 meeting that's being recorded, and then I'm going to go ahead and make Michelle the co-host, and you guys can proceed with your meeting. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. We are going to begin in a moment. Dr. Shipaz is getting a fantastic honor down in Springfield as we speak, and so he's going to try to join us as soon as he is able. And Ms. Bridges, unfortunately, is not able to be with us today. So I thought that Yvonne was going to be able to be here today, so I am going to send her a quick message and just see where we're at, and then I will call the meeting to order. Great. Hi, Dr. Rhodes. Hi. I'm sorry I don't look better. My makeup artist called me sick. I would send mine. I would send mine, Earth. They won't make it into any timing. Sorry, Jennifer, I cut you off. No, I was just going to say hello to Heather Hallow. Alexis and I were just talking when people hopped on and I didn't want to. Hello, hello. Hello. Are you coming to tonight's event? Yeah, the gospel choir is going to sing. Okay, excellent. I like that mug, Michelle. Thank you. It's my Pisces mug. Julia, what's that happening? All right. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to call the meeting to order. This meeting is being recorded and this is the February 1st meeting of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly and I'm calling to order at 11.32 a.m. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. And I'm going to just make sure that everybody can be heard and can hear me very quickly. Dr. Rhodes. I can hear him. Excellent. I can hear you. Yep. And Alexis. Hi. I'm here. Thank you. Okay. Excellent. And Hala. I can hear. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. You can be heard. Thank you. And Jennifer, just to make sure I know. I'm here. Okay. All right. So I do have some announcements. Before we go into any announcements though, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the killing of Tyree Nichols. And I hope that we can. Hi. Good afternoon, Yvonne. Nice to see you. Hi. So maybe what we can do here is just take a minute or so in silence to acknowledge the killing of Tyree Nichols. And then what I would like to do is share with you a joint statement that the town has released that I know both Pamela and Jennifer were involved in, along with our town manager, our crest director, and our chief of police. And maybe we can read that briefly. I'll pull it up onto the screen. There is going to be a grief circle on Monday for all community members who are interested in attending at the bank center. So maybe just however you'd like, if you'd like to close your eyes, if not, that's fine too. Just taking a moment to acknowledge Tyree Nichols. Okay. And I'll go ahead and pull that up quickly so we can take a look and let's see if I can share my screen. The human rights commission is putting out a separate one. Excellent. In addition. Wonderful. Thank you for letting us know, Jennifer. Will there be a separate time for people to convene or is that, do you know anything about that? Yeah. So it was voted a while ago that their chairs will write those letters and so the chairs have written one and we just need to post it. It'll go out on Facebook and the town's social media platforms. Excellent. So if anybody wants to find this, I think it's on the town's website. And again, this is a joint statement that was released by town manager, Paul Backelman, police chief, Scott Livingstone, cross director, Earl Miller, and DEI director, Pamela Young, as well as fire chief, Tim Nelson. And there will be a grief circle on Monday, February 6 from two to four PM in the banks community center. It will be facilitated and all community members are welcome to join. And I also just want to make space if there are any comments related to Tyree Nichols killing that any members would like to make. Please go ahead and raise your hand or just unmute Dr. Rhodes. Oh, you're muted. It is really when I first saw the videos, it was really hard to process because two things came to mind. What community, society, family could produce such monsters as those policemen. What could possibly have allowed a culture to develop within that police force, that particular police force that will allow them to do that, to commit such heinous crimes on an individual, a helpless individual, five against one, and then others standing around. What do these people, where did they spring from, from our society, from their community? The EMTs that just stood around. What culture would allow that to happen? Allow them to be that way? What training did they have that was overcome by the culture? It is such a sad, sad, sad situation that calls into question all kinds of things about that community, that police force that, you know, what is, what is it within them that allow those individuals to grow up in that community and then to do what they did? It is unbelievably sad. Thank you Dr. Rhodes. Alexis. I was really hoping to have something written. This week didn't allow for me to write, but I still, I feel like it's really important to bring these things up. And it's, I didn't know that we were going to have a moment, so I'm appreciative that you brought this up, because it was going to tie into this, but I think it's really important to link this to the things that have been brought up to us as an assembly. And I've done a lot of talking with folks within my age range, but a lot of folks in my community about how they feel about the reparations work in general, but also the nomenclature and also, you know, what our future looks like in terms of reparations federally. And I wanted to bring up to the assembly that I I don't think that the word reparations is a hill that I'm willing to die on for the work that we're doing. And here's why. That when it comes to reparations, there's particular, there's particular associations that you have with that word in the same way that there's particular associations that are being that are made with the word lynching, for example, right. Anyone technically can be lynched, but there is there is a direct racial correlation to and history related to that word, right. And I think that reparations doesn't come without nuance. And so when we're especially when it comes to, you know, what what people are trying to do federally, the work that they're trying to do federally and and potentially looking to Evanston are looking to us are looking to these other municipalities that are doing work. What would feel really wrong to me is if they modeled it after what we're doing, when what we're doing is very specific to our municipality, but also is very limited by the budget of our municipality, as well as what our municipality is willing to do in order to to fulfill whatever whatever charge they decided. And I'll be honest, I was coming into this work initially, not sure what we would be able to accomplish, because being able to end structural racism in Amherst is a mighty, mighty task. And I don't know how we have that conversation outside of, you know, talking about you know, talking about the prison industrial complex and how police are involved in that. And it's it's hard to I really can't compartmentalize those things. I can't look at it in terms of this is just this department that's acting this way. It's not a culture within this particular department. And I understand that, you know, different places can have varied cultures. But at the end of the day, we're talking about one core, you know, one core institution that, you know, we know was created on the backs of, you know, trying to just anti blackness and and trying to, you know, enslave people and and it's it's a domestic terrorism. It's it's a way to keep people under control. And it's scary. And so I, I, I don't, I don't know how comfortable I feel. And I'm I totally feel like I'm saying this feeling like I feel like a lot of people are not