 Good evening. Welcome to College Street Congregational Church. More importantly, welcome to Vermont Interfaiths. Action on this for this evening. We're so grateful that you are here. I'm Ken White. I'm the pastor of College Street Congregational Church, and I've been part of this initiative around racial justice and public safety, and it is a gift to be here tonight with all of you. And with all of you on Zoom, we're so grateful that you have joined in. Thank you for bearing with us through some of the technical difficulties of this exciting new era of getting together in multiple places. It is amazing when it works. In 1966, Mayor John Lindsay in New York sought to create a police oversight board made up of civilians. Local leaders who supported school segregation were also against this measure, and they were able to create a ballot movement to overturn this initiative, disallowing citizen engagement with police oversight. Their leader, John Casice, said he was sick and tired of giving in to minority groups. Baird Rustin, one of the most important figures in the nonviolent civil rights movement of the late 20th century, tried to explain to John Casice exactly what was at stake. He wrote, the maintenance of law and order are, first of all, not the result of police action, but the by-product of a just and equitable social and economic order, where there is justice order obtains, where there is widespread injustice, disorder is inevitable. We at Vermont Interfaith Action have differing faith traditions. We use different names for the reality beyond our understanding. We have different sacred texts and different understandings of those texts. This is part of the gift of being an interfaith relationship. But we have a common faith in the human endeavor, one that you share by your presence here tonight. We have a common faith like Baird Rustin, that life in community is not a zero-sum game, where some people must necessarily be diminished in order for others to be uplifted. We have a common faith that when justice prevails, all are uplifted, and that which is not love becomes an aberration instead of an expectation. This evening, we testify that justice matters, and that unfortunately injustice exists in many of our concepts of public safety in the state that we love, and much of that injustice is centered around our country's larger problem of racial injustice. This evening, we testify that injustice damages all of us, the inevitable disorder of physical and spiritual well-being from injustice, damages those who depend on order as well as those tasked with maintaining order. But in this evening, we also testify to the power that God has given each of us, power that we use, to privilege some among us with the sacred duty of maintaining civil order, and power that we can use to make sure that this duty is carried out justly in a way that honors the dignity of all and that reconciles us to each other. That we have been given that power of oversight and that duty of oversight by God is not in question. What is in question this evening is whether we have the courage, the perseverance, and the optimism to exercise that power. It's a blessing to be here together tonight and to share this very hopeful moment with you. Good night and welcome. My name is Eric Picard, and I'm a member of the College Street Congregational Church United Church of Christ, and also a leader in the VIA and a member of the racial justice organizing committee. I'm your moderator tonight, and it is my hope and intention to be able to deliver and facilitate this meeting in a way that does the issue justice. We are very glad that you could join us tonight to demonstrate your interest in this important issue. We hope that we will learn more about, we will learn more about the guide as we go on. I'd like to thank College Street Community for hosting the event and the technology team for making it available on Zoom. At this point, I would like to introduce our three special guests. They are Chief Rick Ebert, Chief of the Winooski Police Department, Rebecca Turner, a supervising attorney for the Office of Defender General and a member of a statewide racial disparities advisory council and Anne Naumann, co-founder of the Richmond Equity and Diversity Task Force. We appreciate their assistance in this work of our organizing committee, and we look forward to hearing their remarks about the community interaction with police later in this evening. So why are we here tonight? Primarily to support the release of the Vermont Guide to Community Engagement with local police departments. But our gathering tonight is much more significant. Racism has been and continues to be a destructive and deadly legacy in our country. As a nation, we have made progress, but our being here tonight bears witness to the tremendous work which still needs to be done. Since early 2021, our Public Safety Committee has been researching and meeting with local law enforcements and related professions to better understand systemic racism with the aim of affecting change. The Community Engagement Guide came to be as our research evolved and revealed a wide range of experiences and beliefs regarding systemic racism. The guide is a tool designed to support communication between the community and the police. Its aim is to facilitate productive change and strengthen accountability between the police and the community they serve. The guide is a call to action. We are here tonight to renew our resolve to end systemic racism. Now a little more about our process and the norms for this evening. Our VIA process is highly relational and involves listening to each other and others outside the organization at every step. To begin, we conduct one-on-one listening campaigns with members of our congregations to understand this issues effect in our communities. We then held various research meetings with public officials and community leaders to learn more about the systems in our Vermont towns and cities. From this research, the information for this evening was collected. As you can see from your program, we