 All right, good morning everybody. It is Thursday, January 27th, and this is General Housing Military Affairs. We are here this morning with the Reverend Mark Hughes from the Rachel Justice Alliance, and we are going to hear testimony today on age 387, which is dealing with putting together a committee to do research and to talk about chattel slavery. Mark will give us, we've had an introduction and a walkthrough on this bill. Committee for the rest of today, just as a reminder, we will be taking up age 320 after this testimony, and we'll be having some witnesses conversation with possible vote. And then this afternoon, depending on how long the floor is, we will be getting some help on IT. And then, again, depending on how much time we have, then we'll talk about the action general bills that are before us. But today's focus is on age 387. I wanted to turn the microphone over to Mark. Welcome to the General Housing and Military Affairs Committee, Mark. Before we start, just like to introduce ourselves, those of us that are here, some of us are in the room, some of us are on Zoom. I guess I'll go with the folks that are on Zoom first. If you can actually, I think folks on Zoom, if you could do this alphabetically, if you can figure that out quickly. Wait a minute, that would be so much easier than me pointing to people saying, you, you, you, you would use a representative, Howard. Howard, yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am Mary Howard. I represent Rutland Southwest District. Welcome. Good morning, Mark. It's John Killackey from South Burlington. Good to see you here. Glad you're here. Good to see you. Hi, Pete. Hi, John. JP, you're here. Oh, I hate it when I do that. Good to see you again, Mark. John Palacic representing Milton. Good to see you. John Chip Toriano. We've already kind of exchanged your greeting. I represent Harvard Standard of Walden. Thanks for being here. Thank you. And I'm always at the end of the alphabet, representative Tommy Walts for representing Berry City. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thank you for having me. Hey, Mark. That fire on representative from Virginia is representing five municipalities in Northwest Jefferson County. Hello, Mark. This is Wumling, fellow Burlingtonian representing the South End. I'm Joe Parsons. I represent Newbury, Topson, and Grot. Hey, we're at Parsons. Barbara Murphy. Barbara Murphy, I represent Fairfax, serving Franklin, too. And I represent Top Stevens. I live in Waterbury, representing Waterbury, Bolton, Huntington, and Buell's Gore. And we'll be joined by representative Hango at some point soon. So welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning. Good morning to you and also good morning to the committee. It's good to be back in the committee. I know you have been very busy since I was here last. I want to just thank you first of all for the invitation and also thank you for the work that y'all are doing. It's pretty important stuff. For the record, my name is Reverend Mark Hughes. I am the executive director of Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, Justice for All. I'm also a minister here at New Alpha Missionary Baptist Church, the only church that worships in the African-American tradition in the state of Vermont. I am the senior vice chair, the senior vice commander of post-782. Here in Burlington, the veterans of foreign war, you may find that relevant in this committee. And I look forward to engaging with you on some of the emerging policy that's coming our way on, that's on our veterans. So again, I'm a retired Army officer. I have been retired since the late 90s. I'm really pleased to join you here in House General and speak with you about H-4387, which is an act relating to establishing the task force to study and develop reparation proposals for the institution of shadow slavery. We are the originators of the bill, the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. And therefore clearly, I appear in very strong support of the policy, strongly support this policy that I would, at the top, and I will emphasize again at the closing of remarks, would urge you to take additional testimony on this policy. I strongly urge you to do so. I am aware that the bill has been introduced strongly. I've sat through that entire thing as well as a walkthrough with ledge console. I've viewed those videos in their entirety. I've come, hopefully, to fill in the blanks, if you will, some of the questions that you may have had during that engagement. I thought it was very, it was a robust and extremely, I think, helpful discussion that you've reached in with ledge console as well as with representative Gina. And I think after today's testimony, you will find that perhaps I may have filled in some of the blanks that you were left with and hopefully you can take that to the next level. And we will be able to take additional testimony and get more folks in to talk about this. Hopefully during that process, we can get some folks in who are in opposition of this policy. I strongly encourage you to get folks in and listen very closely to the opposition to this policy. I know that may sound strange coming from someone who's supporting this policy. Well, we are so confident in what it is that this policy is seeking to do that to date, we don't feel as though we've heard any real substantive opposition to this policy that would cause you to believe that somehow or another, it is a bad idea. So I just lay that out transparently. And I think those of the committee, Mr. Chair, I know that I do have a way of communicating very transparently. And I just wanted to just challenge the committee with that, please take as much testimony on this policy as possible and make a sound decision. I have witnessed the deliberations of