 Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that all things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. So December 1st was World AIDS Day. And for those of us who've been around for a day or two, we remember a time when HIV and AIDS was a dominant part of our lives. It took up a lot of room, took up a lot of energy, and it took a lot of lives. But the epidemic has changed. And joining me today to talk about how this pandemic has changed is the Executive Director of Vermont Cares, Peter Jacobson. Welcome, Peter. Thank you so much for talking to me, Keith. I appreciate this. Thank you so much for coming back. It's been a while since Peter's been on. Now, Peter, you've been Executive Director for Vermont Cares for a while now. Yeah, coming up on 15 years in total. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I remember when you were young and influential. No. Impressionable. So during your 15 years at Vermont Cares, how has this pandemic changed? It's changed enormously. Vermont has so much to be proud of. I cannot overstate how proud Vermont should be. We are leading the nation in terms of people having access to medical care to manage HIV. There's a solid network to take care of people, let them focus on HIV health so that we can help with housing. We can help with utilities. We can take some of the pressure off and that lets people with HIV really focus on getting to medical appointments, staying on medications, staying undetectable. We'll talk more about that in a sec if you don't mind. Oh, absolutely. Because there is so much that Vermont does really, really well because we're a small state. We're intimately connected. We know each other as providers and Vermonters value each other. We take care of our own. Vermont should be really proud of that. So that's the broader context. What has changed is that new medications have come online and the network of HIV prevention has really expanded. Probably even when you and I last spoke, HIV prevention was struggling in our state and we've seen a really exponential explosion of access to HIV prevention in the last two or three years because syringe service programs are exploding all around the state in a really beautiful way. Meaning we have now many more people have access to sterile equipment, to fentanyl test strips to make sure they're not putting something more poisonous into their bodies and to niloxone. That's because we have mobile access all around the state so that we can reach tiny towns that we just can't afford to set up a new office in. And it's really fun watching people have access to healthcare and HIV prevention tools that they deserve. So Vermont is doing better these days. I mean, it really makes me smile to hear you talk about, you know, the needle exchange programs in safe environments because I remember the fight to get it through the department of help to really identify what were those things that we could do to diminish risk and what were the reasonable things and getting over our biases when we approached this. So it sounds as though messaging has changed a little bit, it's shifted. Men who have sex with men, this is something for which we still need to be aware and take appropriate precautions. Yep, men who have sex with men are still disproportionately the largest number of new HIV infections in our state and the largest total number of people with HIV in our state. So yeah, HIV is still impacting Vermont's queer community the most. And other risk factors of HIV are far fewer. So I understand that there is a new campaign, educational campaign that's going out. That's called you and you. And it's not the Unitarian Universalist Society. And it's not me and you. Could you explain what that you and you might be? Yes, this is a campaign that is designed to call attention to how beautiful it is that we in the United States especially have access to HIV medications that keep people healthy for decades. Basically, this stands for undetectable equals untransmissible, meaning people with HIV who take their medication every day who do not have a detectable amount of HIV in their bodies, otherwise known as undetectable. They're not able to transmit HIV to sexual partners. And we've known that as a community for many years, but haven't been able to scientifically prove it until the last couple of years. So having science be able to back up what we've all known means that some of the stigma around HIV and potential sexual risk is able to evaporate a little bit, because people with HIV aren't going to be transmitting HIV, especially like I said in a state like Vermont where people are generally undetectable and have access to medications. This is a huge advance and it means that it's also going to slow the spread of HIV to new partners. This is so different than the days when we were friends taking care of friends and it was very much a hospice type model. You're talking about reaffirming someone's life, which is for those of us who have lived this long is so wonderful to hear. So looking at where we are right now and moving forward, what is it that we as a community could be doing to be supportive of the work of Vermont CARES? And the work of Vermont CARES is evolving. So I think statewide we have to acknowledge that this medication access is amazing, that we've done a really great job as a state in terms of breaking the link between HIV and homelessness. So more than 95% of the people that we work with are stably housed and that's beautiful. That