 Welcome back to Pathways to Progress. Happy to be here this evening with Portland City Councilor's Victoria Pelletier and Roberta Rodriguez. Thanks for being here again. We get together to talk about issues here in the city. And a lot's been going on lately. So let's check in for a minute before we plunge in. Shall we have, how are things going Victoria? Oh, they're good. They're going good. It's been a long month, couple of months, couple of weeks. But things have been going well. I just celebrated my six month anniversary as a councilor. And that felt really exciting. So it was awesome. You made it to us, right? That's right. I mean, it felt like something, like a milestone. And I'm just a big milestone person anyway. So I was like, oh my gosh, I've been doing this for six months. And every day has been a new adventure, really. So yeah, it's been good. It seems like a long six months. Really long six months. It might be sort of like teachers, though. New teachers the first year, they're like, I don't know. If they make it to Christmas, you always go, if you could make it to Christmas, you can make it. I think you've got it now. I think so, yeah. It's been, I mean, we've been so busy since we last, since we last had our show, right? We've done a school budget. We've done a city budget. We've done all sorts of other work. There was a school election. There's been just so much activity in the city. And yeah, it feels like it's just exhausting, but onward. Nonstop, yeah. But you now have a grasp of ranked choice voting, because you've lived it and you've taught it, explained it to people several times. So ranked choice voting came into the school board election. Yeah, so we had, yeah, I had a personal encounter with ranked choice voting and got to find out how the city decides ties. But this week, we had a school board election with two open seats, two open at-large seats, and one open district five seat, and a really contested race in terms of how many candidates there were. There were 12 total candidates. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, so the ranked choice voting came into play. Sure. And the runoff tabulation came into play. There were no ties. No ties. It was a little bit cleaner. I think they got it, figured it out in like 15 minutes after they did the runoff. Tori, if you wanna talk a little bit, I think maybe we have a lot more to say about what happened before the election. Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing I will say for a post-election is the most interesting part is that they will have to run again for the November seat. And I think that that's something that wasn't widely known by individuals. So the two individuals that won will only have it until November and then they will have to run again. So they're essentially gonna continue campaigning throughout the summer and throughout the fall. So even though they won the seat, it's not like they have it for that long. And so that part's really interesting because I think that they'll have to get papers again for the November election, probably by the end of this month. And so it's like, you're doing it over again and you're running again, running another campaign, doing the same thing. So I think that will be interesting to see who comes out to run again for the November seat. And then that I think will be a full term. So yeah. That's those two seats are Anna Travaros and my school board seats because we left with a year left on our three-year term. So that's why this is such a short term. And both you and Anna left to serve on the city council. Versus Jeff Irish, he resigned from the board a year into his term so that District Five member now or elect Sarah Brighton will be there for the next two years and then she'll have to run it if she decides to for a full term. So did your candidates win? Am I allowed to say that? I'm sure you had preferences when you ranked them. You probably. I endorsed two of the two at large candidates that won Ben Grant and Sarah Lent. So I knocked on doors for them. I did lid drop for them, my canvas for them. So I'm ecstatic to see them there. I think they're strong candidates and they're who I want to represent our schools at this time. On the District Five seat, Sarah Brighton is I did not endorse her officially. I live in District Five and that's what I was rooting for. Her and Liz Capone-Aurekas were the two candidates that I was pulling for. Liz came in third place. But I'm personal friends with her. I'm a strong believer that her heart is in the right place and she's just ridiculously smart. So I wanted her to get a chance. And Sarah Brighton is gonna represent the district well. There were a couple other candidates in there that I know very well that were not aligned, I would say, with the same values that I've seen voters ask for in our schools and some of the work that we've had to advance over the last several years. So by far, Sarah Brighton was, in my opinion, the best choice in voters, you know, picked her. So there were some pretty conservative candidates, I think, among those 12, right? People that are unhappy with the direction that Portland's moving or the Portland schools are moving of being more inclusive and more equitable and having those values and those goals. Do you wanna talk about any of the campaigning that went on or? Yeah, I mean, the first thing that's just frightening and you have really what you would only see at this time is national talking points and rhetorical talking points that are really incredibly conservative and far right groups are bringing out there. So they're talking about critical race theory in our schools, they're talking about sex education and they're complaining about all the equity work that the schools are doing, saying that that's not where our attention should be and where investments should be focused on. And then the language that they use to knock on all that is incredibly problematic because we know