 Okay, welcome. So I'm calling to order the December 12th meeting of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly at 2.06 PM. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. And we'll start the way we usually start, which is just to do a sound check, make sure everybody can be heard and can hear. So I'll start with you, Dr. Shabazz. Shabazz is here. Great, and Pamela. I'm here and can hear everyone. Excellent, and Ms. Bridges? Here, and I can hear everyone. All right, great, and Alexis. Hello, good to be here, thank you. Excellent. All right, so I am going to ask that we begin by approving the minutes that are on the agenda, and then we're gonna have an initial public comment period since we know we have somebody here that might want to speak with us, and then we can kind of monitor and see if the later public comment period is appropriate. So meeting minutes that we are approving, moving to approve October 19th, October 24th, October 31st, November 7th, and December 5th, all of 2022. And is there a second for that? Second. Okay, great. Any revisions or questions about the meeting minutes? Okay, so I'll start with you, Alexis. Alexis, yes. Excellent, Ms. Bridges? Yes. Dr. Shabazz? Yes. And I am a yes. So I'm going to read our public comment statement during the public comment period. I'll recognize members of the public when called on, please identify yourself by stating your name, pronouns, and residential address. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. And while we normally won't engage in a discussion, if we will be listening very closely, and sometimes if there's a clarifying question, we can answer that. So if you would like to make public comment, please. Oh, Pamela, you are on top of it. Welcome. Good afternoon. I hope you can hear me clearly. Very good, yes. Yes, greetings. My name is Kiara Cosby. I am, I was actually raised in the Valley. I have multi-generational ties to the area. I set my childhood between Springfield Amherst, Northampton, and I attended University of Massachusetts Amherst. And I resided in Amherst for about six years. And while a student at UMass, myself and several other students, we founded the Alliance for Afro-American Cultural Education as a means to educate the campus community and the broader Amherst community at large about the specific history and cultural identity of Black Americans or Afro-Americans as we named the organization. So we did submit some recommendations to your assembly and looking forward to the opportunity to dialogue more in the future, perhaps. And looking forward to just watching this meeting and listening in. Thank you so much for having me. Hi, Dr. Shamaaz. Thank you so much for coming. And I hope that you heard, I did receive the recommendations and they will be sent out to all committee members today. And I didn't get a chance to read everything in full detail, but just wanted to really share my appreciation with all of the thought that went into the recommendations that you sent over. So thank you very much. Absolutely. All right. Thank you, Mass Education, the good news. And I see that Hala has joined us, so I want to make sure that Hala can hear us and can be heard. I can hear you and I, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry, I forgot to mute. I'll mute now. Thank you. It's always awkward when this question comes up about, can you hear and can you be heard? It's like. But yeah, thank you. We can hear you, Hala. Welcome. All right. So just to follow up a little bit, our last public comment, I want to again, say that I will forward. I think Pamela was not included on that email. It was myself and Jennifer, which is totally fine. And we'll make sure that it gets out to all committee members today and then included in the packet so that we can have it on our agenda. It's really, really valuable information and recommendations. And so we'll make sure that we have that for our next meeting to discuss. All right. So are there any member comments at this time before we dive into our agenda? OK, great. So today I was hoping that we could cover. I was able to meet Pamela and myself and Jennifer met with Brianna this morning to better understand how we might host our upcoming listening session. Before we talk about those details and try to make some decisions about that, I wanted to let everyone know that several weeks ago, Congressman McGovern's aide, Coby Levine Gardner, asked me to get together to meet with him to talk about how the congressman might be able to support our work. And so I met with Coby and Coby indicated that the congressman would like to participate in one of our upcoming listening sessions. And so after we planned our date and time and everything, I reached back. Actually, Coby had already reached back out to me and I responded to let him know the details and very quickly received a response that the congressman would, in fact, like to participate in our January 11th listening session. The details are still being worked out, but I think his intention, at least through Coby, is that he would like to be there to really listen to members of the Black community and have the opportunity perhaps to say a few words. But really, the role that he wants to play is to be there to listen to what members of the Black community have to say in response to our framework that we'll be offering for that listening session. So I wanted to pause there and see if there are any questions or comments or concerns about that before we move on to more of