 Are we missing anyone else? Oh, Sid. We're Sid. I don't know why it says make co-host, make host, rename, assign to close captioning. I just had an upgrade on my Zoom and now I think if I remove her, I remove her from the meeting. You could ask her. I wonder if I go over to the panelist. Maybe Martha could possibly log out and log back in. I think you want me to close out. Nope, we've got it. I just moved her over. So I'm going to keep my phone muted for the most part because I'm driving from work and you don't need to hear all the road noise. But this is Matthew, by the way, and and I'll just unmute whenever there's something I need to say. Okay. All right. I'm just finishing up dinner. I tried to cook something quick, but it wasn't quick enough. Is there an agenda somewhere? Yeah, I never saw an agenda. Didn't I? So, no, no, there's no agenda. Yeah. There is an agenda. I just didn't send it. So let me give me a second here. By the way, for public events where we're not making a decision, we don't have to call it a meeting just because we're all there. Right. I don't know. That's what Paul said, to do a meeting. So you mean the minutes from the Martin Luther King celebration? Yeah. Yeah. I know we're going to talk probably about communicating and allowing people to do things between meetings again. But I'll just say, and I guess we'll talk about it later, that I don't think we at all needed to have that kind of meeting and send out notice. It's great to notify people that we're all going to be there and to encourage everyone to attend. But as long as we're not making a decision, then we don't have to have minutes. We don't have to call a meeting. Well, great. That makes my job so much easier. Thank you. It's your picture, Matthew, is like this really vibrant smile. So when I said that, you were smiling in your picture. That's how I feel inside when I hear you speak. Wait, who is sharing their screen because now I lost my ability to take notes on my, all right, hang on a second. Do you guys see the agenda? A little bit. Yeah. But I can't take notes if you share your screen. I mean, I can take them handwritten, but that's a pain. We have a pretty quick and easy agenda today. Oh, I wrote black history. Oh, it is black. Okay. I don't know. All right. I was confused. All right. Close to getting ready to preparing to being almost ready to think about starting yet. I think we're good. All right then. Seeing a presence of a quorum, we'll call the Amherst Human Rights Commission to order. So it's the first part. Do we have any public comments? Do we have a public person? Do they want to comment or? I never know how long I'm supposed to wait for public comments to happen. I don't want to be mean and I also don't want to stall out. So Ben, I'm going to make you co-host. We're ready to that. All right. And then you can see the folks. I don't see any hands up. Okay. So we're good. Are there any human rights commission member reports? Anybody have anything to announce or share? Anybody? I can just give a little bit of information on the housing trust that, you know, we're proceeding without work on looking at a parcel of land on Route 9 right across from the colonial village to develop some affordable housing on that end. And we still continue to look at the site of the East Street School. That is also, you know, the title has been passed on to the trust. So it's looking pretty good, you know, to acquire that piece of land. And, you know, it's in front of the folks at the council to prove some of the money. And, you know, it looks good. So hopefully we'll be able to go out with a request for proposals soon and RFP and then start the process in a couple of years. Hopefully we'll have some, some affordable housing options in town for, for folks to take advantage of. That's it. All right. Jennifer, can I ask for you to stop sharing your screen so I can take notes? I took a picture of the agenda. I'm good with it. Okay, cool. Because I can't access. Oh, wait, look at that. I can, but I can't see you all at the same time. Um, no, because anybody else needs to look at the agenda. Hold on. I like the idea of taking a picture. So let me take a picture. It's that Ben starting trends. Yeah. I try. I try. It's a good trend. It's a good trend. All right, got it. He said, is the land that is the land that you guys are looking at right there by Florence savings bank behind that? No, it's right across from a colonial, right, right across from colonial village on route nine or southeast. Route nine. I live in colonial, so I'm trying to figure out where. Yeah, right, right. When you first, there's actually, you can see some for sale signs over there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's technically three lots, right? Correct. Oh, correct. Yep. Right. That right. I know. I know. Now that now that you say the route nine, I, I, I got you. Yep. Yep. That's, that's, that's what we're looking at. Pretty cool. That's a good spot, too. It is, it is. Yeah, it is definitely a good spot. And so I think everybody is excited that it should be to hopefully find, hopefully finalize the process and go from there. All right. Anyone else have any announcements or statements or anything to that effect? Can I do a praise for, for Jennifer for, and everyone who participated in the MLK celebration? It was, I thought it was an amazing celebration. And, you know, Jennifer, you did a great job as usual, pulling it all together. We just always little glitches in zoom and we all know that we've all experienced that. So, you know, nothing to, to be, not that you were ashamed of it, but nothing to be scared about because it was amazing. And I just, I just want to congratulate, you know, Jennifer for putting it together and everyone who was involved in that because I thought it was really a great program. Appreciate it. We all did a great job. All the readers, it was well, well done. It is, it's so ironic that I knew everybody in that audience and I was still like nervous. I'm like, really? Why are you so nervous? It was good. It worked out. Absolutely. Between that and the community safety working group, it was a really long week. Last week, a very busy week because I can go into that later, but because I think I'm going to do an update. I just want to agree with that. That was just a wonderful celebration. And I, the YouTube clips that you found, all those, that was just wonderful. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. I'm gonna, I'm gonna third that. And also at some point when she's not listening, we should do something for Jen. Like when she's not listening, we should play on that. Yeah, when she's not listening. Absolutely. I'm thinking Plaza, then this, and then there's a couple things on the agenda that we'll be putting her to work with or teaming her up with people to help her too. That's, that's also a pretty good gift. That would be better than anything else that you guys can do. That's what we're giving you. Yep. Makes the dream work. Darn. So the first thing is the the response to the attempted cool on the Capitol and just to give like my personal insight, like I'm not the biggest fan of like just statements, right? Like, which is funny for like, I wrote a book called the power of words, but just just words is never enough. That's kind of how I feel like the power of words is putting things into action. And so like, I think it's awesome that the town and the school district came out with a statement. That's that's fantastic. But I was thinking about like things that we could do that would have that would be like more substantive, like something that will last after this point, right? And something that will have like a meaningful effect. So that's my thought on what we should do. I'm just one of many people. So I kind of want to see what you guys, you all think about what steps we should take. It's, you know, it's interesting that, you know, in, you know, I was glad that school school put on a statement in the town and all that stuff. But folks who know that I mean, on the Human Rights Commission, they're always asking, how come Human Rights Commission's commission don't put out a statement by themselves, right? By ourselves. Let's put this to it. And, and I know that there's some legalities around it and probably Matt, you could speak better than I on that. But I think that the expectation from some of the folks in town is that they want to hear from us individually from the town, individually from, from the, from the school individually, or from whatever, just Human Rights Commission does that because I've seen, you know, I've seen an attempted does that Chelsea does that, Nubetford does that, Boston does that. So I don't know if we have that independence or not to do that. But that's something that we really need to explore. Because I think that there is an expectation that we would put something out there from, and we would speak, you know, truths to power when it comes to these issues. Because I know it's come up a couple of times. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to second what Sid said, because I did notice that other Human Rights Commission's who must be bound by the same open meeting laws that we are, unless there's something specific about our town charter that means that we can't legally put out a statement. But I really felt like we, it would have been great to call an emergency meeting and come out with a statement. I mean, but I do agree. I like what you said, then that, you know, words alone are not enough, and we need to come up out with, you know, some substantive actions. And that's a whole discussion of what that would be. Yeah, one of the ideas that I was kind of like tossing around in my head anyways to have like a forum, but not like a, like a community forum, right? We would kind of host it, but not like a forum where the end result is that we just talked and said words like again, like something would come out of that. What that is, like I don't necessarily have, I have ideas, but I don't necessarily have a complete picture. And if we were to do that, I think it'd be best if we like had a collective vision of what that the end of that forum would look like. That's just one idea. I don't know if anyone else had anything else there. Go ahead, Cedric, sorry. Mr. Cedric. We just, I'm just coming from more of the school system and being with the students and they kind of just cried out about this today. And it was really nice to hear what they were saying, you know, talking about. And then yesterday, the staff, we talked about some things too. And I just remember going back to those couple of days weeks ago, how it felt and it kind of felt rushed for first. And some of the feelings of the statement, people have mixed feelings about it. But one thing I feel, just to add on to it, it's not a full plan. Just, just part of an idea is, is what I'm hearing is kind of the, again, the education of it. And I know since, you know, I feel like kids, kids are kind of, from the kids that we're talking to, they're getting their information from the social media or TikToks or, and then some, some life experiences as well, all into that. And I feel that some of that is directed in the wrong direction. And I feel like it's incomplete. I feel as if it's incomplete. It's not some, you know, I don't think all of it's wrong, but I just feel as it's an incomplete subject. So where, if in these forums, could we have an ending of, okay, resources, or where did they find, like, where do we find this out? How do you like, what, like, what's a place that I can learn about these, these subjects about? So, so now, because some of the kids were just stating they're turning 18 or they're going to be 18, and they were just, they were just saying, you know, I wish I watch more news, or I wish I, you know, understood the politics and it's, it's, and I'm not saying we're, you know, we all know that stuff, but it'd be nice to kind of get guided in a direction to understand just a little bit of what, what the impacts are and, and about their, you know, their culture, their race and how is it really affected in, let's just start with Massachusetts or our own town laws or things like that. So they can, you know, at least know that and then, you know, can spread it out nationally. So some form of education is always a cool thing to me and we can always, you know, make it a little bit more in our own language, but at least something to head, like head towards that would be, I feel really helpful because I think students are lost, they're just saying, you know, they're just hearing what the adults are saying and they don't really have a, you know, too much of a fact, fact-checked, I would say. Yeah, I agree with Cedric about like some type of educational engagement to like have, especially for young people, but I think all people need this after what happened, like just some type of engagement to help like see, like understand how government works or how, how we got to that, what happened a couple weeks ago and how that like infects Amherst as well because it infected, infected the whole country like we see the whole thing. So it's important to see like how we can avoid that from like spreading here and also just like being like honest about what, how we can engage and like be positive and like try to figure out ways to become better like citizens of this town, of this country in various ways and like, so we could probably, maybe we can bring in like outside talent or people who have been doing this for a long time, we have like a whole bunch of colleges right next to us. There's probably a lot of people that can help us put things together and then maybe we can like figure out like the summer program or something those students can do or if it's going to be everyone like a workshop, things that we can do to, that's run through the Human Rights Commission that would be cool just to like show that we're not just going to write, keep on writing statements that respond to these events, but we're going to be proactive and try to create like a community that can hold each other and know that we, not that we're different, but we're always working to be better than what happened last week and what happened at any time, so yeah. Yeah, there's another like angle to it that like that kind of, I was just reading about this today that and I'm not sure how we address this, but I feel like if we're going to address what happened at the Capitol, like we need to be real, right? 20% of the people who've been arrested so far are actually law enforcement officials. Like there needs to be some, so we have to have some kind of a tie in with that and I'm not saying that we need to like, I think somebody already made a statement to the Amherst Police Department, if it was at the Town Council, I think that I read that correctly. So Defund 413 put out a demand letter that was asking that the police department let them know of anyone who was in attendance because there was a caravan of folks who left from the Holy Oak Mall and then that there be some type of consequence for their action. And so I don't know where the town has gone with that. I haven't really had the opportunity to talk to Paul, but I know that governor, there's a big thing because Governor Baker was using facial recognition to find people who were from Massachusetts to verify that they were not law enforcement. But I think that that was controversial because of the face recognition technology that was used. But that's all I know about that. So my sister has an organization in Connecticut and in Hartford, what they tried to do, they have a completely different police chief than we do. So I don't know if this is something we would want to try, but they attempted to get the police chief and his staff to kind of have like a pledge to serve people first, etc., etc. It's kind of the pledge that they actually swear to when they become law enforcement officers and they didn't want to do that at all, which is telling. I mean, they're unapologetically what they are down there and I don't want to add commentary, but I'm wondering, does anyone have any thoughts on doing something like that with them as well? I don't think we should just do one thing. It's kind of what I'm saying. I would check in with the chief. I mean, I can call him tomorrow or you Ben should probably reach out to the chief and see how that plays. I would think that that would be an honorable thing to do if that's your mission. I don't see that that should be of an issue to sign on to. But I guess we should also have something written. I thought it was, you know, it's such an ironic turn around the use of this facial recognition software, right? Because now it might actually be useful, right? It has been useful. They've been able to identify a lot of people from the Capitol and arrest them. On the other hand, I didn't actually read this article. Somebody recently told me about it that Northampton police are like losing a significant number of their police officers because they and I didn't read the article, so I apologize, but they can't work with it. They don't feel like they can work within the community anymore because the community is advocating for defunding. So like, you know, seeing what happened at the Capitol, it's like, to me, it's ironic because it's like, that's exactly why we still need the police. And it's also, but the police themselves were involved. It's just like, I don't, I don't know how we, like even just as a, as a country, as a state, as a locality, like, figure that out. I mean, I've just been kind of wrestling just chewing on this. Like, how do we, how do we root this out? Right? Like, how do we, it's complicated. Yeah, I think I actually read the, sorry, that was a mass live article. I actually just read it this morning and just pulled it up. Um, can you share your screen? The officers have either been laid off or resigned because of budget cuts at the Northampton Police Department. And five went to other communities. Yeah, I believe. But I think what would be helpful for the community is people don't necessarily understand what Defund 413 is, because the name is, is so straightforward sounding like Defund 413. People don't necessarily realize that we're saying we don't, it's not that they don't want police. They just don't want the police to respond to everything. And because it's not fair to them, right? Like, we're having them be social workers, we're having them be mental health social workers, homeless advocates, like we're, they're just in a, in a spot position where they're called on for a lost pet, you know what I mean? Just the, such a large or vast area of things. So like a clear understanding for the community of what Defund 413 stands for would be well and would be good. And then, you know, to have maybe someone from Defund 413 attend the meeting or speak with you guys wouldn't be a bad idea either. But I think that people need to understand what Defund 413 is first of all, right? And then you can kind of move to the other items, because within Defund 413 does is the fact that why do you guys send for police officers to want, you know, a stolen bike at, at South Point, right? Like that's just, it's too much, right? So all of that is under Defund 413, but it's not necessarily like get rid of the police, although some of them do feel that way. But overall, the group, that's not what the group is for. Yeah, we're having the same type of conversation at UMass, because it's more like a reforming of the police instead of defunding the police, right? Because