 Good morning, everyone. My name is Jan Kiers and I am the Executive Director of LIPS 360. That's the newly merged Institute of Civic Leadership, or Four Civic Leadership, and Common Good Ventures. And we are delighted for the last couple of years to be a partner with Portland Public Library as they watch these kinds of conversations with you, as audience members, and other kinds of talks as well to engage people around what's happening in our community but to do that in a way that's all about how do we do that civilly? How do we come to these conversations that are tough and deep and meaningful and have them in ways where we all learn from them and don't walk away angry? And I heard you all mocked it again last night with the session that was in here. That was not out. Yeah, well, you posted it. So the library has become a center for tough conversations and our goal is really good to help facilitate the process and working with this excellent crew that we have here at the library. We've had a chance to work with folks as facilitators and engage them in all these conversations. So we're really happy to be doing that with you. Today we're going to focus on getting a little bit of information and hearing from some great folks. I'm a director who will be speaking in just a few moments and you'll hear more about her and Lisa Sockabase who will share some stories from our communities. They care more about her as well. So today we will hear a bit from Kim as well. We'll talk about the data. We'll actually engage you in telling some stories. Those chairs sitting in the back of the room. You'll be in them soon and you'll have the opportunity to share your own stories. So we'll move around a little bit and then we'll come back and talk about what is it that you are taking away? What are you learning? What would you like to do next? And the story that you're telling. So that's another introduction for the day. We will have a break at 9 o'clock. We'll be in here until about 10. We'll have a break at 9 o'clock. Kim Simmons is our partner here in the library and has been the coordinator for CHU's Civility. And she has much more of our community than that but we'll leave it at that for now. Thank you. So welcome to our Portland Public Conversation series. If you haven't already marked your calendars, our second in the series is November 25th and our third is on December 9th. So we hope that you'll come back from the front. I'm grateful to our brand partners, Lift360 and the main Humanities Council who will be offering some neighborhood programming this fall as well and we have a handout for you at the end about that. And to the Lerner Foundation who's support makes it possible for us to be exploring these issues and trying to find different kinds of programs so we really appreciate their support. And I'm really grateful to all the people who attended programs over the last year. We began last September with a program on Incivility and Politics with Professor Nan Shea. And we had a lot of different kinds of events along the way. You really appreciate your feedback as people come forward as potential partners and glad writers and risk taking part in programs that they might not be familiar with or know what to expect. One of those programs came to our City of Readers team on a book called Capitalism 21st Century by Thomas Piketty and people really asked for more conversation. So in partnership with the League of Women Voters and USM's Economics Department in the Main Center for Economic Policy we'll be showing the film Inequality for All on October 29th at 6 p.m. So mark your counters for that one too. Inequality does not require a suppression of dissent or emotion. Both those debates and these very heated debates are central to democracy as the opportunity for more people to participate in the conversations that are central to our shared well-being. Participation means more listening and for other events more participation means taking a risk, telling our stories, sharing our opinion even if it might not be popular. We want to build that trust that the stories and ideas that you share here will be received with respect. When I think about the formation of our civil society I personally often think about protest culture. I'm a sociologist by training and I love social movements. Patient sustained dialogue and discussion that's going to move us towards creating a one city and a common good that we're all going to be able to participate in. Remember these permanent public conversations not to try to reach consensus on significant issues facing our communities and not to make calls and recommendations at this time. But instead we're going to just begin to explore the opportunities and challenges that await us if we begin to create connections across our differences to test our abilities to listen as an ally and to articulate our own point of view. We are the library, a place where stories abound and the opportunity to sift through incredible information is available. We welcome your participation and your feedback in the end. And so with that, who is our state economist and she also serves as the governor's liaison to the U.S. Census Bureau. She's a true data person and help understand big numbers and what they might need to ask. With a shared, a common understanding about who we are as Portland City, who we are a big picture which might not be reflected in our daily walks and our jobs and our neighborhoods and then to move into what that means to us. So Amanda, I welcome you. I'm happy to be here. I'm always happy to talk about demographics, one of my favorite topics. Anytime anybody invites me to go and speak about some of the places, people, I get really excited. Data Nerd, totally acceptable title for me. I fully embrace that. I do want to start with the really boring stuff which is where is this data coming from. As was