was not the case when I started more than 10 years ago. And I think what I want to say now is that some of the stigma around substance use feels to me really parallel to some of the stigma around HIV in perhaps the early days of Vermont CARES. I need all of our monitors to sort of get over the stigma around substance use and move meaningfully toward people who use substances. All the folks who are coming to us through our service program to access light-saving services absolutely deserve someone that they can talk to in a non-judgmental way about ways to stay safe. And it's a beautiful opportunity. They don't have many people they can talk to necessarily around what they might be putting into their bodies, the ways they use, why they use, and having the space to do that can sure for some people be a path to recovery or no longer using. And then for some people is just a stable place where we can be a perpetual through-line in their lives. And that connection is vital. And people are so scared to talk about substance use that a lot of people do. There are a lot of different substances out there. So we just have to be able to talk about the whole spectrum of what HIV prevention is. HIV prevention is talking about sex, it's talking about medication, it's talking about homelessness, and it's talking about substance use. So what I would ask if my neighbors in Vermont is let's broaden that conversation and bring some of the love that Vermont Carers has been able to incorporate over all these years to a group of people who really, really, meaningfully deserve that too. It's very much my good days. Vermont Carers is still dealing with issues of some bias and maybe some unintentional unconscious discrimination. So I am all as as we're closing our time, I am sure that the same as all nonprofits in the era of COVID, remembering Vermont Carers when we do charitable donations would probably be a good thing. Absolutely. Yeah, Vermont Carers needs and deserves help. We are a small loan profit in the grand scheme of things, serving thousands of Vermonters, and we're facing in 2021 budget cuts. So we are frugal, we will do a lot with what we have, but we're facing pretty significant cuts and we're going to need to turn to the community for support. That can be a financial contribution, which is amazing. We also could use smart board members. We could use more people volunteering in socially distant ways, out in our communities. Vermont Carers, I started as a volunteer. It's a great place to get plugged in and to learn about the difference you can make in terms of HIV prevention or care. We need good person power. We have hundreds of volunteers each year. We always make more. And I could access that by going on to the Vermont Carers website and I could either make a donation, look at opportunities to volunteer, or look for what were the services that I might need personally. So with that, thank you for coming back. Thank you for the work you're doing. Good luck in the new year. To you too. Thanks. We'll talk soon, I hope. I'd like to welcome Jean Redmond to all things LGBTQ. Hi, Jean. How are you? I'm good, Linda. How are you? Pretty good. It's been a long time since we've actually talked. It has been. I bet it's much colder up there than it is down here. Yes, it is. But it was 50 degrees today. So, you know, we did have snow a few days ago. But you and I met in New Orleans in a writing group. I think that we probably started or came together somehow in like 1990 or so. So, I guess I've known you for a long time. Yes, we have. And we're still here. Yes, we are. So let me tell the audience a little bit about you. I'm going to read from a bio here. And we'll move on to some questions. Jean Redmond was born in Mississippi. An American novelist best known for her mystery series featuring New Orleans private investigator, Mickey Knight. On June 3, 2013, she married her partner Gillian Roger in New York City the same day when she went to win the Lambda literary awards. Her main theme of Redmond's novels are the protagonist's troubled childhood and how it affects her adult life, discrimination based on sexual orientation and alcoholism. Her novels follow a tradition of hard boiled fiction. Redmond's third book, The Intersection of Law and Desire, won the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian mystery. So is there anything I'm missing? I think you wrote, you've written Ten Mickey Night. Ten Mickey Night books, yeah. Okay. I've had actually three books that have won Lambda awards. Great. Yes, two more and I got Ill Will and, oh god, I'm blanking. I'd have to go take a look at the, I won't do it. And we can also just say it was one of the few writers that in the one of those moments when the LGBTQ people crossed over to the mainstream, they said, oh my god, we're the newest thing. And again and again and again, it's like, oh no, straight people aren't going to do that. But in the mid 90s, Law and Desire was actually originally published by WWE Norton. And I have my little moment of fame. I actually got my name in the New York Times. So, you know, I could die now. Well, you know, well, you know, not many people can say that really when you're talking about writing. Oh, I know, I know. And I recognize that I am incredibly lucky and privileged. No, you are. You're an amazing writer. I remember that from the early days. And we all could see that's coming. So in the Mickey Night novels, you know, was this was Mickey Night based on like you or some