 All right. Well, good evening everyone. My name is Emma Mulvaney-Stanik and I am a former city counselor from the Old North End and also former state chair of the Vermont Progressive Party. We are really excited to see a great participation tonight already and really excited about the caucus we're about to embark on. So thank you for making time to be here. It's great to see new faces and familiar faces and we really have an open caucus. We're really excited to see everyone here tonight. And raise your hand if you're a first time caucus goer for the Progressives. Awesome. Welcome. Very exciting. A little more enthusiasm. I know it's like seven o'clock. All right. Great. So we have a tight agenda tonight. We're going to try to run it on time but some of our caucuses are contested and we have time in the agenda to really allow folks from those wards to really talk to candidates, get to know their options. I'm cutting. Here I am. Okay. And to really make sure that you feel fully informed about who you want to give the Progressive nomination to or the endorsement I should say. So a little housekeeping. So we're in the cafeteria. Edmunds School has two parts to it. So when we wake up, break up for the caucus, there's the middle school which is the building up to the left and there's the elementary up to the right if you're my direction, if you turned around. Okay. So your right and your left, these two directions. So there will be some caucuses. I'll go over where that are going to use a couple classrooms up in the middle school and I'll explain how to get there in a minute. And the other half of the wards will stay in this room. There's, I believe still, is this breaking out? I'll stay right this way. Okay. Can you hear me still? Okay. And there's bathrooms I'm pretty sure out in the hallway. So please take care of yourself. And is there any more housekeeping, Josh, in terms of everyone should have received a ballot on the way in? And if anyone has any eligibility questions around your caucus status and if you're able to vote, you can go see some of our check-in people before we go into the caucuses or into the ward caucuses. All right. So with that, I have two other quick things before passing the mic over to Brian Sheena, represented Brian Sheena. And the first is who knows what the inspector of elections does. Pop quiz. Just raise your hand. One person. Awesome. All right. A little quick tutorial. We're going to be talking about three elected positions tonight in our ward caucuses at city council, school commissioner and the inspector of elections, which is vital to our local democracy. You basically work side by side with the ward clerks on election days and help to make sure democracy happens, that it's fair, that the elections happen fairly, that the voters get to register to vote since we have same-day registration and really just help the elections process happen. It's a pretty small gig. It's a great entry point. If you ever wanted to dabble in getting elected, there are always at least one seat open in every election cycle for town meeting. And in some words, there's more than one, because there's a couple vacancies out there. There's, I believe, three inspectors of elections in every ward. So think about it. It's a super low bar. Great way to get engaged and get your foot in the door. And if you have more questions, you can see Josh Ronsky from the party. Where do he go? He's somewhere. Or myself, if you have questions before you go to your caucus. The other quick housekeeping or other piece, if we do need a parliamentarian, I'm also going to serve in that function. So if there is a procedural question in your ward caucus or even in the meeting, the larger meeting tonight, I'll be answering those rules and procedures. Sound good? You with me? I have a three-month-old and I am more awake than all of you. So let's just like bring the energy up a little bit. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. So next up, let's hear from Brian. Brian, where are you? Friend Brian. Friend Brian is not here? Gil Livingston. Playing the role of Brian today. We'll be Gil Livingston. It's great to see such a big crowd. So I'm talking about money. I'm going to do it briefly, but this is really important. We have had great success, especially in the greater Burlington area, but statewide in terms of supporting progressive candidates and progressive issues. And it happens relentlessly. It's hard just to call out this week, but my friend Jack, working with the progressive members of the council this week, got approval, preliminary approval for instant runoff election principles on the ballot in April. And so that requires a lot of work, right? You've seen a lot of volunteers here tonight, so it's not just a staffing piece, but Josh Ronsky does an incredible job for us. I don't know how he does everything he does with such limited time, but we need to maintain capacity, including Josh, to achieve all the success we've had, including organizing caucuses, supporting candidates, partnering with allied organizations around key policy issues. So we really encourage you to make contributions. My