mentioned, I am the governor's liaison to the Census Bureau. I also serve as the lead for a program called the State Data Center which is a partnership between the Census Bureau and all the different states helping to disseminate data at the Portland Public Library. It's one of the affiliates. We have affiliates all across the state. So Census Bureau data is near and dear to my heart in many respects. For this, you're getting some freshly released data just a couple of weeks old, the 2013 One Year American Community Survey. That's an ongoing survey that the Census Bureau does. They release new data every year. This replaced the long form of the decennial census. So they have all sorts of detailed demographic and social and economic data in there. I have a link there. If you are interested in learning more about it, you can go to the Census Bureau's website and find out more. Also because I am a data nerd, I want to talk about margins of error because the American Community Survey is sample based. There are margins of error around all of the data that I'm going to talk about. I haven't included them in my charts. Normally I try to include the margins of errors so people keep it in mind that it's not, even though it sounds like a very precise number, it's not all that precise. But I have really focused on differences that are statistically significant. So when I'm comparing Maine to Portland, I've really focused in on areas where Portland and Maine are actually different. I'm here to sort of set the stage and give you the data background that describes Portland. What does it really mean when we say Portland is the big city here in Maine? First I want to talk about demographics. We can all pause for a moment. He's done. He's really adorable. Take a moment to just appreciate that. So I'm going to talk about demographics first, sort of the basic age, race, place of birth. I'm going to talk about some economic characteristics. Where are people working? What are their incomes? What types of jobs are in the city? And then I'm going to talk a little bit about some housing data in terms of where are people living? Are they renting or owning? So on to the data, demographics. We all know Portland is Maine's most populous city. That is definitely something to celebrate. Hooray for Portland. The total population in Maine? A little over 1.3 million. We're a small state. Cumberland County has about, oh, 20% of the statewide population, and Portland has about a quarter of the population in Cumberland County. So you've got about 5% of the state's total population right here in Portland. That's pretty good. We talk a lot about how Maine is the oldest state in the country. That's looking at median age. Is Portland younger than the state as a whole? Oh, yes. Yes, you are. The median age for Maine is about 44 years. Cumberland County is a little bit younger with a median age of 42. Portland is under 36 years. So you're quite a bit younger than the state as a whole. That means that you have this young mobile population. Not that kind of mobile. I'm talking more geographic mobility, so moving around. That's because if you look at the age groups that you have, your median age is brought down because you have a lot of young people. You've got way more 20 to 24-year-olds and 25 to 34-year-olds than the state as a whole. If you look at this, Maine's got about, oh, 17% of the population in those two age cohorts, between 20 and 34 years. And you've got almost 30% of your population in Portland in those two age groups. And on the other end of the spectrum, the 65 to 74-year-olds, about 10% of Maine's population is in that age cohort. Only about 5.6% of Portland's population. So you have a much younger population as a whole. Of course, not only are they younger, they are also in general not married. So you've got a much smaller proportion of family households here in Portland. Both Maine and Cumberland County are right around 62% of households are family households. Less than 50% of the households here in Portland are family households. And about 38% are a householder living alone. And of those householders living alone, most of them are people who are never married. In fact, 53% are males never married and 42% females never married. That's considerably higher than the state and Cumberland County figures if you look at that. And of course, if you're not married, it's much easier to move around from one state to another, year after year. So if you look at the residents where people were living a year ago in Maine, about 86% of the population was living in the same house a year ago that they were living in at the time of the survey. 70% of Portland's residents were living in the same house and 7% of Portland's residents were living in a different state entirely a year ago. That's a pretty good movement. There's a lot of geographic churn going on here. Of course, Portland is more racially diverse than the state as a whole. Maine is one of the whitest states in the country. We fight it out with Vermont over who has the title. We sort of go back and forth because the population is white. Only about 84% of Portland's population is white, though. So there is more racial diversity here in Portland, mostly coming from black or African-American and Asian populations. Those are both higher rates in the population in Portland than for the state as a whole. Ancestry, I thought this was kind of funny. So we all know Maine has a large percentage of the population with French ancestry, about 16%. 