that all the equity work and all the investments that we've been pushing for in the schools is specifically to help the students that we've recognized through achievement data, through enrollment in AP classes and all the markers that we know are conducive to success post-graduation. We know that these kids are not getting the same services. So when we invest in them, when we try to advance them and you see this pushback, it's incredibly problematic of how do we advance the needs of the most marginalized people in our community when some folks won't even acknowledge that there's a problem. So yeah, I was worried for a moment there. Victoria, remind me what the percentage of eligible voters the turnout was. It was pretty incredibly low, wasn't it? So it was 14% of Portland of registered voters that went to vote and what's interesting is I put up this whole thing about it and I still stand by that amount is low and embarrassing but I got some data that said that that was like pretty standard for off-election years and for especially June elections. But it was still really low and I think when we have 12 candidates, it was also interesting because I didn't see a ton of press around these candidates. There were a couple of forums but I just felt like, and maybe it's just because we just campaigned to, I felt like every other day we had something to do. We had a forum or we had an interview where just information was very accessible but I got a lot of messages from people just saying like, I don't know how to find any information on the candidates. I don't know what's going on. And so I think that also led to such a low voter turnout because people were just kind of like, I haven't seen anything. I heard from some people that said they didn't even know we were having an election. So I'm more concerned I think with that because that can't happen again in November and I think we have some really important elections coming up. We have important local elections happening. We have important state elections happening and I just really wanna make sure that people are understanding that we need to get to the polls. We have a governor's race in November. Like I just hope that Portland is really showing up and improving that we are a city that is really invested in what's happening locally. And I think we are. And so I would love to be able to say like, Portland we may not agree on everything but we are a 60% voter city. Like everybody votes here for that we have a majority voting city. And that way I think when we do get these people in positions of power, we can say it's really truly reflective of the entirety of Portland or at least the majority of Portland. So it makes it hard when we see such a low number. And it's just concerning I think for future elections. I hope that doesn't happen again. Well, you're a good leader for that. And I think the young people especially, I noticed that you invited the King Middle School students into the council chamber since I've seen you last. And there was some really fun looking photos on social media of the kids in the chambers. So how did that come about? Oh my gosh, we had so much fun that day. So King Middle School had a climate awareness rally. So they marched from King Middle School all the way to city hall, which was really exciting. They made signs. They were holding their own protests and they were raising this awareness. And they had speakers, they had performers that were singing, they're singing and dancing and playing instruments. And I was there supporting them along with two other counselors, counselors RO and counselor Fornir. And then we all just were kind of like, what if we just invited them inside and took them on a tour, it was very unplanned. Luckily the city manager was there and counselors RO ran up and asked and she said yes. And we were like, okay, we're going in. So it was cool because we were like, okay, two lines and then everyone's gonna merge into one. And we're gonna be really quiet. We're gonna go up to council chambers. And that was also really great. Cause like when you tell, you know, a bunch of 11 to 12 year olds, we're gonna be really quiet. That doesn't always happen. So it's just like hearing everybody come up the stairs. But I mean, it was great. They filled into council chambers. We, they got to ask questions. They came up to the microphone and they were practicing giving public comment. And I think they had a really great time. It was, it was more fun cause it wasn't planned and it was just something that we got to experience with them together. So that was really cool. But that's the kind of thing that creates future voters. Oh, absolutely. Then they're excited to be able to cast their first vote. Yeah, it was really, really fun. Well, as long as we're on the subject of schools, I also noticed this week that some data came out about middle school, about disciplinary data in the Portland School District that was concerning. It didn't surprise me as a long time educator because the fact that a student of color is more than twice as likely to be experienced out of school suspension or that kind of level of disciplinary action is a terrible thing and it's chronic and it's been happening a long time. There were some odd things in the article like the Department of Education saying, oh, we don't keep track of that data by race and you and I worked in schools were like, well, yes you do cause you get federal money, so you have to. But do you want to comment, Roberto, on what the data said to you? Yeah, so I think let's start with why this data was presented to the school board in the first place. A couple of weeks ago or like three weeks ago, middle school students over at Lyman Moore and Lincoln set up a protest so that they can share their experiences of having had both staff and students harass them with either racist statements, homophobic statements and just hurtful things. And when it involved the school culture, they felt