 Does anyone have an agenda for tonight? I see you talking Liz, but I don't hear you talking. I said come back because I just did something and got rid of myself, hold on. Oh no. Good, we're all having technical difficulties tonight. That's good, that's good. I'm afraid to, let me, you know what? I can log on my computer because I'm on my phone. Like a computer doesn't have zoom on it, but my phone does. I can log on to a computer and pull up the agenda. Jennifer disappear. Oh, she's still there, agenda, agenda, agenda. I just want to flag for folks that Philip Avila, the attendee has his hand up. I don't know how to do anything with that, but I just wanted to flag it. So Philip is our co-chair. I don't know if I got an agenda. Okay, I've just been talking for like 15 minutes and I was on mute, so. What was I kept saying is Jennifer disappeared. Can we let Philip in as like an actual attendee or like as a participant? I know, because Philip's not on, I can't see him. Right, I just see him as an attendee and I can't like. I think I just jumped on. Oh, there you go, hey. All right, hey, how's it going? Good, good, good, good. Sorry about that. The theme is everybody's in a car. So Deborah and Edgar, I'm sorry, we're not usually this discombobulated. I again had to go to Cooley Dickinson this afternoon and we're just on our way out, so I'm a little bit frazzled. So I would like to introduce, oh, and Gopi is here, very nice. So the folks from the Julius Ford, Harriet Tubman, the healthy living community are here and we are working with them for the community festival next, almost in like about two weeks. So Deborah and or Gopi or Edgar, do you wanna take it over and speak for a few minutes? Yeah, I'm eating in the car. Sure, why don't you call me when you get home? Okay. All right, can you all hear us? Can you all hear me? Yes, Jennifer, I think you might wanna mute. All right, well, hello everyone. Thank you so much for having us. Join your meeting. So as Jennifer stated, my name is Deborah Ferreira. I have no relation to Sid Ferreira. I don't know that guy. I don't know who he is. You all do know that that's my brother, right? I'm telling you a tale. Yeah. I'm telling you a tale. Got it. Anyway, is he on? I don't see him. I don't see him either. Okay, but anyway, so long story short, Julius Ford, Harry Tubman, Healthy Living community is really a group put together by a lot of different community members, intergenerational youth leadership focused, making sure that youth in our group are the leaders for our group. We were established about 2007. And we first started by having conferences, really dealing with social justice, critical thinking, any type of wellness, healthy living kind of perspectives, how to take care of the land, environmental justice, sustainability, how to really grow your own, right? Growing your own food and really focus on your health, especially as people of color. So definitely BIPOC centered too. And we started by partnering up with Earth Dance, which is this organization out in Plainfield, Massachusetts, that really focused on contact dancing and again, really working on the land. And it was started by my late husband, Julius Ford, who now, there's part of the name of the group, as well as Gopi, who's on. So Gopi will definitely talk to you a little bit more about this. And then some other members, it was then director of Earth Dance, Margaret Galanta, who also was part of the original co-founders. And since then, we've just been doing those conferences, bringing groups from Springfield area, Holyoke, obviously Amherst. We also brought groups from New Bethlehem, like Third Eye and YouthBuild members, always focusing on young people and making sure that young people really understanding how to really critically think, have emotional intelligence and get a lot of what sometimes they don't get through schools on a day-to-day basis, especially our public schools, right? In the surrounding areas. So my kids, I have, my son, Phoenix and my son, Onyx have grown up through healthy living and they're now youth leaders. And our kids, so Edgar's kids and Gopi's daughter have all grown up within healthy living. So fast forward now, besides the conference this year, two of our young people, my son, Phoenix and Edgar's daughter, Jasmine, had the idea of putting together a festival, right? Because for them, they were like, listen, it's been, these last couple years have been very difficult because of the pandemic, because of the uprising around what's been going on in terms of George Floyd's killing and everything that has been happening, focused on BIPOC youth of color. And also in terms of just the net adequacies and everything that has been happening in terms of the schools being closed. And so our young people have been feeling it. And I know you all have, I have known that there's a lot of mental health issues going on with our young people. And it's just been a very difficult time for everyone and everyone's families and friends and communities. And so Jasmine and Phoenix basically had the idea of let's bring the community together. Let's have an opportunity to have like a speak out, have some poetry, have performances, bring the community together and also have fun. So there's gonna be like a basketball tournament and there's going to be other sports activities, arts and crafts, face painting, different things to really and of course food and have people come together and really be together through this time and have an opportunity for our community to really speak out in terms of what's been going on, right? Locally, nationally and globally, right? Because we need to really know that we are interconnected. Obviously if COVID didn't show that we're interconnected I don't know what we'll ever show people, right? That we're interconnected. So we started out having this concept