 Okay, great. And we still have some people coming in. So I do want to say welcome to those of you that are here with us on the Zoom meeting now. And also to those who are watching live on Facebook, as well as our YouTube channel as well. We want to say thank you for joining us. And we're happy that you're here. My name is Maya Longmore, and I'm the outreach director for the Racial Justice Alliance. And our mission is to secure sample power, ensure agency and provide security to American descendants of slavery while embracing their history and preserving their culture. And we carry out our work of the Alliance in several ways ranging from our platforms and initiatives, outreach and education, as well as community engagement and support and culture empowerment. So during the course of this session, you'll discover how some of these initiatives overlap. And you will find us here on Zoom every Thursdays and alternating Wednesdays. So tonight we'll have a brief commercial break and we'll we'll update you all on what is going to be going on next week. And also visit our website and go to our website calendar to see the outreach and education events that we have coming up for the rest of this month and also next month. So before I pass the mic over to our executive director, we asked that you all stay muted through this session. And throughout the course of this session, we encourage you to be engaged in our Q&A portion of the discussion. And if you have any questions, feel free to raise your hand or drop a comment in chat. And tonight's session is called Abolish Slavery in Vermont. And I'd like to welcome our speaker for tonight, Executive Director Reverend Marquis. You're on mute. Thank you, Max. How many times do we do that a day? So thank you, Maya, for taking the time and showing up with us tonight. We've got some other folks that I want to acknowledge here shortly, but the first one that I want to acknowledge is our past chair of the Vermont Racial Justice Foundation, the Reverend Dr. Christopher Von Cockrell. So I just want to ask if everybody just a pause for a minute and I just want to acknowledge him who passed last Tuesday. He's the chair of the Board of the Vermont Racial Justice Foundation, Reverend Dr. Christopher Von Cockrell on Tuesday 30 November 2021. He passed prior to this Reverend Dr. Von Cockrell served as an advisory capacity here at the Alliance. He often showed up at various community forums. In fact, he attended the last one that we had on Abolish Slavery just a week or two ago. He preached a message of justice, racial justice in his ministry, he framed the stories from a perspective of having grown up in a segregated Jim Crow south and losing his only brother to a racist active shooter in his work in a workplace. He oversaw the board at time at a time unprecedented expansion of the Racial Justice Alliance and this was just, you know, with this unmatched, you know, first African landing day, which honors 1619, which we did just last summer. Massive technology updates, including website refreshes and huge quantitative and qualitative data expansions statewide joint resolution that racism is a public health emergency health equity enactment. The public engagement and support activities establishment of the Richard Kim Center and much, much, much more I attended his services to honor him in meridian Mississippi on behalf of the Alliance on the fourth The time of his local home going in celebration is yet to be announced and Dr. Von Cockrell, the late Dr. Von Cockrell, who's a great leader, he was a dear friend on and he will be sorely missed. But I know that to be separate from the body is to be present with the Lord Reverend Dr Christopher Von Cockrell. And welcome, those of you who come, Maya said a little bit ago about, you know, some of the things about the Alliance I just want to acknowledge the, the work of the Alliance and one of those swim lanes. What we talked about was as we talked about this whole idea of these initiatives these these platforms and initiatives and one of those ways in which we do that is through a formula we call a CT at the statewide level in our various policies and bills and that this is one year in one area of four areas in which we operate right now. So I just wanted to focus you in on it. This is just a portion of very, very small portion there are many, many organizations that are doing abolition solely abolition and this is straight on abolition. So this is this is hard work I couldn't imagine being just solely dedicated to abolition or probably make me lose my lose my hair more quickly. So we keep busy with a lot of other things so just wanted to bring that to your attention before we go on and get into the agenda. So some introductions here just post haste and we'll talk a little bit about PR two and the 13th Amendment and frame this whole thing with systemic racism. I think you'll see how it goes together when we see how when you see how we introduced this and how we've been following a trajectory this work here in the state of Vermont. We'll have plenty of time to have conversations. I got slides and slides and more slides we may use some we may not use them we may skip some. We'll have all of the slides off and just start talking. So we'll just see how all of that goes. For right now what it looks like is is, I'd like to get up and I don't I don't see for some odd reason I'm not I don't see the video of everyone else that's on this call right now maybe it's because I have a screen the way the way that it is but what I will do is is just to let you know I'm going to keep my screen out of presentation mode because it works better. What happens is is it gets stuck and there's just a lot of issues that happen there so I'm going to keep my my screen and share mode where it's just you know where you can see the slides on the side just so you know I know it's there. It just works better that way. There are a few folks that I wanted to introduce. We've got got some folks from the abali slavery national network. I am excited to have folks from across the United States joining us here in this little tiny state of 628,000 people here in the state of Vermont. So thank you all for those of you who are here I can't see you yet when I get finished wrestling with this thing I'll figure out who's actually on did for a minute did see some participants. I do see Nathan, I see Isaac, I see California abolition at coalition I see Max, Maya and myself. Okay, so I think I can see the participants now. Thank you all for showing up. I want to take some time to introduce those who are here are or allow those who are here to introduce themselves. So get ready. I'm going to go to Max Parthes first. Max. Welcome. Please mark and thank you for being here again. I am very sorrowful at the loss that you have taken. The doctor where I heard him the last time I