wife Amy is here. She actually started this in our household. We've had a regular monthly contribution to progressive party for years, and it's slowly ratcheted up. So especially if you can do a regular direct payment or credit card payment to the party, that would be tremendously helpful. So thank you all for coming and write a check, make a contribution. Thank you. Thanks, Gil. I'm also a happy sustainer, a monthly donor to the party, and I really encourage folks to consider that. No donation is too small. And you all have donation envelopes in your hand. You should have received one. It's an invitation to join literally the party, small p, right? That was a joke. Thank you for laughing. Okay. Thank you. Well, you really all need to bring the energy up. Okay. Okay, here we go. So this will bring the energy up. Let's talk about caucus rules. So let's bring Erhard up to talk you through how the caucuses will function. Wow, what an introduction. For those who are energy challenged, there is some sugar from the dessert potluck in the back. So sugar up. Again, my name is Erhard Manca. I live in Ward 1 on Grove Street. I've been involved with the progressive party since before there was a progressive party and former city counselor during the Bernie era. So everybody should have received a little sheet as they registered, came in, and has enrolled at the top. Caucus rules. I want to just go over them briefly to make sure there's not going to be a quiz, but I'm assuming that people have not yet read all this. So let me briefly go over it. A couple of eligibility requirements. So this is based on our bylaws and state law. Number one, you have to be an eligible Burlington voter. If you are not currently registered to vote, you can still register out in the hallway. You have to support the progressive party platform and the statement of principles. I will spare you the reading of the statement of principles. There is one copy over in one of the alcoves in the back in case you want to check it out. It's also on the party website. You have to consider yourself to be a member of the Vermont progressive party. You cannot currently be serving on either the Democratic or the Republican Party Committee, and you can't vote in either the Democratic or Republican Party endorsement caucus. So that one's really important. If you were planning to go to either Democratic or Republican caucuses as they come up, I think the Democrats are having theirs in early January, you can't vote in both. So decision time. If you're here and you want to vote here, that's great. That's fine. We welcome everyone who considers themselves a member of the progressive party, but know that you can't also then go to a Democratic caucus and vote there. Rules for endorsement. So our bylaws have some guidelines that urge you to consider the following factors when you're voting to endorse a candidate. Number one, their affirmative endorsement of the Vermont progressive party statement of principles, their commitment not to work in opposition to any provision in the platform, the candidate's commitment not to work against the progressive party endorsed candidates, and a commitment to caucus regularly with other progressive elected officials. Any questions on either the eligibility requirements or things you should be thinking about as you're deciding who to endorse. Great. So then the ward caucus rules are, and probably the caucus leaders will go over this in each individual caucus just to make sure everybody's on the same wavelength, but to ensure a fair process, we want to adhere to the following guidelines. Number one, let's do city council endorsements first before we get into school commissioners or inspectors of elections ward clerks. Each candidate may be nominated by one caucus goer. There could be one endorsement speech of no more than one or two minutes for each candidate. And then each candidate is going to have three to five minutes to make their case for why they want the progressive endorsement. Caucus goers will have up to 20 minutes for Q&A. We ask that all questions A be brief, B be respectful, and C be directed to each candidate. So not, you know, targeting one candidate with one question and another with another. And please keep statements to a minimum, make them real questions. Then voting is going to be conducted by secret ballot. And as Emma said, if you haven't already got your ballot, please go back outside and register and get your ballot. They're issued by a by ward secret ballot. There's going to be a writing option. There's a no endorsement option. And after the caucus has concluded, we'll have ballot counters, collect those. And you can come back here for the keynote, keynote speech, which is going to be Mohammed Shafar talking about an exciting voter initiative that he has been a great leader on to get more new Americans to participate in the local process. Any questions? Josh, I didn't make up the ballots. Josh, did anyone hear the question? This generator, former city clerk is asking why there is no designation for ward clerk on the thank you. They're not they're not up this year. Other