I have a lot of students that call me up like, you know, I don't know if I'm for this defunding the police or more into reforming, you know? And I think that that that is the conversation definitely that needs to take places was the difference between the defunding and the reforming of the police. You know, what Jennifer was just talking about, there was that case, I don't know, specifically it was where the gentleman, the black gentleman, 52 year old got shot, right? Because his wife called for a mental health person and a cop showed up and the cop didn't know how to deal with him, shot him. The day before, they had sent a mentor, what they call mental health officers, who dealt with him and was able to de-escalate the situation, sit down with him and then took him to go see somebody, right? So that was a perfect example of what can take place when you don't, like Jennifer was saying, sending cops to everything, because sometimes people are just not trained to do with certain, certain situations. And unfortunately for that gentleman, the gentleman the second time, a cop showed up, didn't know how to deal with that and he ended up being shot and killed. You know, it's perfect illustration of reasons why there needs to be some different types of tactics used to de-escalate situations, especially when they're nonviolent situations, right? Do we know what percentage of Amherst police have gotten de-escalation training? As far as I know, they have de-escalation training now. What does that entails? I don't know to tell you. And just from the community safety working group, I can say they've sent them a series of questions to answer. And the police department shortly after, sometimes maybe mid-summer, late summer, went through an all intense training through Romney Associates. So Pat Romney Associates, where they had someone come in, I think from either New York or D.C. or something like that. And they had this intensive training on race and de-escalating it and biases. So they, but again, all of those trainings need to happen periodically. And I know that for the town and whole the core equity team is working on that, on getting all the staff trained. I have a question about, I remember right after the George Floyd murder and all the protests that happened that the town was talking a lot about how they really don't have a big mental health services in the town. And that was a big conversation. I think I might be exaggerating, but that was a little bit of a conversation that was happening in the town. And I was wondering what they've done about what's been going on since that time. Because I feel like the town hasn't been doing, I mean, they've been doing a lot of both statements and stuff like that. But I haven't seen, and also there was a whole bunch of money too that was coming out. Where has that money gone since everything's happened? And also what have they been doing with mental health? What have they been doing to solve some of the problems that were brought up over the summer last year? So what they did was, over the summer they were supposed to hire two police officers. So they did not hire those two police officers to save room for whatever the community safety working group recommended, whether it was social workers or advocates or whatever the cases so that those individuals can get paid through the police department in that manner. Amherst does not have a good social services network, right? So you can go to different departments depending on what the scenario. So seniors can always go to the senior center, right? But if, you know, Sarah, who's 38, has some kind of issue, she can't go to the senior center for that. So then she has to be routed to somewhere else. So that the human service piece I would like to see be greater, I'd like to see its own department in town. And the $80,000 or $90,000 that was put aside is still set aside. And I know the community safety working group will be trying to hire consultants with those funds and the ambassador program, which the community safety working group will move forward with, will be there, the stipends will come from there. So the community safety working group, they're like in charge of figuring out what the town council, well, they're in charge of recommending what the town council like should move forward to do things, to change things. Well, the community safety working group is trying to, is will be making recommendations for the PD. And how they should move forward and whether or not there should be an ongoing oversight committee or, you know, that they need X and X amount of training or that social worker should be in play. So that's what that group is doing. Okay. And so it's, so as the town council not done anything like with anything else with any like other type, like I know Sid was talking about like housing a little bit, but like has like an education item, like the school district is doing a little bit of with that too. But like, I think it would be important to see like the ways like since, let's just say like May, since the protests have happened, what has happened in Amherst, I think that would be a great educational thing. And then if it's not enough, then we can let that could be the accountability piece that we can push for more, I think. So they did do the resolution. Yeah. And I think that they're, what they're trying to do now is move forward on making some changes. I think that they're trying to get buy in from the community. So I honestly don't really know where they are with that. The resolution was just passed within the month I month ago, I think, or maybe a month and a half ago. So and I like the resolution all that, but that's still, you know, theoretical per se. So I like what Pat was saying, which is, you know, if you can get them to look at, you know, it's about action steps, right? It's all about actions that what has what you're talking about, what has taken place with if there's been any reform, additional training on that. I think that, you know, and, you know, I was talking to an officer the other day, he's like, oh, we do this, that, that and that. But it wasn't in this jurisdiction. And I said, okay, so who knows, right? If the only people who know these great things you're doing is within the department, then that's not great, right? The people that you serve need to know these good things that you do, right? So I'm not saying nothing has happened, but if this stuff that has happened, let's put it out there and say, hey, this is what we've done since, you know, this is the George Floyd's murder, you know, that we've reformed this, we've done this additional training with, you know, we've put out whatever, you know, we've reached out to communities, whatever they've done. All right. So I think that that's, that's one of those questions then that you can, you can ask when you talk to the chief tomorrow or whenever he talks. So I do recommend that at some point the Human Rights Commission and the Community Safety Working Group have a meeting together. Absolutely. So I know that their first goal was to sit and meet with BIPOC communities and BIPOC organizations. And for the most part, this group is BIPOC, but I don't know where they are with seeing organizations in the whole at the moment. But I, we do need to, the missions are very similar. And so I know that the core equity team is working on a, so I had Creed, I'm the co-chair of the core equity team, which is really there to help the town become more welcoming and a more inclusive town between our facilities and our buildings and our staff. And so one of the things is that everybody needs to be trained, like from the top down. So we are working on, there's like a, I created a basic 101 DEI workshop. And so it would start with town council and then work its way down to, to everyone else being mandatory is our goal. So that all employees and that we can move deeper after that training, because we'll have a better idea of where people sit with their own biases and, and race issues. I kind of want to throw this out if I can. I don't know if this is the right time, but I'm just going to throw it out anyways. A bunch of the high school teachers in Paris went to a dismantling white supremacy training over the summer. Dude, this guy named Joe Tess. Joe, trust. Trust, there you go. Joe trust. And I would recommend if there's money allotted out there that, if we can get as many people to that training, because it was very educational. And I think that there is a lot of white supremacy within all forms of town government and the police force and stuff like that. So if we could get not necessarily with Joe trust, but maybe another variation of that training or people within town hall and the police department. Yeah, yeah. So that is part of that. So I think after the fundamental training, it would move on to a deeper dive. Right. So I can't do a deeper dive training, but I can do this one on one training. And so we would hire somebody to come in and do a deeper dive. So I've written Joe trust his name down as someone who could possibly do that. I think that the pioneer. Oh, I can't remember the pioneer Valley. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head at the moment, but when I figured out, I'll shut it out. But there's a anti racist group through the pioneer through a pioneer Valley Coalition that is does some pretty intensive work. It's just at this moment, I think that they stopped doing it because they don't feel that it's as powerful via zoom than in person, which is we're kind of finding that out with a lot of different organizations that the zoom is powerful, but not as powerful as it is live. So what do you guys want to do? There's a lot of great ideas. So like one that sticks out like one. Well, I mean, so what did what is happening with asking for us to know whether there were any Amherst officers who went down there? I mean, I think, you know, we live in Amherst, we pay their salary, we have, you know, we sit on the human, we have the right to that information. So I don't know, you know, I don't like, I don't know, I'm not part of Defund 413. So I don't know what has happened from there. Does anyone know I haven't heard anything, but it wouldn't be bad. I think if maybe the HRC sent in a letter of support of what Defund 413, I mean, I would talk to a member of Defund 413 first and then see if you guys can support that statement as reinforcement. Are there Shabazzes, doctor and doctor part of? I know Mrs. Is, I don't, I'm sure Mr. Is as well, but I know Mrs. Is, yes. Mrs. Dr. Shabazz. And there's a, oh, yeah, it's a quite a large group. So yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say I have to actually have to reach out to both of them this week. So that's a good excuse for me to add something else there. Mm-hmm. So do you guys want to do a community forum or with an educational engagement or like, do we want to ask what town council is doing, what they're going to do? Yeah, I think we should invite like different, like someone from the community safety working group like and the town council and maybe someone from Defund 413, like talk, have them all talk about what they've done as they're in their organizations to like create change since 2020 and then like leave it open to public comment or like a town hall type thing so they can get, people can get asked their questions and like understand what that means for Amherst and stuff like that. And then to make it like kid friendly, maybe we could also have like a different thing for younger people to like learn more about like what, like how those things are established and like how, what they do and how it like the day-to-day thing. So then you get that educational component and then if older people want to come, they can come to, but it would be like specifically for young people like high score under students. So yeah, that's my idea. Are you guys, are you guys deciding on doing that? I mean. Should we have to vote on this or? It's well, probably. Yeah, maybe cool to have like a consensus as to what if we could get like a consensus as to, so is everybody up for the, I should I put it to a vote? Not everybody. So what idea are we actually putting forward? Because I thought I heard some two or three different things in there. And if we're talking about having the Defund 413 race, equity, task force, town council, police department coming to one of our meetings before we decide that we want to have a panel with any of them to talk about what they're doing, I'd like for them to be able to talk to us first because we don't want to get them in there and then they say something that's counterproductive to what we're trying to do. So I suggest that before we decide on anything, we invite them to a meeting here, what they have to say and then ask conjoal demand that they be a part of a public forum and then set that up that way. I love that. I want to make a motion to do that. Motion to do what Liz says. Do we have a second to the motion to do what Liz says? I second that one. All in favor? But on the meetings, we have to state exactly what Liz proposed, right? On the meeting minutes, let me make sure that it's well stated. So the motion is to invite someone from the community safety working group, someone from town council, someone from Defund 413 to understand what they've been working on and what their views are. Do we specifically want to ask them about their views about what happened at the Capitol or actions we should take? I need to clarify that for the minutes. And then the second step, assuming they're in alignment with where we are, that we would then invite them to a panel discussion. So we started off talking about what happened on January 6th at the Capitol and Petchwood kind of bridged out into what they've been doing since we had some pretty significant rallies in the center of a town during the summer. So it can be one or both of those directions and take it up that way. I think if people would talk about what they've been doing since we've had some rallies in the summertime and talk about their work towards this racial divide and ask them to make sure that one of their questions or one of their responses is to their feelings or things that they are putting in place because of what happened on January 6th. So I think that we should, the broader picture is you all formed because, mostly because of what happened and what's been happening in our country, but specifically around George Floyd and his murder and all the rallies that we did in the summer, what have you been doing towards bridging those racial gaps, tackling white supremacy in our town, whatever the questions may be, and then ask them to also, when they're responding to those questions, talk about their feelings or actions that happened as a result of what happened on January 6th. Does that make sense? That makes perfect sense. I'm all in for that. So in my mind, my weird little mind, I think the January 6th thing should almost be an aside, like the point of reference, but it shouldn't be the whole, they aren't inspiring us to do the work that we've been doing, right? So I think kind of catching up with the folks in our community that are doing this sort of work, seeing where we're all at and then figuring out a pivot point in where to go from there. I'm all about that. I like that idea. So it's the idea to mediate different groups of people who are doing the work and figure out where the work connects and then help move that forward. Would that be our role in working with this, in responding to what's happening in our country and making it work better? Is that where we fit in? Is it our role to do that or is it our role to facilitate, I hear what you're saying Matthew, to facilitate just that initial conversation? That's also my question, right? Because I'm not sure if we, do we want that role? I'm not, personally I'm not sure if we want that role, you know, because I don't know. I'm not, I'm not sure if we want to take that role to do that. And it's that part of our mandate to that we can do things like that. Or should it be an open conversation amongst separate groups to make sure that we're all on the same page and can work parallel together for the same cause? Because I don't want to go in there and being like, it looking like we're mediating, having some sort of mediation thing. But how, as separate identity groups, can we work parallel to make sure our community is feeling safe, feeling heard, and also dismantling the white supremacy culture in doing some anti-racist work together? So I'm a little bit lost now than before. So I thought, so one is we're inviting different groups to a Human Rights Commission meeting, right? To make sure that they're all, that we already know that we're all on the same page, but to a certain degree, but to find out what they're doing. And then after we've met with A, B, and C, we are going to have a community forum in which they can inform the public and educate the public on what they're doing. Well, that's what I, that's where I thought I was going. I don't know. Let's just give you an example. Stuff happened over the summer and in the spring that created a lot of racial unrest. From that, the school got some grants and gave and paid for a number of staff or all staff who wanted to to go to a training with Joe Truss on dismantling white supremacy. We've also given a mandate as one of our mandates for the school year is to continue that work in all our conversations in all our lesson plans and in our staff meetings and things like that. From that, a group of people formed a group defending democracy and invited all the staff and all the kids to participate and all the kids can do that if they like. We have Poku and Petra, we can tell you. One of the things that we are do is bringing forward these issues and we have some really in-depth deep discussions about our, A, what happened, B, our responses and then, see our responsibilities not only to our community, but to each other when it comes to these issues. There's some work being done in the school. We have taken some steps to move forward and to figure out a way to get rid of, talk about, think about, whichever way you want to do it, white supremacy in our organization. We've had the English department did a presentation on the continued work that they've done as individuals go into trainings and as a department and the makeup of the books that they're now having the students read and discuss as part of the English English curriculum, the 57 bus being one. I got to remember some of the others, but that was one right off the top of my head because I actually want to read that one. Then the science department came and they talked about how instead of doing this kind of grading, they're doing more work on, Erica helped me out with that word. They just did the presentation last week too and I can't remember. It's more like they're doing packets and it's a different way of grading and getting the kids to have high status knowledge other than in A or B portfolios. That's the word. So they're doing portfolios and things. So the school has made an action plan and they're moving forward. Are things perfect? Heck no. We have a long way to go. So given that, what are these other organizations that have formed or are part of our town government doing to combat, to look at, to dismantle, to whatever? And that's where I think Petruva was going to have them come to us and say, hey, let us know what you're doing. How can we be a supportive you? And then on top of that, let's have a forum so you can inform