this committee and I'm confident in the judgment of this committee given the facts, given all of the details. And I think that you will do the right thing. I'm gonna go through a few slides. If you don't mind, Mr. Chair, and if that would be permitted. Of course, I noticed that you've been made a co-host and if Ron has made you a co-host, please share. Thank you. I do struggle with this presentation mode over here mostly because I have some kind of challenge that precludes me from being able to provide a full presentation view and advance the slides. So please bear with me. And what we will do is we will work through this. I think what I may be able to do is to simply enhance this as such and perhaps. If that's visible to those who are on the call, can you please acknowledge it? It is. Thank you very much. So again, thank you for having me here and wanted to just take a brief moment just to be explicit about the mission of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance to secure sustainable power, ensure agency and provide security for American descendants of slavery while embracing their history and preserving their culture. So that is our mission. Want to take also a brief moment to circle around if you will on the definition of systemic racism. There are many. We have taken the time to do the research. We also offer a presentation which is a part of our Outreach and Education series. The definition of systemic racism is what it is entitled. We've come to the conclusion that through the use of the book, Racist America, Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations, Joe Fagan and Kimberly Ducey arrive at what we believe is the best conclusion to the definition of systemic racism given your work in R-113, declaring racism as a public health emergency and your commitment to eradicate it. This definition we view as being very important. Systemic racism involves both the deep structures and the surface structures of racial oppression. It includes the complex array of anti-black practice the unjustly gained political economic power of whites, the continuing economic and other resource inequalities along racial lines and the emotion laden racist framing created by whites to maintain and rationalize their privilege and power. Systemic racism thus encompasses the dominant white racial frame with its white racist attitudes, ideologies, emotions, images and narratives as well as the discriminatory actions and institutions flowing out of the and linked to that frame. This racism is material, social, ideological, reality and indeed systemic which means that racist reality is manifested in all major institutions. That is, racist America, roots current realities and future reparations were upon which we built the foundation of the discussion which erected the scaffolding of the conversation and the policy surrounding systemic racism in the legislature to date. I wanted to stop for a minute and acknowledge the deep data work that is ongoing across the state and indeed across the nation which previously has not existed for decades and it is in this generation where we uncover much of the data, the empirical data, the quantitative data but also the qualitative data that illustrates these disparities discussed on the aforementioned slide. Our data team with the racial justice alliance continues that work. You may find this data and more like it on our website. Very important in the work that we do not to create a conversation that is merely antidote. The work that we are doing also has led to a discovery and I believe this 242 may be off, I think that should be about 244 now, maybe 245. Our work has led us to the amendment of the Vermont constitution. I think this is relevant not just because the house government operations has passed with a vote of 10 to one out the PR2 to the floor which you will be asked to take action on Tuesday if I'm not mistaken of next week. But it's also important to understand that it is tied, it is interlinked with the broader conversation because as we're having a conversation about addressing systemic racism, as we're having a conversation about abolishing slavery, as we're having a conversation about the economic impacts as we're having all of these conversations at the same time, we've got to weave all of this together and try to stay focused on who we are as a nation and how all of this started. We also, in addition to the data that you saw on the last slide, it's also important to pay close attention instead of debating whether we should teach true history in our schools, instead of constructing opposing views on the data that we see. We have to marry it to the true history of this nation and that is a process because there's a lot of it that's buried and it kind of gets to part of the policy of 387 because part of the policy of 387, much of the policy of 387 has everything to do with unearthing many of the things that we probably don't currently have or understand. In fact, much of the work that we did, we have done to date with this constitutional amendment, you don't know about because we haven't had the opportunity to share with you and the press isn't really very interested in picking that up or explaining it to you. Besides, it's a very difficult conversation for a Vermonter, especially a second or third or fourth generation Vermonter frankly, to some extent even myself, to come to terms with the fact that Vermont was the first state to ever constitutionalize slavery. Now that's a very different story from Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery, but the truth is that there was never a state that had the language in its constitution of slavery before Vermont in 1777. And I use this as an example is because it was only through our research that we discovered this and with