questions? Anyone else? Did I meet my time with it? All right. Ali. Could you say who you are Ali? Because you said Ali. Ward seven city councilor. Thank you. So the endorsement for school commissioners, where did it come from? I mean, it seems new to me this year. I just want an explanation sure. I'll try to feel that. So for folks who may not know a number of years ago, school commissioners no longer ran by party affiliation. They used to run by party affiliation that was done away with a number of years ago. I actually didn't like that idea, but it happened. That doesn't mean that you can't get an endorsement. What we have here is an endorsement process. It's not a formal nominating process. So you could still run you as a school commissioner. You would be on the ballot without a party affiliation on the ballot, but in your literature, you could say, for example, that you're endorsed by the progressive party or the Democratic or the Republican Party, but it would not have a DP or R next to your name on the ballot because they're nonpartisan elections. Other questions? Seeing none. Emma. Thank you, Erhard. Yeah, I'll do that next. Yeah, thanks. Okay. How about a round of applause for Erhard? We'll get the blood moving a little bit more. Okay. All right. So we need sugar. We need caffeine. Okay. So yes, ma'am. Can you hear me now in the back of the room? Good. Okay. All right. So we're going to go through where the different caucuses are going to meet, and I'm going to introduce you to your caucus leaders. So I'll do the leaders first. So if you're a leader and I mention your name, could you stand up and give a wave so people can make eye contact if that's their ward? So Ward 1, Mark Hughes. Hi, Mark. All right. Ward 2, Annie Schneider. Where are you, Annie? She's over here on the side. You can see through the half wall. Ward 3 is bar prime up there in the back. Back's dead center there. Ward 4, I believe, is going to be Josh for now. No, who's Ward 4 now? They're going to do it together. All right. So Kenan's come in for a big challenge. So Kenan is going to do Ward 4 and 7. So he's right down. Sorry. Is that true? Is that true? True statement. You said true? All right. Excellent. All right. Ward 5 is Muhammad Jafar. Muhammad, you are back there. Back corner. Thank you. Ward 6 is Kelly Pierpont. Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. Where are you, my friend? Right here in the middle of the room. Ward 7 we mentioned is Kenan again and Ward 8 is Joe. Hi, Joe. Back there in the middle of the side. All right. So this is where you're headed. So again, if you're confused about what ward you reside in, you can see one of us to help you. Otherwise, listen for your ward. Ward 1 is probably going to be a larger gathering. So we're going to send you upstairs. So there's going to be a few wards that go upstairs. They're all next to each other. They're classrooms in the middle school. So you're going to go back out these double doors, up the stairs, over the bridge, through the woods, and to the first three classrooms that you come to. There'll be two on the right, I believe, and one on the left. The lights will be on. Okay? And it's first come, first serve. Excuse me? And through the woods? So there is a bridge connecting this part of the building with the middle school building. So it's a hallway. It's a hallway with some pretty windows that look into the darkness. Does that answer your question? All right. And you know what? Once you find your caucus leader, they will bravely leave you over the bridge through the woods into your classroom. Okay. You can follow them. So Ward 1 is going to be one of those wards using that classroom. So you will go in and over the bridge and up to one of the first classrooms you come to. Ward 3 is going to be in this room, over in this side of the room. Okay? So Ward 3 stays here over on this side of this big room. Wards 4 and 7 are also going up over the bridge. They'll be meeting in the same room and meeting together apparently anyway. So you're going to share a classroom. Good? All right. Ward 2 will stay in this room as well. The other part of the Old North End, they'll be on this side of the room. So Ward 2 stays in this room, this side. Ward 5 and 6 will also go upstairs and they will also split the final classroom upstairs and be run on two sides of the room. We imagine these are smaller gatherings, so you should be able to hold on one second, share that classroom. And finally Ward 8 is also going to stay in this room and we're going to put you in the back corner this way. So 3 and 8 are going to sort of split this side of the room. Okay? Questions? Barb, I saw a hand. Are you going to Ward 2 or Ward 4 1? So you're going to one flight up. You're going to follow your Ward leaders. I'm going to repeat those people's names in a minute and you can... Oh, thank you. Okay. So it's one floor up. Is that help? Okay. One floor up. Thank you for the clarification. Sorry, two floors up. I apologize. If you're riding the elevator, it's two floors up. Okay. And Barb, I see your hand. You'll be able to tell if you're in the right room, right? So