the public. Here's five or six concrete steps that we've taken since this all came to fruition in the summer and in the spring. Is that better? Or did I make it more complicated? Yeah. And I think the role of the Human Rights Commission would be to facilitate that conversation and make sure that it moves along. I don't think we're trying to push anyone in a certain direction, but just to hold the space and understand what different people are doing. Not that we're doing the same thing, but each like the police are doing their thing, the town council is doing their thing, the school is doing this thing. And like there's things that are happening in the public to know that is important for them to know that. So yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought. And I was going to say also like for the second step, if we're doing like the public forum, getting a chance to hear, you know, tell them, tell the public, the general public, what we're all doing and then hearing back from them what we need to be doing that we aren't, you know what I mean? There's always those little details that you overlook, you know? So I think that would be beneficial too. Matthew, I don't mean to call you out, but you look like you're thinking. I can see the wheels moving. No, no, no. I was about to say the same thing. No, I'm enjoying. I'm trying to think through the notion of first everyone coming together, sharing with each other, and then kind of having learning from each other so that they have a better sense of what they want to present to the public, how they how they should frame what they're doing so that they're in coordination with each other. I'm also thinking back to being on town meeting and the people who would get really upset when committees would come in and everyone was of the same mind. And there was a lot of suspicion, like, what are you trying to hide from us? You weren't trying to fight. You're telling me that there's nothing to fight about that everything that you're doing is fine. I don't trust it. So I'm just curious as to once everyone comes together and they say, you know, we're all heading in the same direction. And then we do something public, whether we're all still going to be heading in the same direction. But I'm excited about it. It's when you do this. And it makes me think, oh, Matthews, I'm not sure that I think that everybody's going to be heading in the same direction. I'm just thinking that maybe people will be able to at least say what they're doing. And again, what Petra just said was, okay, and here and then given the public a place to drop their questions and concerns and how to address what they heard, I don't think we need to have an open forum or a public forum where people can then go, but you said this, no, that's not what we I don't I just want the presentation like, what do you call the town hall, town meeting or whatever, where there's a presentation, people can write stuff in the chat, or we can give them a place to drop their concerns or questions. And then we can have a follow up something based on those questions later on, I don't know. I think that it would be a little bit different because so for instance, if you use the core equity team, and then you use defund 413, although they're all looking for a bridge to the racial divide, they have two different angles and two different missions, right? So the closest one will be the community safety working group and the defund 413, and equity task force and maybe the core equity team would be very similar in mission, but ultimately those groups are different. So from my perspective, I'm thinking we meet monthly. Now, do we have all of these groups come to one HRC meeting? Do we have, do we have additional meetings and then have a forum in a month? Like, I don't, I just want it to be of somewhat time, not take six months, right? Because if we had four groups come in four different meetings, that's four months from now, right? And I know everybody's busy, so I don't know how flexible people's schedules are to have additional meetings. One meeting, bring them all, try to get it all figured out. And then, yeah, because like you said, time is of an essence, you know? I mean, things keep happening every day, you know, and no information is coming out about that event. And if we're going to make an education like Pat was suggesting, then we want to do it sooner than later. I'm not saying next week, but sooner than later. So the week after. Okay. My pen just, I just lost my pen. I have a slightly different idea, and I think that it kind of is similar, but like instead of having them all come here, we can each like have each one of us like are assigned to like two groups, and then we reach out to them and like hear from them what they, and then we can invite them to like the next meeting so that if, but like if they can't come to that meeting, we would at least reach out to them so they would be have, like have their contact. Wait, wait, I think I'm confusing myself, but like, so like each of one of us would be assigned to like two groups, like, like let's say I'm assigned to like the school and like be fun forward and three, so I would reach out to them and say, we're interested in having like a discussion about like what has happened since 2020 and what work you're doing now to like combat white supremacy and stuff like that. And we want to invite you to come to this next meeting, but if you can't come, I would like to like set up a time just to sit and talk about what you're doing. And then like that happens. And so that way, when we come back to the next meeting, and if they can't come, or if we don't have them come, then we can just report back and then plan the form for the following meeting. That was my idea, if that makes sense. I like that idea, but that gets them off the hook. Yeah, but like they need to come. They need to come. Yeah, that's just my opinion though, that's me and you, you know, yeah, I just think that that way lets them off the hook. No, I don't want them off the hook. Yeah, I wasn't saying that they wouldn't come at all. Like they would be the first time they would be talking to the public like they would talk to the public in the public forum, but like not for the next meeting when we're planning the whole event. So that way we don't have to hear all of them talk once and that might take a long time. That was my idea just to save time, but I hear what you're saying too. I guess I could go either way, like they could, I mean, you could reach out and get it like a synopsis from each of them. And we can come together or they can present their synopsis like at a meeting. I'm okay either way. But like adding on to what Sid said, like time is of the essence. So whatever moves us most expeditiously towards the goal, I think. I like that except for they have many members and you can't tell me that one member can't come on the third Thursday of February. Stop it. I agree with that. And I also think that it is also an opportunity for them. We're gonna, if we contact them this week and we don't meet again for another month that gives them a month to rearrange their schedule. And if they can't make it, then they're not on the panel, you know, it just, and we just move forward with whoever is there. My only concern is, is there anyone else who should be at the table who's going to be upset if we didn't invite them? I think there's several different little groups that are going on. Like the League of Women Voters has a group, right? So there's, there, there are several groups. So I think you have to be a little more specific about what groups it is that you want to have involved. But I know like the League of Women Voters is not as big as Equity Task Force, nor is it as diverse as Equity Task Force. So it, it has a different function overall. So it just really depends on what you guys are looking for. Didn't the women of the League of Women Voters presented to us at one point? Okay, I thought so. Because I mean so many committees, I was hoping I wasn't, I had the wrong committee. Yeah, I thought so. So they, they already can present. So we know exactly where they're at. At least some of us are not sure that when they present it, if we have the new body. The other thing is we can give them a time limit if, you know, and say, we'd like you to come. We need you to just speak three to five minutes on some of the work that you've been doing since the summit. So that means they're not, you know, they can either stay and listen to other people or make their presentation and going about their business. Okay, so what are the groups? You're muted, Liz. Deb, you got your hand up. It has been up the whole time and it's confusing me. Your raised hand button is up. Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't even notice that. Yeah. So is it full up? I don't know how to load it. No. Well, you just put it back on. Yeah. It still is like showing me the hand. So we've got D fund for one three, the community safety working group, the racial equity task force and the core equity. What is that a task force, Jennifer? Or what is what are you calling that more core equity team core equity team? Those are the four that I wrote down. Is there anyone else who should be at the table? What about the school? I think the community would know want to hear about the school. Or too big. Take over the whole platform. No, I was not muted and did not realize that. That's it a lot, man. Well, at least you got free to Ben. So that's good. I was just, yeah, I was just thinking like the school equity task force and I will reserve opinion and I'll mute and then give my opinion. I think I personally would hear and I think Petra might even get a little bit of a lashing if we didn't at least like extend some sort of invite to the school equity task force. This is their work too also. And so those initiatives that Liz was talking about, is that through the school equity task force or is that the school department? No, that's like the school itself, not the school department, right? Like that's the high school that did that, right? Well, it was a regional thing. I think it's like high school specific, right? No, everybody at elementary school, middle school, high school, staff, custodians, secretaries, everybody had the opportunity to go to the Joe trust training this summer. That wasn't just a high school thing. That was the district thing, district regional thing. So I'll say that didn't extend to our department. Really? Yeah, absolutely not. I'm sorry, my bad. Maybe it was just the teachers then, but I thought I was I think it was. I think it was because I learned about it through school committee meeting. And I was kind of like, Oh, wow, that's weird because I work there. You know what I mean? So I thought it was either school specific or was just extended to teachers. But no, yeah, I think I think it was just for teachers of parents, like those of us that are in the classroom. It was elementary school, high school, middle school. It just wasn't high school. No, okay. And from that, there's been other sub working groups that work together too. So yeah. So I have five groups, right? And so we're going to be asking them to come speak at one of our meetings for three to five minutes approximately, or give us an update. And then we would like to have them join us in a community forum. But we wanted to hear them first make sure that's that's why I said come to our meeting for three to five minutes and then invite them to a community forum. Yes, I have a weird procedural sort of like semi political question. So let's let's say we get all the groups together, we vet them in one or two of the groups, we decide is like on a different thing than us. How do we are we going to like contact each of them individually and say like, sorry, we don't want you to be a part of our form or are we just going to reach out to the ones that we would invite? Or yeah, it's awkward. I just realized that there's like a Pandora's box there kind of. Yep. Well, if the if the if the reason to have the forum is to inform the community about what they're doing and they ain't doing nothing, they need to let the community know it. I was about to say that. So if if yeah, I mean that's I'm not afraid. No, I agree. I agree with Liz a thousand percent. I was about to say that Liz is like, well, it's supposed to be, you know, it's supposed to be about the community and what they do and inform the community. And really, they don't have to agree with with us. It's just it's a platform and bringing people together to give to educate the community about all these different groups and what they're doing. I think that needs up to the community to ask some of those questions. Right? Yeah. I mean, I was kind of thinking more like like if we find like somebody's, I don't know, somebody's idea of presenting to the community is to like, I don't know, we want to come in here and tell people they need to burn down the town. Like I feel like us facilitating a conversation with folks like that. I'm not saying that that's a possibility. Well, I think it might be good if we hear about that kind of stuff. So we know how to stop that. And I also jump in and say too that like I know the JCA has a very active racial equity task force. They're working on a lot of stuff and it's possible some of the other faith organizations also are working on this. So I just don't know how broad we want to go. And then I also wonder too, Petra, how does that fit in with what you were saying about the younger community? Yeah, I was going to ask if like, because I know like some of the student clubs are also doing some stuff and maybe they could help also present to to show that young people are already doing stuff too. But I don't know if that's the right place for them. And it's also like a public forum. But I think they could do it too if they want, they wanted to. But like the education, I think that's something we would have to think about more because it's more directed. But I don't know that's, that's like, yeah. Wait, but I actually have a question like, are we inviting like the town council and like the police department too? Or is that, are they not going to present what they've been doing too? We did have the town council on the list, but that is actually a great idea to invite the police to talk about what they're doing to to work on structural racism and white supremacy. Right. And I think if they're going to come talk to us that that might be separate outside of inviting the bulk of these groups. There's trust issues with the PD. And it also sometimes, unfortunately, people don't feel like they can express themselves because of retaliation, which is real. So it's always very, and the same thing goes with town council. So it's always very tricky when you include those two groups or town for that matter. Right. I should just say that it changes the dynamics. So these groups that we're inviting are groups that are actively working to like this, like they were created or their purpose is to like advance social equity and stuff like that. Those are the groups that were inviting this for this conversation. And what I think that for the community forum would be best is for town council and for the police department perhaps to hear what these groups are saying and then what the community is saying back to the groups perhaps. I don't know. I don't really know. They do need to be included somewhere. I'm just not sure where you would put them. So when we had five, Jennifer, I had town council was one of my five. So I don't know who your fifth was. I have the school equity task force core equity working group racial equity task force defund 413. And my fifth was town council who was your community safety working group. Yep. You have them. I've got defund 413 safety working group. You're right. Okay. Thank you. I also think it's important that we do have a conversation with the police department and the town council because they like, even though they're not, they should be specifically dismantling white supremacy in their like places too. And I think that we need to hear what they're doing because they're like the representatives of the town. Like I feel like they should be able to tell us what they've been doing. I think that like that could be a different conversation, but like not not with this one, but like, I think that we can't like give them like a free ticket out of like out of this right now. So that's okay. So who's going to reach out to these groups? And then we still have to figure out town council and the police department. Do these invitations need to come from the chair and the vice chair? Or can anyone make them? That's up to you guys. I think we have to have a uniform message whatever. If we're saying everyone is free to reach out and you take these people, we wanted to let them know they're coming to the same event. If you show up and you're like, they're coming to a different party than the one I was invited to, it might lead to some awkwardness. So we need to, are we saying that we would like them to do this for the February, whatever 18th meeting? And for the record, I'm willing to type something up, write something and I mean, you could use it as a template or you could just copy and send it off if folks are amenable to that. And so is any? I just think it should come from the chair or the vice chair that the invitation should be extended from on behalf of the Human Rights Commission. I can team up with, we can do that. It's not a problem. If you want an extra set of eyes on it, Ben, you can feel, I'd be happy to work on that with you if you want. I was gonna say we'll probably put it together and then I'll send it out for the, do not reply all. Apply to Jen. You guys like my memes? Yeah, I was gonna say I'm gonna steal your memes to add so that people are reminded of that. All right, so Ben and Petra were to write an invitation. So does this mean that the March meeting would be our community forum or is this in addition to an HRC meeting? The community forum piece? I think maybe the March meeting should be the police and town council and then a separate meeting time for a forum. I can dig that. I second that one. Yeah, because if we're gonna do a forum, it probably should be at like, I don't know, like the most accessible time. Like maybe we do it on a weekend or something. So police and town council do March and then what a March weekend? I need a calendar. Would the school be included with the police in the town or with the equity groups? Or is the school even being involved in this at all? Like the school district? I think a lot of people would have questions for the school too. Yeah. They're just so big, I wouldn't want them to take over the platform, not saying that they would necessarily. And the school kind of breaks down. Like you can say the school and mean like six different things. You know, like I think I'm just talking. Would have issues with school committee speaking for the school and there's other folks who would have issues if it was the district speaking for the school. I think if we do like school groups, I'm more interested in hearing from students as far as the schools go. Yeah, I would be a little selective on who I would. Well, the other thing you can invite, you can invite our assistant superintendent or a superintendent and just talk about some of the steps and some of the trainings that have been offered to staff and some of the discussions that have been happening within departments and things like that. I mean, if that's what you