and then as we continued to plan for it then we connected with the old and young, right? That we connected with P from the old and young and then through my work with the community safety working group that I work with with a bunch of other members, I didn't say it to our group. I said, hey, we should connect with Jennifer, right? And see if maybe we can partner with the town and then Jennifer said that there was you all's group the Human Rights Commission that you all might be interested in partnering up with us too. And that's how it was birth. And so now we're gonna have like the Heroes Award during that time. We wanna make sure that you all have time to talk about the Human Rights Commission and the wonderful work that you all do. And we really want this to be a partnership an opportunity for all of us to work together in a situation where like I said, it's youth focused intergenerational, BIPOC focused, right? Like the food that we want to have there should be food that's gonna be sold from restaurants at a BIPOC restaurants, right? So really, I mean, I'm gonna stop now but that's kind of like in a nutshell a little bit about it, but I'll let Gopi and Edgar chime in at this point. Thank you, Deborah. Edgar, you wanna say something? Yeah, I can go after you though, Gopi. All right, all right. Thank you, Deborah for such a great synopsis of where we've been at with the Julius Ford, Harry Tubman, a living community for 13 years. We've been running, I think probably our 14th year about now. And I wanna add is thank you Human Rights Commission for jumping in with us to help put this festival together and Jennifer, thank you so much for being willing to assist with so many resources and helping get the town behind this process. And I'm just really looking forward to the day. That's good. And I look forward to meeting you all. So look forward to meeting you all and Liz Heywood. Is that right? All right. It's Hey Good, but we met up on the mountain when we went for- Hey Good! Oh yeah! Hey Good! I remember the hike. Oh yeah, yeah. I look forward to seeing you again. Lying across some rocks. Yeah, right. Okay, good. I'll see you soon. That was a great hike, Liz, okay? It was memorable. It was. Edgar, did you wanna say something? Did you wanna say something? Yeah, well, I just wanna echo what you guys said. I'm definitely pretty excited about collaborating with the Human Rights Commission. I just have a lot of people witness, a lot of people from Amherst and through my connections with the Amherst community, some of the great work that you all are doing there. And it's, I mean, it's really exciting. Let me put it this way. I get to meet you guys first before I meet the North Anthony Human Rights Commission and I'm involved in all kinds of committees in the city. So we have a little bit of work to do in North Anthony and I actually might just steal some of you guys' ideas about how to handle different things in your own town. So I wanna say that it's definitely a pleasure to have an opportunity to work with you guys. And then the only other thing that I wanna add is that this really makes me feel a lot like the old tournament that we organized back in like 2001 at the high school in Amherst. This was sure part of that. And this event just gives me, it was an excellent event, by the way. It was really well attended and it was a complete community come together. So many parts came together because people really just wanted to do their part in putting something beautiful together for the community. And this is the type of feel that I'm getting and the energy that I'm getting from this event. So I'm really excited about it. My son, Jake, has been really excited about the basketball part, which is, we're using basketball as the look, just like we did back in the gold tournament in 2001 to kind of bring folks together. And of course we had many other activities planned, but I know my son and I are excited about seeing the ballers back out there and on a new floor, nice to be done, redone park and all that. So thank you guys for letting us come to the meeting today and I'm looking forward to it. Thank you guys so much. Commissioners, do you want to introduce yourselves? Yeah, I'll jump in. So I'm Ben Harrington. I'm co-chair of the Human Rights Commission. I do other things in town too. So this whole time I've kind of been like, wowed and amazed, right? So I went to, I don't know if it was the first conference at Earth Dance or just one of the first, but so I've had the honor and privilege of kind of like being involved with both sets of folks here or all three sets of folks here. Cause the other thing that I do, whether or not anyone else knows, is I'm kind of like a basketball coach, sort of running like a program, got some things going on with that. But yeah, so like to me, this is like, this is as great as it gets, you know what I mean? So whatever we can do, yeah, I'm more than willing to help facilitate. So we'll move on to the next. I'll try to segue you, Phillip. There you go. I'm trying to find the mute button. I had to go onto my phone and it's throwing me off just a little bit. But yep, I'm Phillip, Avila, I'm the other co-chair of the Human Rights Commission. And I'll just echo what Ben has said that we are more than eager to help out in any way that we can. Hi everybody. I'm Liz Hagerd. I'm a commissioner. Been part of the Amherst community since 1970, yeah. I've had the privilege of meeting and dealing with in a very positive way, all of your children. And unfortunately, I will not be in attendance on May 7th. As some of you all know, I'm really heavy into track officiating and I will be at Yale officiating the Ivy League championships that day. However, as Jennifer knows, whatever she needs me to do beforehand, shopping for food, getting gifts, whatever it is, that's, I'm the girl. Is that