aspects of you or someone you just totally fiction was totally a totally fiction. And it was, you know, I've been reading, you know, mysteries and stuff. And of course, when I started writing Mickey Night, the first novel was published in 1990. That was the the Sue Grafton and Marsha Muller and Sarah Paretsky had really just sort of blown up the PI world. And I thought, okay, I like these books. But I was looking at them and saying, but what about the lesbians? Don't we, you know, it seemed to me that if you're the quintessential outsider as the private eye is, how more outside can you be than if you're queer? And so I thought, well, we really need it when you read a lesbian. And I want to read that book. And so then I realized, you know, if you want to read that book, you probably got to write it. And so I was playing with the ideas of the hard boiled detective. And as I started to think about the first book, I came to that, well, what would make someone want to be this kind of person? What would take them to that role of the kind of lone wolf, the outsider, you know, the small business person who wants to be on their own and have no bosses, and not really deal with those interactions that you have to do. And so that's when I started really thinking who, who would this character be? And what would lead her to these decisions? And some of it was, you know, as a child, if you don't get justice and you don't get fairness, you're often searching for it for the rest of your life. And so I know that your books have been an inspiration to a lot of people. I know that Vicki Knight went through a lot of transitions from being an alcoholic to trying to become sober. And she's gone through a lot of transformations throughout your books. And, you know, I think that, you know, people reading about that, you know, it's probably something that a lot of people in general can understand, but also in the LGBTQ community where when you were writing their books, they're these books, there really wasn't much out there for LGBTQ readers. Yes. So that was really important. I know you work full time and you work for no age task force, correct? Yes, we're actually now, we have changed our name to Crescent Care because we have moved from being just an aid service organization to being a community health clinic. And how do you find time to work? Oh, I don't. You know, it's, I haven't been doing a whole lot of writing this year for multiple reasons. You know, hurricanes and pandemics, oh my, you clot out of the day. Sometimes it's weekends and it is, you know, incredibly frustrating at times because I can get really going and I have a great idea and I'm just writing and writing and then suddenly boom Monday comes and it's like, okay, you got to go back to work. And then maybe I do a little bit of Monday night and Tuesday night and then by Wednesday it's like, I'm too tired, let me put myself in front of the TV. And then, you know, Thursday and Friday, it's just like, ah, whatever. This is for the vodka. And then Saturday, you know, start to rest up a little bit. And then sometimes, you know, and there are all the other things you have to do in life, all the, you know, the grocery shopping, the cleaning, the vacuum stuff, the cleaning of after kitty cats, all that things that you have to fit in. You know, can you only leave the dishes so long? And then you try and find some more time to write and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. And that's one of the really incredibly frustrating things. And I think that's true for many writers that we expect artists to subsidize themselves, whether you're a writer or musician or painter, you know, you have to find some path. We don't have a society that says, you know, what you do is valuable. Let's find you a way to do it so you can have the energy. It does matter, you know, that fresh energy to sit in front of a page, that screen or whatever you're working in, or the end of the day, drags to try and get another thousand words in. And you've done it through Katrina? Yes. And COVID. And how do you, how do you navigate that? I mean, you know, well, it's, you either let it defeat you or you don't. And I know some people, you know, I know that talking to some of my other writer friends here in New Orleans, particularly right after Katrina. And we knew some people that just sort of fell apart and didn't. And I think for me, I had what I called my refugee road tour. I had some incredibly generous friends who were like, hey, you know, and privileged to because I'm white and I'm middle class and I have friends who are white and I'm middle class and they have houses with an extra bedroom and an extra bathroom and, you know, the wherewithal to say, hey, come stay with us. So I was very lucky in that that I had some friends originally in Orange, Texas, which was the closest town over the border from Texas and Louisiana. And so I'll just go there and then it'll be over in three or four days. And if the levees hadn't failed, it would have been because that was the kind of hurricane Katrina should have been, except for the engineering failure that just took New Orleans out and flooded us. And then I had some friends in another friend up in Arkansas and stay there. And we were able to start working with some of our funders to be able to go back to writing about you, what are we going to do? How are we going to make programs back? But so I had a computer and a laptop. And I just felt like, you know, what else am I going