8% of Portland's population has French ancestry, but I had no idea almost 10% of Portland's population has Italian ancestry. A new statistic for me when I was going through this data, and of course Portland has a much larger percentage of the population with ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. One of the things that makes Portland's racial diversity interesting is that it's mostly coming from a foreign-born population. So coming from immigrants to the country rather than a native-born population. So the native-born, of course, is still very high, but you can see Maine is around 97%. Portland's around 85%. Foreign-born, 15%. Considerably higher than Maine's overall foreign-born population of about 3.4%. That can lead to a lot of challenges. Certainly one of the challenges is the fact that Portland has a larger percentage of the population who speak a language other than English at home and speak English less than very well. A little over 7%. That can make challenging in schools, in doctors' offices, businesses, and for workers. So let's switch gears now. Talk about employment and workers. So let's talk first what types of jobs people in Portland have. This is occupations. You have more people in management, business, science, and arts than the state as a whole. You've got fewer people in natural resources, construction, maintenance, and production, transportation, and material moving. I've got a chart. There's a lot going on here, so I just want to highlight those pieces first. The very first set of columns here, all the way to the left, are the management, business, science, and arts. You can see Portland and Cumberland County both are considerably higher than the state in terms of the percent of employment in those occupations. And then, as you would expect, there are fewer of the natural resources, construction, production types of jobs in the more urban areas compared to the more rural parts of the state. So that's what people do. What about the businesses? What are the industries? Well, you have more arts, entertainment, and recreation, and accommodation and food services. It's not terribly surprising to anybody who actually walks around in Portland and looks at the very large number of restaurants, art galleries, entertainment facilities. There's a lot going on down here. It's definitely a cultural center of sorts. And you've got fewer construction and manufacturing jobs. There's even more going on in this chart, and I'm not going to go through most of it. I do want to highlight a couple of things. Way over on the left, that first set of columns there are agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, and mining. Not a big industry in the state as a whole. You have basically none in Portland. Very, very small share here. You can see their larger shares statewide in construction and manufacturing, but fewer in Portland and Cumberland County. Everybody's at about the same level for retail trade. The really tall section in there as education services and health care. Remember we talked about old state health care is a really big industry in Maine. And everybody's at about the same level there. And then the next set of bars over from that are arts entertainment, recreation, and accommodation food services. And you can see just how much higher a percentage of jobs are in that industry in Portland compared to Maine. Portland is like a city in that people walk to work. We don't have the robust public transportation system that a big city like D.C. or even Boston has, but certainly there's more walking to work and you've got a shorter commute time. So if you look at the rates of driving alone it's about 77% statewide. People just commute in their little cars on the highway. In Portland it's lower, it's about 63%. But your percentage of people walking to work is about 13%. It's quite a bit higher. And the travel time, as I said, is lower. It's about 23 minutes statewide. It's about 18 minutes here in Portland. So you don't take it long to get where you're going. My commute time is 40 minutes. So 18 minutes sounds pretty good today. It's probably about income and benefits. So one of the things to keep in mind is that this is residence-based so for people living in Portland incomes are about the same as the statewide average but incomes for people living in Cumberland County are higher than Maine or Portland, the city itself. This is all in 2013 dollars. The first set of columns are median household income. You can see Cumberland County is higher than Maine. Maine is actually higher than Portland in terms of household income. Remember one of the very first slides I showed was household formation. You've got more non-family households relative to the statewide percentage. So median family income is considerably higher than non-family income. You've got more of those non-family incomes and fewer of the family incomes which is bringing your overall household income down. And then of course as we all know median earnings for men are higher than median earnings for women. The margins of error are really big on the Portland data so it's hard to figure out exactly what the percentages are. They're just too large to be able to get a good statistic in terms of the percentage but I wanted to include those in there just so you could see. Of course the fact that you have a younger population means you have fewer people who are on social security and receiving retirement income but because you have those lower incomes it also means you have more people receiving welfare benefits on higher rates of poverty. That's all typical of cities in general. So let's look at the percentages here. A third of Maine's population receives social security. Only about a quarter of Portland's population receives social security. And while 20% of the state and Cumberland County receives retirement income only about 11% of Portland's population receives retirement income. Cache public assistance income however is higher in Portland about 8% compared to a little over 4% and then receipt of food stamps and snap benefits in the past year about a quarter of Portland's population compared to about 18% statewide so that's a bit higher here. Cumberland County is lower than either