if you're in Ward 3, it's a red ballot. You can hang out with all the red people and in the other ballots are color coded. So if you follow the color of your ballots... Yeah. I'm also going to excuse you. I'm going to excuse everyone kind of like they do in school anyway, to see if you can be organized. So Ward 1, hold on. Hold on where you are. Ward 1, if you are in Ward 1, please stand up. If you're not in Ward 1, please sit down. So Ward 1, please follow Mark Hughes, out the door and up the stairs. And then everyone else, hold on one moment. Ward 4 and 7, you're going to follow Kevin. And he's walking... He is walking free as a grayish best on. Ward 4 and 7. He's in the middle room and he'll take you upstairs. Okay. Ward 5 and 6. Ward 5 and 6. I see Muhammad over there. And Kelly's probably headed that way, also in the back corner. So go ahead and find Kelly and Muhammad and head upstairs. And then finally, if you're in Ward 8 or the old north end, you're staying here. Ward 2 is on this side. So my left and Ward 3 and 8 are going to be on this side. All right. Here we go. All right. Welcome back. And if you're coming back in from Ward 1, if you could find a seat, we're just about to reconvene. Ladies and gentlemen, clap once if you can hear me. Clap twice if you can hear me. Clap three times if you can hear me. Welcome back. Does everyone have a good caucus in their wards? Yeah. All right. Hold your enthusiasm, crowd. Okay. All right. Thank you, Barb. I am like literally talking into this thing. Okay. So welcome back. Thank you for participating in your wards. We're going to hear from our keynote speaker and then we'll announce the results. We still have some ballots we're going through from the caucuses. So without actually, before we do that, Muhammad, before we do that, we have another guest speaker, Brian. Where'd you go? Yeah. Brian's going to come up and say one more inspired thing around the importance of fundraising for the party. So it represented Brian Sheena. Okay. So I'm going to quickly just say that it's important that we as individuals chip in whatever we can, a little bit we can towards the progressive party because the progressive party does not accept any contributions from any corporations and in our capitalist society, that makes a difference because corporations give lots of money to the other political parties. And so it's important that each person, you know, chip in if you can. It really helps to have a staff person working for the progressive party as a legislator, to have Josh Ronsky, who deserves some clapping for the work he does, because he goes above and beyond for what we pay him. He does like two people's jobs for the price of one. And it would be nice if over time we could have a few more staff people to help us on the state level and to help on the city level. And so I donate $10 a month. That's how much I think I can afford. And it comes out of a credit card every month. And then I pay it, you know, when I pay my credit card bill. And every year I get 12 cents back from the credit card because they give like reward points. So over the course of like 100 years, I might make like $12 back. So there might be a better way to pay it. But that being said, I just wanted to share my story as a contributor and share with people where the money goes. It actually goes to the salary of a staff person, a working class person who works with us, and really hard to do the work of the party on a grassroots level, without any help of any corporations. It's all people powered. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. All right. So without further ado, we're going to invite up Mohamed Jafar, who's going to discuss his work with the New American Voting Project. So come on up, Mohamed. Thank you. All right. Hello, hello. First and foremost, thank you all for being out here tonight. Can I just get a round of applause for all of you? All right. Some of you may know me. Some of you may not. I ran for city council last year. I lost. But I want to share with you all a project that I started back in November of last year, and a project that is now coming together in its many pieces. And I think it's going to be a project that's going to be very, very valuable to the city of Burlington and to the democracy that is our system. So the project, New American Voter Registration Project. So essentially last year in November, during the presidential election, everyone was very excited to come out and vote. There were several new Americans that came out. It was their first time coming out to vote. And one of the biggest concerns that was highlighted to me, I serve on the board for the registration of voters. So I was on the side during the polling time, during the polling and election day. And someone, not someone, several people came up to me and they were just concerned that they didn't really know what to do. They said they had the conviction in them to vote. Donald Trump brings people out, whether we like it or not. And people came out to vote, but a lot of people felt like they didn't have the direction that they needed to feel comfortable and to feel as though