all of the members here? I think so. So yeah, Debra, do you guys have a point? Jennifer, can I say something? Yeah. There's Earl Miller. I, yep, I was getting there. So Earl Miller is the new, and I'm glad that Debra and Gopi and Edgar are here. So Earl Miller is the new Crest Director. So we have a program called Humanity Responders for Equity, Safety, and Service. This is a new department that was really driven by the community. And I'll let Earl introduce himself to everyone here. Yay! Hello, I am, tomorrow will be the end of my fifth week doing this. Still pretty psyched. So that's a good sign. Crest is, I think you all are familiar with the idea, right? The town owns this idea, you own this idea. You know, we are trying to take the, I took this job because I watched the process the town went through and it spoke to me, right? You guys did the hard work. Those meetings, those CSWG meetings were brutal. And I'll be honest with you. One of the questions I've asked those group members is, why didn't you quit? A lot of towns started down this road and quit. They quit at similar spaces to the ones this group found themselves in. Challenging ideas of what first responders can look like. Looking at how compassion is shown in our community, right? These are big, big ideas. And I spent the last four years in a very safe place. I worked for the state, you know, it was, it felt safe. And seeing this job, I felt like, you know, I think there's a such thing as being too safe. This is a big risk, big reward position for me. I like to play the game for real. That's what we're doing. So in the five weeks I've been on, we're looking at kind of other departments in the town and how we can support their mission. And ideally allow them to do what they do best without the pieces that they struggle with. An example of that is Jones Library. For folks who aren't aware, one of the challenging points of their day is the end of the day, when they have to put people out of a warm or cool space depending on the time of year out into the elements. They don't feel good about that, right? They're telling people they need to leave and they have no ability to follow up on that. So Crest will do that. We will take over that function starting mid June and we will do that every day as long as we're here. It'll allow the librarians to be librarians for their whole shift and not have to end the day kind of in this struggle. It'll also allow us to meet people and we'll have vehicles so we can get them someplace that's warm or cool depending on the time of year. Shaking a lot of hands. We're gonna take over one of the cafeterias at the middle school next year. That's the scariest place in town. So I figured that's where we should be. Those middle schoolers are tough. I went there, worked a lunch shift and got to see, you know, shake hands. And kind of the way I'm approaching this is everybody in the town is a resident deserving of respect and consideration. So spending lots of time at the senior center, spending lots of time at the schools, shaking everybody's hand, right? Just because they're a kid doesn't mean they don't deserve to get to know me in a real way, right? A palpable way. And as we're looking at hiring, I am uninterested in bringing people who don't share my passion for this work into the team, right? This is not about kind of promoting ourselves. Although I'll say, I'm sorry for all the times you're seeing my face in your local papers. I didn't tell them to do that, but it seems to be good kind of raising the stock. I want people who are interested in the work. If we get the work right, everything else is on the other side of that, right? If people want the more extrinsic value from work, well, if we figure this out, then all that's there. We will be the first department in New England to stand up. We will stand up mid June. We will have eight responders, a program assistant and myself. We will be taking 901 calls. And I know there was a lot of focus on those 901 calls. I'm hoping more of our work happens upstream, right? I'm hoping more of our work is about meeting people before there needs to be a 901 call. And I think the escalation works. I believe in it, right? I ran a center in Springfield in the South end for six years, never called the police twice. We just didn't need to. I think the people want to be respectful. I demand it, right? I, people will be respectful because I will be respectful to them. Not because I'm going to scare them into being respectful, but because respect is a mutual thing. And I'll give it to everybody and I'll ask for it back. We, today, Jennifer was with me. We were hiring for a program assistant. We have some incredible candidates. I think I'm probably going to be the least impressive on the team, which is a good place to be. And, you know, I think that people's human rights matter. That's something I believe pretty deeply in. When I worked for the state, I was a part of several processes that looked at the way people who receive services from the state are treated. And I'm committed to supporting your mission and also maybe more importantly, to receiving feedback from you whenever and wherever you feel it's appropriate. I've told everybody this and I'll share it with you. If you have to give me information and you're struggling, whether to just say it or say it politely, please just say it, right? Please just say it. The work is too important for us to waste time on niceties. If you think there's something we should be doing better, tell us now. We may disagree, but we'll have a respectful conversation and I don't expect to win every one of those conversations. I don't have a monopoly on being right. I don't have a monopoly certainly on the town, right? You all know the town better than I do. Invite me to something. I'll come have coffee at your house. We'll go have lunch with