our national partners, the Abali Slavery National Network. This is relevant because again, there are many things that we don't know that must be uncovered because the reason why it's important is that we would know our true history so we don't repeat our mistakes, but it's also important if we're talking about some type of apology or some type of restitution or in this case reparations, we should at least get to a point to where we understand what it is we're doing it or if we should even do it at all. Now, Ohio, Oregon, and then later, very late, Alabama would go on to include slavery within their constitutions, also the Northeast regional territory, but it was used as a model in developing the United States Constitution and certainly the 13th Amendment, which also has very much like the Vermont Constitution, which has three exception clauses, the 13th Amendment has one exception clause. So it was modeled, the 13th Amendment was modeled after the exception clause that predates it from 1865 all the way back to 1777. That is the truth. That is our history. So the relevance of that is very important because then we'd have to talk about our role in the establishment, say for example, our being our state and the perpetuation, not just of prison slavery, but if you move past that convict leasing, convict leasing. So we'll talk more about that later, but I wanna move on and just tell you that we're not just here doing platforms and initiatives, which we refer to as policy. The Alliance, we're doing a bunch of other work in other areas. So outreach and education is one, community engagement and support is another, and also there's the area of cultural empowerment. And I think the flagship of cultural empowerment today has been the first African landing day, which is actually hosted at Intervale every August. I saw a representative bloom there. In fact, I think we had extensive conversation about a lot of stuff that I'm talking about right now. I wanna make you also aware that here in the city of Burlington through the partnership with community partners and so forth, what we're doing is, is we've also launched what we call the Richard Kemp Center, where there is a community center, youth activity center, arts and science, programming and wellness based adult basic education, basic computer skills and the like. Workforce development, financial support, grants assistance. All of this is targeted at the same thing. This is relevant because this policy solution is not the only way that we address these issues. I think it's really, really important for us to embrace if we're talking about, we're not talking about let's pass a policy that says that we have a reparations task force. That's a very small of a much larger solution to a very old problem that we're addressing. And that's all I'm really trying to illustrate here. And you deserve that, Mr. Chairman and your committee. You deserve to get the broader scope of the work that is being done to address systemic racism in Vermont because you are a part of it, but you are not all of it. And whether you move this policy or not, we will continue this work and we'll be back and there'll be other policy that we'll talk about. Since we are here to talk about platforms and initiatives, it's, I guess I should share with you that our platforms and initiatives are a legislative agenda, if you will, this year at a statewide level. And it's important to distinguish that because we have a local policy initiative here in the city of Burlington. But at the statewide level, you probably heard acknowledge, create and transform. Acknowledge and reconcile historic systems of racism, new structures for community empowerment would be create and transform state systems in public safety. That's gonna be our transform. And you see there, there's a list of policies that we're working across the legislature currently at the state level. We know that the public health emergency as well as the health wellness bill, which became Act 33 have moved. We know that on Tuesday, it is likely that the house will move PR2. Our fingerprints are on and we support H273. You will see, you've already had H406 introduced to you. This is the economic piece as it pertains to policy. I heard Representative Bloom ask the question, hey, what's the difference between reparations and say policy, policy can be reparative? Yes, H406 specifically intended to address these challenges of addressing systemic racism on an economic level with policy. So very, very intentional, just like H210 was very, very intentional on the health front. So yes, H406, we must come back and take testimony up and have conversation about that cannabis equity over in the government or house government operations as well as quality of life outcomes in the Senate. And we'll talk more about that on another time. This is a broader scope of some of the things that we're doing with policy regarding this work. And I know that Representative Chiena came in and showed you some of this and we still haven't captured all of this. And, but whoever put this slide together is I think is trying to tell us that those last two items on the statewide, that's where we are right now. Both of those are in this committee. Both of those are in this committee. So we'll get a chance to know each other. There's some things happening over in Burlington too, which I'm not gonna bore you with because I wanna keep it moving. And I think what I may do is is I may just pause for a moment and just a second, just Mr. Chair, if that's okay, just to see if we can go to any questions to up until this point, but I'll just judge on just maybe a couple more slides. I did wanna remind you of the work that you did in R-113 with specific attention on the resolution itself that the legislative body commits the coordinating