want, it doesn't have to be this big thing. The one thing that I would caution with the school is people getting off on in-person versus remote learning because somebody's going to go there with them. I would second, third voted unanimous that yes. And so what weekend are you looking at the forum for? The meeting in March would be March 18th. So then that puts us, the 20th is a Saturday and the 27th is a Saturday. Can you give those dates again? What was it? So the forum with the police department and town council would be in theory the 18th of March, which is the third Thursday. And then the community forum could be if you're looking at a Saturday, it's the 20th or the 27th. I'm not looking at a calendar right now. We're going to Easter and Passover fall. Yeah. So we can't fall on the 27th because that's Passover. Yep, that's Passover. So how's the 20th? 20th sound, that looks good actually. We also have to keep in, it depends what time, because we have to keep in mind that somebody was telling me this, which makes sense. They're like saving time starts on the 14th. So it's longer time. So people may want to be outside longer. Because people been cooked up. And I was like, yeah, that makes so much sense, right? So it depends on what time we also want to have. Do you want to have it on the 13th so we don't have to mess with daylight savings? Yep. Then we haven't, and push the meeting to the 11th of March? I couldn't do it on the, yeah, because I have the housing trust. So I want to be able to do it for a half hour. Yeah. On the 11th of March, I will not be available depending on COVID. I will be in New York officiating the new balance in doing nationals for track and field. So I'm not available on the 11th. That ain't happening. It might not be happening, but it's on my calendar and I get paid either way. So boom, drop the mic. Yeah, it's okay. But that ain't happening. I'm just telling you. She's like, boom, drop the mic. Okay. Thoughts? Well, what if we, if we, is anybody available on February 25th? No, wait, that's school vacation week. That's right. That's right. School vacation. What was the date? It doesn't work. Okay, good. Because I think it was my birthday that I was going to say. School vacation week is the 18th. Stop it. Well, I'm not coming to 25th. I'll tell you that now. I'm just letting you know the 25th is not school vacation week. Hey, don't be messing with my days off now. Right. So Liz, you're saying that our next meeting is actually on school vacation week, the 18th of February? Yeah, next year. That's the one day that we have next year. Okay. So then we can't do the forum on the 18th. So we should maybe bump our meeting to the 25th. That's Erica's birthday. She won't be with us. How about the 11th of February? I can't because I have a housing trust. Like I said, I won't be able to be full half of it. If we have to have it on the 25th, I'll be here. It'll be such a good birthday present for you. Send you cupcakes. I'll drop them off. I'm so excited. I'll sing you happy birthday. I have a basketball game on the 25th and the 11th. So I'm probably going to be able to make it. Bam. So therefore, we're not having it on the 28th. So why can't we have our meeting on the 18th? I know it's school vacation week, but I'm like, Hey, I got nothing to do with the pandemic. It'll be virtual. So that's true. If you're on vacation, hop on for an hour and a half. You could. All right. So we're back to the 18th. Yeah, let's go to the 18th, yeah. Okay. So what are you guys thinking for the PD in town council? Then the next week, the next month is March 18th, right? Yeah. And we can't really do the week before. We can't really do the week after. So we just keep that meeting. And then the forum, I don't know, what about the first weekend in April? Or we do the form the 18th and we host a different meeting for the police and town council. Well, what about March 4th? Yeah, just say it out loud. March 4th. Yes. It works politically. Is that for the forum or is that for? Ben, I got you. I got you. You got it? I got you. March 4th. I totally missed that. I got it. I got it. Okay. Stop saying it. Oh, March 4th. March 4th. I want to say it again. Catch up, Deb. Catch up. I know. I know I'm slow, but I'm really. The energy's out of control on these meetings, man. So would March 4th, March 4th, Ben, would that be the meeting with the PD and town council and then the 18th would be our forum? That works for me anyway. Well, no, I wouldn't suggest having a forum on a Thursday. Matt, Matthew, you're muted. I was just agreeing with you that we, that wasn't the forum date on the 18th. Yeah, we said weekend, right? Yeah. We should have the forum on the weekend. Okay. Just even based off the community safety working group had a forum on a Wednesday and we, even though we got valuable information, it was low in attendance compared to what we saw. Yeah, Saturday was banging. Why is this U.S. House of Representatives keeps calling my house? This is the third call in a row. Stop it. Dude, because they're having some sort of, it's Jim Mc, something, and he's having some sort of town hall COVID thing, because he keeps calling me too. I get it, but I'm in a meeting. I didn't answer the first time. I'm not going to answer the fifth time. Stop it. So are we, so let me, let me just try to get this in the back of my brain. So on March 4th, we're going to have a meeting and invite the town council and the police department. On the 18th, we have our regular meeting in anticipation of our forum on the 20th. I'm asking. Hey, just send me an email with all the dates and everything and what you need me to do at this point, and I'll do it. Okay. I'm so lost because I got confused. Yeah, I think that's right, Liz, that we will meet, I'm going to just include February 18th as well, and that is when we are going to be inviting the four or five different groups. We're going to meet again on March 4th with town council and the police department. We will hold our regular meeting on March 18th, and then we will do our forum on March 20th, and we just need to pick a time. For the forum. There we go. I think any time two, three is really good, works really good, it seems like for the public. You know, you can get your morning shopping or whatever it is done, and it's still afternoon, and then there's still time afterwards to go have some fun. Okay. Two to four. Yeah, I'm good at naming two. We got the one agenda item that's progress. It's something here tonight. Do you know what it was progress though, because it's concrete? We have an action. Then on the 20th, is that where we're going? March 20th, right? What about the, but for another group, I'm so sorry, what about the reparations for Amherst? Is that what the group is? They're having their next meeting or their next event is February 5th. So I think it's the 5th. So if we get them this information, they can schedule around. Oh, yeah. Thank you for mentioning them. I've realized they actually reached out to me slash us. So, yeah, we can add them to the mix, I suppose. March 20th, this alien abduction day. There's no holidays on March 20th of note. All right. Let's talk to us. Talk to us. I was just asking, because that was one agenda item. Yeah, yeah, we got, and then the, okay, how would we, we do have to kind of at least at some point discuss planning for Black History Month. And the Lunar New Year. Yeah. So there's definitely the raising of the flag, right? That's there's a proclamation that's already been approved. And then there's a flag raising ceremony that that typically happens. So then the question is, what do we want to do above and beyond that? So you did ask me to talk to Poku students about what family means to them. I did have three students write something to me. Um, I can ask them to join us on Zoom and talk about what they wrote if you'd like. If they can't, I can read. Here's some things that some of our students said or Petula can read once since she's one of their peers or whatever. If you still want that to happen. So let me just give a little background. This year's theme for Black History Month is the Black Family. So that's where the connection of what does family mean to the students. That's where that came from. And the students from Poku did a great job with Kwanzaa and they bring a lot of energy. So if we wanted to have a small event similar to MLK, but include Poku, I'm okay with that. We want to run down a little brief history of African American history. I have a couple of requests if that's okay, unless somebody has something else. One is I would really like for us to post like a national or worldwide renowned African American and as well as a local African American from the town of Amherst on each day. So if members could kind of, if you guys could kind of think of different people and then we can post them on the town website. Well, where do we stand with our Facebook page? I don't even know we had a Facebook page. We do and people like it all the time. Let's think like if we could do like posts like that there. Yep, we can do it there. And on the news and announcements, I would say on the town calendar because it's, and then we can share it out on our Facebook pages. But the piece about the news and announcements on the town calendar, is it connects with a different audience than what typically the Facebook page does, right? Like, and if they send somebody out, someone new every day. And I don't know if somebody can try and connect with the Belcher Town Library. Um, for Angela Palmer, is the, Angeline Palmer is the, was here in Amherst, as not as a slave, but as more of a housekeeper. And the family was going to, had to move down south and was going to sell her down south. And so her brother and another gentleman, basically, I don't want to say