folks. We're going to do events at the apartments. There's 35,000 people. I think I've shook in a thousand hands. I have 34,000 more people to meet. I'm pretty excited for that. And this is my dream job. I'm pretty pumped. So, you know, I'm going to do this work with optimism. I am going to do this work with a hopeful spirit and we're going to have fun. Ultimately, maybe the most important thing is I believe that this work can be done joyfully. I believe that this work can be done with like a light heart, right? I think that people don't get better because someone scares them into it, right? I've been thinking a lot about harm reduction, right? How do we support the folks in our town who are using substances in a way that negatively impacts them? And one of the things that there's a really great article out now about the supervised consumption site in New York. You know, one of the things that we know is that, you know, our current system just punishes drug users until they have nothing left. And the reality is that people who have nothing left will use drugs until they die. That is the reality of that situation. So, you know, we want to be helpful without taking things from folks. We won't make anybody dance for their food, you know, being respectful of everybody and I'm psyched. I could talk about this for hours. In fact, that's what I do most of the time now. I imagine soon here I'll have to get to work and I'll miss the times where I got to talk with you about this, but I have an open door. If you have a thought, endeavor you have your hand up. So maybe we can open that door now. Yeah, sorry, wonderful, wonderful. And obviously we're looking forward to seeing you on May 7th at Mill River. It's from two to five when the festival was taking place. But hopefully for folks from the Human Rights Commission, hopefully you all can be there. We're gonna be there at eight o'clock in the morning and we're going to be, you know, setting up and doing everything we'll have at 10 a.m. We're gonna have like a little kind of just bringing together of everyone that's there to do like a ceremonial circle, just to kind of make sure that we are focused, ready, you know, united, you know, focused on peace and love and all that good stuff. And then from 10 to 10 30, and then we'll continue setting up and then kick it off at 12, we'll have a DJ, we're gonna have music, we're gonna have all that good stuff. So hopefully folks from the Human Rights Commission, Jennifer, myself, Gopi, Edgar and some other folks, Pete from Old and Young and our DJ, Carlos, Rick McBride, we're all meeting like tomorrow 10 30 to 11 30. We're trying to meet every week to kind of, you know, continue discussing, you know, the itinerary, the agenda where we need to kind of plug in things that need to be done. So feel free to join us on any of those planning meetings. Right now though, I do need to jump off because we have our Julius Ford, Harry Southern Healthy Living Community weekly meeting because we're also meeting on a weekly basis in order to kind of get things ready for May 7th since we're only about two weeks ago away, right? Things are coming fast and in a hurry. But it was lovely and wonderful to meet you all and can't wait to meet in person. And for us to have a beautiful, wonderful day on May 7th. All right. Thanks, Gopi, thanks Edgar, love you guys so much. Thank you. Thank you guys, bye. Bye. I was leaving though. So I'm going to meet with them tomorrow at 1030. So I guess the goal and hope is for folks if they can to come as early as they can. Obviously Deborah said that, you know, we would start setting up at eight but if you can come before the event starts at noon. So if you can come before noon, that would be great just cause we need setups. We've got tents to set up and tables to put up and we got to do the basketball court. So there's lots to be done. And so I actually pulled up the agenda. So just give me one second and if I can find it back because I'm on my phone. So we did the, just to talk about the HRC awards a little bit. So we got about 12 participants, 12 participants 12 people who were nominated, which is really good. And I basically got them all the first three days that I put out the announcement which usually I have to send out like consistently I have to send out reminders to folks. So it was really nice. We got them back very quickly. We do have one larger group that we will honor as well for their hard work. And so what I'm looking for from this group is for someone I would like to forward the nomination papers and have someone do a write-up list. Do you think you could do that? Notice how I just threw that in there. I can. That's mostly a pair of people that I know. And then other people I will, if you show up, I did that last year. I know. Okay, no probes. And then Phillip, this is like you're gonna be your one year anniversary, right? Cause we met you at the Human Rights Commission here awards last year. Right, I think I was a potential candidate at that point and then soon after a full candidate. So yeah, it will be. You were a finalist as far as you knew but you were the finalist as far as we knew. So I think one of the things that we need to figure out is what do we wanna gift the youth for their heroism. In the past we were purchasing globes like a world globe and they would get a certificate. So I'll definitely do the certificates again but I didn't know if anybody had, I'm honestly thinking what people's thoughts are for an actual gift for the youth. Was there like a thing behind the fact that they were getting a globe every year? Like was there like- I think it was like a piece on earth kind of thing. You know, like you bring, it's changing the world, right? Because I think that's what the certificate says is you're changing the world. So I think it kind of ran in that perspective as it was