have a lot to cover in a short period of time. For this reason, we are only inviting those on the program to speak tonight. Our VIA group would be very happy to hear from anyone who is concerned with this issue at a later time. We will make sure you have contact information to reach us. Tonight, we will present a report and a guide based on research. But as we all know, behind every fact and figure, there are the human faces of those who long for justice for themselves and their families. Many across our country have lost their lives through their encounters with police or have paid other physical as well as mental, emotional and spiritual tolls. We dedicate this evening to those who have sacrificed so much to truly make national, state and local systems provide fairness and equity for all. And so now VIA credentials will be read by Lucy. Good evening. It's an honor to present Vermont Interfaith Actions credentials to you. The mission of Vermont Interfaith Action is to create solutions to systemic issues that prevent our most vulnerable citizens from enjoying the quality of life God intends for us all. Vermont Interfaith Action is a faith-based grassroots coalition of congregations that strives to transform people and communities. Our goal is to make social justice and compassion a reality for all in Vermont. VIA is affiliated with a national organization, Faith in Action. Along with Faith in Action, VIA believes that organizing is the best way to address the spiritual and material crises facing our society. Organizing is the best tool we have for standing up to corporations' interests, profiting from racial and economic oppression and environmental destruction. To create a new society based on equity and sustainability and love, we need to build strong multiracial, people-led organizations that relentlessly press for social change. Vermont Interfaith Action and Faith in Action have a unique role to play in building a larger movement for change. This contribution flows from our capacity to engage large numbers of people through trusted community institutions, to speak prophetically about the moral dimensions of political choices, and to bring people together across race, class, religion, urban, suburban, rural, and region to make progress on racial and economic justice. Thank you very much. Thank you, Lucy. And now we'll have a roll call. Good evening. My name is Lucia White, and I'm a member of College Street Congregational and a leader in Vermont Interfaith Action. This evening, we'd like to welcome and recognize those who have come from all of our member congregations. When I call out your faith community, please stand and remain standing. And whether on Zoom or in person, feel free to make some noise. From the Burlington area, College Street Congregational Church. All souls interfaith gathering. First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington. First Congregational Church of Burlington. Ohavi's Edict Synagogue. Vermont Zen Center. Christ Church Presbyterian. Cathedral Church of St. Paul. From Central Vermont, Unitarian Church of Montpelier. Christ Episcopal Church Montpelier. Good Shepherd Episcopal Montpelier. From Southern Vermont, Guilford Community Church. Hey! Good to see you. From the Upper Valley, St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Norwich. Those from other congregations in the Burlington area and Central Vermont. Those from other congregations in Southern Vermont and the Upper Valley. And all our friends and allies who are interested in racial equity. We are glad you're here tonight. Which is the College Street. Yeah. Now we will hear from a few individuals who have experienced with different aspects of this issue. We'd like to introduce, and I'm sorry, we'd like to hear the experience of establishing a community group on equity and diversity from Anne Nauman, a resident of Richmond, Vermont. No? So, let's swallow all those words and start again. Before we get to our guests, we have, there was a report written on the process by which we put the guy together. And that report will be shared now. Good evening. I'm Nina Regan. And I'm going to deliver the results of our research. Vermont Interfaith Action has three broad efforts under way to promote racial justice. Our public safety organizing ministry started in early 2021 and is pleased to share the results of this work. Public safety group is composed of 8 to 10 people who represent diverse communities of faith. We approach this project with humility and a spirit of genuine learning, both about the experiences of people of color in Vermont and the difficult work performed by police officers. To better understand the issues surrounding policing and people of color in our state, we conducted over a dozen interviews with Vermonters positioned to speak authoritatively on the subject, including the executive director of the Wyndham County and double ACP, the executive director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, a member of the Vermont Racial Equity Panel who is a UVM professor, an expert on policing data and a member of the Burlington Police Commission, the team lead of the Burlington Outreach Program from Howard Center, a Burlington based nonprofit that offers mental health, substance use and developmental disability services. Vermont state police officers, including those responsible for fair and impartial policing, training and recruitment, the police chiefs of Burlington, South Burlington, Winooski and Williston, the commissioner of Vermont's Department of Public Safety, the office of the defender general representative to the Racial Disparities Advisory Council, the executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, and finally, Vermont state legislators. Not surprisingly, there are differing views on the issue. One of our chief conclusions is that there is no consensus on the nature or extent of racism in policing in Vermont. Some interviewees, citing traffic stop data and anecdotal reports, believe there is evidence of over-policing of people of color in many jurisdictions. Others pointed to policies and training programs in place to minimize bias. One interviewee noted that violence, arrests and incarcerations are disproportionately focused on people of color and that community safety must be viewed as much broader than just policing. Several of the people we interviewed expressed concern about the wide range of policing disparities among Vermont police departments. Some were frustrated by Vermont's limited ability to enforce standards across Vermont's law enforcement organizations, emphasizing that local police departments think that they can police as they see fit and often rebuff attempts by the state to help them improve their performance in this regard. One law enforcement official stressed that there is explicit bias in policing everywhere, but that it is only occasional, not pervasive in Vermont. That official took issue with some of the analysis of police stops, arguing that the relatively low number of people of color living in and visiting Vermont means that one incident will dramatically spew the perception of disparity. Another official asserted that there is not much evidence of racism in the daily behavior of police officers, but conceded that racism occurs upstream of police interactions such as in education, housing and employment. Now I'm going to go over some ideas to move forward. Despite the lack of consensus on racism in policing, interviewees did have useful thoughts and suggestions for Vermonters working to improve policing. A key theme is that trust between the community and the police force is critical for everyone to feel respected and safe. Strong engagement between the police and the community is a starting point to effect change. As for the approach, many people believe that reforming public safety is a complex problem that requires careful fact-finding and analysis as well as a collaborative approach between police and the communities they serve. Others noted that quality reform-minded leadership can make a difference in setting standards, enforcing expectations and shifting the work culture. The Vermont State Police and South Burlington Police Departments were cited as being ahead of the curve on fair and impartial policing. Both have taken data analysis seriously and made progress in creating a culture that values fair and impartial policing. As for community oversight, some argue that police commissions and community oversight are important tools that can be ineffective without appropriate training, mechanisms for promoting communications and trust, and adherence to national best practices. The Burlington Police Commission has taken advantage of the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, or NACOL, training in this regard. According to NACOL, effective civilian oversight is an essential practice to develop trust with the community. One senior law enforcement officer, however, pointedly said they do not support community oversight because of concerns about people inexperienced with policing, second guessing the actions of individual officers. As for community engagement, many noted the need to strengthen communication and trust between citizens and police departments. Some police officers noted that they received little feedback from the community even when they asked. As a result, they are interested in learning more about what Vermonters want and need in terms of policing. Another person noted the importance of transparency, accountability, trust and cooperation. As for culture, one police chief mentioned the importance of cultural brokers to help convey community views to law enforcement and to help the community understand police views. These brokers can help promote open conversations, educate audiences and bridge cultural differences. This police chief observed that some communities feel they have an open channel to the police, while others, especially marginalized communities, most likely do not feel that way. Many interviewees noted the need for deep cultural change in police departments. One noted that police deserve respect as do each one of the people with whom they interact. We need to get past the mindset as the enforcer. Many also emphasized the critical role that leadership plays in changing culture in police departments. A leader in the racial justice community noted that faith communities can offer programs to encourage humanizing the other. As for data collection analysis and use, many interviewees emphasize that data is important for promoting police transparency and accountability and for keeping the focus on fair and impartial policing. Many assess that most departments are not using data effectively, in part because of inadequate resources to analyze the data. Some advocated for standardized statewide data collection and analysis around characteristics such as race, ethnicity and other demographics. Some believe using data as a police force management tool would be effective shedding light on officers who are over stopping and over searching people. For policy considerations, one senior official in the criminal justice system thinks that banning pretextual traffic stops would be effective. They perceive the police as having a wide latitude to stop people based on suspicion, which can be skewed as a result of explicit or implicit bias. That official noted Vermont has a very low standard of reasonable suspicion, which could be corrected by the following. Eliminating prosecution of non-criminal offenses, such as jaywalking and vehicle taillight violations. Strongly emphasizing deescalation whenever possible during police encounters. And having the flexibility to use declination when appropriate in the justice system to reduce the chance of racial bias. Declination is a practice of declining to pursue criminal charges, declining to place persons in custody, and declining to impose harsh or impossible conditions. As for education and training, there was broad support for increased training on implicit and explicit biases, data analysis, deescalation and safety. Some of our interviewees argue that officers do not generally understand the breadth and depth of racial oppression in the US, while one police chief made this topic central to his officers training. Many mention that funding for such training is inadequate and that time constraints further work against adequate attention to racial issues during training. As for staffing and resource challenges, police departments are experiencing serious staffing challenges, but are committed to hiring qualified applicants from diverse backgrounds. As for social service gaps, some interviewees noted that policing would be impossible without the support of community groups that help address mental health and substance abuse problems. One law enforcement leader would like to see a study that identifies gaps in social services that led to subsequent crisis calls, shining a light on the upstream circumstances that led to 9-1-1 emergencies. Eugene Oregon's CAHOOTS program was cited as a national model for embedding experts in mental health, substance abuse and homelessness with local police. And finally, about organization, many government officials argued that elevating the Department of Public Safety into an agency would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement in Vermont. Such a change would also provide a mechanism for consolidating police resources regionally and for the state to have greater influence over the policing practices of town and county police officers. So with all that said, BIA's new contribution is a Vermont guide to community engagement with local police departments. BIA's research on improving racial equity in policing in Vermont generated a wealth of information and ideas for change. As a next step in this work, we are releasing today a new guide to help communities engage constructively with their local police forces with the goal of reducing racism in policing. The guide, which has been vetted by one of the police chiefs that we interviewed, is designed to give concerned citizens the benefit of BIA's experience in this space and a concrete tool to help them work in concert with law enforcement to produce better outcomes for all. BIA drafted a series of questions in different categories such as training, accountability and grievance processes that community members can use to start a dialogue with their law enforcement officials. We believe that police departments will also benefit from the guide as they seek more constructive interaction with the communities they serve on the question of racism in law enforcement. The guide will be available on BIA's website and hard copies are available for those of you present in person this evening. The guide begins with the case for civilian oversight of law enforcement and an overview of policing in Vermont, followed by the series of questions that are intended to be a first step in opening up a dialogue between the police and concerned members of the community they serve. The questions also provide a chance for police officers to talk about policing as a vocation and their motivations for serving. There is also an opportunity for them to talk about the challenges and trauma they have experienced performing the job and how they handle it. The guide concludes with a section on additional resources, including links to websites. We encourage all communities in Vermont to initiate such a dialogue with their police departments in the spirit of building trust and coming together to help address a serious and persistent concern that affects the lives of all Vermonters regardless of race. Vermont Interfaith Action is willing and eager to assist, coach, support, mentor, any community group anywhere in the state that would like to use the guide. If the community group uncovers information that is disturbing or at least needs follow-up, BIA leaders are happy to guide them in ways they might do that and resources they could use. Thank you. Thank you, Nina. Now, we will hear from our guests. So we'll start with hearing from Anne Naumann, who was involved in establishing a community group on equity and diversity in Richmond, Vermont. Hi everybody. My name is Anne Green-Naumann, and I've been asked to talk about how it is that Richmond racial equity got started. So originally the work in Richmond started when President Trump was still in office, and I became quite distressed about some of the things happening in the southern border. And then in researching it more and in talking to some people through my work with the Open Door Clinic out of Middlebury, which serves the migrant farm population, I became aware of the jeopardy that some of the farm workers were in from interactions with police that often got them entangled with ICE or immigration and customs enforcement. And so out of that came some work with a few other people here in Richmond to try to get our police department in Richmond to make changes about how much they communicated with ICE and how much help they gave to them. And originally we didn't get very far, and life got busy and I kind of let it go. And then George Floyd's death happened, and there became a lot of us here in Richmond that were concerned about racial equity issues, and we started meeting in, I think it was June, around the time that, at the same time that George Floyd was killed, or the whole tribe, that whole thing. And we started meeting, and originally there were about 50 of us that were meeting on a pretty regular basis, and the first project that we tackled was No Most Polymigris, which is about not having police coordinate and help ICE. And we were basically successful in getting our select for board to agree that that was an important thing and getting our new interim police chief to agree to make those changes. So that was the first thing that happened. And then we started trying to address a few other things. We started working on some education, public education and education of our police force and education ourselves about racial justice issues. And so now two years later we have a core group of people of about anywhere between eight and 15 people that come to meetings and work on things on a regular basis. And the biggest thing that I would suggest to people considering this kind of work is that you can't do it on your own. When I started I was trying to do it mostly on my own with a few people helping and it just didn't happen. And I think in a lot of ways we were successful because of the timing when we finally were able to get No Most Polymigris passed and make some other changes here in Richmond because it all happened around George Floyd when the whole world was up in arms about things. And so that's a large part of why we were successful. But the other large part of why we were successful is that there was a whole group of us working on this and you know many hands make less work and many brains are smarter together. So I would suggest that if you're going to do this work you try to work together with a whole group of people and see if you can get other people involved so that all the work isn't on any one person. Our next guest is Rebecca Turner, the appellate attorney supervisor in the Vermont Office of Defender General and a member of the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel. Hello. Good evening. My name is Rebecca Turner. I'm a public defender at the Office of the Defender General and I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person to share my thoughts with you directly in person. But I appreciate the opportunity to share my congratulations to all of those who worked on this wonderful resource on how to engage directly with police chiefs on the issue of bias discrimination. I have not seen a statewide guide on this subject yet. So it is a welcome addition to our toolbox on racial justice in the state. As a public defender when I stand beside my client who may be black or brown who is always economically disadvantaged. It is the nature of these things that I am the only voice in the room to object to the biased or discriminatory treatment of law enforcement towards my client resulting in how he or she got to the courtroom. This guide provides a way for you to join my voice by directly engaging with police departments in your local communities to demand accountability, transparency, and most critically change. I certainly recognize that police officers serve a critical role in our society. They protect us the public and we need them to be great. We need them to protect all of us, not just some of us. And so thank you for coming out tonight to learn more about this resource to think about how this may be applicable to your local communities. And I certainly thank you and appreciate your voice joining mine on these issues. Good night. And finally, I'd like to introduce Chief, goodness gracious, where'd he go? Chief Rick Hebert, Chief of the Winooski Police Department. So thank you, Chief Hebert, for being with us. I really appreciate you taking the time and all your help and our research and reviewing our guide. So the first question I'd like to ask you is just to recognize that Winooski is one of the most diverse municipalities in the entire state. What are a few of the steps that you have taken to ensure that your officers respect that diversity and treat everyone that they encounter fairly and equitably? Sure. I just wanted to start today by thanking you for including me both in the conversation on the development of the guide and also the opportunity to share my thoughts on the finished product. So thank you for that. As far as your question goes, the first thing to do in my opinion really is to just prioritize basic human rights principle. And our department calls out in our strategic plan, our core principles, even our officer job descriptions to value all human life, to embrace a caretaker mentality and remember that every single person's life has worth. Our department also used the President's Task Force report on 21st century policing as the foundation for how we police on a daily basis. And it really emphasizes building and maintaining good working relationships with the community that we serve. And it's always been my mentality that residents are funding the Police Department and we should always be open to community input and provide those services that the community expects. Another crucial item in my opinion is adopting a customer service mentality. It includes trainings that not only prioritize delivering fair and impartial policing, but it's also understanding unconscious bias, customer service and cultural competency in both policy and real world applications. And then last, I believe constantly reevaluating higher delivering services, both by analyzing data and outcomes to determine if current policies and procedures are unknowingly victimizing traditionally marginalized communities is an essential part. So you have Fred, the IE's guide to engaging with Police Departments and could you just share with us what your assessment is of the goal and the contents of the guide? Absolutely. So I think the guide has been an excellent blueprint on how to start a dialogue with your Police Department. I do feel it gives people an outline on how to start these conversations between law enforcement and the residents in these communities. Also understanding the work that's being done along with things like operational expectations, oversight, budgets, staffing, data analysis and how responses to calls for services constantly evolving is vital to building and maintaining the trust between the departments and the communities that they serve. And can you envision the guide being helpful to start a dialogue? You were just coming up on this between community members and yourself or other police chiefs in the state. And what would you hope would come out of such a dialogue? Sure. I do believe the guide is going to be very helpful in starting these conversations. The documents well thought out. It prioritizes relevant current issues in policing and any questions and any relevant questions involving policing going forward. I hope that having these conversations and spending time discussing those tough issues will build trust and legitimacy between police departments and the communities that they serve. The shared goal should always be for people to feel safe, trust their Police Department and deliver services in a professional and equitable manner. Thank you so much, Chief. It was great to hear your comments and we appreciate your help. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. Next, we're going to hear from Bill Neal. Good evening. I'm Bill Neal, member of the first congregational church here in Burlington. As you've already heard, faith-based community organizing is all about working for systemic justice throughout our communities, throughout our region, wherever we live and work. And tonight's program would not be complete without some kind of ask, some kind of challenge, some kind of invitation for follow-up action. We have prepared this marvelous guide for our local communities to engage themselves as citizens with their local policing agencies. So what we'd like to do tonight is invite you to indicate your interest or willingness to be part of such a small group working in your local community using the guide and the other resources that we have available. If you're here tonight in person, I think you have a little card on which you could place your basic contact information. Just give us enough and make it clear enough that we would be able to identify you in order to be in touch with you and indicate what town, city or regional area that you would be interested in working with a group of citizens to further this work of local community oversight. In policing, if you are with us virtually in the Zoom world, which many, many of you are and wonderful that you are able to participate, we invite you to present your basic personal contact info by way of the chat room. And again, indicate how we would be in touch with you by phone, by email, and what community, city, town, county, what area that you would be interested in providing your effort to work with others in your own area. And we will take that information and be in touch with you to help get you started in these conversations that will hopefully bring the practice of fair and impartial policing, not merely as a policy, but as a culture of policing day to day throughout the state of Vermont. Thank you very, very much. Thank you, Bill. By being here tonight. Oh, collect the cards. Careful, I might. Right. So right now we're collecting cards that Bill has encouraged folks to fill out. And please write your information in the chat and we can collect it there. You're good. By being here tonight, we've all demonstrated that our community and everyone in it matters to us. We have shown that while coming from diverse faith traditions, we come together around deeply shared values. The IA's mission is to create the hope, the power and the political will that will make compassion and social justice a reality for all Vermonters. I want to thank you all, especially our guests for being part of tonight's event. Before we adjourn, I would like to extend two invitations. First, we will have a brief evaluation session of this evening's event. If you'd like to be part of this evaluation, I invite you to join us, well, probably right up front here, or to stay on Zoom immediately after we adjourn. Please note that this evaluation is intended for those involved with VIA who have participated in planning and implementing this event. Second, if you are not already a member of Vermont Interfaith Action and would like to learn more about VIA, please go to our website and use the contact form to get in touch with us or speak to anyone here with a name tag. We will be happy to give you more information. And so in closing, we'll have a reflection by Reverend Elise Young. Good evening friends. I'm Alyssa John, I'm the lead minister at the First Congregational Church of Burlington, Vermont. And I have been very glad to be participating or watching this process unfold. Now Ken started us tonight. He started his reflection in 1966. Now, it might be a little bit more pressing for me than it is for some of you. But I know I'm not alone in desiring that we not be in the same spot 60 years from now. And as we have been reminded tonight, we are here to bear witness to the work to be done to renew our resolve to end systemic racism and to speak prophetically about the moral dimensions of systems, the moral dimensions of choices. So thank you for being here. Because as Bell Hooks once wrote, I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism that is fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to the individual self improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community. And as Anne reminded us, we can't do this alone and we shouldn't. We are here to pay attention to the context of community and the practice of love. Now, in response to this quote, the Christian theologian, Cole Arthur Riley, who goes by the online name Black Liturgist, put together a breath meditation, breath being across all the major religions, one of the ways we most connect to the spirit, however we name it. So I would invite you, I'm charged with a closing prayer here to settle to yourself and comfortably to sit in a way that connects you to the ground below to the chair that you are on to straighten out your back and to feel the breath flow in and out of you. And I want you to pay attention to that breath, close your eyes if you need to to focus in only on that and inhale the words I can look toward the collective and exhale my path is not solitary. I can look toward the collective and my path is not solitary. As you repeat this to yourself, my prayer for us all this night would be that it sink deeply into every part of your being. That you might know yourself part of this collective that you might know your own spirituality come more fully alive. By paying full attention to the practice of love within the context of community, and that we might go together from this night to make it real. In the name of love, may it be so. I declare this meeting to be adjourned. Thank you all so much for coming. Good night and blessings to you all.