going to agree with me. Maybe maybe I shouldn't jump to, you know, make assumptions. But I, I'm, I'm now like moving forward and doing this work, especially with how much money we're, we're already being not given but allowed to use towards this work. It doesn't, it, it doesn't necessarily feel right or feel good to call this reparations work when we're so limited and and and things keep coming up in terms of, you know, our own police department and how and how we're dealing with things and how conversations are being had without transparency. And so I wanted to bring that up. But also I wanted to add on top of that. You know, kind of really getting down to what our what our values are as we're doing this work. Because I was, I was pretty surprised to see the certain things come out, especially with regards to, you know, how, how the work that we do and if it's, if it's important for us to provide safe spaces, which in our work so far, we haven't provided safe spaces. We've provided what we've been calling brave spaces. None of our spaces have been exclusive spaces. They've been spaces that have been open to the entire public. And wondering, you know, how people feel about how important it is for us to be creating safe spaces. And I know that some people don't agree with that. And I say that knowing that a lot of people don't agree. A lot of black folks don't even agree with the idea of reparations because that in itself feels like I don't need a hand. I don't need help. And in that that alone is infantilizing for some people. But I think that it's about, you know, there's a consent piece to it. No one has to be like no one's forcing you into a safe space. But also how important is it for that to exist for some people? How important is it for that to be an option for people? How important is it for people to have the option to not be in a violent space, but in a safe space? And so I don't know, I feel like it's hard for me to take all of the information that has been, or all of the opinions that has been brought to us in public comment, as well as the conversations that I've been having outside about people's feelings about it, and not sort of take a step back in looking at like what our values are and what we're doing in order to imprint those values into the work that will eventually be kind of out of our hands. Because at the end of the day, we are a group that makes recommendations. We don't make a decision about how that money is spent, where that money goes. So I, all of this to say like this, this whole, the murder of Tyree really brought up a lot of things. And I know that our town is, I don't know, a lot of people feel safe in this town, but I think it's important that enough people do not feel safe. And so I can't, I don't know, I think that it's, I think that it's harmful to paint with, you know, wide brushstrokes and so yeah, yeah, I just, I'm sorry it was a rather fragmented, but I wanted to share that with the assembly. Thank you, Alexis, and so glad that you did share all of that. And it does tie into some of what I had hoped for us to talk about today really nicely. So before, before we sort of make that turn, I did want to say that I feel like we are reaching a point in our work and I just so appreciate what Alexis just brought forward, where it's critical that we as assembly members identify our values and identify where we are in this process as individuals. And so one of the recommendations or suggestions that I have for the group is that we set aside, unfortunately, we are limited by the open meeting law and the inability to meet, you know, without being in a public meeting. But I think that we may want to consider setting aside some time to have a retreat like meetup convening, where we can get to some of these pieces that Alexis so so beautifully brought forward. And where we can discuss these individual values, the collective values, the individual places where we're coming into this, as we start to go down the road of exploring eligibility and use of funds and the, as Alexis said, even the use of the word reparations. So would folks be open to if we can try to schedule something to setting aside a time where we would have that as our focus instead of lumping it into a meeting with other agenda items? What would be the objective of this retreat? I'm going to answer that in one question. Dr. Rhodes, I'm just going to check in with Jennifer to see if Jennifer I was just going to say that the human rights has an annual retreat every fall where they kind of go in and figure out what their goals for the year are going to be. You have to post a meeting like always. We just don't usually typically have an audience. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think Dr. Rhodes to answer your question, the objective would be for us to as individual assembly members be able to air our own, our own place in this work where are we coming into this work because our work as an assembly is to listen to our community and then be able to make recommendations. But we all have individual places that we're coming into this work from. And so I think it's important that we have an opportunity to share that with one another. So we're not sort of talking past each other or when we're receiving public comment, we're not we're aware of where we all are and we have some common values in which we want to move forward as we start to build out our report to make recommendations for our community. I really agree with the sentiment of that, but it seems to me that given that when we do get together, it has to be public has to be a public meeting. What is the difference between that? And then setting aside something, one meeting to say, here's what we're going to do on discuss because it's all public. We're still going to have to be sharing who we are, what we believe in, our thoughts, values of sexual relationship, the reparations, whether we were just sharing that with each other in a private group, which you can't do, or a public group, which we can do. I don't understand the difference. Yeah, I don't think it has to be too different than just posting a meeting that only has one agenda item. So, you know, not not thinking of anything fancy. One thing that does come to mind for me, though, is I have to look for the date, but very soon, I believe the town council needs to make a decision about whether committees can meet in person. It may be beneficial for us to be able to at least have that meeting in person together. If people are open to that, it may be just another option that people might be interested in. But I think the purpose would be to really have an intention set that we're coming into that meeting for that particular purpose, and we're not going to cover other items in that particular meeting. So, it's not, I don't think that it has to be much different than that, Dr. Rhodes. Just one thing, I remember one committee, I can't remember which one, the public committees that we had a retreat. And it was the school committee, we had a retreat. And we're in person. 30 people showed up. It was remarkable. I mean, for me, I'm thinking even if we're in person or doing virtual, anyone can be there. Since anyone can be there, the intimacy that one would expect in those kinds of meetings are like a fantasy. So if you're going, if we're going to discuss anything, we can discuss it and we need to talk about each other, what each other feels, things, etc., about reparations, our roles in it, etc. Absolutely. It's just, to me, we are where we are. We are who we are, whether we're, and what we believe, think, value, etc., in relationship to reparations, that is something that the public needs and has the right to know. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not suggesting it by any means that they wouldn't. I'm just suggesting that we set an intention and that we draw up an agenda that is focused before we continue moving forward. I'm going to welcome Dr. Shabazz and see if he can hear us and be heard. Oh, I thought I was at least. Did you all just see a box? It's okay. It did come up. Okay. It was scounded with the video. Let him into the meeting. He came as an attendee. Okay. I have to have Jennifer. Perhaps he had to drop off again. Okay. Are there any other right now? What I would like for us to do is we're going to continue to have our meetings to cover the particulars that we're covering that's within our agenda, but I will work with Jennifer and Pamela to send out some doodle. We need to work on scheduling anyway, so to send out a doodle poll to get a sense of when folks might be available to have that meeting in which we will focus on those particular pieces. I did want to make two other just brief announcements before we move into other items on the agenda. One being, I want to acknowledge that this is the first day of Black History Month, and of course this ties into so much of what we're talking about here. There will be, Jennifer, could you give the details on the flag raising event that's this evening? Sure. So it'll be a quick ceremony. It's cold outside. The council will read the proclamation. The Amherst Gospel Choir will come and sing a few songs with us, and we will raise the flag tonight at six o'clock p.m. And then later in the month we are doing a this year, the Black History Month, speaking of flags, I just got our flag, the Black History Month theme this year is Resiliency, so we are going to show Black Resiliency from 1619 through current through music. And that will be an event that occurs later in the month. Okay, please let us know how we can be supportive of that, if at all, and this is on the town hall steps for tonight at six o'clock. Okay, and then one other announcement, Amherst Neighbors, the event with Amherst Neighbors is tomorrow from four to five thirty. And I, we don't have a chat that we're allowed to use here, but I will send out the link to register for that for folks who may want to do so. It's virtual, so I'll send it to assembly members. It's from four to five thirty. It is a virtual event. Myself and Dr. Chabaz and Kathleen Anderson will be panelists. If any of the other members are able to join, that would be wonderful. And we'll just, it is open to the public, but it was, it was definitely made available to the members of the Amherst Neighbors Organization. So are there any questions about any of those other announcements before we move on? Yes, Alexis. Oh, God, I feel so awkward. So one thing that has been tough about at least covering the Black History Month Black Raising is that it always seems to happen after sundown. And so it's very dark. And so I don't know if that's, I know it's already in the schedule now, but I just, I just wanted to bring that up. It's something that we've covered it in the past and it's like, it's too dark to be able to see anything. So we have had, you know, originally when I first started working for the town, it was at noon. And then too many people were upset that they weren't able to attend because it was during work hours. So we moved it to four thirty, which wasn't late enough for folks. Then we moved it to five thirty, which was too close to like getting home and getting everyone together. So we went with six p.m. Yeah, you know, we can work on lighting, though, to make the area lighter for you. Like I mean, I don't know about for today, but moving forward, I will keep that in mind and see if we can reach out to DPW or someone to get some additional lighting in that space. All right. Excellent. Thank you for bringing that up. So on our agenda today, I'm just taking a look here. We have several sort of operational pieces that we need to get to. And then we also have an item that Dr. Irv Rhodes asked to be on the agenda last week. And unfortunately, we weren't able to get to. And that is letter E under action and discussion items courage. And so I do want to make sure that we get to that. Dr. Rhodes, if it's OK with you, I know Dr. Shabazz will be joining at some point. So I'm going to give him a little more time to get here before we get to that. And I can and then and if we can maybe call, I'm going to call a public comment right now first, since we have two public comment periods. Would that be OK with you, Dr. Rhodes? It really is up to the assembly. I'm really at any point in time to discuss it. So it's up to you. It's not up to me. OK. Well, let's if everyone's good with that, we'll wait for Dr. Shabazz to get here to have that particular discussion. And if he is not able to attend in the next 20 minutes or so, then we'll we'll take it up sooner. So I'm going to call a public comment period. I did want to make just a bit of a statement about public comment before we we do that. So last week we had and we've had actually several weeks of public comment. We're in this process of listening right now. We have hosted multiple listening sessions. And I just I the public comment is so important to our work. And it's really important that the public comment also be respectful and that in particular, if there are individual names or folks that where a character or personality might be come into question, I would ask that if an assembly member feels that a public comment may be creating harm because of those reasons, if you would just raise your hand and bring it to my attention if I'm not already on it. And just also asking folks that would like to make public comment to keep that in mind. We do have ropes, which is our internal guidelines for how we communicate with one another. But I just wanted to make that that clear. So before I do call the public comment, would anyone like to comment on that or have any other additional suggestions or anything to add related to that? Okay, great. So I'm going to go ahead then and call a public comment period. And just quickly read that the chair will recognize recognize members of the public, depending on how many folks are here to speak, we will have up to three minutes. And if you could please just state your name, if you would like to make public comment and where you live, that would be excellent. And we will not engage in a dialogue, but we will certainly be listening. So I'm going to look for hands now. I haven't even looked to see. Let's see here. Okay, so if anybody would like to make public comment, please do raise your hand and we will have another public comment period later in the meeting as well. Okay, so not seeing any. I would like to give you all an update on the survey. So Dr. Rhodes and myself and Kerry from the Dunahue Institute had the chance to meet and we brought back all of the feedback that we got in our last meeting from the assembly and we received yesterday an updated scope of work. And I don't know if I even need to pull it up. I can just share that the updated scope of work included creating a hard copy of the survey so that we can distribute it at the various locations throughout town. So that's part of the scope at this point. And in terms of process, Town Manager Bachleman has given us the go ahead to move forward with the survey. So what happens is he will take the scope of work and then that gets turned into a contract that the Dunahue and the town will execute. And once that happens, we can start to develop the survey. Dr. Shabazz brought to my attention something I think very important yesterday, which was related to whether there were any people who identified as black as a person of color that would be working on the survey. So whether developing the survey or having any part in the survey. So I had the opportunity this morning to speak with Carrie. It turns out that Carrie had a particular person in mind that does identify as a woman of color that works at the Dunahue Institute. She has provided the bio to me if we can we can take a look at that. But she will