of those keep in mind. Cumberland County also had that much higher income level. And poverty rates are higher here. About 10% statewide about 18% of families were in poverty in Portland and in terms of actual people about 14% statewide and 23% in Portland. To just a quick rundown through some housing statistics we think about cities we think about apartments just along those same lines Portland has more rental housing in terms of Maine about 70% is owner occupied 30% is renter occupied Portland you've got about 40% owner occupied and 60% renter occupied. So it's much more of the renter market as opposed to ownership market here. They consider rates are lower in Portland both for owners or renters though and rents are higher here. I'm surprised to anyone I don't think. Your homeowner vacancy rate is 0. So what houses you do have are occupied and your rental vacancy rate is 4.2% so that's still very low and quite a bit lower than the state or Cumberland County. Rent is sort of interesting statewide that's the blue line in here. The peak is in the $500 to $750 range and then there's sort of another large group with the $750 to $1,000 a little bit less than $1,000 to $1,500 then it drops off when you hit the $1,500 rate. Portland and Cumberland County though you've got a big spike up around $750 to $1,000 another big group in the $1,000 to $1,500 and then you've got over 10% of your occupied units paying renter paying $1,500 from a month. That's pretty significant. I'm going to sum all this up. We talk about Portland as the big city for Maine and it really is very much a city. It has a lot of the same characteristics that other large urban areas have and so even though it's part of Maine and so we do have compared to major metropolitan areas an older population less racial diversity and the rest of Maine you do have the younger population more racial diversity and a lot of the same characteristics as other urban areas. Population as I just said it's younger it's more diverse, it's more mobile you're able to move around more freely than the statewide population Incomes are lower poverty is higher but Portland is a desirable place to live I mean look at those rents and the vacancy rates people want to be here very active economies where a lot of the economic growth for the state is and so it is a desirable place to locate. I just blew through a lot of data so there may very well be questions that folks have about either the data that I have included or data that I haven't included so here's my contact information there's a a website for our office we do have a lot of data on our website my phone number and e-mail are on there as well and I will hopefully be here through the rest of the morning so if you have questions afterwards please feel free to come up and find me after thank you very much clarifying questions we have time for maybe two questions and I saw a hand up here and here just clarifying questions if we could for now before we go into the next stage who was you want to go first do you differentiate between African-Americans and Africans because they're people right, absolutely so the Census Bureau data you wouldn't be able to look at some more detailed ancestry versus place of birth and race categories the problem with the one year data is that the sample size is very very small there are three year and five year aggregate data sets that they produce that will be released later on that give you a much larger sample and so you can access some of the data that's not available at the one year level just because the populations are too small they have certain thresholds that they have to use before they can use the data so that is something that would be available in probably a few probably you have to be able to find your data to get at that particular by the rain and wherever we find data and some of the other work we've done that's been a really difficult point in the country thank you I was just working on the area median income data 80%, 50% of median and so forth and I like to work with the household and we're clearly in my mind that I was dealing with a number of $46,000 and I'm trying to figure out the important that also for household I think the HUD though that may be a figure from a household before but it's their dominant number on the HUD chart it's $46,000 so I know that the HUD data is a little bit different maybe from an older data set this is from data that was just released a couple of weeks ago and so it could be that it was from a previous year I'm not familiar with that big of a discrepancy it could actually because the sample size is so small if you're looking at the single year data it can bounce around a lot I'm not familiar with the HUD data as much as I am with the census so I'd have to look at exactly what their data source is I'm just trying to figure out working on some housing stuff which figure I'm just trying to learn and that's a challenge that everybody faces is that all of these different programs are using their own particular definitions and data sources and that's something that I struggle with I get a lot of calls from people who are looking for a figure for a grant and they can't quite figure out which data source they're supposed to be looking at great thank you very much Amanda was this data surprising to folks at all in your kind of quick comments what does it mean how does this data mean for us here in Portland it struck me that there was a huge concentration of wealth and poverty maybe that means the mill is small yeah I bring a breakout of income brackets that is available so you can look at they sort of break the income out by certain levels and so you could look at how many people you have at the low income versus the high and I haven't looked at that in this data set but I suspect you're probably right that you do have this sort of divergent where you have