the nitty gritty logistics. Good. OK. And both Joe Cumberford and Mindy Dum have also confirmed that they will be in attendance. Lynn, our council president, sent out a message to the council encouraging council members to be there in a listening capacity. So I expect that we'll have a good turnout of state and regional and town leaders. In terms of the logistics, we had a really good meeting with Brie this morning because we wanted to kind of figure out what might be the best way to host this as a fully virtual meeting where AHRA members could be spotlighted throughout the meeting, where our special guest, Congressman McGovern, might be spotlighted or where any member that is speaking that has the floor will be able to be spotlighted and where we won't be in a situation where there's a wall between the panelists where everybody that's attending will be somewhere else where nobody can see them and they can't see others. And so we wanted to make sure that everybody could be brought into the room, be seen, and that we could spotlight the folks who were talking and our assembly members. So what we figured out is that we could run this as a webinar and that we could ask people to register for the webinar. And then Jennifer or whoever else, but I think Jennifer agreed that Jennifer would bring in folks in the beginning as we got started. So they'll start where they can't be seen and then they'll be promoted to panelists essentially. And one of the thoughts was to also talk to Amherst Media to see if they could cover the event so that if there were folks who didn't want to be necessarily part of the scene webinar could participate by just listening through Amherst Media. So does anyone have objection to that form or would like to add to that or ask questions or have different ideas altogether? And Pamela, let me know if I got that right. So that works for folks to do it that way. OK. So then the question really becomes we're going to create the link. We're going to create the registration. That will give folks the opportunity to receive the recording back as well after the event occurs. So if somebody registers and they get sick and they can't come, they'll receive the recording after the event. And it will also want to think about in terms of getting this out and marketing it and making sure that we get as many people to know about it as possible. We're going to do similar to what we did last time, create some using our previous template. We'll create some advertising and marketing. And Bree has offered to get it out everywhere, all on social media, through the calendar, through all of the various channels that the town has to reach people. So that's and then I figure that at our next meeting, we will really dive into how we want the program to look. But for now, I just wanted to make sure that everybody was comfortable with that format so we can start getting it out into the community. Yeah, I think that can work. I don't know what the town's latest experience has been with the Zoom bombing or anything like that. I know earlier on there had been hiccups. But I think maybe now some of that we're a little protected against some of that. But otherwise, the webinar format with registration is all good. Is any thought given to the Zoom allows you to livestream through platforms like YouTube or Facebook? Any thought given to that? I see Alexis might have a good response to that. Go ahead. I'm so sorry, I've been trying to eat. But so yes, we're definitely interested in covering this as Amherst Media and what would take the labor out of anybody else having to try to deal with the live stream is that if we're covering it virtually anyways, it will go to YouTube automatically. And it's actually the nice thing about that is that it allows people to rewind immediately while they're watching it in real time. We're also now able to livestream to Facebook at the same time. So the only thing about that though, and I don't know if we want to make some sort of comment or if we're trying to be aware of the comments. Because there's been times where we've covered meetings. Maybe even the latest one that happened was the League of Women Voters had a public forum and people were commenting on the YouTube to ask questions. And so I would assume that if people are tuning in, especially on Facebook, they might think that that is a way to engage. And when the League of Women Voters did it, they were actually monitoring the comments on the YouTube and were responding to it. So that ended up working out. But I don't know if that's something that we're interested in doing or making some sort of comment that's like, hey, if you want to make a comment or something like that, you got to do it through the Zoom. Yeah, that's a really good point. And we may even want to just be explicit about that now and our instructions for registering that if you plan, this will be live streamed through those channels. But if you plan to want to engage in the conversation, your best bet is to come in through the Zoom webinar. I'm not sure if we have the capacity. What do you think, Dr. Shabazz, since you asked the question about live streaming, do you think we have the capacity to have folks be monitoring those comments and things? I think it's just a matter of identifying and securing some volunteers. And then some of us could perhaps link with them or a designated person could link with them to say receive the feedback via text message or something like that that can then be brought in in the queue