to do except to control the situation? I need to start writing about the situation. And I actually was halfway through my fifth book, Death of a Dying Man. You know, in the book, I don't even remember what the book would have been, but obviously with Katrina, it was a decision, do I write that book in the past of New Orleans that no longer exists? Or do I write it in the with the New Orleans that now is? I mean, once we have the recognition that this will be a very long, long road before a city that is 80% flooded is going to come back. So I just felt like, you know, I need to start writing it. And then after I came back into the city, you know, that these experiences that I wrote about were my daily life, you know, driving around and there's the watermark where the water was, it's over my head. These these are the destroyed buildings and driving by them over and over again. And I felt like I just need to put them into the books because this is one of the few things I can do is to bear that kind of witness so that people, you know, ideally supposed to be it's a mystery book, it's supposed to be sort of entertaining and stuff, but you can bring people along for the ride and and and let them into a world that they wouldn't otherwise see. I know and I know when Anne and I drove back to New Orleans after Katrina, I couldn't even find my way around because all the landmarks were gone. Yeah, I mean, it was it was that kind of experience. And so you found this was a this was like a help to get you through to help you deal with it was it was a necessity to get me through it was you know, what else would I do, you know, just stare at the TV screen. I found it hard to read particularly fiction in that period. So I felt like, okay, let me just, you know, it's a feeling of everything is falling apart, but at least there's one area I can control and one area that I can make some progress in or do something and create something. You know, maybe it's just a tiny, you know, a tiny bit of screaming into the wind, but at least it is something. Yeah. Well, I think it was a really good contribution. And I think if if if you can entertain people and bring a witness at the same time, that's an important thing to be doing. Yeah. So I know that you had you were instrumental in starting Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Yeah, I think that's probably giving me a bit more credit than I deserve. It was there are a lot of people involved in it, particularly Paul Willis and Greg Herron. But I was again, I'm still working in no ways. But at the time, Paul and I were sitting down and he said, Hey, I'm thinking about doing music, you know, literary festival on the LGBTQ community. Do you think that no ways would have any interesting kind of working on this? And, you know, this was back, you know, in the early 2000s that we did it. And it will still, you know, well, even today, HIV is still a problem as some of us say that, you know, this is our second pandemic. So we were like, Well, you know, could we have away the stigma about HIV and about being gay was still pretty, you know, obviously, we couldn't marry, we were illegal and all that sort of stuff. So we wanted to say, this is a visible way that we can see a very positive gay community that we can see accomplished gay people in the world for the kids that are coming into the bars in the French Quarter, because it's the only place they feel that anyone will even recognize who they are. But, you know, something besides, you know, this is the bars about alcohol and drugs and stuff. But hey, you can write books, you can be a successful author, you can have, you know, a full life being a gay person. So we sort of sat down and said, Yeah, let's do this. And again, Paul and Greg knew a lot of people in the LGBTQ community and literary festival in the French Quarter is not that hard to sell. You know, so it was a lot of work. But, you know, it's still going. I think they just sent an announcement that this year in March, it will continue. It will be virtual, though. 20 years now, is that true? Yeah, I think so. I had to look. Everybody's a little foggy there. Yeah, it was about 20 years ago. So when you were growing up and you were just a little gene, did you enjoy mysteries? What were your influences? Did you read a lot? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, my parents were, my mother was the first one in her family that went to college. My parents were both college educated. You know, one of the fun things we did as kids was we went to the little library in the little town in Mississippi and just got a whole bunch of books every single week. Certainly, you know, the Nancy Drew books, the Trixie Belden books, you know, a lot of those, those books. You know, so reading was always a huge part of, you know, what we did, things like, you know, you can't read that book until you got your room clean. So it was, it was the reward at the end of the day. And remember, this was, this was way back in the dinosaur era, just three channels on TV. So you wanted any variety you had to read books. And, and was it okay when you came out? Was that an okay experience or with your parents? Yeah, my father had passed away by then, you know, and I think he would have been okay with it. I think, you know, looking back at it, it's like, oh, hello, how could they not know? You know, I was a kid that wanted G.I. Joe's instead of Barbies. So I, and when my, when I did come out to my mother, she was like, yeah, I