be working directly with the development and the analysis of our survey. In addition to that, there will be interns that will be working on it and Carrie is aware of keeping that in mind. So I did want to just open the floor and see if anybody had any other comments or suggestions related to that piece. Yes, Alexis. I'm sorry. So I feel like it's going to come up again. I feel like it's going to come up again because the reason that there's BIPOC is that the POC doesn't necessarily mean black. And those experiences are very different. So I don't know. I can see this coming up again. And I think that I don't know. I don't know what that means exactly. Are we talking about an African-American person? Are we talking about a non-African heritage person of color? Yeah, that's a great question. And so I'm just hang on one second. Carrie said that she believes that Ellen identifies, her family is from Africa. Let me just pull up her, see if I can do this quickly and easily. Okay, so this is Ellen's bio. This is who would be working directly with Carrie on most if not all. She is a recent graduate of University of Massachusetts as well. So she has some good sort of connections and background in terms of working with the student population. But I certainly feel like this is an area that we should, if we are going to move forward with the Dunn-Hew Institute, I want to make sure that we are talking, you know, that we're that we're doing it in the way that honors and give is integral with our values. So are there any other, would there be any other steps that you would like me to take as the chair in this moment in terms of ensuring that that happens outside of what we've already talked about? Yes, Alexis. So is it Ellen someone that we're going to be able to meet with? Would Ellen be someone who would come to the retreat about values? Like, how do we how are we imprinting our values upon or how are we assuring that our values are being honored in this work? That's a really great question. I think we so our current scope of work has built into it several meetings that Carrie and Ellen would attend with us. So we can identify which ones we want that, you know, which ones. So like it might make sense to have them attend in that sort of values meeting so that they are as they're developing the survey, like you said, in a line aligned lining with our values. And then of course, there will be other times throughout the process that they'll also be meeting with us. But I think that's a great way to connect the two. And yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Dr. Rhodes. Just I think, you know, one thing or a number of things keeping in mind, but the major thing to keep in mind is this is a survey. Surveys are developed by professionals in either quantitative and qualitative manner. The most important part of the survey is what we are responsible for, not them. And that is developing the questions. We are responsible for that. There's the developing the design and all the stuff that goes into a survey. So we're talking about whether the person is that we're going to be working with this African American or not, or whether they identify as black, same material. Because the work that we do with the survey questions is the most important and major part of the survey. Thank you, Dr. Rhodes. Yvonne, Yuri. That's exactly what I was going to say. I mean, there's plenty of things that we do as people of color where we work with non-BIPOC folks to do the work. So it's really, my question was what is the process of our involvement like with them? Like we are the drivers. So I think that we don't have to ask questions about whether these folks will have our values. We need to just assert our values. So I think more than anything, we need to think about what the schedule is of completing this in a timely way and what our interaction will be with the group. Absolutely. So once we get through this kind of initial stage of getting the scope of work into a contract and having the town manager sign it, then we can set up our first meeting with the Dunning-Hue Institute and we can assert how we would like for it to move forward in terms of process. So we'll have a lot of opportunity. It's sort of like there's I'm trying to be respectful of Kerry's time before a contract is signed. So once we get to the signed contract, then we'll have that for the assembly can decide how we would like to and I really, really like the suggestion that Alexis has made, I think, at least to invite them in part to that values meeting that we would have and have that be a sort of catalyst for the development of the survey. But we'll be able to work through a process of meeting with them multiple times throughout. So does that answer your question, Yvonne? Okay. Yep, Dr. Rhodes. And Dr. Sorry, Dr. Rhodes. Dr. Shabazz is in the audience, Jennifer, just FYI there. Okay, go ahead. Sorry, Dr. Rhodes. Just remember when we're talking about again, when we're talking about the development of the survey, our part, our specific part in that are the questions. The survey design, et cetera, that's Donny. But the development of the questions, and that's us as A and B, one of the things that's already built in is after we develop the questions, and we put it into question form, before we even put that out to the public, is going to go to the four people who are going to be African-American black to get their responses to the questions. This is, again, to me, survey development of the survey is technical. It's all technical stuff. But the questions are there. We're the important part in the values that we share at the time. How the questions are asked, how they're framed, how those things are developed, that's us. That's us. Everything else is not us. Thank you, Dr. Rhodes. Welcome, Dr. Shabazz. Can you hear us? Get out of your car. Dr. Shabazz, do you want to take a moment? I've already announced that you were being honored this morning in Springfield at the opening of Black History Month and huge recognition. I personally am very inspired and proud that one of our members had received such a recognition. Do you want to say a few words about that right now? Are you sort of still taking it all in? My cup run is over. I'll bring home the glass and share and bring home the goal as it were. But no, thank you so much for mentioning that. Absolutely. Dr. Shabazz, this has been a very rich meeting so far. I would invite you when you have time to watch the recording up into the point that you arrived here today. We'll get that over to you. Are there any other questions right now in terms of the process for the survey, where we're at with it, and any other pieces? I think given open meeting law, I want to make sure that every member of the assembly feels like there's not some space between the survey and us being here in a meeting. I want to make sure we're all engaged and involved in the process. Anybody is welcome to call Kerry, individually ask questions, talk with her at any point. But if there's anything right now that folks have before we give Pamela and Paul to go ahead to turn the scope into a contract, please let me know. No? Okay. Great. So we are good to go with that. Just checking. Just a quick update on the big payback screening that's on our agenda. Has everyone had a chance or is slightly familiar with the big payback documentary that's been released recently about reparations? Okay. So if you are not, it's currently streaming free on PBS. It's a documentary that was put together. It does cover Evanston's journey and also covers some other perspectives on reparations. And so I met with former older women Robin Rusimans from Evanston last week to talk to her about doing a community screening here in Amherst and welcoming Robin to Amherst to participate in a panel before or after the screening with other members of the community. So right now where I'm at in that