more low income here than high income in Ottawa thank you and we'll continue this question you sort of I thought you would ask you know I just wanted to say data is power because increasingly we're entering an era where people don't just think they're entitled to their own opinion they think they're entitled to their own facts point it back thank you very much I appreciate it we're going to end on that comment we'll have more time to talk about this so we'll go ahead and transition we'll be introducing our next speaker thank you good morning everyone some things to see on your faces some familiar and some new and we're so glad that you're here this morning the next speaker will add a new dimension to the data you've already heard this is Lisa Sakabason who's with the office of health equity at the state level Lisa come up here I won't give you a whole history because I think that's for you to say if you'd like to but I think the most important thing for me about today when I think about Lisa being here today is that she is able to bring alive some of the stories of mayors and that's what we wanted to do today was to have you think about what story you would tell about who you are some aspect of your identity we'll be getting into that in some groups but for now Lisa's setting a stage for you to understand the stories of a few mayors who are real people who have stories to tell who have multiple facets to their identity and to their identities and that's a wonderful stage setter for you to think about what's important about your identities as someone who lives in the Portland area who is a mayor who has a story to tell so I want to introduce you to my colleague my friend someone I've worked with a lot through our leadership intensive and through our health leadership development programs we did that so much so I'll turn it over to you Lisa thank you thank you so much and I have some folks that are going to be readers for us so in just a couple of minutes I'll turn it over to your person that you're going to be reflecting today so just a brief background on myself I direct the office of health equity for the state of Maine where we address issues of disparities focused primarily around health and health disparities originally I'm a Pascaquati tribal member I'm from Indian Township a small Pascaquati reservation very far from Portland so this was a project that some of my colleagues and myself have worked on and what we wanted to understand was the issue that Amanda brought up in terms of the whitest state in the nation and as she said we fight and I don't even like to use that term fight for the distinction but oftentimes we go back and forth with Vermont and one of my colleagues who is not from Maine and from a very diverse place herself said why are we not able to attract diversity we're seeing changes in the diversity of the state of Maine but why do we not see more racial and ethnic diversity and it was strange to her coming from a very diverse racially diverse state and coming to Maine and really seeing how it took her a while to see a face that did not look like hers and she is white from New Jersey and so what we wanted to do was understand from different faces of Maine that we often don't hear from and we wanted to hear about their experiences in Maine and share with us what a day is like for them and some of these people represent one individual that really told us a compelling story and that we wanted to reflect their story but most of these people are groups of people where we were able to pull out themes we were able to hear from a group of refugee women and hear similar stories in every single one of their voices and what was so you know Lord talked about us telling our stories and how we are unique what I wanted to bring to all of you were stories that I have a feeling even if you look different than most of the folks in front of us you are going to have so many similarities with people so we often talk about difference I really want to talk about how we are the same and how we can be united on some of those commonalities in our stories so for the people that are readers could you come up and stand by by your poster do we have anybody in the audience that speaks even a little bit of French just a little will you be a reader I think you are Sylvia do you mind you being Yvonne instead that would be great and where is Yvonne I'm looking for Yvonne okay perfect I was telling Laura and Amanda that there has never been a time where I haven't been able to find a French speaker so thank you very much and then Amanda was sharing with me the data that French ancestry is half in Portland than it is the rest of the state so I started getting nervous so these two ladies thank you and so if you do not mind coming up and we can spread these out a little bit further so people have time to stand so what I want you to think about is which one of these stories regardless of gender race language can you relate to and we are going to have a conversation about them when we are done so behind does that work for you guys okay great perfect and I will help what I will do is just have you pass the mic down so Sylvia great my name is Sylvia I am a Native American living in Calis, Maine I feel the medical staff at the local hospital and physician offices have profiled Native Americans as drug seekers I had to have orthopedic surgery to repair my knee that I injured playing in a charity softball game my recovery has been long and painful and describing my pain to the doctor he immediately said he would not give me narcotics for my pain and that he would need me to submit a urine test before he prescribed any treatment all I wanted was a plan to get better not to be accused of seeking drugs during my visit my doctor also asked me what percent Indian I was why do people ask me that we don't ask other races what percent they