a change, you're changing the world. Is there a reason why we didn't give them a globe this year? Why not give them a globe? Oh, we can, I just was asking what people's thoughts were if they had something else. No, based on what you just said right now, I don't feel like you can give them anything other than a globe. It's just a matter of like style and flavor, et cetera, et cetera at this point. So I know one year for the employee recognition party, we did globes and I was able to get like clear label pictures and I was able to like put a picture of the department around it. So we'll see if I can find, you know, around a stand that the globe sat on. So we'll see if I can find something like that. Maybe we can put like a, you know, the picture of their school or the town of Amherst or something on that. So that was pretty fun. Little arts and crafts project for myself. And let me go back to the agenda quickly. So I wanted to give you guys, does anybody have any other questions about the HRC Awards? Nope. So I wanted to give you guys an update on the human rights complaints because we've had several over probably the last six months. And when I say several, I mean, we've had about four or five, but they've been pretty, that's a lot for us because we usually don't get any. So one of the things I'd like to say about that is the word is definitely getting out. So that is a little bit reassuring that people know to come to the town because I think at some point they didn't really know. The other thing is I want folks to know that when we, so Donna Ray, who was the human rights director, human resources director has been acting as the human rights director and I in that manner have been the assistant. And so we go about these approaches, these investigations together. And so with, you know, our whole entire mission is to make sure that what we are investigating that whoever we're investigating that whatever their process is done fairly and it's done for everyone. So we need to be able to see, show us a policy, show us how it happened to somebody else. We just want to be able to see and fully understand what's going on. And so none of these have actually really turned out to be human rights complaints in the sense of we can't really pinpoint that you were treated any different than anybody. But what I will say is that we do not just leave the person there, we put them in the right direction, we make sure we get them to the right person to continue to give them help. So, you know, we're not just saying like, oh, it wasn't a human rights complaint, you know, for us because it wasn't just discrimination. And, you know, that's it. We actually take the time out to move them forward. So the first one that came to us was a woman who had an issue with the shelter. And you know, it was really, she had a policy issue, right? And so what we did was we, you know, reached out to the shelter. We asked to see their policy on this and they were able to provide that. And then we, you know, there was some other things going on. There was a few mental health issues. You know, this is a great time for Crest to be around because that's something that they probably could have picked up too. And so what we ended up doing was helping her through the shelter's complaint process. Right, we helped her with that. And then she got that, and then she just kind of, we ended up closing it out because there was nothing to be found, but we made sure that we could get her to the right forms and to the right people to speak. And she actually ended up being relocated. The next one was a gentleman who had a complaint about the shelter and about community connections. They really just felt like they had been blacklisted, which is understandable from landlords and from the different human service agencies in Amherst. And so that one was a little bit harder to call, but we did, we were able to reach out to community connections and smooth things out and get that person the help that they needed for housing. Because at the end of the day, that's what that was about. The next one was we had a gentleman who they were in the Amherst family and the mother went to Cooley Dickinson and then she had to stay at Cooley Dick for a while and the son had been trespassed against Cooley Dick, so he felt like he was being discriminated against. And so that was a very legal scenario going on right there. And so one of the things that the Human Rights Commission does not do is approach legal stuff. We will help you find legal representation, but we will not invest, we won't get involved. Also, we are talking about in Northampton, which is outside of our area, so we only work within Amherst. But if somebody came who lived in Amherst that had a complaint from another town, we would still help and assist. So we actually connected that individual with the ombudsman's person for the hospital, and then we also gave them up some numbers for legal counsel. So the next one was a little trickier. We had a gentleman who was parked on Mill Lane, not by Graf Park, but on the other end, and a little tucked in nook. And the police, so what I did know was that that was Amherst College property, so the police kind of rolled up and asked for their license. This individual refused the license, but the individual really felt like he was approached and the license was demanded because he was a person of color. So one of the issues was, they had a sign that said, all are welcome here, just make sure you clean up after your dog, basically. So if you have a sign like that, it doesn't really matter where somebody's parked, it makes it seem like it's pretty inviting and that there shouldn't be an issue of somebody is in that space, but there was. And so we reached out to the chief of police for Amherst College and we kind of talked through and we asked for what happened. And so they