process is making, trying to make some connections with the three higher ed institutions to see where there might be interest in partnerships. This would be something that we would do in March. So there will be more details forthcoming once I gather some more information about that. But if there are any questions or comments about that now, please feel free. Okay. Not seeing any. Also the League of Women Voter collaboration with Dr. Sandy Darity and potentially others. There's a small group of folks meeting. Dr. Rhodes is part of that group and folks from the racial justice committee of the League of Women Voters to begin to discuss what that program might look like and whether it will be something we hope to be able to be collaborative in that. And Alexis, I don't know if you could hear what we were talking about when you walked away, but I might need to call you separately. It was about the big payback screening and I had some questions for you just in terms of Amherst media. So I'll call you separately. All right. Great. So I think what I'd like to do now is turn our attention to what is again on the agenda as E. It's courage. Dr. Rhodes has brought this forward and I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Rhodes now to if he's available now to talk to that agenda item. You know, I've been thinking about this every time I thought about it and then put it forth in the editorial. And I think that what makes most sense to me is to try to give a little bit of history background about who I am and where what my experiences were that led me to that particular article. One, I came out of Western Pennsylvania, a very small town in Western Pennsylvania, coal mountain town. I was recruited as a football player for to play football in a division one school called Southern Illinois University, school the size of University of Massachusetts. I arrived at Carmeldale, Illinois, the home of Southern Illinois University on a bus. I get off of the bus, walk across the street and I can't eat in the restaurant because I'm black. Then fast forward a year and a half from that time, I get my varsity letter sweater and I put it on, take up a sign and join others who are protesting at that various very old restaurant refused to serve me. At the time of this that happened when I put on a sweater and I did that, I understood that I could very well be expelled from school. The very next day, there was Earl Rose on the front page of the newspaper with his sign and letters. Nothing happened to me. At the same time, every black student that I knew was getting on busses head itself to join protests. We were all trained in how to deal with when we're in the protests. I didn't go, could not take that time off being a student athlete. But every last one of them went, feet up, spat on, feces thrown on, etc. But it didn't stop them from going. And every time that I have ever been in the South at all the museums, all the people I've talked to, who grew up with professionally, who went through those times of being very afraid for your own life, very afraid in entering situations all the time that were precarious at best. But we were not one thing that we never asked for. We never asked for a safe space. We never said, hey, let us talk. We demanded to talk. No one asked for a safe space in terms of setting down in the restaurant. We demanded to set down in the restaurant. No one said we had to, you know, a safe space when we're marching in those and being attacked by dogs and sped up on for a safe space. We demanded the same space. We demanded all those things. No one, no one took our humanity away or our man or the person or the way we were in our people. We do not ask for your pity or gratuitous sympathy. We ask or in demand your respect. And respect is not given by asking for safe spaces. And that's where I am. That's my history. I am proud of it. I stand on it. My forefathers and ancestors who march with me and those who came before me, I'm there. And I respect that history. And I will not disrespect it but asking for a safe space. Thank you, Dr. Rhodes. Thank you for sharing that background. It's really helpful to hear that. And I wanted to just clarify that Dr. Rhodes alluded to in opinion piece that he had published. Did anyone have a chance to read that? Alexis? Yvonne? Okay. So I want to set that aside for a second in terms of the opinion piece and that. But I want to open the floor for folks who may want to talk about Dr. Rhodes what he's bringing forward. And I guess what I would ask Dr. Rhodes is what action are you seeking from the assembly? So it's on our agenda as a discussion and action item. There doesn't need to be an action. But did you just want to be able to share that with us? That's all I want to do is share that. And if people want to discuss it and you want to question me about it, I'm really open to that because I want to share my background, my perspective and where I'm coming from and what shapes my opinion about these issues. Again, it's whether we discuss it, don't discuss it. It's immaterial to me that I had it was incumbent upon me to say it. And I said it. Okay. Would anyone like to speak to this? Yes, Dr. Schwarz. You're muted, Dr. Schwarz. Thank you. So I want to echo. Well, this is this is really important. I when the piece, an advanced version was shared with me by Dr. Rosen as I read it as it was published, you know, the invocation, the call for courage in what we do and is so important. And the acknowledgement of the of our ancestors and the shoulders we stand on, the courageous shoulders, the award I just received was named for a woman named Ruth Loving, who lived nearly a century. I had a chance to get to know her here in in Springfield. She is regarded as the mother of the civil rights movement in in in Springfield. And I and so I completely concur with the what that invocation that called to courage on the at the same time, I would like to say I've been learning. I'm a lifelong learning. I try to learn from the young people I teach at a school where, you know, I'm constantly engaged with 17 year olds, 18 year olds, 20 people in their 20s, 30s all the way up up the line. And and then I and I also have a senior in high school getting ready to graduate. So I'm constantly in the mix of talking with with young people, especially. And the way I'm hearing the the call for safe space from from from particularly from that in that intergenerational conversation is is not so much that is not so much a request for like some guarantee that to to to assert once once once humanity to want us to be in a public forum and to speak for and to speak about your your needs and a public forum that somehow, you know, there has to be some guarantee of safety. I don't hear it is that I hear it rather as and and in the same way we're calling us to courage. It's a call to community that asking for safe space is asking for us to come together and be in community with each other with respect for each other's personhood, human dignity, and that we're not going to throw feces at each other, that we're not going to attack each other, that we're not going to inflict harm on each other. It's the call for community. It's not so much a, you know, a repudiation of courage or saying that, oh, in order for me to speak, you know, I've got to have all these conditions otherwise I don't feel safe. And no, it's a call for community. And therefore in that regard, and I'm going to stop talking because of this thing coming on with directions, but but just to say that I also hear the other side of that that call for safe space as really a call for us to be a community and live up to what it means to be in community with each other, that we don't attack each other, that we don't harm each other, and that we respect each other's differences. No matter, you know, no matter what, where we may personally feel about those differences, let's give respect, human respect to each other. Thank you all. That's my piece. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz. Dr. Rhodes. I like that Dr. Shabazz. I like that a call to community. That is great. I mean because, yes, we can call each other, we can call each other to community without attacking each other. We can be in a group that's, you know, made up of all kinds of other people, but we can call each other to community, that we don't attack each other, berate each other, but we lift each other up. That's what, you know, when I think about it, that's right on, because when we were preparing to do marches and go out in public and demonstrate, etc., that's what we were doing. We were lifting each other up. We were giving each other the courage to go out, to be, and to know that we were going to be attacked, but with each other, we had strength. That's where our strength came from. And so I agree with you, Dr. Shabazz. If you view it that way as a call for us, you know, to recognize each other, that's call to community. That's a different way of putting it. It's different from asking for safe spaces. It's a call to community for those who are Black, African-American, whatever, to be with each other and not to attack each other, etc. I can go with that. Thank you, Dr. Rhodes. Alexis? I guess first I want to start with saying thank you, Dr. Rhodes, for sharing your experience as well as thank you, Dr. Shabazz, for your framing in that. I think that the way that I understand safe space includes what is also maybe adjacent to how Dr. Shabazz explained it, went to Hampshire. So, you know, a lot of conversations about that. I think that one way that I can't think about it is in terms of asking for it. I don't think that safe spaces are really spaces that are being asked for, but rather intentionally created. And that a lot of the time, or at least a lot of the spaces that have indeed been deemed safe by those who have been in it have been intentionally exclusive. And I think that that comes back to a community piece is that how do I create community with someone who is harming the community? How do we get through an issue or get to a resolution when there are people present that are wanting to intentionally create harm? And I think that the intention is to create a space where a resolution is able to be made with folks who are looking to opt into that. And so with all that being said, I think that I'll just, maybe I'll just add, my mom plays tennis, a lot of tennis. She, tennis is life for her. And up here we have, there's a particular culture within tennis here. There's, it's a diverse community of tennis players, but people feel comfortable in this space saying certain things, particularly anti-black things. When my mom goes down to Atlanta to play tennis, it is a very different situation for her. Not only is it a space that she feels safer in, but also it's the community of the tennis players not only look different, but they act different. And so I don't, again, I want to kind of avoid this idea of like we're asking white folks for safe space because I really don't view it that way. And at least that's never been a successful thing that's happened. Rather, it's a space intentionally created by, and it's not always black folks creating a safe space. Sometimes it's LGBTQ folks, sometimes it's Asian folks, sometimes, depending on what their needs are. So I, at least I'm never seeing it, and I've never seen it played out as an asking for permission from folks. It is in the way that Black Wall Street was created in the way that Black communities were created to foster community and foster safety amongst that community. It's intentional space building. So I'm going to stop there because I'm rambling, but yeah. Thank you, Alexis. And, you know, this ties in really nicely to the earlier discussion about values. I mean, we're essentially having a discussion related to that right now. So I really appreciate it. And I want to just pause for a second. I'm not sure if Dr. Shabazz fell off or Jennifer, do you see Dr. Shabazz in the attendee at all? No, it looks like he might have fell off, like he lost reception or something perhaps. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking. Okay. Well, we still have a quorum, so we're still okay. One thing that I wanted to address related to this, not this isn't specific to this necessarily, but related to this, is for us to think about, and again, I think this can come back to a values discussion, whether those are internal AHA member values as a collective or values that we're projecting out into the community, is if we have something in particular to address with one another, as Dr. Rhodes did, so I'll use this as an example. And I think Dr. Rhodes asked that this be on the agenda, and unfortunately we didn't get to it last week. But I don't want to speak for anybody else in the group, but myself to say that it was challenging for me to see the piece being published in the paper before we had an opportunity to speak about it as a group. And so I don't think this will be the last time that one of us has something that is on our chest, on our mind, that we want to get across. And I would like for us to think about how in the future we want to handle those situations. And perhaps we want to just have some guidelines for ourselves about that, so that we have the, it's not to say that anybody doesn't have as an individual the right to publish or to speak their minds about anything, but do we want to think about that in terms of our internal assembly members and are the collective here? So that's, I don't know if anyone has any other, you know, wants to talk to that. Yes, Dr. Rhodes. I mean, the reason I wanted it on the agenda was I really wanted to have feedback from this group, from this committee. I mean, this is a committee of individuals who have really, really respect and have come to look at as a really good solid group of people. And so I really wanted the opinion of this group before I published it. And I wanted to have a spirited debate about it, because it's something that, as you can tell, I feel very deeply and strongly about. And it's because of my background and my history, my own personal history. And so I was looking forward to that. And unfortunately, because of some circumstances and publishing wise, it had to be done the day I did it. Otherwise, it would, I would have held off until this discussion, but unfortunately we couldn't. But again, I really wanted to hear and all of the feedback from the AHRA. I mean, one thing that you can count on about me in relationship to me is there is no feedback that is negative. It is all positive because it gives me information. And that's been a part of my history. That's where I approach life. Feedback is good. Positive or negative. It's just feedback. And it's good feedback. It's not good or bad. It's feedback. It's neither negative or positive. It's feedback. And every time someone that I know, other people put a value judgment on that feedback, then I know they're going down the wrong road. They will not develop in a positive manner. Thanks, Dr. Rhodes. So yeah, let's hold that as a question because, you know, like any one of us, like what Alexis was speaking to earlier, we're all coming here with our own feelings and opinions. And do we want as an assembly to have some guidelines in place for how we might, you know, whether we ask each other, you know, to, okay, I want to publish something about this work. I'm on fire about this. You know, do we want to have some guidelines in place around like, let's have a discussion publicly in our meeting together before we would do that? Or are we saying, you know what, we can each individually go ahead and do that. And then we'll talk about it like we did today when we have time to talk about it. So I'm not saying one way or another, I have my own opinion on it, but I did