work and participating in ongoing action grounded in science and data to eliminate race-based health disparities and eradicate systemic racism. You also said that you committed to the sustained and deep work of eradicating systemic racism throughout the state, actively fighting racist practices and participated in the creation of a more just and equitable system or systems. Thank you. I appreciate that work. And I've watched it in real time last year and it looks on this paper a lot easier than it was for you last year with the failure to be able to suspend the rules, to communicate it over to the Senate in a timely manner. And the votes in the dissent of this policy, they were noted. And I think we should all acknowledge them maybe not focus on them, but it is important to understand that once the body made a statement that it is yours. And we appreciate it and we stand to partner with you. One of the things that we did to move this advances forward, which it's been more like crickets and hearing from the legislature, even the SEC, which the SEC we work with, we work around, we work through, because at the racial justice alliance, we're not gonna vet everything that we're doing through a sub body, the black affinity group or the SEC and not only that, just to be transparent and I don't mind saying it and please mark this for the record. This is not a political conversation to address systemic racism. This has nothing to do with the left or the right. It has everything to do with right or wrong. So we're not gonna relegate ourselves to the SEC or any other body, we'll be coming directly at the legislature in these policies because again, this is not political. This is right or wrong. So thank you for 113. I wanted to bring your attention because this is one of the pieces that I think you missed and it wasn't your fault because I didn't see it come from ledge console and I don't have positive things to say about the presentation that came from ledge console. It's unfortunate, but it's true because I don't think that they've done your homework. So ledge console, as you're watching, please do your homework. I'm gonna give you some here today, but it matters like this and issues like this. I think it's important that all of us acknowledge, take our jackets off, roll our sleeves up and say, hey folks, let's do the work. We really need to do the work here and it shouldn't take, if we have a legion of lawyers that are sitting down here in ledge console, then all it takes is, a fifth grader could go and do a Google search on some of the things that we're talking about and come up with some of the conclusions that I will share with you. And if that sounds blistering, it's intended to do so because this is important work and attorneys, when you're down there doing the work, we expect you to do the work, just like you would in any other issue. This is what the United Nations says. It says, there is a profound need to acknowledge that the transatlantic trade in African enslavement, colonization and colonialism were a crime against humanity and are among major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, aphorophobia, xenophobia and related intolerance, passing justices and crimes against African Americans need to be addressed with Reparatory Justice. So they go on to encourage Congress to pass HR 40. This is the United Nations in 2016. This is the report of the working group of experts on people of African descent in its mission to the United States. This is a subgroup of the Human Rights Council. I want to define a little bit. Yeah, I'd like to define reparations, but before I do, and we get into what I think is probably the heart of what I came to tell you. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I can pause for any comments or questions right now. The only comment I have right now, Mark, is that H406 did get moved to the Commerce Committee. And so it's... I was being correct and we actually asked for that. We actually asked you to do that. Sorry about that. That's okay. I thought for a minute that I had to think for a minute if I did. Yep. Oh, you did. You did it quick. I'm checking it out. I was mentioning that it's been recommitted. Yeah. Yeah, it's over, yeah. You've actually started, I apologize. No, that's okay, just, but that's really it. It's continue on. Fantastic. And I'm also willing to entertain any comments or questions, Mr. Chairman, from anybody else on the committee at this time, if there are any. I see no hands raised right now. Yeah. So there's this group of folks and they're called, we call them in Cobra, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. And they've been doing a lot of this work in reparations for a while. And they say that it's a process of repairing, healing, restoring a people injured because of their group identity and in violation of their fundamental human rights by governments. Corporations, institutions and families. Those groups that have been injured have the right to obtain from the government, corporation, institution or family, responsible for the entries, that which they need to repair and heal themselves. That which they need to repair and heal themselves. Themselves. In addition to being a demand for justice, it is a principle of international human rights. So this is, in Cobra, they've been doing the work in our communities across our society for decades. The forefront, please Google, if you will, I hit the user as a verb, in Cobra and file that away for future testimony, please. Again, that which they need to repair and heal themselves in a demand for justice, a principle of international human rights law. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this slide. It's important to understand that the first time that reparations occurred in America was folks who previously owned slaves and lost them, the government paid them back $300 of slaves after slavery was abolished, quote unquote. That was reparations. Again, former slave owners were paid $300 for each slave that they had to give up. Now on part two, some of the slaves that remained unclaimed tried to go back and just turn themselves in and get the money for themselves, you can probably imagine how that worked. What happened was is right after the Civil War, Edwin Stanton and General Sherman, they met up with some black ministers and eventually they came out with this filled order called number 15. And this is where the whole story of 40 acres in a mule happened. Not only did black folks provided 40 acres and there were upwards of 1,000, I think it was, folks and I think it was folks for 1,000, 10,000 folks. But they also received eligibility for the military and it was so serious that they had an inspector that was appointed to ensure that this was all happening. Well, after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, when Johnson came in, he gave amnesty to all of the former slave holders in the South and he also revoked all of the grants that were given to, of land that was, it was estimated at 400,000 acres that was taken back from black folks in the South alone to South Carolina and Georgia base in there. These artifacts. So the legislature attempted to, well, they actually passed the law, they went through the legislative process, but it was veto, they tried to replace this reparatory action that the former Lincoln administration had put in place after Johnson revoked it, but Johnson vetoed it. There's more to talk about with various other activities that have occurred over time where things have been, activities have taken place that are reparative in nature, which I won't go into. I did want though, however, to speak about which I think was overlooked by Ledge Council is that the House of Representatives did offer an apology. Maybe Ledge Council did say this. I'm not sure. I did think it was relevant to this discussion is as it was the resolution 194, the House of Representatives in the United States in 2008 did offer an apology for slavery. So the reason why I pause here is because this is a little known fact, I don't know why they don't teach it in schools, but again, this is part of the work of H387 because as you recall, this is not just about a group of folks going off and making some decisions on whether to give black people a bunch of money. This is a policy that calls for folks to go back, do a deep dive, uncover as much as they can. And also one of their charges is to figure out how to teach others if you miss that. One of the ways in which they're executing their responsibilities is coming back with proposals on how to teach folks what it is that they discover. So if you think that's a big deal to send it also, they also offered an apology and that was the following year. And maybe we were so distracted in being excited about having a black president that we missed the fact that the United States Senate actually apologized for slavery in 2009. Note the disclaimer. So there's a lot of work that's gone in and preparatory work that's gone in. We've got the Japanese internments, there's still ongoing reparations being paid for Jewish survivors of Nazi war crimes. The Indian Claims Commission was a big mess. The debacle, that is shaming and embarrassment on the United States government, even how they handled that, but still nonetheless, we get credit. Yes, we apologize for Hawaii. There's the Tuskegee experiment. I can never say it's, I'm just gonna say Okoi acknowledgement of 2018. If you don't know what that is, that is one of the hundreds of massacres that were executed with impunity where black villages, black towns or black people were killed, towns were burned down, or black folks were just lynched. We hear a lot about Black Wall Street. Some of us are starting to learn more about Rosewood, which is the next one. Maybe you have heard of Wilmington, there are others. So these are some of the areas where preparatory work should be, but mostly has not been done across the United States. But those are some additional examples. I think the Chicago police brutality, again, this is all out there. This preparatory work, it's all available for folks to see, it's available for folks to read. In fact, there's this group called more. This group called more mayors organized for reparations and equity. And you probably have heard Mayor Garcetti's name in Los Angeles, and Michael Hancock is a little less known, but they co-chair this thing. There are 11 cities that have signed up. We've got Rhode Island's right down the street, Providence, but what we've got is we've got a group of mayors who said that they wanna quote, serve as high-profile demonstrations for how the country can more quickly move from conversation to action on reparations for black Americans. So again, these folks have really come together. And what you probably noticed over the last couple of years, post George Floyd, and also with the presidential, with the 2000 election, you've seen presidential candidates and other candidates across the state speak out loudly on this whole idea of the need for reparatory work to happen in the United States. And we know at the heart of this is the fact that we're just a nation that never reconciled with slavery. We never reconciled with the Civil War, which is why you get things like January 6th. So in addition to that, there's more here because if you just, again, do a surface search, and I pulled this up in 10 minutes yesterday after watching your testimony, the previous testimony, all of the everything you see on this slide. So the Virginia Theological Seminary recently did some work as well as Princeton