are I responded to my doctor by asking him what percent white he was several years ago when I was at high school football game I saw a student from a posing team whose mascot was redskins portray a warring Indian prancing about doing war whoops mocking sacred symbols and sacred dances I asked my mother why our culture has been shown so much disrespect she had tears in her eyes and both of us decided to leave together these mascots and their performances logos or names are disrespectful and offensive to Native Americans and others are offended by stereotyping can you imagine a team named the white skins the black skins or the yellow skins it would never be allowed after many meetings with the school board one of my proudest accomplishments was when we were successful in changing the mascot of the team from the redskins to the redstorms my name is Sylvia and I am a force in Maine you in the census data my name is Pedro I live in Bangor, Maine with my wife Jill we are expecting our second child in three months I moved here from Puerto Rico when I was 18 to attend the University of Maine in Orano folks in Maine are pretty enlightened and tolerant but they have few experiences dealing with people of color and stereotypes I think they are much more inclined to think the worst my wife struggles with how I am treated differently and how people look at us when we are together we were shopping recently and a woman was staring at us when we looked back at her she shook her head in disgust and walked away five years ago I had a job where racial discrimination was a routine occurrence my supervisor constantly questioned me about phone bills accusing me of making personal long distance calls I was also accused twice of stealing money from the company safe my supervisor told me you people are used to doing stuff like this when I asked him what do you mean you people he said you know what I mean when I went to my supervisor's boss about the harassment I was told that the company was not going to address my concerns because the company was going out of business I filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission and they agreed that I had been treated unfairly because of my race now what my name is Pedro and I am a face of Maine hello my name is Gloria I live in Bitterford Maine with my husband we moved from Japan to Maine in 1970 for my husband's job shortly after arriving in Maine I landed a job with a local company where I worked for the next 22 years I had an excellent work record and had been named top nationwide manager three times but my evaluations dropped to unsatisfactory soon after I had the company investigate my supervisor who called me a derogatory name the company ordered my boss to apologize about him to continue supervising me four months later that same supervisor recommended that I be fired my company was focused on sexual harassment training but did little on diversity training employers seemed to be reluctant to suspend or fire a worker who makes racial slurs yet that same employee would likely lose his job if he made sexual comments to a female co-worker it is amazing the number of times that people will speak very loudly and slowly to me they speak the language I usually just smile and respond in a slow, loud voice some people will just be rude and talk about you while you are still in the room they assume you don't understand English it's frustrating to me because my first job was teaching English in my home country it is hurtful that some people are so disrespectful to anyone that looks different from them my name is Gloria and I am a face of Maine hello my name is Al Rala I am 25 years old I have four children and a wonderful husband we moved to Lewiston, Maine in 1999 from Somalia to find a better life for our family I am fluent in both the languages of Somali and English it's been a challenge to keep my children speaking Somali they mostly speak English a friend called me one day and my daughter answered the phone in English and my friend spoke to her in Somali my daughter never said a word she looked down the phone and yelled to me that someone was speaking Somali often times I feel sad that my children do not speak our native language recently my son was in a fight at school and I was called in to come get him I arrived at school to have the principal tell me that my son was suspended for three days the other boy in the fight was white and was still sitting in his office waiting for his parents I asked if he would be suspended as well and the principal assured me that he would be I found out later that week that the other boy was allowed to go back to class and was not suspended the racial climate in Lewiston is one that on the surface seems all right but when an incident happens where it involves someone of color the tension seems to surface rather quickly my name is Arala and I am a face of Maine my name is Steven I am 27 years old and I live in Portland, Maine my family moved here from New York when I was 7 I applied for a manufacturing job in South Portland several years ago in which I was the only black person among 12 candidates that applied for the job I was told by the company that I didn't do well on the test and I didn't have manufacturing experience instead they hired 5 white candidates one of them also had difficulty with the math test and 4 others didn't have any manufacturing experience and I learned later that of all the employees at the company none are black this is not the only thing that makes me know that racism exists here in Maine my younger brother was riding a late bus home after school when 3 older bullies started harassing him at the back of the bus they start by telling some offensive racial jokes but then lead to a barrage of racial slurs I dropped reference to the Ku Klux Klan and Kunta Kinte referring to the slave depicted in the television miniseries