know. And just said, what else have you done with your life? And that was kind of it, you know, so I, I went away to, I didn't apply to college below the Mason-Dixon line because I really had to get out of the South. So I went up to a college in the Northeast, so out of New York City. And then after college, I moved to New York City and worked in theater until all my friends started getting sick and dying. You know, so for me, it was, I made choices, but I also had the ability to make those choices that kept me in safe spaces to come out. And so I felt like I needed to. You know, it's like, you know, at some point, I remember my mother passed away when I was in my twenties too. So people were saying, well, how do you come out? And well, the books was like, hey, my parents are dead and I'm gonna get fired from my job. I'd better be able to come out. Well, and you did. And it's a good thing for all of us. So who did you like when you were a kid? I think, you know, we're gonna have to wrap up in a few minutes, but I'd really like to know who your favorite writers were then and now. Oh boy. I say that my influences are every single book I've read, some for good and some for ill. I love Jane Austen and I know that may sound weird, but hey, she is cavingly funny. If you really can get into that kind of wit just the way she does it, I love that kind of sarcasm. I'd love to be able to do it as well as she did. And she managed one of the hardest literary tricks in the book, which is to create a believable happy ending. Okay. Well, I think we'll probably end on that note. And Jean, thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it's been a long time since I've seen you. And I hope we meet again sometime in New Orleans as soon as we get a chance with Ann and I are coming down. So yeah, take care of yourself. Good. I hope so too. I hope I hope it's soon. And we'll be in touch. Hello. And for this interview show of all things LGBTQ, there were 13 LGBTQ plus candidates that were elected to the Vermont legislature. Some of them were familiar names. Some of them are new to us. And this is an opportunity for us to meet one of those new members. So the new representative for Lamoille two, which is Belvedere Johnson Hyde Park and Walcott. And yes, I needed to look to get the complete list. Please welcome. And there she is giggling already. Hey, welcome. Hey, thanks so much for having me. So I want to start by, you know, I have read your campaign website. And there were decidedly things on the website that told me a great deal about you that I would really like our viewers to know. And the first aspect is you said you grew up as a Vermont term. Where in Vermont? I grew up in Burlington, Vermont, which, you know, when I would travel out to the areas that I live in, now they would always say, where, where are you from? And I would say Burlington, they would say, Oh, that's a nice place to visit Vermont from, which was always so crushing, crushing to me as someone that felt so identified with this state. But, you know, as we know, those tensions persist, the Chittenden County brought a Vermont tension. But yes, I grew up in Burlington. I am a proud Burlingtonian born and raised and a proud Vermont or born and raised. Okay. And you had gone away to Wellesley College, Vassar and NYU. And what might you have matured in those three educational institutions? Well, Wellesley and Vassar were all sort of like collapsed into my college experience. I went to Wellesley. And while I loved the education I received at Wellesley, there were also a lot of aspects of that space and environment that didn't necessarily feel like they fit me entirely. And so I also spent some time seeking out other academic institutions where I might feel had different kinds of educational experiences and social experiences. And so Vassar was one of the schools that I went off to and spent some time at. I also went down to Central America and studied down there as well. And then finished college and went out actually to Oregon, which is where I met my wife and did a number of years of working with homeless populations out there. And then she's a social worker as well. And so we actually ventured back to the East Coast where we both got our masters in social work from NYU. That's sort of a very interesting journey. And part of your campaign website identified that when you grew up in Burlington, it was in a low income family. And that you benefited from the resources that were available to you through, I guess, you were referring to the state system. You also made a reference that as a proud Vermonter, it taught you values. But not only values, but that values had to be coupled with action. How does that background or how did that background influence your decision educationally to become a social worker? And what brought you back to Vermont? Yeah. Oh, great question. There are a lot of things with all of us. So many things from my early childhood experience that have impacted the course that I've taken. I think I was born into the world. I think it's become a more popularized term these days. But the HSPs, highly sensitive person, I was just born into the world with a certain orientation towards the world and towards people. I always had a cute awareness of other people's experiences in my own. And I was born this super queer little kid. Up until the age of seven, I wanted to be a little boy mostly because I wanted to present in such boy-like ways. And at that time, didn't realize