like a protest was the way for them to express themselves. And literally they organized themselves, they scheduled it even at Lyman Moore. I know that some staff helped the students sort of kind of organize and do science and whatnot. And then Lincoln had a process as well. So after the protest, there was a lot of pushback about how the students protested and whether or not they should have been allowed to do that and how the schools managed it. But a lot of the focus went away from what they were protesting about, right? Like we know how that works, right? They never liked how you protest, just ignoring what you're protesting about. Don't sit up, don't stand down, don't take a knee, don't. So then the superintendent presents this data as a way to say that, listen, our data, our objective data shows that there is discrimination in our schools and we're seeing it by way of increased suspensions and discipline that has a disproportionate representation of our black students, of our ELL student, our special ed students. And so that might not be the strongest argument to show it, but there's a lot more themes about this, right? So we know that two or three years ago we had a study done looking at the experiences of all staff who identify as BIPOC staff members. And this report, which was done by Bowdoin School with Doris Antoro, Julia Hayes, Juan Alberto Morales, literally summarized the experiences of BIPOC staff members and they came up with two themes. One is the impenetrable wall of whiteness and the other one is the suffocating smog of racism. So literally they're saying that their views and their realities are not being valued in our schools. And then you had- These are the adults. Like the staff are experiencing this in our schools. And then you have the children literally reiterate the same thing by way of their protest. So it's clear to me that that's what's happening inside of our buildings. We've heard it from everyone. Every time I went into a school and I used to go to events all the time when I was on the board, these kids would be, they wanted to go out of their way to tell me that that's how they felt. I remember them waiting for me and I can tell that they're waiting to catch and tell you something. They'd be like, oh man, these teachers don't care. And I'm not saying that that's exactly how it is, but when so many kids are telling you the same thing over and over, you gotta look a little bit deeper. And so that's the reality of our schools. That's not just Poland schools, right? That's public education. These inequities exist everywhere. And it's not just public education, right? We see it all throughout systems. So to go out there and then deny that that's what our kids are experiencing, to deny, to have this Portland exceptionalism that this doesn't happen in Poland is ridiculous. Last year, mostly like two years ago, we had the principal at Lincoln famously wrote an email to the council where she literally said these big national problems just don't exist in Portland. I remember that. And I brought that up as it should have done in executive session, saying that I don't believe that a person that has these views, given the data that we have, should be in a leadership position in our schools. And then Jeff Irish, former school board member, famously, resigned and threw that letter out into the open, exposing and blaming me for the problems, right? I had forgotten that that was executive session until he revealed the, because of course, personnel matters are private and health not for the public. And so when you have leadership that's denying the reality of our students and our staff, how could people out here in the city sit and say that we don't have those problems in our schools? They're telling us over and over again. I've heard students at Lewiston High School say that there are those problems. I've seen students at Bangor High School say that there are those problems. And I taught in the Kerabek School district for many years and the Mesolensky School District before that up in Central Maine. There were those problems. So saying that they don't exist is willfully being ignorant and not wanting to support. And it has such an impact on education. Like you were talking about, you were telling me that during high school, I believe it is, every incoming freshman is automatically enrolled in an AP class. They don't necessarily have to take the AP exam or pay the fee to get the credits that you can get from taking an advanced placement course. But that access, that equity of access is huge because all those things are like gateways that some students don't get through after spending many years in a school district being told like, you're not smart enough, you're not good enough, you're not gonna have a job like that, you'll never be a professional or in so many subtle ways. And wasn't there a huge pushback to AP for all or AP for everybody? So this all came about several years ago. We did a study where we looked at the graduating class of 2016 and we traced them all the way back to middle school and figure out what common themes can we find in these students that after they graduate high school are going to college, staying in college more than two years and then eventually getting a degree. And we wanted to see what themes emerge and two things came up. One of them was attendance, so being in school. And the other one was access to rigorous material by way of AP and college credit classes in high school. So having a policy like Dr. Ahmed put in place over there in high school that every incoming freshman has an AP class in their schedule is key to breaking down those barriers, those opportunity gaps. I remember when I heard that those were the key things to success for our students, I started to ask for data about discipline. Because how are we getting, how is it that the kids are not in school because they're being suspended? And then I asked for AP enrollment data. And I have