and Georgetown in terms of work. You probably saw Georgetown in the news because I think it was 270 descendants of folks that were sold in order to fund Georgetown. I won't get into the details on the Theological Seminary of Virginia or Princeton. And the point here is, is you probably, you don't have to go back very far with any church, with any school, with any institution. And God knows what we've got buried here. We were watching something the other day to where Mississippi buried quite a bit to where they sealed records for 50 years. And as a result of the unsealing of those records, not only was there closure, but there was also some prosecutorial action that happened. I won't get stuck on that, but here you see the Texas Episcopal Dioces. You see the Jesuit Conference. And these are all recent. These are all recent here when you start looking at the fund for reparations now. Elaine Arkansas, again, Elaine Arkansas is yet another one. Please do your homework on this if you have the opportunity. Mr. Chairman, Elaine Arkansas, I think I even saw a show about it, like a documentary about it was awful where there's a whole community that's just massacred. So for those who push back and say, well, I don't know whether this work is necessary. Why can't we just let it be? It's not just about slavery. It's about everything that it caused and all the damage that it did because there's generations of children, generations of people. In fact, an indigenous African American person, and this is you'd have to go back to testimony on a clinical professional, maybe bring in representing a cleaner. But there's this thing that there's a generational trauma that comes down from slavery itself. Now, I'm not here qualified to speak on that, but what I will say to kind of put the icing on the case of the slide on his slide, put the icing on the slide, is the state of California signed into law a reparations bill while nobody was looking. Now, this was almost two years ago. So there was this conversation happening in testimony as I'm watching you yesterday. And it occurred to me that maybe somebody should just do a little digging. And I have no idea why Ledge Council was not able to come across with or come up with the fact that, yeah, we've got a state that's as large as the economy is maybe the fourth country, the fourth largest country in the world that already signed up to do it, right in front of us. So this is some of the, and if you detect frustration in my tone, it's only because we got to do the work folks. And that's the whole point of this task force. And it's, to me, it's mind boggling. It's actually skull-duggery to sit here and have this conversation about this where we've got qualified attorneys that they can't even peel the first layer to onion back on this thing. And the whole thing that what we're talking about here is getting somebody to peel the first layer of the onion back on this thing in terms of establishing this task force. So it's just blown my mind. So you get it again. You guys, Mr. Chair, your committee is familiar with me and who I am. So this is what you get, you get what you get. I just came to tell you the truth. This is my testimony. HR 40 passed out of, it was voted out of house judiciary for the first time in 33 years, 34 years. You didn't get that. You didn't get that in your testimony from your legislative council and you didn't get that from anybody else. You got it from me. So again, this bill was introduced in the 100th Congress. Now we're in 117th Congress and it passed for the first time in history. And it took me to come here to tell you that. That was in April of last year. This is not that. This is not that. So H96 is something else. Now, H96 is probably not a bad idea. I just wanna, and you did get this, but I wanna reiterate it is different. It's different. Because what we're talking about here is, and I just wanna read this because if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Chairman, it's a short bill. It's a short form rather. The bill proposes to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Development Task Force to develop and submit to the General Assembly a proposal for legislation to create one or more Truth and Reconciliation Commissions to examine and begin the process of dismantling institutional, structural and systematic discrimination in Vermont both past and present. The task force shall be composed of both voting and non-voting members and voting members and I'll stop there. At what point are we gonna talk about slavery? You see, for far too long had we tried to solve a problem that we have not been willing to name. What is very, very important about 387 and we knew this was common. We saw this common before the beginning of this, before you were elected this term because this was, as I said last time I was in this committee, we saw this coming from your committee. So we intentionally, as I told you last time, put forward 387 as house government operations put 478 to bed last, the last biennium. We intentionally brought it forward because specifically with 387, just like H40, H40 says consistent with what the United Nations is telling us is what we're trying to do is we're trying to stay focused on solving this issue. It's a hard conversation, I get it, I get it. But this is not that, just to be clear, this is not that. So I'm not gonna go into jurisdictions and all that other stuff. I think you know that there is a task force, a reparations task force here in the city of Burlington which has existed for over a year, which Hal Colson chairs. So what's coming out of that? We don't know, maybe we should ask some of the folks who are on the committee. Maybe that's a great thing to do. I don't know, but I do think that at the time that this original presentation was made, there