at an appropriate time to do it. I think it's just a matter of if we can secure a volunteer on that. I think the more platforms that are available live and in real time will really maximize both our ability to hear from folks, to really listen and hear from a wide variety of folks, as well as our reach, the reach of the kind of discussions we'll plan. So I think between now and our next meeting, we can try to see if there would be some volunteers. Excellent. That's a really good idea. Yeah. So those volunteers would have a direct access to one of us via text who would be paying attention. OK, that's great. Alexis, your hand is still raised. Did you want to? OK. So we had talked last time about the program being centered around the five injury areas. I think next week, we're going to want to dive into that with the holidays coming. We actually we won't have a lot of time to meet before the actual event occurs. So I think if we can iron out those details, if anybody has any thoughts on that, that they'd like to bring up now, though, we can certainly spend a little time talking about the program. Or we can save it for next week, too. That's fine. Yes, Pamela. Because we are short on time, if individuals would be willing to sort of take an area of harm and maybe limit themselves to one summary slide that you could sort of build out your program. So I just think, given the time, you should get started. I think that is a great suggestion. And what I could do to facilitate that is send out the slide deck that we used last time without the content in it so that folks have the actual format with the HRA label and all of that. And then you could use that to fill in. And we can just kind of put it all together. I think that's a really good suggestion. If it works for everybody, I could send an email and just assign. If you have something that you would like to take an injury area that you feel strongly about and that you'd like to do, please just let me know. Otherwise, I'll just randomly assign and then send. Dr. Shabazz, didn't you create a really great one-pager at some point with the five areas of injury? Or was that, did I say? I think that's possible. You know, I'm just trying to hear the idea again. So each five assembly members would each take one of the areas and would do what at some point in the program. I think what Pamela was suggesting was that for now like an exercise between now and next week would be that each assembly member would take an injury area and draw some of the important information out about that injury area so that when we come back together next week, we have more content in terms of our program. And so then next week, we can really decide, OK, does it make sense for Dr. Shabazz to do an overview of all five and then for Alexis to drill into one a little bit more? Or are we going to, you know, how do we want to actually format the program for the live event? Is that Pamela? Did I get that right? Yes, I think so. And we didn't talk about what's are you thinking that this is going to be a two hour or two plus hour meeting for the live event? Yes, 630 to 830, I think is what we are. OK, all right. Yeah, I couldn't I couldn't recall yet because you are anticipating a number of people attending and probably want to give place more emphasis on really listening and having people comment. I would think just one slide on each of the five areas and a very brief sort of summary or discussion of that would allow you to have the bulk of your time with the listening. Yeah, and I think one of the some of the feedback we received from the last listening session is I think our intention was to really dedicate as much time to listening as possible. But where we had an opportunity to grow was actually to give a little bit more framework, some prompting to folks so that they had some direction about what they might want to comment on. It doesn't mean they would have to. But more as a way to sort of prompt like OK, if education resonates with you or whatever it is that they would be able to sort of center their comments around that particular injury area. But I have no attachment to any way of doing it if others have thoughts on that. All right, so if for some reason you're unable to between now and next week work on one of those slides because we're all very busy, just let me know and we'll cover it. Don't feel like it has to get done between now and next week. But if we could endeavor to do that, it would be great. All right, any other comments about that piece? OK, so the other piece that I wanted to share back with you all is hang on. I just want to check the agenda real quick. So we had a presenter last week. Meg Gage came from the League of Women Voters Racial Justice Committee to talk about a potential collaboration. And I wanted to give us some time to talk about that today if people had thoughts. I also wanted to share back. I had a very good meeting with Kerry Spitzer of the Donahue Institute in relation to the survey that we started discussing last week. So I will start by giving you that update and then we can talk about the potential collaboration with the League. In terms of the survey, I met with Kerry and discussed the possibility of the HRA doing an informal surveying as we talked about last time, which would not necessarily be representative, but where we would be able to send the survey to lists of African heritage residents that we already have and ask those sort of three questions, the question about use of funds, the question