that I could do both, that I could be a woman or a girl and still have the short hair. And so being a queer little kid, growing up in a low income area, there are so many reasons why I should have actually struggled much more than I did. And I was born with these other sort of protective factors in place, including my brain just happened to work in the way that our schools wanted my brain to work. And I happened to be good at forming connections. And I happened to be a really, really skilled athlete. And so I could beat all the boys on the soccer field. And that gained me a lot of credit on the schoolyard. And so, you know, all these things that I think many, many young people experience a lot of pain and ultimately a lot of trauma around, I have these privileges that allowed me to have success in areas that I think others of my identity wouldn't have or didn't have. And so I always had an acute awareness of that from a really young age of like, you know, how are the people around me doing, how am I doing, what's allowing me to be okay, whereas others might not, what's causing me to suffer, where others might not. And in that context, I also grew up really embedded in the progressive movement in Burlington. I grew up in a family that, you know, my mom worked for Bernie for years. And so while I didn't have a lot of money at home, I was also like sort of steeped in this environment where people were daily, actively advocating on a systems wide level to ensure that I had my needs met. So from a really young age, I saw these direct correlations between the struggles that an individual has, the privileges that might allow them to succeed or not succeed. And then the ways that we can sort of engage with systems to try to impact the trajectory that that people have in their life. And so I just, you know, I carried that with me. And, you know, well, I'm not, I can go off in a little tangent, if that's all right with you. I mean, interestingly, speaking of this idea of like Vermont values, so I grew up, you know, very safe as a queer person. I had a very supportive environment, a very supportive peer group, very supportive family came out in high school to a very safe environment. And it was actually late in my high school when civil unions were being discussed in the legislature. And it was the first time as a Vermonter that I felt unsafe in this state that I loved. And I would drive, you know, around Vermont and I would see these massive take back Vermont signs. And it was scary. Like I really felt, I felt unsafe. And I felt really a tremendous amount of pain as so much of the narrative around that was, you know, this notion of take back Vermont, essentially that, that I wasn't Vermont, that I was being sort of defined out of what it is to be a Vermonter, even though I grew up, it was the only space I knew was my home, right? And so I think it was this like real introduction to this sort of idea of defining what it is to be a Vermonter and this like nativist, sort of trend or sort of lens that people can bring to that, which can be very painful for a lot of people and create really sort of exclusive ideas of what it means to be a Vermonter. And so that Pete you're talking about on my website, I think part of what I was speaking to and what I think a lot about is how do we shift this definition of what it means to be a Vermonter to ensure that it is inclusive. And then if we're going to define it around values that it represents a very particular set of values that allow everyone to be present at the table. So what brought you back here? What, what made this home? So I think Vermont always felt like home and I always knew when I left that I was coming back. That was never a question for me. Like I remember when we were living in Brooklyn and we were getting our social work degrees and we would leave Brooklyn and, and I love living in Brooklyn, but we would leave and come to Vermont. And like the minute we would cross over the border, like my whole body would just like settle in. And the minute we were like getting back on the bridge to head back to the Brooklyn, it was like, everything kind of like, it was like, all right, here we go. We got to like get the battle armor on. Again, love Brooklyn, but definitely like just in my busy physiologically, there's like an experience I have when I'm in Vermont that just feels right. It just feels settled. So that was always the plan. And thankfully, you know, my wife was on board for that. So, you know, when we finished up our degrees, we packed the car and headed back. It's always good when your wife is in agreement with your long range plans. So not to be taken for granted. Oh, absolutely not. So part of your campaign, you use this wonderful an acronym called share. Could you talk a bit about it? Sure. Yeah. So share. And, you know, I was trying to, I didn't, I had never run for office before. And so campaigning, I was launched very quickly into campaigning and trying to wrap my head around what this thing is, this campaigning thing. And so I, it felt most comfortable to me to sort of try to introduce myself from the perspective of my values and priorities. And so I started, you know, spending a lot of time thinking about that and came up, you know, as a social worker in the world of mental health, we love our acronym. So of course, as I'm like doing certain, you know, priorities and values, it's sort of like shaping itself into an acronym. So the acronym was share. And so the S was for safety