were a little, when you get a call from the town, people's first reaction is, I'm gonna call our legal team, our lawyers to see what I can and can't say. I mean, that's typically what we get. So people do get, they immediately are like, oh, a human rights complaint. So this ended up turning into a legal matter because the person did not have a valid driver's license. And so they received a ticket, perhaps to go to court over driving without a license. And so at that point, we really couldn't do much for that, but we could offer this person legal. He didn't wanna take, he figured he would work on it on his self, but I'm sorry, but anytime this individual called, we definitely was supported in any way that we could, like they'd asked for a copy of the record of the report. And so we reached out to the police chief of Amherst College and asked that. And so that was the last one. The next one was in an apartment complex where an individual's car had been towed during snow removal. And the individual really felt like that they were targeted because they were a person of color. So this one, I reached out to the apartment complex itself and asked for their policy because again, once again, once you start saying things like, your human rights complaint, they wanna say, well, I'm gonna check in with legal. So they did forward me their snow removal policy, where the cars should be, where they should be parked and that entire process. And so the other piece of it was that there was a witness that said another car had been put onto the tow truck and moved. But the individual that we're talking about did not have a sticker to the complex. And so it just, they felt the complex. They actually took a picture of it before they towed it. They took a picture of where it was towed. I mean, of where you'd parked before it was towed. So the car was towed because it was parked in a place where it shouldn't have been parked during snow removal. And somebody else had seen another car that was parked and they just moved it. The car that was just moved had a sticker. So they actually charged that person for that move that they did right there in the complex. This car for the individual who made the complaint did not have a sticker. And so there wasn't a way to trace back to them in the manner that they felt. And so they towed the car. And so those are the, then there's one that is current now with the woman who is having a complaint about the Amherst Housing Authority. She's feeling targeted by the, by the director of the Amherst Housing Authority. And so those are all of the complaints at this time. Does anybody have any questions? I will send this in a written document. I'm just not in the office at the moment. Sorry. Yes. I don't have any questions, but I just think that in all the situations was handled fairly justly. And even when there's not a human rights quote unquote issue to be able to give people the next step in the process or to help them move forward is a good way to do things. I know it takes up a lot of time. So I thank you for your due diligence in all of the situations. And yeah, and the one that's still pending, but if there's any way we can be of assistance, let us know, please. Absolutely, absolutely. And thank you. And I will relay those kinds of words to Donna Ray. I will say one of the things that did come up with one of the investigations was really like, how far can we go with stuff, right? So when the DEI director comes, they will take on that role as the permanent human rights director. And so one of the things I would like for us to do is kind of smooth out our regular process when someone files that complaint. And also, which is hard because everyone's complaint is so different, but also, if the complaint is valid in the sense that it was definitely discrimination without a doubt, like then how do we really proceed after that? And so I'm hoping that we can really smooth those kinds of things out, moving forward with the director. So it's on the list of things to do. Anybody else have questions about that? I'm getting the zoom thing on the phone pretty well now. So I'm feeling a little bit empowered. I just have to take the time out to say that, right? I was able to make Ben and fill the co-host. So I'm feeling a little bit gully. Let me just find out what's next on the, what else is on the agenda. So we're gonna have to table the upcoming events. What I will say is in July and August there are no heritage months listed. But for June, I know, I believe it's Caribbean, Caribbean American Heritage Month, and then we have Juneteenth. So I'm not solely 100% ready to shine back on Juneteenth, but Juneteenth this year falls on a weekend. We are doing a full weekend celebration. There's stuff going on in multiple places. It's gonna be fabulous, hopefully bigger than last year. So we're super excited to be able to offer these things. And probably at the next meeting, I'll be able to kind of let you guys know where I might need some support and some stuff to have done. But yeah, I'm super excited that it's on a Sunday, so it's like a whole weekend event. And I'm just really excited about that. And so any questions from anyone? I had a question, John, just that's really great and really awesome. And definitely looking forward to that weekend in June, just about though the process of the complaint process. Is there any reason or any, like, what is the reason? Why a commission member cannot be a part of going through it kind of with you and I forget the other person. Right? Yeah. So in the past, I mean, that has happened where we've called out onto the chair. It just becomes a little bit sticky, you know, because we don't like some of these things happened a while ago and there's an at one point, the meetings were in part, it just got a little bit, I don't want to say confusing, but, you know, one of the things that we had to do for the human rights complaint process was, you know, someone would have to literally come into a meeting to give that, right? And so that's not helpful. It's your, you know, you're out there in the public in a meeting, although we typically have folks come to our meetings, but it would have been recorded in the minutes. And so one of the ways that we went to avoid that was by having people fill out an online complaint form. And I think that through that process, we kind of realized that it was a little bit easier. And then also one of the things that we're doing is we are weeding through. So if there was an actual complaint complaint, then we probably would have asked for one of the co-chairs or both the co-chairs to attend. But I do hear what you're saying. And so I, you know, that's something that I can discuss with the director because it makes sense. And at what point you guys want to be involved which probably be up to you and the director. I just want to add, because this is something that Chris has already involved in. I think what happens with human rights process sometimes is that folks with mental health challenges who feel unheard are ending up in this thing. And one of the really great things Jennifer and Donna Ray have set up is that we're starting to intercept some of those folks now. So starting to set up regular times to meet with them. Some of them, it's really is the human rights commission is a guaranteed response, right? And sometimes, so I'll say some of these things are more complex mental health needs than actual complaints. And hopefully that's a roll crest conserve is kind of intercepting those folks before they kind of fall down a path that's not gonna lead too much ultimately because unfortunately some of these complaints I think are more rooted in so much trauma history than kind of an actual actionable step by you all. So just as far as an intercept point we've already started working on that and maybe that's a space where we can collaborate it's kind of clearly defining when you all would like us to step in and how you'd like us to step in. Yeah, yeah, so like I kind of feel like that's key because like all with the exception of one issue since I've been on the commission I can say that like the majority if it been exactly that that somebody's like crying out for something other than what we can provide them with it's just the fact that we can actually answer them in some sort of meaningful way. But yeah, that's very helpful to have that. And I have a crest like something like crest as a resource, right? So yeah, and I just wanna add to like it doesn't necessarily feel good when you know that somebody needs more help than what we can give and then we send them to legal thinking because then it's just on legal. So to have crest to be able to kind of intervene and get at the root of the issues there is a lot more healthy. We would still give them that legal info but to have be able to send, refer them to crest is only gonna make it more solid I think at the end. We can go with them, right? Really what they want is someone who's gonna to some degree hold their hand through the process which I don't say that in a pacifying way. If I have to deal with the legal system I would want someone to hold my hand through it and we can do that. We're preparing to do that. We're scaling up to do that. So great example is one of these folks just need someone to talk to. And so we're setting up a regular time to talk to this person but also setting some healthy boundaries to really kind of model, hey, you don't actually need to start this whole process anytime you want something you could just call and ask for it. And I hopefully that'll mean that you guys are getting more streamlined stuff but the reality is I don't know that there's a human rights complaint that doesn't have some aspect to trauma, right? Whether it's legitimate or it's someone's perception that doesn't line up with the kind of consensus reality just so you know this was true when I was at the Department of Mental Health too. If you looked at the human rights complaints they got the vast majority of them where somebody saying, hey, I know this is a button I can push that's gonna make a thing happen. You know, it's the same reason sometimes people call 911 on themselves, right? They don't actually want to end up in a 911 situation but they do know that if you call 911 someone's coming and you guys serve that role. It's a nice one. Thinking about engagement roles one of the things might be just to kind of be able to talk to those folks about the limits of things. I think if they could hear that from someone who they felt like had the power that might be helpful maybe that's a collaborative space we can work through where we could do that together, right? You guys can talk about what you can and can't do and then we could be in the room to fill in what pieces we can hold. Yeah, and I would like to say too like a couple of years ago we got a complaint about someone and just having the town reach out to say that a human rights complaint has been filed against you gets people shaking in their knees, right? And so while this person was telling us their story you know, it was debatable whether or not this program had a process or not, right? But they had a process afterwards, right? Because we called and said, you know we need to see your process. So whether they had the process when that you know, they should have had it but if they didn't have that process when that person made the complaint they have the process now. And so one of the things that happens is there is some kind of change that usually happens. The individual on Mill Lane they have taken down that free welcome sign, right? Like, you know so it's not, if you know there's a limit of like a restriction of how far back you can