about eligibility, and the question about injury areas. And so that is something given our timeline that I think would be very important for us to pursue. And Kerry is going to check with her executive director at the Donahue Institute to see if she could work with us in a small scope, per Irv's Dr. Rhodes suggestion, to help us develop the questions and put them into a survey format that would elicit the best response, help us to figure out how to link to things that we might want people to read. And so I think legitimacy is really important here. And the world is watching us as we know. And so we don't want to put out a report in June and have had a survey or have had our report reflect only a handful of people's opinions about how the town should pursue this. On the other hand, we aren't in a position where we can necessarily wait to do an entire survey that would be a representative sample to the entire community. And so the question really becomes, the report or when we talk about reparations, we're talking about a harmed community. And what's most essential for us right now is to hear from the harmed community. However, there will be people that will argue that because we're working within a municipality and this is taxpayer money that we should also receive input and decide how we want that represented into the report from residents who don't identify as Black and of African heritage. So what we thought about is Kerry does a small scope survey with us, a small scope contract that helps us to develop a survey that right now goes out to as many residents of African heritage as we can get it out to. And then that possibly a bigger project that the town may want to take on around policing, community health, and reparations. The downhill might work with the town to do that in say March or April, which would then capture all community members. So that's I'm going to pause there because that's a lot. And just see if folks have any feelings or input or questions about that particular strategy. Dr. Shabazz. So I was missed something in the explanations of y'all's discussion in regards to universal general input versus trying to get input via a survey specifically from the African-American community and was that just things that came up in the discussion or was there a conclusion around that particular dilemma? We didn't really dig into that. When I know you were late at the last meeting when we started talking about it or you were absent. But it's actually more that Irv and he I want to give him the opportunity to express for himself. But I did speak with him today and given that he's sort of lead helping to lead and has a lot of experience with surveying. I had a good conversation with him today before speaking with Kerry. So I don't think the assembly has actually decided how they would like to solicit information and from who and how. So I think that we we do need to have that discussion. All right. So you're just presenting it as kind of things that had come up and still left out there to deliberate. Well, then sooner rather than later, I think we ought to we ought to decide my personal vantage point is that we with respect to the listening sessions, I know you've you've opened it and prefaced it with emphasizing hearing from the African-American community. But again, those but it has also been made clear that anyone is empowered to speak to us as a public body. Anyone from the public is is is welcome to speak to us. And we've had input, you know, broad input coming in that way at our first listening session. And I'd imagine that at future ones as well. And of course, all our meetings have been open to the general public. And we've been poised to hear as well. So I don't think that moving toward the idea of specific efforts to engage the African-American community about this work, about this process, about the experience of of harms and disparities and and what are particular things if possible to be done on a municipal level. People would like to see. I think that's that's not at all at odds with with the ability to to continue to look for general input and in general, you know, recommendations. We're hearing from League of Women Voters. We're talking with them about, you know, the educational work they're trying to do. We've we've dealt with Stolen Beam and and our Jewish Congregation of Amherst or an initiative within the the JCA. And we've we've we've, you know, supported supported that and other efforts. So I I think we've we have a track record established of being open to input from anyone and everyone in our in our town and sometimes even beyond our town if if there are linkages to the town and I fully expect will continue to operate in that in that track record. So for me, I don't see anything at odds. I will let you all know I have a communication out with an academic partner that is that was involved in Providence, Rhode Island in their survey process. I went into it and by the time I got there, though it had been closed out. And so I wasn't able to see the structure of the questions, but I have asked them if they'd be willing to share to share what how their survey looked. And and once I do, I will forward it on or for folks to to take a look at it. That's would be of of interest. theirs was done using a software called called Qualtrics, which of which we have a subscription where I work and it is a it is a a, you know, very powerful type of tool for for collecting data and then analyzing the the input from the data. So at any rate, that's how Providence did it. And I can let you know once I hear back more about their their process, I'm also at the same time checking with people from Asheville and in their Bukong County, because they are operating on both the county and municipal level with reparations there in North Carolina in that area of North Carolina and as well as partners in Kansas and some other places to see what they've done along the lines of community feedback and surveys and this type of thing. So hopefully I'll have more to report by the next meeting. That's fantastic. Thank you, Dr. Shabazzon. In fact, I had a question from Carrie. She wanted to know if you had access to Qualtrics. So sounds like you do or that somehow we could get access to it. OK, that's great. Awesome. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments about the survey right now? OK, perfect. Pamela? No, OK. All right. So was everyone here last week when Meg came to speak with us about OK? So for Alexis's benefit, I'm just going to give a quick update. So Meg came last week to our meeting and she spoke on behalf of the League of Women Voters Racial Justice Committee about a potential collaboration. This is something that we had touched on weeks ago and it's sort of we left it and now it's come back. And the collaboration was with Dr. Sandy Darity. Well, in particular, the collaboration would be around Dr. Sandy Darity and Kirsten Mullin's book From Here to Equality. And the League is hoping to have either sort of a book group or have an actual event that comes out of a book group and felt that it was really important to ask us to collaborate given that we are here as a committee working on reparations for the town. And I think that there are some logistics being worked out between the League and Dr. Darity. But in particular, I think Dr. Darity, given his ties to our community and his care and concern for our community, I think had agreed to do a program, I think at no cost, but that there would be a commitment to purchasing a certain amount of books. And I don't think the League was asking us to take on any of the financial commitment that wasn't my understanding, but that we would be co-collaborators. And one of the things I asked Meg to talk to Dr. Darity about was I was part of a panel at Boston College Law School recently, and it was really amazing to hear from my diverse perspectives about reparations. And so Meg was going to check with Dr. Darity to see if he and Kirsten would be open to more of a panel discussion where we can bring in partners at UMass, maybe Amherst College, and then reconnect with Boston College School of Law because they are very interested in collaborating with us on event as well. So Meg's checking into that. But this is an opportunity now for the committee to talk about thoughts, questions, concerns, feelings about that potential collaboration. And I'm just going to kind of like maybe the elephant in the room, I'll just state, which is that we all know there are different ways of thinking about reparations. And I think Dr. Darity has been clear that he has concerns about how local reparations efforts may impact a national effort. And so given that we're already here and we're pursuing a local effort, we can think about that in the context of what this might look like. So please, Dr. Shabazz. Yeah. So previously when this was brought up, I did not see the intersection of what the league was proposing to do with our work. And since then, where I really sit with that right now is that in general, as far as reparations goes, and as someone who does support the federal government to become involved in establishing a commission, to study, to develop proposals, and then hopefully to get those proposals funded by Congress, I do support this work. I think that what would be valuable in order for it to be really productive vis-a-vis our mission is that it would really be on the terrain of the policy issues and the work of building the national will toward creating federal reparations. And Kirsten and Mullen have a lot to say about that in the book, have a lot of research that backs up the kinds of conclusions they come to in terms of direct payment, cash benefits towards individuals, not in any type of collective address, but individual, eligible African-Americans getting direct cash benefits and that constituting the central thrust of what reparations is from that policy standpoint, I think we'd have a lot right there to discuss, to develop, support around. But if we go down the path of debating the efficacy of the efforts we've already put more than a year of our time into and have several months remaining to get some work done on in terms of our report. If we're talking about spending time and energy getting into a debate about the efficacy of this present effort of more than a year of our lives, starting with weekly meetings, I just think that's just an insult to my time. That's an insult to everything that we've done thus far and everything we're working to do. So my sense of a zone of collaboration or where collaboration could be possible and fruitful is to really focus in on this being a discussion about how creating and building toward what the book is about. And that is a national level proposal for reparations for blacks in America. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz. Anyone else? And I think just to Dr. Shabazz's point, this is where I think potentially having a panel and being able to have partners in this, what was so great, and I'll send you all the link to the Boston College is we had folks from like we had the chair of the California Reparations Task Force was on that panel, and she holds her view. And then she also holds herself as the chair of a group, a body that has various views. And it was really, she was just so remarkable to hear from, as were the rest of the panelists, but to have some diversity in discussion all really at the core at the heart is what Dr. Shabazz is talking about, which is this need for a federal effort to take place. So I thought that maybe having a panel might help to keep us focused on that goal and that we're all linking arms here, essentially, for that greater goal. So we'll see what Meg. Meg's going to get back to me about that as soon as she has an opportunity to talk with Kirsten and Dr. Darity. So any other questions or comments right now? I know Alexis, you're just learning about this, so feel free to next week we can come back to it or you can reach out and we can talk about it more. All right, great. So I'm just checking here. We pretty much covered everything on the agenda that I was wanting to ensure we covered. I do wanna give another opportunity for public comment and just see even if it was our original public commenter would like to make an additional public comment after listening to our discussion and if that is the case, they could raise their hand now. All right, so are there any other member comments, questions? I do think we should consider whether this meeting time is working for us. Alexis, how's this meeting time working for you generally speaking? I'm sorry, so like two weeks ago, I literally was just about to join, but like when people come in and they need me, like I can't not help them, especially since like sometimes it's like emergencies. So anyways, I was planning on being there last meeting and then five million things came up. So it still works for me. I still tell people that I have a meeting at two, but like when things happen, they happen. So I don't know, other than like it being after work, which I think that we had talked about it not being a good time because I still cover meetings Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I don't know, it works for me in the way, if it works. So I don't know, I'm gonna try to like really be like unavailable in work for this, but it's just been like it's been a madhouse as of late. So I'm sorry, I haven't been here as much as I would like to be here. No worries, no, that makes a lot of sense. You're kind of on the front line over there. So I totally understand if this generally works, but yet you might have to, that's not a problem. I also wanted to check with Hala because I know Hala was having some scheduling stuff on Mondays as well. Hala, can you hear us? I can. Okay. And now that I've switched to schedule, it works. Just last week, we had a couple of staff members out, so that's why I was with the two-year-old, but generally this works. Okay, wonderful. And Ms. Bridges, is this still working generally for you? Okay. Yes, it's okay. All right, awesome. But right now. Okay, yeah, and just let me know if at any time it stops working, then we work together to find a solution. So just let me know. And Dr. Shabazz, are you in the same boat? Yeah, I used to work. Great. And how about you, Pamela? Is this generally working? Okay, great. So we'll keep things as is. I'm gonna suggest though that we do not, so we will meet next Monday the 19th. I was going to suggest that we do not meet on Monday the 26th. I think that's the first day of Kwanzaa. Am I right in that? Okay, and there's a celebration that we, maybe Pamela could tell us a little bit about that the town is hosting. So there will be a Kwanzaa celebration. I believe the hours are from 11 to three at the Bings Community Center. But I don't have more detail. Jen is doing the, is doing the programming, so. I'll ask Jen to send it out to everybody. I already posted it on public, on our AHRA Facebook page. So, and I'll post it around there, but that will be a really nice in-person event. And I think what I saw is that it's open to everybody. There will be events for children. So it sounds like it's a really inclusive event. So we'll meet on the 19th. We will not meet on the 26th. If we don't meet on the, the second is going to be difficult for me to meet on. However, that would mean that next week, we need to be really tight on our program for our listening session on the 11th, because we'll only then have the ninth to finalize details. But if we think we can do that, I would prefer not to meet on the, to take a two week recess, just so we can be with our families and friends and rest, and then meet again on the ninth, if that would work for folks. Yeah, okay. Awesome. All right. So I don't have anything else at the moment. And if others do, please. How you feeling, Alexis? Good. Ms. Bridges, did you have something? My computer went out, so I didn't hear the last few things you said about the time. No problem. Yeah, I was just saying, we'll take a recess on the, on the next, we won't meet on the 26th and the second, so that we can have a little bit of a break. So we'll meet on the 19th next week, and then again on the ninth, and at the same as our usual meeting time, like two to three or three. That's fine. Awesome. All right. Any other comments or questions or anything? All right. Well, good to see everybody. Thank you very much, and we'll see you next week. Okay. And I'm adjourning at 2.54. Thank you. Bye-bye.