were multiple states that were doing multiple things. There are multiple jurisdictions and this list could go on and on and I didn't bother to update this slide yesterday. Some of the other folks that you could possibly consider bringing in for testimony and we're not organizing these organizations. We're not doing that. We brought the policy to you. We've told you what our position is on it. We've told you what other states and what other jurisdictions are doing. We've given you what the United Nations says about it. We've connected to docs and told you what the importance is. We've told you what the United States has done on this up to date in terms of the apologies, in terms of the passage of HR 40. As the United Nations asked them to do, if this committee is interested in taking additional testimony, we would suggest that maybe you might consider some of these organizations. Our demands are intentional. We're asking for a reparations task force. We asked last biennium. No action was taken in house government operations. You know that, as I said before, Bergenstein recently launched one and really what I came to tell you is that Vermont, we have an obligation to address this crime against humanity by empowering a task force to do the research, to do the research, to do the research and figure out what role Vermont actually has played in this process and then create some proposals. I think what the research does is it uncovers more. I think today, I've probably brought some things to you that you've never heard before. Some of them are probably uncomfortable truths and that's what this thing is all about. Our past is filled with uncomfortable truths. It's about how we face them. Do we argue about it? Do we deny them? Do we choose to go in a downward spiral and in guilt and somehow or another make it about, that maybe there's some kind of conspiracy or there's some kind of conscious effort to discredit who we are as a nation or to make us feel bad about who we are as a nation or who we are even as a race and because of our race, I mean, this is all about the sum of us and that's S-U-M. And we gotta be able to get busy and do this work together, take it serious and understand that we're all not gonna be better unless we're all better. And that means something as simple as taking responsibility and it's so easy to get wrapped up into the fact that, well, I wasn't there and I didn't own slaves. And I think, and actually it's somewhat regretful of the part of the exchange that I had with Representative Parsons last time I was here, but it was a point that I was trying to make in that is, is that we own it, whatever we do as a nation, we are a nation, I'm a citizen of the United States of America. I'm an Iowa born and bred flag waving United States Army retired officer. And so I own it. I own this nation and I think we all have to own where it is we've come from and what it is we've done and how it's impacted us. Whether it's a selective group or whether it's individual level or whether, whatever. So I thank you for the time. I'm gonna take some questions and I just wanna just re-emphasize that there is work to do and we have to just take the work seriously and understand that there was no outcome that we should fear. I think that the travesty of what's been happening at the national level is that it's... Representative Blumlee has a question. I am, one thing that you, we should share with you is that the H96 has been further developed with ledge council and so what was a short form bill is now a committee bill that we've just got and taken a walk through on and I can share that with you and it's on the website. The question I have, so I didn't know that 387 was a response to H96. And I think that H96 is a... I mean, it can be what this committee wants it to be and so the question I have is whether there is a way to essentially combine your bill or fold it into the context of H96, which would address other forms of systemic discrimination. Because I think the original vision was from this committee that we had folks that there might be multiple commissions under kind of this umbrella that would look at different issues because they aren't the same for the H96 and the H96. They aren't the same for individual communities that might be part of this process. Yeah, so I just want to back up. I appreciate the question and it's a good one. First of all, I think I may have been either misunderstood or maybe you just misheard me is that H387 is not a response to H96, H387 is a response to H478, 1920, 2019, 2020 legislative session. It was, as your ledge counsel told you, the policy is highly reflective. I think you received a number like 99%, which is probably a little high, but it reflects HR 40 at a federal level, which has been in place for 33 years. So this policy that you're looking at couldn't possibly be a response to H96 because the policy after which it was modeled has been at the United States legislature for the last 35 years. And it's also been introduced in another form. As early as recent as this last biennium of this body and where it hung on the wall and house government operations until they died. It was, if anything, maybe H96 might be a response to H478, just to be crystal clear on this because H96 did not exist when we first introduced this policy in the legislature last biennium. Now, regarding your thought process on folding this policy into 96 or any other policy, or the idea that there are a number of issues that need to be addressed, one would ask oneself, well, why haven't they folded HR 40 at the United States level into other policies? Certainly they have a responsibility to address other demographics as well when we think, but it seems as though for the last 33 or 34 years, they've chosen not to. And I think my