 Welcome to Amherst on this beautiful morning and to our celebration of the LVGTQ month raising in the flag as well as the Stonewall anniversary of the Stonewall riots. We have several people here today to speak. We're going to start by sharing with you the proclamation from the town and the two people who are going to read that are in fact our sponsors and that's Councillor Pat D'Angeles and Councillor Evan Ross. Thank you. So we're going to read the proclamation that the Town Council voted on June 3rd whereas Amherst is a community that values diversity and inclusion and is committed to equal rights and opportunities for all residents and whereas Amherst recognizes the important contributions of its LVGTQ residents to the town's history, culture, economy and civic life and whereas we celebrate the accomplishments of the LVGTQ community towards securing important rights and freedoms often through struggle and adversity and whereas we remain vigilant against continued oppression and discrimination against the LVGTQ community and against any new political efforts to overturn these accomplishments and whereas we affirm our support for our LVGTQ residents and stand with them to protect their civil rights and ability to live openly without fear, now therefore we, the Town Council of the Town of Amherst, do hereby proclaim June 29th as LVGTQ flag month. Thank you everyone. I understand you would like to share a memory. So hi, I'm Connie Kruger. I was just so pleased that we have this proclamation. I was like darn, why didn't I think of that? And now the flag so it's a first. It's the first year for the proclamation, the first year for the rainbow flag, but I just wanted to share a really happy memory and I know that Carol and Pat were here that day, but in 2004 the Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage and my partner Susan and I were like you hadn't really planned really let's go get our license the first day that they were available and I came into town hall and others were here and the then select board was standing in the lobby giving everyone a rose who came in for their license that day and then after we did our business with the clerk's office upstairs there was a big cake and a big celebration so I just wanted to share that because I'm so proud of Amherst. It is a very safe welcoming place for gays, transsexuals, queers and our allies. If it weren't for the allies we also wouldn't all be here today so just showing a little pride in my town. And we have Mindy Dum who not only is here with us for this event but made sure we got the flag. Everything should be so easy to do actually when you want to do something. I just want to say I'm also very proud of our town. I'm proud that this is the first year that we have a proclamation thanks to our new town council. I'm glad we're raising the rainbow flag on the anniversary of the Stonewall right so we can remember that a lot of folks got hurt, injured and have died so that rights could be achieved and LGBT rights affect all of us. And I'm proud that it means that in the future we can raise that flag for the entire month of June and celebrate it all four weeks. About nine years ago I put out a call on Facebook to see if anybody else was interested in having a candlelight vigil on the town common to support LGBT teens in our community. It was at the time when there was a great upturn in suicides people in that population and I really felt that our town could do more to visibly show our support. I had been doing a lot of work with health and human service providers around supporting gay and lesbian and transgender kids and had learned that all it takes is one supportive adult to make a difference just one to build resilience and love and folks and I thought well wouldn't that be a great thing for us to have this vigil in the town and that was my first kind of contact with trying to do something with the town around LGBT rights and it was amazing. I think I might have actually talked to you Dave at the time and it was like well talk to Scott and you know get the permit and everybody was like not a problem and they made it happen and then we had the vigil and a hundred people showed up and a hundred people showed up from a Facebook post. It was amazing including Ellen Story who I think came back from Boston that day just to be with everybody and that's to kind of tell me have you can put out a call and people show up and not only they show up but they work hard and they build resilience for everybody in the community so I couldn't be proud of and I'm really glad we're all here today. Thank you. So unless I'm missing somebody who's supposed to speak why don't we all proceed over to where the flag is and maybe there's some people who'd like to help raise it.