kidnap her, they took her and they brought her and they hid her in Belcher Town. So Belcher Town has the bulk, I've been told by our archivist, has the bulk of the information on Angeline Palmer compared to what we have, because for some reason, that she was there in Belcher Town. And I don't have all the details. That's why I need someone to reach out to the library in Belcher Town. I think it's a little different than that. I think she was here and then whoever she was with, couldn't keep her. So she went to live with a family in Belcher Town. And that family in Belcher Town was going to move down south and enslave her. So her family here went to try to, she came, she was able to come here to say goodbye to her family. And then they came to get her to take her back to Belcher Town, the day before she was going to be sent down south with that family. And there was a lot of making her a role and people went to jail and she ended up, they ended up getting her. Yeah, something like that. I read it. I did do some research on it because you and I talked about it. Right. So great Liz, sounds like a great project for you since you're halfway there, right? And so Dr. Shabazz's students a couple of years ago made a fantastic film about different lands and on Amherst that were historically Black communities at the time and also highlights the different attributes from African Americans in Amherst. And so I'm, he said at some point that I could use that footage. And so I would like to show that at an event. For February 1st, if that's what we're going to go for with the kids from Poku and whomever else. Can we not wrestle with the dog, right? Okay. So I'm good with that. I will ask the students to who sent me something if they wouldn't mind coming on and reading what they wrote. One of them's very short. The other one's very it's interesting and lovely. And I can't remember what the third one was. I kind of skimmed it. Okay. So February 1st is a Monday. Do we want to do this event over the weekend timeframe? But the flag raising always happens on the first. So it's somehow all connected at the same time. Although we could do a pre-recording because no one can be around for the flag raising. So we can have the town raise the flag and we can video it and then air it similar like we did the bell ringing service. Not even socially distanced like we did the reading? Right. So that was just us. So if it's just us, I think that that's okay. But if usually that's typically a community driven more community driven than the reading of the Declaration of Human Rights. So, yeah, let's keep it safe then. Yeah, then let's do it via video. And then so the next thing is the Lunar New Year. I have been trying for two years to celebrate the Lunar New Year, but it conflicts with so many other things like Black History Month and we're at the tail of Kwanzaa and Black History Month and the MLK. So this year, I've actually created a proclamation and wrote a proclamation that will be going before the town council. And I've also sent this proclamation out to a few members of the Asian community just to make sure that it's appropriate. And I'll be working with a few the first Baptist Asian congregation to have formed some type of event, very small, but an online but but something. So the Lunar New Year's Eve is February 11th and the day is the 10th is the 12th but from my understanding, families are really it's a very family though the families are together on the 11th and 12th I know they got you all excited but I can't Whatever you just said, I lost it in the dog. It's because of the dog he just got all excited because they were wrestling with him and now he's you know I was talking to the dog, basically. Oh, okay. I heard February 11th and I heard family and then it was muffled. Yes. So our celebration could kick off in theory on the 10th because the families are traditionally together the 11th and the 12th but it's a 15 day celebration where you get red envelopes with great gifts. I would like that. So if anybody has any information or ideas to help with that event that would be fantastic because it's a little more challenging for me because I'm not as aware of the the culture but it's a great learning experience. Okay. Can I just go back to February 1st? We have been you said Dr. Shabazz has given you a video to do all these things happening on the first the video looks like so we had the celebration of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We had a number of things for an hour and a half or two hours whatever it was and it was all Zoom on the 15th. Are we doing the something similar to that for the the Black History Month on February 1st? So you want me to get the students to be able to read something maybe at 5 30 or I don't know what I gotta go I need to know what I'm doing and asking them to do. So I would say that the best choices would be either February 1st or February 6th. So we just have one long event or we can do it on February 6th which is a Saturday which might open up more community members. And then at the 6th we would tell you like the video of the flag raising would be off. On a day I don't care I'm here so I just need to know what day to ask the students if they would wouldn't mind reading what they wrote in the time. Liz did you want them to read it live or do you want them to be pre-recorded and have it put together? I thought that they should be reading it live. If somebody disagrees with that if they can't do it maybe they should do it pre-recorded but I was expect my expectation as the apocal advisor was that they would be able to read it live. I would say February 6th might generate us a larger crowd while we will acknowledge February 1st as the start and then follow with an event on the 6th. So and again I'd still like to be able to for us to be able to post on social media and on the town website different african-american heroes from a national or worldwide perspective and from a local perspective. So you guys got what 28 days to to come up with people and there's eight of you seven of you. That's a perfect divide right? Again apocal students researching some lesser known african-american heroes and sheroes and they're going to be in the morning announcement at the high school anyway and we asked that the staff envelop these people into part of their curriculum for the day. So Petua has already sent us a paragraph on somebody that she would like to bring forward and so what would happen is that say February 1st Petua's person would be read actually on the 27th 28th which is the last day that the kids have that person's name will be in the morning announcements then on the first that person will be read by the teachers in the morning announcements and discussed and then at the end of that person's little paragraph blurb would be the name of the next person so that they can prepare for the next day. So that's what Poku's doing at the high school. We only have 15 days because we have vacation week in between. I have a question list because I was working with the student yesterday. Are you guys looking at scientists and mathematicians? The students are researching whoever they want there was 30 something students in Poku and then in our next meeting on Tuesday they're going to vote on which people they want to bring forward for the 15 days. Great, thank you. And so I'm looking for everyone and yes not the typical like we just celebrated MLK not that he shouldn't be included but I'm looking for the unheard more than the herds. Alrighty. I will ask my students if they would like the town to use some of their people whether they we use them at the school or not Petua because we already have one from her. Yep. And if you could send those in so I want to start that for February 1st. So if you can have them in by the 20th I'll have them on Tuesday that's when the kids need to vote on them. Right. But everybody's if you can have them in by Wednesday the 27th and then I can start posting them for the 28th so that they're you know in time because all of a sudden I'll have 30 things to post or 20 that's how our young people continue to support what's going on in town. Right. So are we going to should we move the the town council's resolution to the next meeting in the update? Oh, you're going to have to talk about the retreat at some point. Kick that thing down the road consistently here. Okay. Right. So do you guys want to have a retreat? How would we do that on Zoom? Yeah. That's not fun. I spend way too much time on Zoom. I don't I mean adding more than just a two-hour meeting. Oh my god. So we can week of Zoom it's too much for me. Post-pwn that until we can meet in person and then we can get like a good lunch and yeah all that jazz. Yeah. Yeah, I concur. The sandwiches were important. They are, man. Foxy makes a good sandwich. Those were great sandwiches. All right. And then it's all right. So anybody have a motion perhaps? I know it's we're like 13 minutes over time. And I get to go to another one of these right after this. So anyone? A motion to adjourn or another motion? Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. I second that one. All right. All in favor? Thank you. Thank you. We crazily got some stuff accomplished. It doesn't feel like it, but we did. Yeah. Yes. Like a really nervous week, but we we did it. All right, Ben and Petra, I'll probably email you guys tomorrow and everybody else. I'll be looking for your individuals that you submit and Liz, you're going to connect with the Belcher Town Library, right? I think I believe they have artifacts and stuff. That's we, you know, if we can get pictures of that, that's would be awesome because we can't do anything live. All right. Perfect. Thank you. We're ready. I'm going to hit end. See you guys soon. Bye. Bye. Bye.