roots as it seemed regressed one of the older boys spat on my brother and hit him in the head this is not an incident that happened 4 years ago in the south this happened right here in Maine just 2 years ago my name is Steven and I am a face of Maine Bonjour, je m'appelle Yvonne my name is Yvonne and I come from Waterville when I was young we spoke French at home with mama and papa but if I spoke French at school I was teased by other kids when I had my own children I didn't want them to have that experience so that all speak good English we thought we were making life better for them but now that my kids are grown they wish they could speak French my grandson Marcus goes to l'école française du Maine to report many students have Franco-American parents who lost their French language my son wanted his son to learn more about our heritage and background I am so happy that I can speak French with Marcus I only regret that I did not make sure my own children knew their French we Franco-Americans have a saying qui perd sa langue perd sa foi who loses her language loses her faith when the first French Canadians came to live in Maine we were discriminated against because we spoke French we were Catholic and we had our own ways of doing things I remember papa telling stories about those times did you know that in the 1920s Maine had more members in the Ku Klux Klan than any state in the country the goal of the Klan was to wipe out the French Canadian Catholics and the Native Americans in Maine but we're still here and now there was a renewed interest in telling our stories and recovering our language and culture I would like to share something from the book Wednesday's Child by Ray Quote-Robbins it really tells how I feel about my past and my hope for the future I make bold the colors in my house I get dizzy admiring the roofs in Quebec the colors on the houses leave me breathless I have been shamed too white but I vow to return to the palette of true colors I dream the visions of young women in French the cookbook of life rendered for what it is that which sustains the generations to come pride, not shame in the female cookpot modern day tapestry of living unparalleled in its boasts in French here the commercial advertisements read understood at last my name is Yvonne and I am the face of Maine I'm really here to facilitate a conversation with everybody here and we want to talk about what did you find similar in each of these stories even though they're all very different could you relate to any one of these stories even if you come from a different background so general thoughts and impressions most of them not all were subjected to scary times in scary times absolutely and who has that happened to right? we can all relate to that yes please threads of lost identity lost identity and lost language was really a thread that we heard a lot pretty much in almost every story, every group of people that we talked to yes it sounded like all of them had really experienced incivility did everyone hear that? everyone had experienced incivility in some way whether direct or indirect there's going to be a lack of big people interested in learning do you both own culture? I'm sorry I didn't give what you said it strikes me as that absolutely right here and then we'll go in front here at the end of that it seems like the people that they cite who are rude to them or really special are afraid it feels to me that it's not just incivil but there's fear of the time finding out more about who these people might be that is a really good point and I think every story there was a story of fear and fear not being separate from them on a daily basis always being on guard is what we would hear that means there are a lot of people who are being prevented of fear absolutely right here just a minute to be important you say stereotype even negative there's nothing positive in the mouth which I think many people think that the connotation of stereotype is not a problem I think we have to be more important negative stereotype is what we're talking about here absolutely right here and then we'll go into that although the prejudice exhibited was systemic the voice was that of people who felt alone and personally attacked as an individual not a part of the community that was supporting them absolutely the element of fear came up a lot a lot of discussion about isolation and feeling alone and worrying about even when family comes to visit or moving family into the state that feeling of isolation they feel they do not want others to feel and so that was something that we had long conversations about isolation general observation is my own story I grew up as a child with blacks and human other types of racism and what not unusual childhood experiences and what not so the idea of separation really wasn't there as we grew older of course we get hearing about these kinds of things and we start looking at each other and saying up to lunch all I'm bringing up here is the impact of childhood lives and positive aspects when you're not there conditioning causes a lot of damage at a young age absolutely that's a great point how power comes to play in each one of these stories absolutely and something I got from all of them many were talking about an institution like school or hospital work and I think we're a land of law and we all kind of feel that we as a nation have certain reflections and for me I heard that it made us all happy when we talk about different levels of discrimination or racism that institutional and structural is sometimes a lot more overwhelming and you feel that powerlessness in every place that you may enter not just on a one-on-one encounter you also brought up something about you know they're in place so oftentimes people are surprised to hear some of these things and that they still go on and that was one of the reasons why we wanted