go now, right? So it shouldn't have to take these kinds of things to get, you know, some things done but sometimes it does, right? So any more questions guys? None, come on. Nope. I'm gonna go, I don't, I think that was the basis of the agenda if we're tabling the events. I do want to be able to meet twice. Hmm. No. So, you know, I will send out folks stuff for the Human Rights Commission Hero Awards if we need stuff, if we need shoppers, if we need folks to go pick stuff up. So I will send something out and then for Juneteenth, I think we'll be having a Juneteenth meeting, you know, next week maybe. And so hopefully by our next meeting or even before I can send you guys some info on the different stuff that we need. And I would also like to say one of the really nice things about being involved with these events and collaborating with the community about it is, it is a way for us to network folks with the town and you know, at the end of the day, for me that's one of my stronger missions is to connect people to town who we don't typically hear from because what they don't realize is we need to hear that voice, right? And we don't hear it because they don't know that these things exist. So when we have these kinds of events, it brings the people that we don't typically hear from. And so, you know, the May 7th one, you know, I actually, you know, because everything is so, you know, it's at the park and we've reached out to Amherst Recreation to have them be involved. And so when it's gonna come to some community events requests, we're gonna try and really have that be in all inclusive town events where we get all the different town entities together just to really be able to let folks know like, okay, we're here, we're resources, we have resources. And, you know, so it's just gonna be a lot of, it's gonna be a good summer with lots of events. So I guess we'll have to stick around. Well, I know you guys are sticking around, right? But so that's really, that's it really for the meeting unless someone has something else. I don't think that there's anything else on the agenda. We're gonna shoot for the third Wednesday of the month for our next meeting and there won't be a Monday holiday. So we don't have to worry about things not getting scheduled. Looking at the calendar, is that May 18th? I'm scared to look at my calendar because I have to. I know you're good, yeah, I guess it is. 18th, I just pulled one up. Perfect. So yeah, May 18th. So I did wanna check in just Wednesday. I mean, we don't have Sid and we don't have Erica here, but do Wednesdays work best for folks or does Thursday work better? Like I wanted to retouch on that. Yeah, so for me, Thursdays are way better because like I sort of have that basketball program thing. Yeah. And so I have four hours of practice every Wednesday and it's like hard for me to like defer to other folks. That's a lot of practice, Ben. I might probably complain. There's definitely a human rights violation going on here, self-inflicted program. And then Liz and Phillip, how are Wednesdays, Thursdays? How do they look for you? For me, it doesn't matter which day. I mean, I have track on Wednesdays, I have track on Thursdays and I'll get here. Sometimes it'll be in my car and sometimes I'll be finishing a meet and talking to you at the same time. Thank you, Liz, I love it. Phillip? Yeah, Wednesdays or Thursdays are fine with me. The only thing that I have is for the month of May, the 19th will not work for me. I am graduating with my master's on that day. So, Liz, we need to honor you. We're partying on the night here. I got it. Thanks for that, and Liz, it's supposed to just get swept underneath the table. No, too. Hey. I'll DJ your party. I'll do that. I'll DJ it. Yeah, so thank you, everybody. Yeah, no, Phillip, we gotta, yeah, something will have to pop off for that. Oh, the other thing is that the event on May 7th is the Saturday before Mother's Day. And so we, I think we're gonna be giving all the mums roses out on Mother's Day. So, it's equally with Juneteenth and maybe you guys can kind of help me over here too. So Juneteenth falls on Father's Day and so I'm trying to find a way to honor the Father's, and maybe it is that we just give each dad a rose. I'm not sure if that works in the, how people, I don't know. So we could just do that to keep it simple if people feel like that's a good idea. I mean, I'll take a rose. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Many of flowers too, they just like to be acknowledged. So I think that would be appropriate. Yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, we'll just have to have a lot of flowers because it's hard to predict who will be at the event overall. But that's good feedback because I reached out to Pete and he was like, I don't know. So that wasn't, you know, I didn't get much there. So we can do, I think we're doing carnations. So we can do carnations or roses or whatever. So that sounds good. So yeah, that's basically it. I'm so sorry that things were a little bit rocky at the beginning of the meeting. And a little more, I'm kind of a whiz now on the phone with the Zoom and I won't have to do it again and I'll have the same issue. So. Much appreciated though. I've played hooky for like two months now. So like I can't really talk. It's hard to play hooky when you're the host. I would, and for some reason I was like, oh, the meeting's not till seven. And then I was like, wait a minute, the meeting's at 6.30. And I like turned the wheel real hard and pulled over and was like, oh my God, gotta start this meeting. So if you wanna go ahead and call the meeting at this time and then I'll do the minutes when I can record and listen to the meeting later. So as of 7.30, we are adjourned. Thank you. Have a good night, everyone. Welcome. Thanks for letting me come. Take care, everyone. Yep. Bye.