want to kind of put that out for the assembly to think about. Yes, Jennifer. I'm sorry, I don't exactly understand. Are you saying, because nobody should be speaking on behalf of the AHA, are you talking about speaking on the work of the AHA to others? I'm just trying to get a clearer picture, because no one should be speaking in public on behalf of the AHA. Yeah, absolutely. So that's a great question. And I think that, yeah, that should be reinforced. But I'm more speaking about if an individual member wants to speak about an issue related to reparations. In this case, Dr. Rhodes was speaking to courage. I think it's a little slippery because he voked AHA in the piece. So I'm not exactly sure how the assembly feels about that. But I agree that nobody should speak on behalf of the AHA outside of the meetings. However, how do we want to move forward if an individual wants to publish something that relates to their feelings about Reparatory Justice or feelings about any of it? Do we want to have an agreement here as a committee that, hey, at least we're going to give that heads up to the committee before we go and publish something? That would be my preference, personally. But I just follow up with that. I mean, I don't think you can always necessarily, it should be limited to publishing because it could very well be that you're someone just approaches you about something because they know you're on the AHA. But honestly, really, it should be stated within whatever the person's writing or saying that I'm not speaking on behalf of the AHA and duly noted as a common courtesy to tell folks, this is what I'm doing, right? Or this is what is done or don't be surprised if you read. Yeah. Yeah. So I see Dr. Rhodes, then Alexis, then Dr. Shabazz. Yeah, Jennifer, Jennifer is right on and that's a modus operandi for public servant when you're speaking and you really need to say that you're not speaking on the behalf of the AHA. And my article certainly did not need to say that because I was writing in general in general about a particular issue which was courage and relationship to safe spaces. Alexis. So this is important to me just because this came up in another committee and I know that because I broadcast it, which was it like regarded not just with someone put in their own blog, but also what they said at public comment and it being very like a different committee or a different meetings, public comment. And so it is indeed a subversive but I also think that having these, I think that the transparency piece in terms of like us having this conversation so that the public knows I think is very important too because we, this has come up not explicitly in that language, but this has come up as a concern in public comment as well. Especially with regards to our survey, right? So I don't, I personally don't feel like anybody has to give me a heads up that they're going to do it, but I think that it's important to make that distinction at least in terms of when something is being said publicly that like I'm saying this on my own behalf. Yeah. Thank you, Alexis. Dr. Rhodes. This is an incredibly good discussion that I wish that I could stick around. However, I have 15 minutes to get the word, it takes 30 minutes. And I really need to leave and I really want to say before I leave I really appreciate everyone's comments and that again, there's no negative or positive feedback for me. It's all feedback. I treat all feedback as neutral. Thank you all. Thanks, Dr. Rhodes. Dr. Shabazz, you had your hand up. Did you have further remarks on this? Well, that's fine. I think we're landed in a good place and only to say that, you know, so many of us on here where multiple kind of political hats in town, you're a counselor, you certainly are called upon to speak both publicly and in, you know, privately one-on-one on a whole range of matters, some of which may touch sort of what's in the scope of AHRA. Dr. Rhodes himself is on school committee. We've been talking about education as a harm area. He may, you know, have to speak or write or publish or whatever on, from his duty as a school committee member, you know, Alexis in the media, in the eye with Amherst media and so on. So, you know, I and I have different hats that I wear as a teacher and what not. So I think that where you propose that we, you know, feel free to come back as feet, you know, and have a discussion if it's deemed, if anyone deems, you know, would like to respond or would like to go on a record or whatever relative to remarks or something someone else has made or published, I think that's fine to the extent that we have time in our work. But the, and I also like the point made about, you know, that it's where it's possible to try to, you know, emphasize your speaking for yourself. I know there was an ugly little situation that came up with one of the school committee members in an effort, an unsuccessful effort to try to chastise her or censure her for speaking out and that it went at variance with, you know, her role in, in terms of within that, within the school committee. So these are ticklish matters and, and so I just think it's good that we've discussed it. We've talked about certain, you know, firms, certain protocols like. Dr. Shavas, unfortunately you're breaking up quite a bit. It's possible to, to indicate that you're speaking for yourself or you're writing as, you know, as your own opinion, as we back in our meetings or otherwise. And I think that that lands us at a good place. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This has been such a wonderful and rich meeting today and so many threads, you know, that are just, it's all crossing. And so I do look forward, Dr. Shavas, you weren't here when we talked about setting aside some time. Like I said, if you get a chance to watch the beginning of the meeting, Alexis brought up some really important points. And we talked about setting aside a sort of retreat style with the intention of talking about our individual and collective values as, as we move forward with this work. So let me just check in and see here. I'm going to call one more public comment period and that would be now if there are any members of the public that would like to make public comment before we do that quickly. We need to make sure we can keep a quorum here. Is everybody available to stay through the public comment period? It looks like we have two hands up. So another 10 minutes and then we'll, okay, great. Awesome, Hala. And then we'll be able to, I think, wrap up for the day. So we have Lauren is going to come in first. And I have just starting to move Lauren over. It takes a second sometimes. Okay. Lauren, it's said that maybe you just want, here, let me try this. There you go. There's just a delay. Yeah, it is said that she declined it. But I think Jennifer that maybe we were both pressing at the same time. Welcome, Lauren. Okay. I joined as panelists and I wasn't sure if I should press that. So I waited until it just said unmute, but then I might, my phone is on low battery. So I'm hoping that I can get through this public comment without it shutting off. But I wanted to share some thoughts from the last AHRA meeting about like how we are identifying and defining, you know, groups of Black people. My phone is off. But I'll just, I'll just Lauren, in case you're talking, we can't hear you right now. I think we got her point and we'll have future occasions where we'll be addressing the question of who is old, how, you know, the question of lineage identity and residency. Okay. Yes. Let's see if Lauren, are you, can you be heard? Can you try one more time to be heard? Okay. So let's go. We have Kiara. We'll bring Kiara in and then we'll try to come back to Lauren before we, before we finish up again. So. It was just with Kiara's grandmother. Ms. Cutting came out to honor my receiving the Loving Award. It was great to see her