for all. The age was for health, mental, physical, and emotional. The A was affordability. R, the relationship, and this notion that we thrive together. And the E was for equity and a state that works for all of us. And I really feel like, you know, while I'm sure there's many more to add to that list, I felt like those, those sort of values or priorities really drive my perspective on just about every issue we might discuss. So coming into the legislative session, which is going to be different than legislative sessions we've seen in the past, do you have priorities of the types of issues, initiatives with which you would like to be involved within the legislative process, legislation that you would like to see introduced policy that you would like to see developed? You know, I think that one of the things that I really, when I was thinking about whether or not to run, and it was a very, you know, we had one of those stories where it was like, we got a phone call and was asked if I would want to run. And, you know, we had like 36 hours to make a decision. And this is a very rapid like, you know, and of course, we're like, you know, my wife and our team kids at home were like drowning in COVID absurdity with like no schools open and we were already totally overwhelmed and we were like, this is a horrible idea. But you know, tell us more. And when we really sat and thought about, you know, what, why would we want to do this? Like what feels essential right now? What is it we need right now as a state, as a community, as a nation? And it really felt like what we needed were people with a very specific skill set, a very particular type of leadership, skill set, and ability, you know, the ability to build broad coalitions, to bring people together, to sit at a table of people with varying ideologies and work towards common goals, you know, while always centering the needs of the people who are the most vulnerable in our community, who are the most impacted by the policies that we're creating. And so I think from the beginning, and you know, as a social worker, and I've also been doing some community organizing over the last couple of years, that's really the skill set that I feel like I bring. I have that sort of spent my professional life doing is like building coalition, engaging people in hard conversations around challenging issues, but sort of centering this need to like come to common ground and move forward. And so I think that continues to be my perspective coming in. I'm not coming in with a slate of bills that I already have in mind. It's more, you know, I mean, certainly can, you know, highlight certain areas, but to me, my focus is looking at the needs of the most vulnerable, the most marginalized people within our communities, and working to ensure that everything we do within the legislature centers those people within our community. So every whatever committee we're on, whatever bill we're looking at, we have to look at it through a lens of equity and work to ensure that the people that are needing the most protection, the most, you know, support are being prioritized in that way. So you had mentioned whatever committee you might be working on. Is there a committee in particular to which you would like to be assigned? There is, yeah. You know, it's interesting being launched into this world, recognizing like, you know, the committee process and, you know, people get really, really passionate about this issue and this question understandably. So there's a part of me that's like, oh, I'm like nervous talking about this. Like, I don't, you know, there's other sort of angling for similar committees. But, you know, I think when I think about the skills that I bring in, what in the community organizing I've been doing over the last couple of years has been related to racial equity and racial justice work and doing a lot of work in LaMoyle County, among a great community of people to build a coalition, the racial equity alliance of LaMoyle, what we've been doing, again, a lot of community organizing and I was helping to chair a subcommittee of that group that was working on doing racial equity work within schools. That's a huge passion of mine, coupled with my professional work. I felt like I was looking for, you know, everything we do in the legislature has an impact on vulnerable people. But I think there's certain areas where vulnerable and marginalized people can be most severely impacted by the policy decisions that we're making. We look at certain like basic human needs and rights, you know, and one of those that comes to mind for me most certainly is in the judicial system, the court, law enforcement, of course, also housing, health care, you know, these are areas where people, their lives really depend on the policies that we're writing. And so for me, the number one choice is judiciary. So fingers crossed there. But I would also be happy on any committee. I think, you know, is exciting to me. And we just have the opportunity to work on lots of really, really great things that can make people's lives better. So I'm grateful for wherever I'm placed. And with that, I need to say thank you for our first interview. I am so looking forward to following you through this legislative session and inviting you back to talk about what has been like as a first year legislator. So Kate Donnelly, thank you. Thank you so much. It's been great. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in two weeks. But in the meantime, resist.