it all saved. You can see for years before Dr. Ahmed went into there in high school, the discrepancies were ridiculous. It was literally just white female students in AP classes. That was the vast majority of them. And then slowly as we started to make it a policy that every student has access to it, we started to see more equitable outcomes. But it happens literally by force. It was Dr. Ahmed up there, say I shouldn't have mentioned his name, I feel bad. It was the leadership in the school saying that we believe in this, we're gonna act in it. And even though there was a lot of pushback from people in the district, they stood their ground. And now the kids have opportunities that they didn't have several years ago. Well, being a leader isn't always fun. And sometimes it kind of paints a target on your back to be a leader and stand up for things that are right. I know that tomorrow's the Pride Parade, right? It's Pride Month. And tomorrow's the Pride Parade in Portland. And I think Victoria, that you were telling me that there have been some disturbing reports of possible disruptions tomorrow and safety issues. Do you feel like talking about that? Yeah, and I think it's, and it just happened. So I feel like that's why I like brought it in here today. And it feels like it's just adding to me feeling a little bit frazzled. But there were messages that I was getting from individuals in Portland and photos that I was getting that there was concern that there was a proud boy presence. That would be- Getting how? Like how were you receiving it? Oh, just on Instagram, in my direct messages. So like people were sending me photos or people were sending me like direct screenshots of other individuals saying, here's what I saw. And I just think that there is concern that there's an existing proud boy presence that's gonna make themselves known tomorrow at the Pride Parade. And this has been in photos. There was a photo of an individual being handed a bulletproof vest that somebody had sent. There was a post about a potential like white lives matter counter protest that would be happening tomorrow. Counter protest to Pride. Counter protest to Pride. Which that is a counter protest. Yeah, it doesn't really mesh, but I think it's just basically there are groups here and there are individuals here that wanna make their presence known in opposition to anything that is celebrating any marginalized identity, whether when I said, think I said this earlier, it could be Pride, it could be a Black Lives Matter protest tomorrow, but any event that is in celebration of a group that has been historically underrepresented, we have individuals that don't think that that's good and wanna show up in counter protest to tomorrow's celebrations. So I had some conversations before I got here with the city manager and with other counselors and everyone is aware. They don't think that there is an issue. All of this has been monitored by city staff and by law enforcement for the past couple of weeks. They don't see anything that they said was out of the ordinary, but everyone essentially put out something that was just to be aware of your surroundings, which should unfortunately be commonplace regardless of what's happening tomorrow. But yeah, I mean, it's hard that we're having that conversation now, but we just had a horrific school shooting. Again, we had a horrific shooting in Buffalo and I just think that being out in existing and being different in any way puts a target on your back and we have individuals now that are living in Portland that are really trying to show up and make themselves known in opposition to that and it's really hard. I mean, the bulletproof vest clearly seems like an attempt at intimidation because even if you wanna do a counter protest about the Gay Pride Parade, where does the bulletproof vest come in? Yeah, and I don't know if it was being given to this person and in saying we are gonna do a shooting tomorrow, but you stay safe. And again, it could be nothing, it could just be a photo of nothing, but I just think especially now and just given the track record that we've had for the past however many years we wanna go back, these events are events where people who have a lot of hate and just wanna show up and disrupt will have the opportunity to do that because everyone will be out in Portland tomorrow. And so, I'm hoping that by exposing that the individuals will see it and say like, okay, well, everybody in Portland now knows that we're here. We were planning on a surprise something, but it's still, I mean, it's hard. And I think it's hard to be an elected official and to be a black woman that's an elected official to speak out against some of these groups, especially the Proud Boy groups that we have here because now I'm the loudest voice in the room and I'm being looked at and can be targeted. So, I don't know, it's tough. Yeah, this hasn't been in the media at all. I mean, I haven't seen it cover. I mean, the fact that Proud Boys are doing a counter demonstration. So, we're kind of breaking that news here because we're live right now on cable TV. But, I mean, I sincerely hope, I haven't been to every Pride Parade in Portland, certainly, but I've never known of any disruptions or dangerous situations at Pride Parades here. I have been to some other street events in Portland where there was some, you know, hostility between opposing groups and a little bit of trash talk and I've never, one time there was a group that was parading through the streets and they dropped to their flag and one of the counter protesters who didn't like the fact that these right-wingers were parading through the streets, ran out and picked up the flag and gave it to them and, you know, you might see that as naive or you might see it as heartwarming. I keep feeling like, you know, our corporate overlords would like to see us have a civil war instead of the revolution that we need to meet the people's needs and get government