 And I will make you host so that I don't forget to do that. OK, excellent. So I'm going to call to order the April 24th meeting of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly at 2.04 PM. This meeting is being recorded with the extension extension of chapter 20, the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. And let's make sure that everybody can be heard since I had an issue. And I'll start with you, Dr. Rhodes. I'm here. Great, it's great to see you. And back in Amherst, yes? Yes, I am. Welcome home. And Hala. Can you hear me? Yes, very good. Perfect, thank you. And Ms. Bridges. Yes, I can hear you. OK, great. And you have your camera off. That's how you want it right now, I assume. Is that is that right? Yes, I'm on the phone. OK, perfect. All right, so I know that Yvonne is not able to join us. I'm just going to send a quick text to Dr. Shabazz and to Alexis, and then we'll get started. All right, great. Let's see. And I'm just going to check attendees. Oh, Dr. Shabazz is actually in the audience. So I guess now I can promote him and he should be moving over. Yes, I hear everyone. Welcome, Dr. Shabazz. Thank you. I'm glad you're here. OK, so just reviewing the agenda. It's been a couple weeks since we met and our survey has been live. And so I'm going to, of course, provide an update on that. Dr. Rhodes and I received an update from the Dunhu Institute this morning. And then we have a definite other item that we need to get to today, which is our Amherst Cultural Council grant. We have the opportunity to amend it so that we can utilize the $500 that was granted to us. And Pamela and I have been working together to think about some ideas for that. So we'll just want to review that with the committee. And then we also have some listening session, just a little discussion on listening sessions and some thoughts I have on that. And then I would like to touch on our final report as well. So any questions before we get to it? All right, great. I did want to share something really quickly with the group that I came across today. And I'm going to try to share screen here. I have been doing a lot of historical research on the town of Amherst. And I've been reading through dozens of annual town reports. And they're very, very, very interesting. I can send the link to everyone. You can search by date. And if you know something important was happening in a particular time period, you can search. And it's really been illuminating to me. But I wanted to share something I came across today. And let's see. Can everyone see my screen? OK, great. So in 1969, at the proposal of several citizen groups, the annual town meeting created a temporary, broadly representative 11 member Citizens Review Commission to study and make recommendations, which would more fully extend democratic government and equal opportunities to all inhabitants. And interestingly, it says that the commission's focus was on four major areas, education, housing, and real estate employment and governmental institutions. And its conclusion says, basically, Amherst is a typical Western Massachusetts town whose overwhelming white majority possesses substantial racist attitudes toward blacks, whose very environment and educational system permits the perpetuation of the economic and social disadvantages encountered by individuals of low income backgrounds, both white and black, whose college students encounter the universal prejudice in attempting to find housing or rentals, and whose secondary school population reflects the general polarization between the college community and the non-college community. I was able to search down over at the archives that you mass the full report. And I'm picking that up today at 4 o'clock. I think that it will be really interesting for us to take a look at that. This commission made recommendations based on these four areas. And it seems to me that they're just as relevant then as they are now. So I just wanted to share that and see if anyone had any thoughts or questions or comments about that. Yes, Dr. Schwarz. I think I'm accurate on this. But one of the members of this commission is none other than William Sandy Darity, Jr. Oh, wow. Recently, a few months ago, at the memorial ceremony for Professor Jules Chemetsky, William Darity Jr. was zoomed in to give remarks. And one of the things that came up in the discussion is that he was on that 1969 commission. I think Jules was as well. And Jules might have recommended or something. They wanted to have a youth, a young person participant. But when you get the document and you look at the members of the Citizen Review Commission, take a look if it doesn't say Sandy or William Darity Jr. Absolutely. And as soon as I have it, I don't know how they're going to let me have it. It may be pictures. It may be photo copies. I will send it to the assembly to look at. Thank you for that, Dr. Schwarz. And now that you say it, I remember you telling me about that a few months ago. So any other comments or questions on that right now? All right, great. So let's, Dr. Rhodes, do you want me to read out the report that came from Ellen this morning? Yes. OK. So let me just grab that. So we have a report from the Denahue Institute. And let's see. Tiffany emails. Strange. Here we go. All right. So as of today, early this morning, we have 363 responses to the survey. 41 of those respondents said they identify as black. And then in the other demographics for race, we have three that identified as American Indian or Alaskan native, five Asian, 37 black or African-American, 206 white, zero native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 36 prefer not to say, and 23 identified some other race. So and the 41 who identify as black is representing about 11% of the total respondents. So I wanted to pause and see what folks' reactions are to those numbers. We're about two weeks in. And my sense is we will keep this open until Friday, May 5. So we have about two more weeks. Any comments or concerns or questions? Yes, Dr. Rose. It's kind of disappointing in relationship to the number of black people, African-Americans who have responded. Given the numbers that we know are here in Amherst. Is there, I know that there was something being discussed, Michelle, in relationship through a mail out to African-Americans via the census tract information. And that is something that I would really wholeheartedly suggest we do, especially since we have that. I would like to be able to look at these numbers with a more robust representation of black and African-Americans. Somewhere hitting around 20% rather than where we are right now. Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I agree. I would also like to see that number go up. I think when I talked to Carrie, she thought the number being that what our population of black residents is was a good number. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that we hear from as many folks who identify as black as possible. So what we did is I requested a full resident list from our town clerk. And the Donahue Institute overlaid that onto the black census and then gave us essentially a list of all of the blocks where there are more than 10 people who have listed African-American on the census in that block. And so what we can do, and we have actually everything. So what we can do is a direct mailing. I did have a postcard created specifically for this. And so I'm wondering if others in the group would be willing to review the list and identify folks that they know may identify as black. Because then we can even be more targeted. The way that we have it right now is we would have to send it to everybody in that particular block. So if we have a way of going through and highlighting, if you know folks, then we can really target. So if folks are up for that, I will send out the list. And then if you could just go through it and highlight who you know and send it just back to me and Pamela and Jennifer, and then we'll do a direct mailing out to those people by that. If we can get, if everybody can take a look at it in the next day or so, we can get that out by the end of the week. What do you think about that, Dr. Ritz? That's very helpful. OK. And we are also working with Hala and Ms. Bridges to get it into the newsletters at Goodwin and Hope Churches. So that's another new development. We have sent it to all of the groups that we have listed in Yes, Hala, please. Oh, you can finish your sentence, Madeline. Really? If you have an update on the churches, that would be great. Well, not an update, even though it is going in. It is in our newsletter that our clerk sends out for Goodwin. I was also wondering about, I can't remember if we had to be 18 because you're a voting citizen, but maybe through Poku, people call United at the high school, we could, you know, if we get the youth engaged in engaging their parents or caregivers, maybe. How do we get the word out in different ways that's not just email or a survey, I'm sorry. I'm wondering how we activate our youth a little. Sorry. No, no, I'm sorry. I just got really excited. That's a great idea. That's a really great idea. It did go out to the whole, in the newsletter, to all of the Amherst Regional School families. But I think directing it at Poku would be a really great idea. Does anyone have a contact? My experience has been you need to go through their faculty or administrative person. And that is, I think in general, yeah, she's very, you know, not only with Poku, but if just her own personal list, she could send it out with an endorsement. It would go a long way. Okay, great. Yeah, that's Sid actually, Sid Ferrara had recommended the same and he had made a connection between us. So I'll follow up on that and there we go. We'll try to make that happen. Awesome. Okay. Any other thoughts about, yes, Pamela? So it's just gonna say that I think Jen probably also has some connections at the high school and there are two high school students on the Human Rights Commission that we could share it with them as well. That's a great idea. I didn't know that there were two high school students on that commission. That's awesome. Okay. Great. Well, any other ideas or thoughts on that? I think that activating, as Hala said, the youth is actually so powerful and could really go a long way in engaging parents and caregivers as well. And if folks have other ideas, just send them our way. Does that date, Dr. Rhodes, does that date seem like a good date for us to keep the survey open through till May 5th, given our timeline? Yes. Not to do that would not be good for us. Yes, as long as we can keep it open, the longer we can keep it open, the better. Okay. Yeah, I agree. Okay. I'd agree as well with extending beyond May 5th. We can still go ahead and begin to build our report and analysis. And then I know that once we do say, pull this number with respect to UMD, they will, at that point, they'll be working on generating their analysis based upon the date we say close out. But, you know, there's still no, there's no reason necessarily to limit people from past that day, just want the analysis we'll look at from UMD, if any other comments come in. Excellent. Okay. So what all, I think that's really, yeah, that's a great thought to let Carrie and Ellen know that they can begin, you know, if they need to begin for their purposes to analyze, you know, to begin on May 5th to start to analyze to be in line with our timeline, then I think that's fine. And we can just continue to keep it open for additional responses. The other thing that everyone should know is we have a paper copy now. So it's available, Jennifer and Pamela have it. I know they received a request for a paper copy and we're gonna have that distributed in a couple of different areas. But if you know somebody who would like a paper copy, I have it in a PDF and we can print the packet for you and make it available so you can get it to whoever that person might be. Okay. So any other comments or questions right now on the survey? I have heard feedback from some folks who have taken it. They have felt that it was very well done and well articulated, clear and for what surveys can sometimes be, we've gotten really good feedback. So that's good. So I'm gonna open up a period of public comment, our first period of two public comment periods. And I will read our statement during the public comment period. The chair will recognize members of the public when called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name, pronouns and residential address. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the chair. No speaker can see their time to another speaker. The AHA will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment, but we will be listening very carefully. And there will be a second public comment period before we finish. So this is the first, if you would like to make a public comment, please use the raise hand function and we will bring you into the room. Okay, I'm not seeing any. So I'm gonna close that public comment period. And let's go to the Amherst culture and cultural council grant amendment. So you may recall, we put in a long time ago at the very beginning of our work together, we put in an application to the Amherst cultural council. We asked for $5,000. The purpose of that money was going to be to create a documentary or to document the AHRA's work. And we received $500. The feedback we received was that we were very early on in our work. And so they encouraged us to come back at a later time when we were further along with our work. So Pamela and I were sort of, Pamela has been working with the chairs of the Amherst cultural council to help liaison with us in terms of what we need to do to amend our application so that we can use the $500 within the scope of what is allowable. So one of the ideas that we have, and this sort of ties into our final report topic. So I'm gonna kind of tie these together. One of the options is for us to use that money to transcribe our meetings. And that will give us a really good way to document all of our meetings and could be the beginnings. They will certainly be used for our final report but also could be the beginnings of the work that we'll need to do if we want to pursue a documentary at some point. So there is an excellent service, there are many, but I did try to transcribe one of our meetings and it was very, very clear. It was a really great formatted very, very well, not like something you'd pull off a YouTube. So I'm curious what folks think about that as a possibility for use of this $500. And if there are other ideas, we just have to submit this. Pamela, their meeting is May 2nd, did you say? I think it's a second, I think it's a second Tuesday evening in May. So it may be the 9th. The 9th, okay. I think it's on that. So any thoughts on that or should we, is everyone comfortable if we just move forward and amend the application for that purpose? Okay. Yes, I agree. Okay. Yeah. So I just wanna add that, so I did reach out to the two co-chairs to see if I could get a sense of whether that use would be acceptable to them. And I got, I'll just say maybe, perhaps like lukewarm feedback about whether it's something that they would be interested in supporting, so I don't know one way or the other whether they would approve it. The other thought was several months ago, I was approached by a couple who have experienced doing storytelling and gathering narratives, which might be another way to have that couple interview you all or interview the assembly about your experience as preparing another way to prepare for a documentary. So I just throw that other idea out there. I think it would be a good use to have the transcript but I don't know whether they will fully support that idea. Thank you, Pamela. Oh, go ahead, Dr. Schwarz. No, I was just gonna say, I guess we don't know until we follow up and submit along the lines of what we think we'd like to do and then they can let us know if it's consistent with what they're funding. Yeah, it's a really easy amendment process. It's very simple. And I might even be able to just put in both options to see, I did reach out to the folks that Pamela mentioned and I do hope to get together with them soon just to get an idea about their work and how they might be able to help us. Initially, they wrote back very enthusiastically and they sound like really creative folks and very committed to this kind of work. Dr. Rhodes, were you gonna add something? Yeah, just I think putting in another option would do us well, especially the storytelling. Okay, perfect. So just to be, just so I had a preliminary discussion with the town manager about transcribing our 60 plus meetings and I do think he would like for us to seek out some other possible sources of funding to do that if we really feel strongly about it. The other thing is we can determine which meetings would be important. Like for example, and I'm gonna move right into the sort of final report piece of our agenda today. So I have been in communication with Matia Kramer who was integral in the two reports that the Reparations for Amherst Group put together. She is an excellent writer. Her heart is fully in this work and she has a background in this particular kind of report writing and research. So I have invited her to our next meeting to speak with us about working with us on our final report. And one of the things that we've done so far is she has a service that she uses so she transcribed or is in the process of transcribing our retreat, for example. Because that's one where having that documented and transcribed it could be really helpful for us. So more to come on all of that and we'll see what shakes out with the Amherst Cultural Council but I will make sure that we get that in and I'll include both options. Let's see. So the other piece that I wanted to ask the committee about is we have a couple of months left. We're gonna be spending a lot of our time when we get the survey results and with a report that's due. But there are some listening sessions that I think we can still host with groups. One of them being with the Amherst Survival Center. I've reached out to the director this morning. Levin and I have talked previously about hosting a listening session during one of their community lunches. And I don't know if folks know but Jennifer Moyston is I think if not already but about to become the board president of the Amherst Survival Center. And I should say also that Jennifer was nominated by Rhett Mindy-Dum for a Black Excellence on the Hill Award. And I was honored to be there with her when she received the award in Boston and it was just a really, really special. I'd love to share more about it with the group when we're together in person but it was really quite amazing and she is so deserving. So it was great to see her recognized. So the other two listening sessions that I was hoping to add to that, one at Amherst College, which is already in the works. We just have to identify a date. And then one at UMass. And yes, Dr. Shabazz, I see your hand and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on UMass, a listening session there. Well, I don't mean to interrupt. You can finish right now. No, no, no, please. No, I'm talking too much. Please talk. Yeah, well, I don't know. So I do know some of the students that are active at UMass and the other thing kind of competing for some of their attention right now is a tribute program, Memorial Program for the late Professor John Bracey who was kind of a founder of our department or at least going back to 1972. And that's taking place on Saturday, May 13th. So some of their energies right now are invested in that event, which is really student-driven and student-oriented. So the department, I wish to say, the Du Bois department is looking at a formal Memorial event in the fall or next academic year. We felt like we needed more time to do things right than to just do things immediately. So we are supporting this student-led effort, this student-driven effort, but the department will have a separate activity, an additional activity later in the next academic year. So at any rate, I don't know fully yet how much what they're bandwidth is going to be beyond the event on the 13th. There had been some talk about something on May 19th, but we'll see more on that. I had a little bit different item than the listening sessions piece though. So I'll wait if there's more for you to finish out on that. No, not really, Dr. Shabazz. I think I just wanted to see if there were thoughts on those three between now and the next month and a half, particular with Amherst College and UMass being that they're gonna head toward graduation real soon, so or till the end of the year. So I would like to try to get those in place, but that was about it for the listening session. So please go ahead. What was the third besides UMass and Amherst College? That was the Amherst Survival Center. Okay, survives. All right, so very good. So what I wanted to mention here and following up in future meetings for sure, but I internally would really recommend that we might all begin to look at other reports that have appeared, even if just a cursor glance at the California task force report, looking at Providence, looking at other municipalities that have come out with reports. And certainly I'm prepared to kind of send a query to Robin Rue with first repair for recommendations on her part for the kinds of things that are coming up in various municipal plans and municipal reports. Also Asheville, North Carolina comes to mind, which also was a county wide report. So that's one, at least that's one thing I've been looking at just sort of getting a sense of the form and function of some of these reports. And then secondly, I am putting together a few of my thoughts on sort of guiding some guiding ideas about the nature of our report. And some of them are things that I've been mentioning here in this group for the last, I don't know, two years or more. And that is, I'll mention a couple of those guiding points. But one, I think that our plan and what we're coming forward with should really emphasize, link itself to and anticipate the development of reparations at the federal level, okay? And I see in some of the past reports different sort of orientations around this. So, for example, California calculated what is owed to each eligible individual and put that number out regardless of their own ability to even pay that number. But that was their approach. It was to try to assess the harm by individual, eligible California person. And that is certainly one way of doing it. I think in our case though, rather than that kind of theoretical, if you will, or rhetorical, or that sort of approach that then just comes out with like five million for each eligible person or one million for each eligible Amherst resident. But then that having no connection to the town of Amherst actually being able to do it is not then, in my view, the way to approach a program that a recommendation that is anticipatory of federal reparations where such a number could be grappled with. But rather to aim toward recommendations toward things we think our council can immediately act upon in its own power. But also the anticipatory part is also things that the council might lend its recommendation and endorsement to, but that are things that would be carried on at the federal or at the state level. So for example, Congressman McGovern, hearing from us, listening to us, coming to our listening sessions, he was emboldened to write a letter to President Joe Biden, calling upon him to take executive action on creating a federal commission to study and make and recommend proposals for reparations at the federal level. Now, I think while that was a nice outgrowth of our relationship with him and of our listening session involvement with him, how much more powerful would it be for the elected government of the town of Amherst to formally endorse and formally call upon our congressional leaders, not only McGovern but also Warren and Markey to make similar efforts for the support of the commission to study and recommend proposals as an executive action of President Biden. So to me, that's a concrete recommendation we can make to our council that I think should be right up in the preamble or right up in the early section of our report that the council then can take as an action item amongst the others that allow, but hopefully take it as one action item that it could immediately vote and I hope unanimously would vote to then follow on with recommendation based upon our work and our recommendation to follow on with formal letters to Senator Warren, Senator Markey and to Congressman McGovern, particularly thanking him for what he's already done but then further encouraging continued efforts to make this happen at the executive level. So things like that are where I'm starting to put my thoughts down that I will look to share and I certainly welcome the support, the editorial support and research and writing support of Matteo Kramer and whatever other support that can even be brought in because I envision a document with multiple sections, some that we can then begin to again enlist expertise and enlist support. If you recall our charge, part of our report ought to be speaking about how the kinds of equity initiatives or reparative justice initiatives, whatever we resolve on our final language but how some of these initiatives connect to existing institutions in our town such as in the business area, the bid and the chamber such as in things like Amherst Survival Center, Land Trust, housing, affordable housing efforts that are going on. We're supposed to be registering our thoughts in all of these areas. And I noted today, a counselor Anna Devon-Gottier was on WHMP and was speaking about one particular item she passionate about, affordable home ownership. And what the idea there is that when these opportunities are created in Amherst to just dole them out by a lottery system, well, how much more powerful it might be to have the council think about part of those opportunities or resources being a part of a reparative justice action rather than just by pulling a ping pong ball. So I'll stop with that, but just on the topic of final report, these are some of the things that I'm thinking about in beginning to do. Excellent, thank you very much, Dr. Shabazz. And I know that that Mattia will be following up to listen to our conversations and will be with us next week for our meeting. So we'll be able to share more. Does anyone else, would anyone else like to share any thoughts about the final report or anything really? We've basically covered everything on our agenda for today. There are a couple other items that I added to the agenda just to, we had, two weeks ago when we met spoke about the elementary school building project. I didn't get the sense from the committee then that there was anything this committee felt it should or wanted to do. If that has changed, please do let me know the vote. There's already actually voting happening by mail. Early voting is happening later this week. And welcome, Alexis. Can you hear us? Yes, I can. Can you hear me? Yes, very well. So that is on the agenda. If folks would like to revisit that, we can do that now. And then we also have on here the Darity Mullen League of Women Voters racial justice collaboration. And I don't have much of an update on that because the group that we're working with to plan that hasn't been able to get together. So hopefully we'll be able to get together soon. And I don't know if there are other updates like a BAM update or an HR 40 update that anyone would like to provide at this time. But if not, we can call our second period of public comment. Yes, Hala. I don't have a BAM update per se except to say we will be having our next meeting this Saturday, 1.30 to three, I believe. And yes, the information has been sent out. But if anybody is listening and didn't get it, so please contact us and we will make sure you get it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Hala. And if you need anything from me in terms of if you will be able to talk about the survey during that meeting, if you need anything from me, let me know. All right, so I am going to open up our second period of public comment. Again, please use the raise hand function and I will bring you into the room and you will have up to three minutes to express your views and you can express views about what we've spoken about today or anything that's within our purview here. And we will not be able to engage generally, although sometimes we'll be able to but we will be listening very closely. So I'm looking for hands. I'll just keep it open for another minute or so here. So I'm not seeing any hands. So I'm going to close our second public comment period and just check in with assembly members now to see if there are any final comments or announcements or discussion before. This was like our most efficient meeting yet. But there's still some time if folks would like to. Okay, so again, we'll be meeting next week. Same time, May 1st, two o'clock and Metia will be joining us for that meeting. I'd really like to spend a good portion of time with Metia to talk about our final report. We'll of course have another survey update. Alexis, you weren't here just so you know, we have as of this morning, 363 responses to the survey, 43 of the respondents identified as black. We spoke earlier about finding ways. We're gonna do a direct mailing using the black census and a resident list so that we can target. I'm gonna be sending out the resident list. So if you along with others are gonna, if you could go through and just highlight any folks you know, that would be great. And we have some other ways we talked about getting it out too as well. All right, any other comments, questions before I adjourn? And Pamela, you got to stay for the whole meeting. All right, well, thank you everyone. I'm gonna adjourn at 2 51 PM and we'll see you next week. Thanks a lot.