was here spoke very profoundly, and I would love to have access to that segment that we had before to see it again. I'm Max Parthes. I am as it says on the thing is spoken word artists and slavery abolitionist co director for state operations for the abolish slavery national network co host of abolition today and online masterclass on slavery abolition. And also, I am the acting director for the Paul coffee abolitionist center in Sumter, South Carolina. It's such a pleasure to have you back with us and Max has become like a brother because we're usually on a call about once a week. I see a feeble wasn't Dennis hasn't shown up yet. And he may be joining us but I'm happy to speak of the devil. So we're not we're not going to put him on the spot but I've just admitted him. And we will go over to Molina. Welcome, you want to just take a minute and introduce yourself. Thank you for joining. Yeah, thank you for having me I'm Molina Cohen. I led the effort in 2020 to abolish slavery from Nebraska's Constitution, and I'm proud to be a part of the abolish slavery national network. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome Dennis feebo we're going to come back to you we're just doing some brief intros I know you probably still trying to blow off some steam from your class. So we'll let you we'll save you for last but I would like to go over to Nathan, Nathan would listen Stanley. I'm going to mute here and join. Yes, my name's Nathan with the Stanley. I was part of why I'm part of the leadership team for the baller slavery national network as well. And I was part of the effort in 2016 to try to abolish slavery in Colorado that narrowly failed it did not succeed, and then an effort in 2018 with amendment a in Colorado which did succeed. I worked closely with Kamau Allen, who is the lead organizer for the baller slavery national network he would probably be here tonight except that his his mother had surgery yesterday but that the two of us have been involved in in this effort. It's been a long time since the since the beginning of it. I'm an ordained Unitarian Universalist Minister. I was the director of the ACLU of Colorado during those two campaigns and happy to be here and thank you for your work mark. Thank you again, Nathan. I, you know, it seems like it's probably been about a year or maybe, maybe it was last. I don't, I won't try to remember but it's because I got that COVID fog, but it's good, it's good to hear from you. And I'll go back to Dennis Dennis thank you for joining we're just doing some quick intros just introduce yourself and tell us those where you're coming from. My family side the call from my car because my kids are inside acting real crazy. My name is Dennis people, the founder of Amanda 13 in New Jersey, we're the movement to amend the New Jersey Constitution to include anti slavery language. And the public that only 20 only half the states, properly ratified the 13th amendment by including their language in the Constitution. And the other half didn't write anything at all so our state base our campaign is based on adding anti slavery language which was state slavery and voluntary service who are illegal in the state of New Jersey, including as punishment for crime. And then almost three, you know, two and a half years right now has been a really hard battle but we still in here. And I also direct the New Jersey credible messenger movement which is putting our brothers and sisters that lived experience especially done time or involved in the streets to work with our youth and families here in New Jersey. Max is good to have you back. I'm sorry. I'm Dennis is good to have you back is always good to hear your voice. Thank you for picking up on the call I do have my community engagement and support director on the call right now and I will be remiss and not introducing you to my good friend and my left hand. Isaac Orusu. Are you here Isaac. I am. Thank you beautiful folks who joined us and we're very very excited to have you guys I think he covered my old intro statically so thank you mark and thank you all for joining us. Thanks for being a brother. Let's just talk a little bit before we move too far. We'll come back and get Savannah in a minute. But before we move too far, I did want to just take a brief moment and go to the Constitution itself. This is the Vermont Constitution. We're going to be talking a little bit about it. Before we go too far into it, I just want to let you know, I am excited in where we are right now. We have moved this constitutional amendment through the Senate, through the House, back through the Senate. Now it's back in the House. When it passes out of the House, it must go through a, by constitution, it must go through a public hearing. When it passes out of the House, then it will go back to the Senate, get buttoned up, and it'll go over to Jim Condo's office, our state secretary, and it'll be on the ballot in November, if all things go well. This has been a work, this has been a passion that was born out of some of the other work that we're doing. We're, I'm excited because we have learned so much, especially from the Abali Slavery National Network, folks, on what it is we're doing. Because we had no idea what we were doing when we started this. I did see Colorado from a distance when this kicked off, because you gotta remember, it was like 15, 16, we first started looking at this. I have a map for you later on to show you, but I did want you to be able to see this language in Savannah. If you could just be getting ready to introduce yourself, it's just a high level introduction on who you are and the role you play with the Abali Slavery National Network, I don't wanna just throw it at you too quick. It'll give you a chance to prepare. But for those who are looking at this right here, what you see here is a couple more exception clauses, and we're gonna talk more about this later. When I say a couple more, because what we know is that the 13th Amendment also has an exception clause. I'm gonna pull all of this together and why it is that PR2, the 13th Amendment and a conversation on systemic racism, they all go together. And it's kind of wrapped in this whole framework of something else called the United Nations. So we'll get, again, this has been an education for us and we're removing this thing forward. I wanna go back to Savannah, because I'm really happy that you were able to join if you don't mind taking a brief moment to introduce yourself. Hi, hello everybody. My name's Savannah Eldridge. I'm one of the co-directors of state operation for the Abali Slavery National Network. And I'm leading the state campaign in the state of Texas. Thank you so much for joining. I know you were pressed for time and you had a whole lot of other stuff going on and you had an incredibly short notice. So thank you so much for showing up. I