they had the access necessary to really feel enriched in their voting and in the process. So I was angry, I crossed my arms, I stomped my feet, and I went all the way up to the Secretary of State's office and I said, what the heck is going on? To which the reply was, calm down, let's figure out how to do this. And since I have embarked on this project, which has aimed to bring accessibility to a part of our community that really does not get the representation and accessibility that it needs and deserves. So we embarked on a three-part project which included videos, translated ballots in six languages, and an event which would essentially invite people to the process again and give them information that they need to know how to vote and what the voting process looks like. I bring this project to the table for the Progressive Party because I think this project and the Progressive Party share a heart. I think that the soul of the Progressive Party is to move forward and to bring people to the table that are not at the table. And in order to bring people to the table, sometimes we have to take the extra leap to pull them in. And I think that this project is something that will pull even more people in. So we embarked on a pilot project which is going to be started in Burlington and in Winooski and will hopefully expand. So as I said, we have six of the languages translated. We have videos that we recorded in the six various languages and actors from all over Burlington, these videos can be viewed on the Secretary of State's website and they will also be viewed during our event which we can get more information about at another time. And so the six languages were translated so folks can come in, they can see and ask for whichever language that they speak and I wish we could have more languages but this again is a pilot and if it does work we'll be able to implement it on a yearly basis. And I'm very, very thankful to the Secretary of State's office for taking this project on. There is a certain cap in terms of the amount of folks that are United States citizens and can vote that is needed in order for voter technology and access to languages to be triggered if you will and the Secretary of State's office still took this project on with me even with my stomping and arms crossed and it's really going to be a project. If you can't tell it's a project I'm very, very proud of and the best part is it's not even my project. It's a project that belongs to several people that are here right now that worked with me after the first meeting with the Secretary's office didn't go so well. I brought in some brains, I brought some people who are involved in the community who are part of the Progressive Party. I brought those folks in and we all put our minds together and we came up with a system, a structure and a project that really is going to work and again if you can't tell already I'm super duper excited. If there's anything I'm missing I'm just going to go ahead and give a quick soft shout out to the folks that are in this room that have already worked on the project with me which is Annie in the corner over there, Adin over there, Barb and Ali and several other people whom I'm probably missing but again I bring this project to the table to all of you because I really do feel that the Progressive Party embodies what my values are. Oh my god I apologize one of our actors in fact I apologize and so yeah. So again it embodies what this Progressive Party is and that's why I'm bringing it all to you and I hope that you will share this information with your neighbors and with the community and again I'm very excited and hopefully this will be something that will be implemented across the state at some point. What are the six languages Barb please help me when I get stuck they are Swahili, Arabic, Somali, French, Nepali and Burmese. See that's why they're on board with the project that's what they do. So again a round of applause for everyone that's worked on the project but also all of you again thank you all for being here tonight and thank you for having me. Are there actually any questions besides that for for Mohammed? Any questions about the project? Ask away. Is this a project of the Secretary of State? Are there any paid staff? Like how are you organized? So again I went over there I was kind of angry and so just to repeat the question is this a project of the Secretary of State's office? Yes and no I think it's a project of the community but he is funding it and he did you know he yeah yeah he's doing quite a lot so it's certainly a project of both the Secretary of State's office and the larger community. Again it's it's there is a certain threshold that needs to be met in order for something like that to be triggered and as soon as I went there the Secretary of State's office was very understanding and and receptive to the message that I was sending which was hey we want we say we want to be progressive we say we want democracy we say we want to bring people to the table this is an opportunity to do it and you know and so here we are with a project and it's going to be amazing. A question