too. That's wonderful. All right. Welcome, Kiara. Okay. Thank you. I just caught the last, the tail of what Dr. Shabal was saying. So I'll check on my grandmother today and see. Congratulations, by the way. Yeah, this is Kiara Cosby and I just wanted to say with regard to the public comment thing, I want to first thank you for honoring both public comment period as we spoke about last, last time. And also I really appreciate Alexis's earlier comments and especially Dr. Rhodes comment on courage and the idea of safe spaces, especially when it comes to this particular work. And so I do agree that a standard of respect is definitely important. It's also important to acknowledge that this issue of reparations and the deliberations around it are often very emotionally charged conversations because it's a deeply personal issue, you know, to many, to many black Americans. And so I'm not sure, you know, to what degree, you know, the ideas of the public are able to be policed in that manner. You know, for lack of a better word, but I'm definitely wanted to also say that respect is often subjective. I'm especially, you know, pertain to this particular issue. For example, the language of, as referenced earlier, of POC and BIPOC and those sort of terms, that actually has often been referenced and these are, these are liberations and a growing contingency of black Americans, believe it or not, actually consider those to be anti black slurs due to the erase, eraser or erasure of black identity that can often be kind of seen within those terms. There's almost like an excuse not to actually talk about black people who say just say POC or BIPOC. So I just wanted to reference that. So especially when, you know, discussing reparations related to slavery, that type of language for many is considered to be disrespectful. So at the end of the day, I think ultimately what's important is recognizing that, you know, this conversation of reparations is an educational experience, not just for members of the public, but also for assembly members. And, you know, this is the work that members have signed up to be a part of. And it is, you know, there's going to be a lot of, a lot of things that you may hear that, you know, may not agree with or may not understand. But all of that I think is very essential to the process. So to the degree that we can, you know, we want to do what people to be respectful, but that is very subjective. And we have to keep our ears open and our hearts open to all the different ideas that we're going to hear throughout this process. So thank you so much. Thank you, Chiara. Thank you very much. And Lauren's hand is still up. So we'll try to see if Lauren can be brought back in. Looks like it might. All right. Welcome back, Lauren. Can you hear us? You'll have to unmute. Okay. I just want to say, on February 23rd, 530 to 730 at the Jones Library, I will be hosting an event called I am Home. It is in celebration of Black History Month. And it is through the team's department. And on the website, you can get more information. And it is a community presentation, a creative presentation. And we're asking all of the community to submit any kind of art that they would like to honor Black History Month. And the inspiration for this is the Black Church. And it is to inspire us to realize, you know, what Dr. Rhodes was saying that sometimes that safe space is within ourselves. And so I could go on, but I don't want. Can I ask, I actually didn't get the first comment that Ms. Mills had made, which you find repeating, which her first comment was, please? I didn't either. Lauren, did you hear that? A couple people didn't hear when you were first commenting what you had said. Okay, let's give Lauren a second. In the meantime, I'm going to pull up. Lauren actually sent me a flyer of, hang on one second. Oh, sorry, my, everything's, I don't know if you can see that though. I will send this to everybody though. This is the call for submissions. Lauren was talking about the event she's hosting at the Jones Library. It looks fantastic. And I will make sure that everybody in the assembly gets it. I do see there's someone in the audience also from the Indies. So I'll, we'll make sure we get this out there as much as possible. It really looks fantastic. Lauren, oh, okay, I think Lauren's phone did and ultimately die because she's not in the audience either. So hopefully she'll be able to I'll follow up with her to see if she can come back next week and wonder if it's on the community calendar. I'm looking right now. Yeah. And I'll, were you on the email that she sent me Jennifer? Because I can forward you that if, if you don't have it. I don't think so. Okay, I'll forward that to you. All right, wonderful. So before we wrap up here, I just, I'd like to check in one more time with members to see we'll be meeting on Monday at our usual time. I will also work with Jennifer and Pamela to set up a doodle poll for the separate retreat style focused meeting that we'll have on on our on the values piece. But February 6 at two o'clock will be our next meeting time. And in that time, I do hope, well, let me check in with folks. So how does that feel because that's sort of rolling up pretty quickly would do folks want to meet on the sixth or do we want to take a breath and meet on the 13th? And hopefully by that time, we'll have the survey contract set to go. And we'll be able to start moving forward with that piece of things. Yeah, Alexis. So we're not meeting, like President's Day is closed, right? Oh, is that the 13th? No, no, it's the 20th. Oh, yes, that's correct. Yes, that we will not be able to meet that day. So how many, how many meetings do we have before we have to get the survey stuff done? Well, we can't do much until we get this contract signed. And my guess is we're not going to have that done until at least the 13th. We won't have it by the sixth. And so there's but but we could be starting to develop the questions ourselves, you know, and starting to think about that. So if folks are okay to meet on the sixth, I think it would be good so that we're ahead of the game once the contract is signed. Is anyone opposed to meeting, I guess, on the sixth is the question. Okay, let's just do it then. So Jennifer, you can post today if you want or, you know, whenever you can post the same agenda just to take off Dr. Rhodes, the courage piece. And then in terms of the other meeting, we'll coordinate on that separately, but you can go ahead with that agenda for two o'clock on Monday. There's something on the agenda that says small group of folks meeting to begin to discuss what the program will look like. No, maybe that's part of my minutes and it got stuck in the wrong place. I was like, wait, I don't see it. Can I take the listening session debrief? Sure. What about upcoming listening sessions that stays on? That stays on, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I had, I did want to propose a couple of things related to that, particularly back again to what Alexis was bringing forward earlier in terms of public safety in our community and whether we want to think about listening sessions for members of the town staff that are within the public safety or other particulars that we may want to think about that aren't, that are a little more focused. So yeah, if we could keep that on, it would be great. Are there any other agenda items that folks would like to have included on next week's meeting agenda? Okay. I assume that you'll have to post it by tomorrow, Jennifer. So if folks do have anything, please do send it to Jennifer and myself before then. Yep. I'm going to post it now. So, but we can always revise the agenda and add something if needed. Perfect. All right. Anything else? All right. Well, thank you everyone for a really excellent meeting. Thanks to those who came to speak in public comment. And we are adjourning at 107 p.m.