to hear from people that every single one of these people or groups of people this was a part of their daily life this feeling of fear or being on guard or thinking like they're being treated differently because of because oftentimes we're here from particularly Pedro where he was in the store and this woman looked at him and his wife and shook the head and walked away he is basically saying you know feeling like it was because of his race and oftentimes we'll get pushed back and say it may not have anything to do with this race maybe that person was thinking about something and didn't even see him and I think the point is with the feeling of always having to ask the question am I being treated this way because I am uning the race and I think that's the point of always having to have that thought process way back here one thing for the purposes of our project that struck me is how challenging it is when there's people on history of discrimination and oppression and hurt and infidelity to figure out how to start and so when people express a curiosity about somebody's heritage it can come out the other way like why are you asking me what percentage I am you know that wasn't friendly but when people don't have curiosity why don't you want to know about my history I think there are really how do we ignore about how do we be curious about each other's stories without over-attributing people to their group or making assumptions about them and when do we decide to share our curiosity in groups like this wonderful we can have those conversations it is wonderful that there are spaces where we can have a safe dialogue and we can share that curiosity the time not to share curiosity probably is when you're in the doctor's office and the doctor's asking you questions so when do we have do we set up safe places to have these conversations in educational settings in you know hospitals and also in forums like this is there any guideline for civil discourse in you know so that people aren't too closed off and not problem boundaries that actually are micro-aggressive right here and then I think we're going to break I'm going to take two more yes you haven't spoken yet so can I just he had to stand up first okay as someone who grew up in a society would be more normative what's striking to me is how so democratic this story is called this directive I think a lot of these folks that you see before you were people that we had built trust and had you know a long a long relationship and so I think that did change what they would share and it also made them you know with names changing and pulling common themes out of groups of stories but I think that's a great point oftentimes it is not that direct personally I find it very challenging with my day and my interests so forth and how much to see people that are different and how much to not see that they're different I don't have it it's a live struggle for me because well I didn't my experience is dramatic at the moment I mean I've been in places and I don't think it's right to always notice and I don't think it's wrong right to never notice but I get uncomfortable with people that notice too much certainly and if I ask who knows the question because I'm delighted and curious especially with someone from Mexico they don't admit it and they don't want me to say they're offended and here I am being delighted wanting to share it's online it goes back to the fear aspect right there's fear on both sides there's discomfort on both sides so how do we strike that balance and have conversations one more than Laura's going to give us the hook I think it's really important to recognize totalization that happened and we are a group of I'm guessing almost entirely white folks you know having a discussion about this and we need to acknowledge the aspect people of color often feel very tokenized and so I think the important thing to ask is questions and recognize that people are curious but that it often is happening in a place where a white person is tokenizing a person of color to understand their culture and that's something that's very real and very common in our society I'm just going to say maybe if we were like the lady here and I have the same thoughts often I don't feel like this is curiosity I'm going to stress this so maybe you just say I'm asking that's not ridiculous sure absolutely and sometimes you need to build that relationship a little bit before you die so I think we're going to do you want to transition us to the next great thank you Lisa really appreciate this process so we're going to take a five minute break in just a moment but I want to finish this part of the agenda with the data and the posters with a reading because that's what we do at Lyft 360 and it's what we do with the library as well this is a Margaret Wheatley reading that I think pertains so beautifully to what all of you have said as you talked about what you heard here it's called turning to one another there's no greater power than a city discovering what it cares about ask what's possible not what's wrong and keep asking notice what you care about and boy do I need my glasses there we go oh so much clearer notice what you care about assume that many others share your dreams be brave enough to start a conversation that matters there you are with your comments talk to people you know talk to people you don't know talk to people you never talked to be intrigued by the differences you hear expect to be surprised treasure, curiosity more than certainty invite in everybody who cares to work on what's possible acknowledge that everyone is an expert in something know that creative solutions come from new connections remember you don't fear people whose story you know real listening always brings people closer together trust that meaningful conversations can change your world rely on human goodness stay together