from Ali? Yes so there is an event there are going to be actually two of thank you Ali that's a great question there are going to be two events one in Winooski and one in Burlington and we'll get more information out there once we kind of have our details rooted but we have two events in which we are going to invite the Secretary and we're going to invite community members we're going to have food and we are going to give people the information that they need and give let people know about the project but also help people get registered to vote so that we have a bigger body of progressives. So we unfortunately do have a very limited amount of resources and so these were the languages that were at the top of the list in terms of meeting both the number of United States citizens but also folks that are able to able to and are going to vote so I wish we had Spanish and again this is going to be it's a first step right now we have nothing and as I always like to put it this is going to be better than nothing and next year we'll hopefully expand on that and we'll get Spanish in there that is my goal is that this isn't just a one-time thing nor is it a five-language thing any other questions awesome thank you all again okay so a little bit of news from Montpelier in case folks are not familiar our house progressives the folks elected to state representative in the house have a caucus themselves and I wanted to announce that Selena Colburn who is a representative from the east side of the city district six one is the new in six four sorry whatever yeah somewhere over that way she's the new assistant leader of the progressive house caucus so we wanted to congratulate her first of all she's right there in the back and also to thank Deanna yeah to thank representative Deanna Gonzalez who's a representative from the Winooski and slight bit of Burlington district which is again you don't worry about the numbers but she's served in that role in the past and we really have appreciated her leadership there's strong women in this caucus and we really appreciate both of you stepping up and serving so congratulations Selena and thank you Deanna for your for your work okay are we ready for the results of the caucus okay here we go can everyone hear me oh hold on okay at the end okay so at the end if you are if you did receive the endorsement we're going to ask all the candidates to come up to the front of the room at the end and we'll take a photo of those folks okay so if you are an endorse candidate just remember that please i'm gonna go in reverse order okay so ward eight ward eight which is in the central part of the city for city council the ward endorsed Jane Stromberg for city council can you stand up just if you're if this is you just stand up so people can see you and you can be recognized at the end you can all come up okay so that was for city council and for school commissioner Aden Haji was nominated for the progressive endorsement and there was no inspector of elections at least endorsed in this caucus ward seven out in the new north end so our incumbent Ali Deng was received the endorsement for the progressive city council and for school commissioner the incumbent Monica Ivonsik did i say that correctly Ivonsik with Monica congratulations and then moving over to ward six um the wards are not logically ordered here anyway ward six we're going in oh sorry was there inspector elections i didn't capture that thank you jade as i said it's the gateway position into the elected office all right ward six uh back over to um the hill section of the city there was no city council candidate endorsed uh there i believe it's no candidate so there wasn't there was no one endorsed and then for school commissioner claire wool received the progressive endorsement ward five um to the south end the city council position uh endorsement went to nathan uh land tier was mike fischer who received the endorsement all right counting down ward four back to the new north end uh the city council endorsement went to sarah carpenter sarah and i believe there was no uh school commissioner endorsement in that particular caucus ward three just kidding back to ward eight first there are two inspectors of election there pora smith received the endorsement also lola jacuzzi i said i love when women run for office total bias but i love when women run for office so well done okay so ward three uh brian hyde received the endorsement he's an incumbent for ward three inspector of elections barbie also one of the inspector of elections endorsing there was no school commissioner endorsement in that caucus ward two max tracy won the city council endorsement the school commissioner endorsement steve carrey is and then the inspector of elections was um hallad al barbark ward one um in for the city council endorsement it went to zariah hyde the election endorsements in ward one i think i covered it all yay okay so congratulations to all the endorsed candidates thank you for everyone's grand and the love click themselves forward we had a few contested races and with that we invite all the endorsed candidates to come to the front