personal opinion on it is, is I think it's because of what HR 40 represents as it pertains to the national responsibility for slavery. They named it HR 40 for a reason and they named it HR 40 every single year of those 33 years. Every single year, HR 40 was reserved for that policy. Why? 40, 40 acres, 40, the reason why they did that is because they wanted to recognize and acknowledge Field Order 15 that I just taught you about earlier. They wanted to recognize and acknowledge the responsibility that we have as a nation that was actually reneged upon after the president was assassinated when all of that land was given back to former slaveholders and they were granted immunity. They wanted to acknowledge that and they wanted to do so emphatically. So now the decision in terms of what you decide to do with this policy obviously is yours. If you choose to fold this into any other policy not to implement this policy or not to adopt this policy or anything else it's yours and yours alone. I've come here to simply provide you the information that I think obviously has been missing and to inform you to be able to give you the ability to act upon some information that would be useful. But my hope is that this body would recognize and acknowledge the importance of the history of this nation and the symbolism upon which the acknowledging of reparations would I guess would communicate to communities here across the state as well as across the country. I can see a tendency, I could see a propensity to want to pull back from that and to do something differently either to make your job easier or to perhaps take the sting off if you will what it is that is being communicated. I respect that, I appreciate it, I understand it. And I think it's good just to call it what it is but let's just all go into this clear eye and understand what it is we're dealing with and then take responsibility for the decisions that we make. Mark, have you shared your slide show with the committee assistant yet? I have not, I will though. I'm happy to do it, Mr. Chair. I would appreciate it. And just one, we have to end this conversation now but I just wanna say one thing from a structural perspective. I've heard criticisms about our legislative council and about the work that they did. And I just wanna be very clear that the work that gets done especially in an introduction and a bill that's introduced legislative council works for the legislators. And so I would take on, if I were requesting this bill as the sponsors of this bill take on responsibility for the information that's in the bill. And so this wasn't the legislative council not doing a job. I mean, I know the writing may not have come up to a standard or included everything that you may have that you shared with us. And I appreciate that in addition to what's in the bill as introduced, but I just wanna be very clear that the fault, if there's any fault in the content it lies with the legislators and not the attorneys. So Mr. Chair, I realized that you have to get going but I can't let that one go because really what I'm referring to is this really not the content of the policy, not at all. In fact, we take responsibility for the content of the policy, we wrote it. What I'm talking about is the content of the research. As I said, I did watch the introduction of the bill by legislative council and I did monitor very closely the exchange that you had with legislative council and what the legislative council was able to provide you. And so for the record, and for those who are watching there was an exchange that you had with legislative council and asked legislative council for some background on some of the specific areas that I covered in that exchange produced little to nothing in terms of the reparative work, the specific reparations work that has been accomplished across the United States most notably the fact that the United States house judiciary passed HR 40 in April of 2021 and the state of California passed a reparations bill that is information that your legislative council should have had. And they should have been able to tell you that. So that it is things like that that I'm talking about as far as the content of the policy we take full responsibility for the content of the policy. Okay, no, thank you for sharing your thoughts and thank you for the presentation. This is as you mentioned a difficult, it was difficult to hear some of the truths that you were sharing with us. And I appreciate you doing that with us. And we, when we take this up again you gave us a list of organizations. If you have a list of other witnesses in particular that you think would benefit to the as you challenged us earlier today to hear as many pros and cons as we can on this policy please feel free to share them with us. Happy to do that, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your time. We'd be most, it'd be most appreciated if Mr. Wild would be able to provide us maybe some target dates and or time slots that we might be able to bring those witnesses in. Obviously there are a lot of folks across the state that are going to, that we want to be able to have the opportunity to, if it all possible, we understand the legislature is very busy but if it's all possible, if we're able to, if we're gonna bring a list of folks for this or 406, which we really would love to do it would be very helpful for us to at least get nailed down some possible dates and maybe some times that we would be able to work in coordination with you much more effectively then. Sure, we will, we have a potential date for next week. Ron will communicate with you. I sent him the email this morning. Great, so that's in your email box. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mark. Thank you so many. We're gonna take a 10 minute break.