back to representing the actual people and I hate falling for that. On the other hand, I think we need to take really seriously threats and intimidation aimed at, you know, someone who's serving as a city counselor. It's not like a highly paid job with a whole lot of perks. It's like a lot of work. I was thinking of that today. Yeah, I was thinking of that today where I was like, we don't get paid and with that comes the knowledge of just being like, okay, I'm in a visible position and it's not just this, but it's like I speak at protests. I was speaking at the pro-abortion protest, very visible. There was like a very many, I don't even know that it took off, but there was talk about a counter protest at a pro-abortion rally and I just think it's always going to happen whether it's a very small thing or whether it's a huge thing, but I think it's great for people to just be aware that we are in a time where, of course, we're reading horrific news every single day. There are shootings every single day. There's a lot of targeted hate out there and I just think it's important for people to just know that and I don't want to scare anybody and I hope that tomorrow is fine, but I would have rather said something about what I was getting sent to me. I do feel like that is partially like my responsibility as a counselor too, with like a platform to raise that awareness, so I'm glad I did and I hope that tomorrow is nothing but joy and love and happiness, so. Well, if you didn't say something and then something did happen, then you'd feel terrible because you'd feel like, oh, people didn't try to pass the warning through. I mean, is it a safety issue for you, Roberto, standing up for what you believe in at times? Yeah, I mean there's, so, right, like when we talk about safety, safety manifests itself in so many different ways, right? This is your physical safety, right? Am I gonna be physically harmed? Then of course there's like, you know, your mental health. This is a small community. A lot of these people that are throwing hate and hate at you, you know, we know them. They live close to us. Our kids growing up together, going to school together. I mentioned it before the taping. I coached a lot of the girls whose parents are out there talking about us and throwing all this hate at us. You know, I find it incredibly disturbing that in such a tight community, we throw rocks at each other so just freely. You know, and you don't know who you're hurting when we're so tight and you throw a rock, you don't know who you're gonna hurt. You know, like I said, I have a kid. When people come at me, I worry about my family. You know, when I see, because Tori does an amazing job in social media and being transparent and informative and I see her and I know that I can imagine what her DMs look like. I can imagine the kind of hate she gets. And then when she shares it with me, I worry about like her health. So that alone I think is important and that's safety. And when we talk about wanting to inspire people and wanting to get people involved, that's not the climate that I want young people to get involved in. I wanna step down from my council seat and open the door or like pave the path for someone to be here and be effective without having to deal with like their safety being. Don't you think that's a lot of the goal of this type of intimidation, is making sure that the next Victoria Pelletier, the next Roberta Rodriguez, because I don't know, that kind of seems dangerous and risky and I've got people I love that I want her to be safe. Yeah, and I think it's a double-edged sword when you are like paving a path that hasn't existed before as like a black counselor or counselors of color that like are have not existed historically the way that white counselors have. So I go back and forth between like I have to take all of this so that the next generation doesn't have to like I will go forward and raise as much awareness as I can and be as great of a counselor as I can. So like whoever comes next, the next Tory can just serve and do a great job and not have to deal with like all of this outside like racism and sexism. But then on the other hand, I'm like, do I want to bring another person into this environment that I'm in that is harmful and can be really toxic and can really impact your mental health or do I just want, you know, all the black people to just like find joy, like don't come into the council just find joy and be happy because this is not a safe space for us. So it feels like it goes back and forth depending on the day like Monday, last Monday we had a really challenging council meeting for me personally and I spoke up about how hard and frustrating it can be to exist in these spaces that are harmful and can be harmful to like black women and especially young black women when I'm trying to speak up and I'm getting shut down and I'm getting disrespected. So, you know, every day it changes, but yeah, I do think individuals want to make sure that we are silenced and want to make sure that we don't speak out anymore. And because of that, it's now I have to speak out. I have to continue to do it because if not, if I get silenced in any way, then they have all my power. So I need to make sure that I was continuing to speak up and really thinking of the younger generation, especially like all the kids at King who I hope someday want to be involved. I have to be a role model for them and continue moving forward in the face of all of this stuff that comes at you, especially I think when you're a counselor with a platform and somebody that uses Instagram the way that I do and someone that uses social media the way that I do. So, you know, it's tough, but I think like we just, I focus on what am I doing this for and who and it's always the people that are gonna come after me and I hope that I can make it a little bit easier for them. Would you agree? I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree.