other people. And once you're able to just accept that without being defensive about it, then I think that you can really get to the real work. Thank you. A question that relates to or perhaps builds on the previous one. Someone would like to know what goals do you have to implement change and how will you do it? Yeah. So I always tell people my ultimate, ultimate goal is that the governor will fire me because we will have done everything there is to do. And equity will be so built into the work that we do that you won't need a special role or office for it. And I say that a little bit facetiously, but it's true, right? This is the kind of work that if you're doing it right, you put yourself out of business. And so, but, you know, narrower, more realistic goals include things like making equity built into our work by making it an unavoidable part of the way we operate. What does that mean? One of the things we do in state government now is we use an equity impact assessment tool, which is effectively a questionnaire that forces us to ask ourselves certain questions whenever we make a new policy or budget proposal. For example, let's say the Department of, I don't know, I'd say the Department of Taxation says, hey, we want to propose a new tax on, we want to propose a new tax on nail polish, I don't know. And it's going to be an 85% tax on nail polish because we hate it and we hate the way it smells and we want people to suffer when we buy it. Doing an equity impact assessment tool would force them to ask themselves, is this going to have a disproportionate impact on any demographic group? And they're going to have to be able to say, yes, it's going to disproportionately impact women and people who buy nail polish and people who are poor or what have you, right? That question, or here's another concrete example. When we passed legislation about tobacco a couple of years ago, it was a piece of legislation that forbids possession of tobacco by a person under 21 years old. Problem is there was no religious carve out for that, which means indigenous people who see tobacco as a sacred plant and who use it in spiritual rituals are now criminalized if they're under 21 in taking part in their spiritual observances. That was a situation where if we had used the EIA tool they would have been able to see that racial disparity and avoid it. So one of the goals that we have is using that tool and it's something we currently do mandate. Another goal that we have is having more uniformity in the way that we do business across state agencies. Departments like the health department or public safety and transportation are a little bit further along in their equity work, mainly because they have a lot more federal requirements to meet, et cetera. But some other departments may be a little further behind and so one goal is catching everybody up to seed so that if you're a person of color or if you're a person who is a member of another historically marginalized group it doesn't matter what department or agency you're interacting with you're going to be treated equitably you're going to have language access, et cetera. Another goal that I have and I'm going to leave it at this one because I'm rambling another goal that I want to mention is being able to support being able to pair our efforts with racial equity with our efforts on age and generational equity. As I mentioned before people of color in Vermont are few younger and so it's not enough just to say we want to help brown people. We also have to recognize that most of the brown people are young people and if all of us are saddled with debt and are unable to enter into a job market because people aren't relinquishing the job then it means that we have to do things that are going to help young people and inherently we're going to be helping people of color in that effort. Thanks we are getting some more questions coming in but we're always welcome more. One of our questioners asks this I hear that it has been difficult to recruit and retain people of color as teachers in Vermont schools. Is this true? Do you have any advice on how to improve this situation? It is true and it's not just limited to the education sector it's true in almost every sector and one of the reasons that it's particularly true here is because being in Vermont can be hard and a lot of times people like to say oh you know how it is black people don't like the cold and Vermont gets cold that's not it that's a cop out it's not a real answer. The truth is that again we go back to that sense of welcoming that insider outsider narrative right if you get the messaging that no matter how long you've been here no matter if you had your children here and raised them here you're never going to belong and they're never going to belong how long do you really want to stay in a place that makes you feel like that? How long do you want to stay in a place where everybody you know is you know sort of walking tiptoeing on eggshells around you because another person who looks like you got murdered by the police and they don't really know how to interact with you. One of the things that I tell people a lot when they ask me we need more employees of color how can we attract more people I tell them listen some of it is outside your control because you can attract somebody with a great job but if that person is not having their holistic needs met they're not going to stay long enough for that job for example you could bring me here with a great job but if everybody on my street is flying confederate flag or if my children are being harassed and bullied in schools and the schools are doing nothing about it or if the local grocery stores don't have culturally relevant food or if the housing is too expensive because I am somebody who did not grow up with a trust fund right if all those things are in place then it's going to be really difficult for me to stay here because the picture for my tenure in Vermont is not just about what job I have it's about where I can live whether I can live how well I can live and next to whom can I live so those are all sort of those are all factors that go into it and then again I mean look at the education sector specifically now right we're having this incredible and unexpected and frankly ridiculous debate about how and whether we teach equity concept in schools if you're a teacher of color in a majority white state you're already under intense scrutiny many times parents are distrustful of your credentials they mistake you for janitorial staff they assume that you're not qualified to do that teaching and I'm not making that up it's true and documented it's already difficult to be an educator of color in that sector to say nothing of higher ed but on top of it when we start having conversations about power and privilege pensions get even more inflamed and then you end up with people who feel attacked unsupported underrepresented unheard and unseen and it's just really difficult to be able to say please come work for a very modest salary in a place you may not be able to afford to live and oh yeah everything you do is going to be criticized by people who don't think you even belong here we have a question regarding something which you briefly mentioned earlier but one of our members would like you to please elaborate on the Native American population in Vermont such as their demographics and other aspects of the Native American people who live in Vermont that would be of concern thank you absolutely so the area that we call Vermont remains unceded Indigenous territory it wasn't given and it wasn't sold and that's really important to keep in mind it was you know mainly Abenaki with a little bit of Mohegan and that's really important because when we think about things like land use or who owns land or who gets to develop parcel we're or you know what do we do about climate change and should we make people composed in all kinds we're talking about regulating the use and treatment of land that was never ours to begin with and so who gets to own that conversation who gets to direct it who gets to direct policy who gets to say this town has a minimum parcel size of 0.79 acres or what have you because all of this is we're dealing in stolen goods and the thing about feeling something from someone is it doesn't matter how long you've kept it it's never really becomes yours not morally and not philosophically just in practice so that's one thing that is really important to keep in mind the other thing is that there's a very difficult history in Vermont with the Indigenous population Vermont was considered a leader in the eugenics movement you know a lot of people don't know what eugenics is there's eugenics and eugenics eugenics is the idea that we can improve humanity or make the human race I don't know cleaner or evolutionarily better by killing off people who we consider undesirable that's eugenics with a TH eugenics with a G is where we try to accomplish the same aim right making humanity somehow better or cleaner or what have you by selective breeding and in the case of the United States a lot of that selective breeding occurred through forced non-consensual sterilization of people who were considered undesirable this has happened in Vermont Vermont again was considered to be at the forefront of that movement and it went on into the 1970s they were sterilizing Abenaki women in this state into the 70s and men too and you know a lot of times people say well that was so long ago you know you can't hang on that forever well the problem is that that's within people's lifetimes today denying a person one of the most intimate decisions they can make which is whether to have children when to have children and how many to have that's if a decision is not for another person to make and yet it was a full on program here and the thing is that the attenuation of the time right by saying well that was 40 years ago we've got to move past it well was it 40 years ago because of recently a last year year before they were sterilizing migrant women at the US border as well when they were holding them in those cages and camps so when we talk about distrust in government particularly when it comes to health and medicine these are the things that we're talking about so yes Abenaki are still here in Vermont they are still very much here in Vermont they are not gone by the wayside and experience poorer health outcomes and other economic outcomes etc there's currently a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that's being that's in the process of being stood up that is supposed to be addressing some of these issues so I really encourage you to follow that as it's happening because it could really mean a lot for Vermont and actually tomorrow at three o'clock at the State House in Montcalino they're going to be doing a formal reading of the formal apology that the state has passed this year for Indigenous people it's also going to be broadcast I think on Wednesday that's interesting in recently there have been some incidents in the news media about taunting or racially charged remarks being made on the athletic playing field in football season or perhaps from people in the stands um this is a very troubling situation what do you have any suggestions for the best ways to handle it and maybe some ways not to handle episodes like that yeah don't look away don't pretend that it's not happening we all heard it we all heard it it wasn't even in hushed tones or even if it was in hushed tones we shouldn't just talk about it in hushed tones afterwards and help the people who experience that harm are just going to get over it because we're in polite company and don't want to talk about it can't do that for a few reasons number one if this is happening in a school context or around youth those youth are going to internalize and then model and replicate our behaviors young people are like sponges we always say this right that that that word that four letter word that you say around your child one time is now going to become her new favorite word and there's nothing you can do about it right so children are like sponges they see what we do they hear how we talk about certain topics and they can sense our comfort or discomfort with a certain topic if your child asks you about race or ethnicity or poverty or you know orientation or something like that if you freeze if you get that deer in the headlights look or you get nervous or you start stumbling they pick up on that discomfort and then they learn this is a taboo topic it's something that makes people uncomfortable so one thing that I would say is you've got to be able to face it head on and address it you can't just pretend it didn't happen because everyone heard it happen and if if I'm a person who has had learners curled at me or I've been harassed or bullied and I see that there are other people around who know that it happened or who saw it happen and don't do anything about it and what that tells me is that they tacitly approve of it so that's it's a really and it's another important point is that if you're a bystander if you're somebody who's there and you could do something about it or seek up about it and you don't the person experiencing the harm doesn't know why you're not speaking up they don't know that well it's because you were nervous you didn't know what to say or you weren't sure if you heard correct they don't know any of that they think that you heard it you knew what you're cool with it otherwise you would have said something so the concept of neutrality or objectivity is really difficult to defend in those situations another thing is you've got to have a protocol you've got to have a policy for when that happens right not just to say like oh we'll figure it out after the game but let's all not spoil the evening and just have a nice time well can we have a nice time should we be allowed to have a nice time as people are made to feel unsafe or threatened or lesser than then what's more important being able to enjoy a game in the face of course sportsmanship or being able to say this is a principled institution and we're going to follow certain guidelines of behavior and if we don't and you want to ruin it then you're ruining it for everybody and that sends a lesson that's like we're not going to tolerate it and if you want to if you want to be the the jerk who ruins it for everybody then you're going to have to be but by allowing it to go by and still accommodating the joy and the fun part then we're basically saying that the joy and the fun part for the rest of us is more important than then the treatment or dehumanization of the few the in Vermont the number of elected officials of color is very small as I understand it and there have been at least one fairly recent incident where the elected official of color was severely harassed and conditions were made very difficult for that person who eventually left the position voluntarily are there are there strategies or ways in which people of color people of any background could be encouraged to to run for office and to to have a a more active role in the in the communities and in the state in that in that way yeah I see this the same way that I see opportunity in all other sectors it's not so much about giving us opportunity or giving us something or helping us or encouraging us it's really about stopping the prevention or stopping the obstruction I'll tell you what I mean by that you know again I I mentioned earlier I said there's nothing inherent about me as a woman or the brown person that makes me less capable in the sciences right it's not that I need to be brought in to the fold or given an opportunity it's that there are many barriers that present me from being able to take advantage of those opportunities if I so choose so in the same way there are a lot of people of color who want to serve their local community whether it's on the school board or in the state legislature or what have you it's not that the desire wouldn't be there it's not that we don't have these interests we have the same varied I promise you racial equity is not a passion of any person of color we don't we don't talk about it because we like it we talk about it because they have life and death implications and we have no choice but you know I wanted I was going to be in a faith lawyer I you know I like to make soap I like to make food I like to knit I don't like to have to justify my humanity to people 12 hours a day so similarly yeah a lot of people of color want to be elected officials or they want to be artists or they want to be this and that and it's not about necessarily encouraging us to to do it it's about we're removing the barriers and the risks and dangers that prevent us from doing it which we would already want to do so what does that mean it means you know for example the elected official you mentioned who ended up stepping down that harassment didn't stop just because she stepped down she's still experiencing a lot of unsafe situations and time and time again local and state police and other regulatory bodies are failing to step in either because of legal loopholes or because of other reasons so it's really important to keep in mind that when a person puts him her or themselves out there like that there's this expectation that if you're a public official or a prospective official a candidate that everyone's entitled to every detail about you and is entitled access to you problem is it puts you in harm's way you're not going to want to do it so we have to be able to have better security for people better safety protocol maybe that means fine you were able to convince the Asian woman in your town to join the select board but are people going to show up to the meeting and be disrespectful to her and make comments about the coronavirus and her home country how long do you think you're going to keep her on the select board if we're allowing things like that to happen do you have a code of conduct do you have people in the town who are obstructionist or maybe who who claim that they want we want to see more diversity in our seats and in our leadership but they keep running for the same seats after 45 years and they don't actually pass the baton right it's really difficult to encourage more people or different people to to join if we're not actually letting them right so it takes a lot of it takes a lot of actions it means one being able to share and feed power to it means recognizing the safety and security implications that you're asking people to take on and do something about it three being an elected representative of the state level in Vermont is really hard if you can't afford to take six months and be in the state house all the time right if it's something that pays enough what about people who need child care or who are caregivers to other people who aren't children people whose jobs don't have that level of flexibility I've heard from a legislator who says six months out of the year I eat rice and beans because that's all I can afford because not a real paid position so those are all things that that kind of factor into that one of our questioners asks how can we attract more diverse individuals to Vermont? Yeah so one of the ways that we can attract more diverse people to Vermont is to really combat that insider outsider narrative I know I keep talking about it but it is so powerful it has such a strong hold on people this idea that you do or don't belong and why right I came here by choice I'm not a member of this community just because no one in my family ever moved I uprooted my life and came here on purpose to do good in Vermont and for Vermont and it's just really disheartening to be in an environment where people say none of that matters because you're you're not real so one of those things is really combat that insider outsider narrative another thing is we've got to get control of the housing market I can't tell you how many folks I know who say well you know I bought my house in 1987 and I paid $14,000 for it you're just investing your money poorly buying avocado toast and you know if we put that 14 grand into an inflation calculator and look at it today that might total out to I don't know $127,000 I made that up why are you selling that same house for $550,000 and then telling me that I'm not acting right with my money what money right so another thing is we've got to get control of housing market just because you can sell something for a certain price doesn't necessarily mean that doing so is helping anybody if people are priced out of living here then we can't bring them here another thing to keep in mind is diversity is just a numbers game right that's just how many of certain kinds of people who bring in but inclusion is something different right you know diversity would be let's just hire let's just hire six Latinos right but if they don't have any meaningful participation in decision making or if they're too afraid to leave their homes because they're always getting harassed and their things are getting vandalized or if they are not really being considered or heard then you've got diversity but you don't have inclusion and so another thing to keep in mind is that bringing people to Vermont is one part of the story but keeping people in Vermont is going to require actually treating people like members of the community thanks for see we're getting near the end of our hour but to to wrap up I think I would combine two questions into one and be interested in in your response is there anything about living and working in Vermont that has surprised you and also do you see any signs of hope or progress here in Vermont Oh absolutely absolutely you know it's also hard doing this work because so much of it sounds like you're focusing on the bad but there's so much good happening in Vermont and and I have enjoyed I've enjoyed my time here it's not easy but I've enjoyed it and one of the things that has surprised me about living and working in Vermont is gale you know they say things are relative and I think that's true when I was in New York that the number of tourists was huge and traffic was awful and then I came to Vermont and now for me that traffic is at a much lower scale but it still annoys me the same and yeah so it's just funny how you get accustomed to things um at a different scale and it it has the same impact on you even that it did in previous guys another thing I think that has surprised me is how and this is going to sound sad to hear but I thought I was going to get a lot more pushback from people in positions of authority in the state and I've been extremely pleasantly surprised at how not only willing but eager people are in leadership to really make strides on equity it's been a wonderful a wonderful thing to see I do see signs of hope and of progress in Vermont and those signs are evident every time there is a tangible meaningful investment in something like being able to say hey you know what this program is underfunded and that's just the solution we're hurting people's color or I see signs of progress every time there is an art installation having to do with equity and it gets vandalized and they put it right back up again they repaint it they do whatever they investigate the vandalism and they prosecute the vandalism because that says that it's not just for show that we really mean it really mean it and we're willing to follow up on it and it's not just a gesture well thank you so so much this is wonderful we really enjoyed hearing you speak and you've given us a lot to think about and we're thrilled that you are here so thank you again so much see you all again next week thanks again thank you Susanna thanks all thank you