wanna just take a few minutes and set some expectations before I go too much further because I'm just gonna give a very short, I probably got maybe six or seven slides for you or something like that. Then we'll break out into some conversations. Then we'll go a little bit more with a few more slides and then we'll break out into some conversation. So this is why, you know, while we're talking, while I'm talking, while we're talking, I'm gonna ask Maya if she could just kind of moderate if you can watch for hands and also if there's something that you wanna say, no, feel free to open your mic and just go ahead and say it, drop something in the chat. But I did wanna engage, I didn't wanna talk at you for the next hour or something like that. I do have a lot of information but there's much, much more information that we brought to bear on this call from the Abali Slavery National Network because I want also folks to know about what's happening across the United States. I want folks to understand, you know, why this is important in Vermont but also how this ties into this national conversation. So what you see here is this state right here is not the first day till Abali Slavery, sorry. What this state is is this is the state that has held constitutionally that has held slavery constitutionally longer than any other state in the United States and that's 244 years. And what I was able to do here for you is just to pull together and just contextualize all of the opportunities that we had to do different. We see the 1777 Constitution and it was revised in 86 and 93. We had conventions in 28, 36, 50 and 70, 18, 18s. And then also there were referendums in 1888 and 1913. There was an amendment to change the age of women in the exception clause from 18 to 21 in 1924, believe it or not. Yeah, that blew me away too. And then there were also 27 other additional amendments to this constitution all the way up until 2010 and this language remains. So this language remains. So just to contextualize the conversation. Now, this is an interesting discussion because as I said, we had no idea what we were doing Max. What we did, what we knew is that there was language in the constitution that was unacceptable. But we were not framing this in the context of the fact that the 13th amendment is unacceptable. I'm still in a little bit of my thunder, but what I'm getting at here is all we were, when we originally went into this work, all we knew is that this has something to do with systemic racism because this whole idea of slavery. And what we know is that this language should not be here. So if you take a look at this, what we did was and this was the original, when we submitted this into our legislative council and when it came out of legislative council, this was the language. If you go and look at PR2 on our website, what you'll see is this is the language when it says as introduced, as introduced. And so you see, excuse me, that we alluded to the fact that the 13th amendment did indeed have an exception and we made it very clear in point B is the reason why we're really doing this work is because we believe that this work will serve as a foundation for addressing systemic racism in our state laws. And now that was proven to be correct to some extent. And I'll tell you more about that later or in another presentation. So this was as introduced. So what we decided to do with that language which you see here is we just figured we would just truncate this entire article one and just stop at happiness and safety. And instead of saying, therefore, we just stop. No additional language just saying, that's it. That's what we're gonna say. Now, those of you who are on from the Apolly Slavery National Network, you guys are going, oh man, it's like, what are you doing? No, yeah, it's true. We had no idea what we were doing. So that was what was actually submitted. Now I'm proud to say that where we came out and of course, this policy didn't went into committee. It was a lot of haggling and it ranged from constitutions fine. This is just a historical document. Does it make any difference? The language is not hurting anybody. It doesn't mean anything. And all the way to get that language out of there or you guys crazy. So it was a huge swing and it was a heated debate. And what happened is what we came up with was is that in red, you see, that's the language that we fell out on, the red language. Now you can also see that there is no reference to the 13th Amendment in this. Okay, so that committee, what they did is they stripped out all of that language that referred to the 13th Amendment. They stripped out all of that language that referred to foundational work on systemic racism but they got the third part right. And that is therefore slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. Now, when you think about it, when it gets to the ballot that's gonna be the rubber when it meets the road. That's gonna be the most important thing anyway. But here as we move this thing down the road it should be important that we are contextualizing this work, that we are contextualizing this work, framing it with systemic racism and also framing it with a conversation on this whole idea of the 13th Amendment. So, Max, to you, I'm wondering thoughts on this as far as what you've seen in other states and did we course correct enough over here? Yes, you did. But what struck me as profound is that you just showed us that they were aware of the wording in 1924 and upgraded it to adjust from 18 to 21 for women to be enslaved. You have seven different reasons in that one amendment that allows people to be enslaved in Vermont, including the like, which is a very vague thing. What is the like? Who knows? You know what I mean? Eatin' lollipops, that's the like. Doesn't matter. Vermont holds that clear distinction of being the grandfather of all exception clause. The reason we have a 13th Amendment with an exception clause is because of the language that was incorporated into Vermont's constitution in 1777. Yeah, I think part of that what you're saying, I was probably more shocked than I can express because when I was doing that research, I said, wait a minute, in 1924, they made a pass at it. So another thing, and I won't get into this tonight, but what we discovered is for those of you who are watching and for those who are interested in doing this work, and we're gonna tell you why it's important that you do in a minute. But I think one of the things that was revealed to me along the way is that when you look at voting, okay, I'm just gonna go straight to the heart. When you look at voting in your constitution, in that chapter, those sections that govern voting in the constitution, you will be able to map it back to a specific statute in your laws. In Vermont, it is chapter 42 in our constitution and it's title 17 in our statutes. And what I also discovered is that there's a lot of language in there that has since been quietly removed. And the language that they use is freemen, freemen. And in fact, for those who reside in Vermont, if you can think back a little ways, and I've been here long enough, you had to take a freeman's oath in order to vote. So the language of freemen suggested in the connotation is that there were some people who could not vote. And if you take a closer look at that, I'm not gonna go too far into this, but if you take a closer look at it, what it is is it is the people who are qualified to run for the offices and the people who are eligible to vote for the offices of all statewide officials and all elected, federal elected or federal delegation. Local elections, you didn't have to be a freeman to do that. So if you think about that, what that does, first of all, that's voter suppression. But if you think about that, what it does is it institutionalizes something in the state, which is why there's no wonder that we've never sent a woman to the United States House of Representatives or to send it, for example, or a black person for that matter and how few have ever had the opportunity to serve. I'm not gonna go too far down that road, but it is precept upon precept when you start looking into this constitution and you start thinking about this whole idea of voting. I'm gonna go back to the panel and ask just my question is across the other states, I'm wondering, there are two things that I noticed. Number one, there are some states that have no language in their constitution whatsoever that has anything to do with slavery. And there are some states that do and they're seeking to modify that language to ensure that slavery and indentured servitude are prohibited. So how's that panning out? And I'll go over to Melina and what it didn't look like in Nebraska. Did you guys start with language like that? Then I wanna go to Fibo on that as well. Yes, our state constitution had language in it, I think from like the year 1865 maybe that allowed slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. So what our amendment did in 2020 was to remove the exception clause. And we were fortunate that Senator Justin Wayne who introduced the legislation was able to get that onto the ballot without any exceptions. So our constitution today just states that slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited period. Yeah, yeah, I get it. So it was definitely, it was already in there. Dennis, what about New Jersey? We see that you are muted but we can't hear you. We can come back to that. Any other, Nathaniel, you got anything on that? What are you all seeing in Colorado? We had the same situation as in Nebraska. We had a prohibition of slavery and involuntary servitude but with the same exception for as a punishment for crime and we removed the exception clause. So it just says there shall be no slavery or involuntary servitude period. I know that if you get to talk to Dennis he's in one of the states where the state constitution simply says nothing but that sort of defaults or defers to the 13th amendment which has that exception. So in those states, we've encouraged language to be added that prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude with no exception. Savannah has a state bill like that to introduce anti-slavery language. So Dennis, this was like New Jersey. Our bill basically would add a section to our state constitution because we, like Nathan said, deferred to the US constitution. So we proposed language that basically said like Melina that slavery is abolished or prohibited rather even as punishment for crime but it was just that simple. It's just adding that we don't want slavery. An amendment to protect the citizens of those states. So again, so what we're dealing with this, we're dealing with two things. It's funny because I remember sitting in a, I was sitting in- There's three, Mark. There's three things. Some states do not have slavery but they do have involuntary servitude like California and Jamila land and also North Carolina. So those are the three different versions. 25 states have exceptions of varying degrees. 25 don't have anything. The only thing that we tracked was is, we were talking about, as we were doing this and you'll see that this is not current. But as we first started this work and I think that this goes back to 15 or 16 because you see, you can't really see it well but the orange indicates that that the, let me see if I can get this right. That there is a for the punishment of a crime. The state constitution says for the punishment of a crime. And I think the red Alabama was just, I couldn't even hardly understand Alabama's constitution quite frankly, but it didn't seem, for some reason it just seemed really odd and awkward. And then with Vermont ours is the only one in the United States that says that has two exception causes. And obviously it is the oldest one in the United States but we definitely, we came at it from a perspective of we had some language to deal with. And honestly it seemed like it was, in hindsight it seemed like it was kind of distracting because we were so busy trying to figure out how to get that language out of there that we didn't stop to think about, well, wait a minute even if you do get it out of there you got the 13th amendment. In fact, there's an older gentleman sitting next to me, old salt and pepper, silver hair and he says, I don't know what the problem is, the 13th amendment of Bolly's slavery. And I'm just sitting there going, oh my God. So for those who are watching, this is the Bolly's slavery. What we're doing right now is we're ramping up, we're gonna do this again on the 30th of this month. We're gonna do this on the 30th and what we're doing right now is we are slowly lifting off. We're gonna combine this with a get out the vote campaign with Vermont Interfaith Action. We're gonna overlay that with the Bolly's slavery national network. We got the t-shirts already. So we're gonna make this thing do what it does in terms of pushing this thing forward. We're gonna show up at the public hearings that are put on by house government operations. We're already in touch with the chair there. We've already spoken to the speaker. We've already talked to the social equity caucus. We've made this as a priority. This has gotta get done. It's not done until it's voted on a ballot. So we're gonna walk this thing all the way through until November and then we're gonna take whatever it produces and we're gonna take that and push whatever needs to be pushed forward with it. So this is the Bolly's slavery Vermont campaign and we're lifting off and we're not gonna be pulling back on it. So for those who are watching, we're gonna have some information on how you can get involved with it. I did have a brief commercial for you. We've got a couple of things that are gonna be happening for the remainder of the year. Turning the curve on systemic racism, building back our better Vermont is our work that came out of our joint legislative resolution stating that racism is a public health emergency here in the state of Vermont. So that is some action stuff that folks can get into. It's mostly informational. It's gonna give you some information on systemic racism and what we're doing about it. It puts the story together and talks about the true history of this nation. It overlays that with a lot of quantitative data where we're seeing disparities coming out of all determinants. You know, we've got a strong backend data apparatus, we do. And then the other thing is, is it defines systemic racism. It really just explodes the whole anti-CRT conversation because it's just ridiculous. So then there's a reparations one. We've got the definition of systemic racism and then you've got the economics of systemic racism. And then of course there's a body slavery. So these are the outreach and education activities that we do every month, not just this month, we do all of these every month. So when you come back in January, come back to catch those as well. Gonna pause right there and go to the 13th amendment and have that conversation. Mostly cause, you know, again, what I'm here to do, what we're here to do is we wanna remember that first that the as introduced and I showed you how we had that language there. Why am I talking about it? Let's just go back and I'll show you what I'm talking about. We had that language there that said, where is it? I know I'm getting you dizzy. There it is. We said that the 13th amendment to the US Constitution ratified in 1865, prohibited slavery within the United States, except as for punishment of crime, where the party shall have been duly convicted. What we said back there was, is we wanted to make it clear that this constitutional amendment in the state of Vermont, there's a relevance to the 13th amendment. We're gonna talk more about that because you can change an amendment. You can rescind an amendment or something. A lot of folks haven't really given that a whole lot of thought but why are we a nation that has slavery at all? So we'll come back to that. So just talking about the 13th amendment, just wanna make sure that it's really clear this is what we're focusing on. This is, so it's like they said, like grandpa used to say, it ain't about you boo. So this is not just about Vermont. Vermont is one of 50 states and we are 628,000 people. What we wanna do here is we wanna, we don't wanna be hypocritical when we look at the fact that we are a nation that has slavery and we can't even be a state that don't have slavery or that doesn't prohibit slavery. So we wanna start here, yes, by moving this constitutional amendment PR2 here in the state by making sure that it's clear to everybody that yet a civil war, it still has remnants here in the North and it's relevant as far as the work that we do on our constitution. So what we can do is we can do the work at a larger level. I've got some dates here for you. I think what I was doing here was is I was mapping this back to Juneteenth because of the recent activity that happened here in our United States legislature on, I think it was Juneteenth. I have a slide on that later. You missed one date. Which one you want me to put in there? I'll put it in there right now. Which one? It was December 6th, 1865. The 13th amendment was ratified by a sufficient number of states to be adopted into the constitution. We just passed that anniversary, 156 years. It was December 6th. 1865, December 6th, 13th amendment ratified. Watch this, this is the beauty of having this open. 1865. And you know how I am, Mac, you will tell me something and you'll send it to me and next month I will say, hey. That would go after Lincoln assassinated and before Juneteenth. Okay, and that's teamwork. So I wanted to make sure that folks were able to see some of this stuff contextually. There's a whole lot more we can overlay on to this, but this is all about the grandfather. Mac, you wanna talk a little bit? I'm gonna, we're not on break time right now, but let's just mix it up a little bit before we talk about the United Nations. I mean, you're sitting down in Sumter, South Carolina. What have you discovered about the Vermont Constitution in your research? Well, I certainly would like to hear a few more of the voices that are here because you got a large assortment, so I'll keep it brief. Through my research, I found out that by implementing this initial conditions of an exception clause in their state constitution, that Vermont opened the door for slavery to be legalized in the state's constitutions. And that went through eight different variations between 1777 and 1865, when it was finally adopted into the 13th Amendment. It was basically refined. Other states also adopted the same language prior to 1865, like Oregon, Alabama, and Ohio were all predecessors of the 13th Amendment. So this tactic, this legalization of slavery where you make the state the slave owner was practiced all the way up until the point where Lincoln got a hold of it. And Lincoln was involved in not one, not two, but three different exception clauses. He also was part of the exception clause for the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia has an exception clause in it. And he was also involved in Alabama's efforts. So he knew very well what this was going to do. As a matter of fact, he wrote a letter to Justice Stevens saying that the only difference between us is that you in the South think that slavery is legal and should be entitled to all and us in the North think that it should be restricted. And when he was saying restricted, he was talking about convict leasing, which was pioneered by Vermont and then practiced by several states throughout that period of time until it got to 1865. What we find ourselves today in 2021 where slavery is literally not only is it legal, but it's also practiced in the forms of prison slave labor and warehousing of bodies. And also human trafficking, which is happening in Vermont, where you've already shipped prisoners out to multiple states where they never committed a crime. And you're not doing it because they're criminals in that states, you're doing it because you're working with national prison industries, often for-profit prison industries who only exist based on the number of prisoners that are in those cages. So the problem with that, of course, is that prison for profit creates a demand for prisoners. And when one state doesn't have enough, they get them from other states, like Vermont. You're on mute. I appreciate that a lot. And there are much, much more to say on that. And I just wanted to just pause on this slide. And the main reason I captured this, it's not just because of Juneteenth, but also it occurred to me that I wanted to illustrate just how far ahead of the game that we were in terms of this slavery thing. And you start looking at the 13th Amendment folks that it's an exception clause. Some people are saying, oh, it prohibited slavery. They say, no, it was an exception clause. This is heinous. Well, there were exception clauses almost a hundred years before that started here. I got to stop on the United Nations. And the reason why I do this is because of some things that I've learned from Dennis Fiebel, just having conversations and just doing the work and finding out what the United Nations Human Rights Council is saying about the United States. So you can take a look at this yourself. It's the sort of report on a working group of experts and people of African descent on its mission to the United States in 2016. And this is just some of that language that's in there. All you got to do is just do a Google search on this, get the whole document. It's horrifying. And it seemed like a playbook, a reverse playbook for the previous administration, quite frankly. But there is a profound need to acknowledge that the transatlantic trade in Africans, enslavement, colonization and colonialism were a crime against humanity. And they're among major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, Afrophobias and Afobia related intolerance, passing justice and crimes against African-Americans need to be addressed with preparatory justice. So this is what United Nations, I don't have time tonight, but you can go and look at the chief of the United Nations and she gives this little short speech on the need for us to acknowledge systemic racism. As a matter of fact, directed right at the United States. So the reason why I think this is so important is because people spend so much time worried about the Feds and sitting there saying, oh, well, we're doing this in our state. If we don't do this, then they're not gonna give us money. That is the definition of systemic racism. We'll come back to that. But, because when you get this policy violence that consistently produces adverse and disparate outcomes for black and brown people, both politically and economically, there's no other definition for that. And what I'm getting at here is that at some point or another, we have to stop for a minute and ask ourselves, what is civil rights and take a step back and say, maybe we should be talking about human rights and not civil rights because that's not working very well for us. So we'll talk more about that as far as looking at what we're doing at a national level and that we're calling just, that we're calling legal, that we're, but is immoral at the end of the day, just because something is legally right doesn't mean it's morally right. And slavery today is legally right on a national level. But morally, we know better than that. We cannot be a nation of slavery, not anymore because we have been a nation of slavery ever since before we were a nation all the way back to 1619, there's never been one day on this territory where there has not been slavery. Because by the time the ink dried on the 13th amendment, all they did is call it something else, but it was still slavery. So here's that amendment that I was telling you about to close that loophole. And this is that, this came out like I said on Juneteenth. Somebody wanna speak to this from the network? Nathan or Melina, would you like to speak this part? Dennis? Well, y'all feel shy today that I scare somebody off, nobody talking. Is it because you saw my Bible? What is it? No, I think our Bianca Tyler is the person who's leading our federal campaign and she's not here tonight. So that's who we would probably point to. But of course we want to both change state constitutions to not allow slavery or involuntary servitude in any circumstance. And we will ultimately wanna do the same thing with the US Constitution. And this amendment proposed by Senator Merkley would do that. And we have a whole part of our project that is working on trying to support this change at the federal level. I think the work at the states is important because I think one just morally and ethically we ought to have abolition at both levels. And there's also the reality that if this doesn't succeed at the federal level we will need to do it state by state in our state constitutions. And even if we did get an amendment passed at the federal level, we would need to have it ratified by the state. So we need all of these state campaigns no matter how we go forward with this. But that's what this is about. It's about ending the exception ending the loophole allowing slavery that currently is in the 13th amendment. So I think it's amazing that there's work as an end happening with the states as well as at the national level. And I think Matt said it one day, he said, we're gonna have to do this two times. I had to think about that for a minute. But I mean, there's also this hypocrisy that exists or could exist where you've got folks who are not willing to do the work at the state and then they're criticized in the 13th amendment because maybe they saw 13th or vice versa or something like that. I just, I think it builds, if nothing else it builds momentum as well. It builds momentum to do the work at the state wide level. I'm gonna keep it moving and just move through. Just wanna give a shout out to the folks who've been working on our cultural empowerment center. We call it the Richard Kemp Center. Programming includes wellness support, adult basic education, basic computer skills training, people and workforce development, financial and so on and so forth. There's a bunch of stuff that we wanna drive out of there through these community partnerships. We wanna get some youth activities. Wellness, this is all about wellness. This is about cultural empowerment. If systemic racism is true and every social determinant is consistently and simultaneously dealing, disparate outcomes and folks are underserved all the time. And what that means is somebody needs to stand in the gap. So thank you for those who are working on the cultural empowerment center and the work there and I'm looking forward to continuing that work and that's the fundraising as well as the community outreach and education on it and the coordination. Wanna get into, I wanna tie this all together with this conversation about systemic racism. One of the things we do here is we've been reading this book and my staff, all my staff has this book, it's called Racist America Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations. This is the fourth edition. It's Joe Fagin and Kimberly Ducey and Fagin is spelled F-E-A-G-I-N. And there's a definition of systemic racism in there and that's what you're looking at on the slide. And what I wanna focus on is that unjustly political economic power of whites and the continuing economic and other resource inequalities along racial lines. Did you just take a left turn? No, I didn't because we're talking about the constitution and we're talking about slavery and what slavery created. Slavery didn't just create wealth, it also created poverty and we'll talk more about that. It's also the emotion laden and the racist framing created by whites to maintain and rationalize privilege and power. That is where overt racism came from. Oh, lookie there. Overt racism came from systemic racism because that's what's being used to sustain it because when it gets attacked what it'll do is it'll shape shift, it'll morph, it'll change itself into something else. If it can't be slavery, it'll be convict leasing. If it can't be convict leasing, it'll be sharecropping or maybe it'll be the school to prison pipeline or the war on drugs. It'll continue to do that. And then finally it's manifested in all institutions. So I encourage folks, especially folks who are talking about systemic racism who say they're doing stuff surrounding systemic racism, make sure that you get those who are in, who are doing the work with you, whether it's our white allies or even us that are doing this work, make sure that somebody stops and defines systemic racism. Make sure somebody stops at some point or another and creates that definition. Because what it creates is situations to where in America pre COVID, the median wealth of a black family was one 13th that of a white family. Repeat, the median wealth of a black family was one 13th that of a white family. You can't fix that in five lifetimes, okay? And that gap grows every single time we have a major crisis and we're in the middle of one. So that's something to stay focused on because when we're talking about doing the work of abolishing slavery, we're also talking about attacking this thing that it created. We got to be able to do all of them at the same time. Somebody does. We can't all do everything, but somebody's got to step in like that cultural empowerment center I was just showing you a minute ago. Somebody needs to be in the gap and we need to be creating policies to be able to regain that ground. I think King said it best. There needs to be a radical redistribution of political and economic power. That's where the rubber meets the road. So I just wanted to make sure that we were all having the same conversation. And as I said, we're gonna always come back to what the United Nations says about some of this stuff. And this is the special repertoire on extreme poverty and human rights on its mission to the United States of America. This was recent in 2018. And again, the United States remains chronically segregated society. Blacks are 2.5 times more likely than whites to be living in poverty. Why is this relevant to abolish slavery? Because he created it. Because it sustains it. It continues to sustain it, okay? Their infant mortality rate is 2.3 times that of whites. Their unemployment rate is more than double that of whites. And they typically earn 82.5 cents on every dollar. I'm not gonna read the rest. This is where you do your homework. Find the report, check it out. Because now again, what we're doing is we are looking at what the United States looks like from the outside in. I don't know whether you've been spending any time out of the country. I spent 10 and a half years out of the country. And we look a mess from a distance. And what I'm telling you is it's easy to sit in your state and look up at the feds all day long. But every now and then you need to step back and you need to look at the United States and say what is going on over there? This is from our data site. Well, if you go up to our data site, you'll see those cards and there's also data dashboards that you can access. This is arguably the most robust data set, quantitative and qualitative on racially disaggregated data that supports the conversation on systemic racism in Vermont. And we continue, we're gonna continue to do this work. And you can see in your lower right hand corner the harrowing 0.2% of Vermont farms are owned by black people. And this is the conversation that we're having. This is what we're trying to address both systematically as well as tactically on doing the work here. Some of the conversations we've already had, we talked about, we talked about human trafficking. And you see we've got that highlighted. Yes, human trafficking is a thing. You start moving people out of state, across state lines. We start thinking about incarcerated conditions. How do you house someone that is in a cage? How do you feed them? How do you clothe them? What is expected of them during the day? Do you make them work? What do you pay them? So we've got this thing out here and you have one too. In your state, ours is called Vermont Correctional Industries. Yours is called, fill in the blank, Correctional Industries because they're connected to this federal entity that owns all of the private prisons. And in your statute, and I'll show you some in ours in a little bit, show you some language in our statute in a little bit, I'll guarantee you there is a statute that criminalizes poverty. And there is also a statute that empowers an entity within your state to lease out people for money in your state, in your state. So these are the implications, but labor, we have a lot of migrant labor in this state. We call them migrant workers. We call them undocumented. Some people call them criminals. Some people call them illegal. But that's that thing that they play with. We've got the Department of Children and Family, which is a mess. We're still trying to get to the numbers, the quantifiable, disaggregated data on the kidnapping that's happening of black children around this state. So this all ties in. Locally Woodside was recently closed. That was a youth detention facility. You can only imagine who was in there more than others. So these are the implications of slavery in this state, the constitutional slavery in the United States. In this rose, it doesn't, it starts with the Constitution, yes, but it permeates our statutes, our rules, our institutions, our government, our legislation, our courts, it all goes together as a package deal. And what we got to do is we need to shake it at its foundation. And that is we need to address it constitutionally because if there's no constitution to support it, then it is unconstitutional. So I just want to talk a little bit about criminalizing poverty and we'll talk about where that exists and if other folks have seen that and just pause for a minute, even though we're not on pause. We'll pause for a minute because we just hit 7 o'clock. We'll see which way we want to pivot on this. But this is our title 13, Crimes and Criminal Procedure. It says, fines, costs, penalties, collection of fines, debts, penalties, and forfeitures, liability for a person to find security imprisonment, wait a minute, fines, costs, and penalties. So you take a look at this thing and you take this back to Article 1 of the Constitution and you look at the slavery. This almost, some of this language is almost when you start talking about, what did they say? They said, debts, fines, let's go back real quick. I know you're getting dizzy. You're getting dizzy. There's language in there that said, debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like. I think what they get you with is, or the like. At any rate, what I was just trying to get after is, is that this is our law that says, if you cannot pay your bills, you go to prison. Now here's the thing about Vermont and I want, and don't forget this. We don't have jails. If you take a look at the 2.3 million who were incarcerated in the United States, somewhere in the area of about 1.3 million are in state prisons. 200,000 people are in federal prisons and maybe somewhere around 800,000 people are in local jails. We do not have local jails. What does that mean? Well, 500,000 of those 800,000 people, approximately 60%, have not even seen a judge. They are there because of bail and many of them average about $250, $300, can't afford it. That's why they are incarcerated. So that problem doesn't exist in Vermont. Why? Glad you asked. Reason why is because they go to prison. Those people who cannot pay that money, those people who are fined and cannot afford it, they go to prison and they haven't seen a judge. The same situation as they are in Jersey, except for we don't have jails, just a side note. So a little bit about systemic racism in Vermont, and we're almost ready to take it home and open it up a little bit, is we have been doing some of the work here. So there are a couple of policies that we were able to pass recently over the last several years. I'm not gonna go into details on them. We all, one of them included, we established a position racial equity executive director to statewide level. That office finally got enough money to get a couple of other folks in it. And you see here, there's things in this. This is the language from the statute. We wrote this. It says eradicate systemic racism within state government, which is a good thing. If we define it, if we can define it. And there's also comprehensive organizational reviews, collection, race data, model fairness policy. So there are things that we can do in addition to abolishing slavery at the national level, abolishing slavery at the statewide level, we gotta take it to the next level. So this is the other stuff that we're doing. Recently, I told you about this joint resolution. So this came out of our legislature. If nothing else, we ought to be able to just grab this piece of paper and go back in there to committee and say, do you remember this? Committing to a sustained and deep work of eradicating systemic racism throughout the state. I would imagine that might include ensuring that within the state constitution that a slavery is abolished. Fighting the racist practices and participating in the creation of a more just equitable systems. And it goes on and note that the final part of the resolution was is that we resolved that the state secretary, the secretary of state, he be directed to send a copy of this resolution to the governor, to the chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, as well as the legal cities and towns and the regional planning commissions. Why? Because at this point in the game, what we wanna do is we don't want to make this just about the legislature. We want to set everybody on notice across the state on what's going on. I wanna open up in this last part before we move to conclusion, just on discussion on a national level, as far as the work that is underway, that's ongoing. I'd be curious to hear mostly from some of the folks who are working at the national level, get some of the updates that are happening right now. I love our viewers to understand the depth in the breadth of the work that are happening in those respective states. Melina, maybe you can start over in Nebraska. It looks like maybe I see Nathan is still on as well. Maybe Max, you might wanna share as well with some of the what is happening at the national level. And what I mean at the national level is I don't mean national operation, I mean state operations, okay? Melina, you wanna start in if you don't mind? Well, our campaign in Nebraska was successful. It passed by with a super majority, so that was really exciting. At that same time, Utah passed their legislation. They do have a caveat, though that states that it won't affect the criminal justice system. So to add to what you guys were discussing earlier, that's kind of a fourth variation of things that are going on. As far as current efforts, I think Max can speak to those. I'm just kind of helping as I can through the Abolish Slavery National Network. So I'll let Max speak to those other efforts. Thank you. Yeah, Utah has an amend them to their exception, but it applies to work programs that will not affect work programs. With concession that they had to make to get it passed through bipartisan efforts, and they did. In any case, as far as the national efforts are concerned, at this point, we have Abolish Slavery in four states now. We have two states that are already on the ballot to be voted on in November of 2022. That's Oregon and Tennessee. We also have an additional nine states, like yourself, that has legislation that could put them on that same ballot in 2022. They're going through committees now, like California, for example. And then in addition to that, we have grassroots organizations working with legislators across an additional 20 states to get their legislation in two sessions so that we can have all of the states involved. Like Texas is on for 2023, and Louisiana is on for 2023. Our goal is to see this thing annihilated on paper, to end slavery in the United States for the first time, which will open up doors of possibilities that have never existed before, because we never ended slavery. And every time we challenge these slave-like conditions, whether it be labor or warehousing bodies or athymemic constitutional violations, whenever we challenge them, we are hit by a brick wall called the 13th Amendment. The court and the judges will say, well, this says you can do that right here. Not only does it say it in the federal, it says it in your state. And we wanna see a world where that is not there. What would happen if we don't have that brick wall? We've never had the opportunity to find out. And so now we see the light at the end of the tunnel with so many states involved. This is not something that might happen. This is not something we wish is going to happen. This is something that is happening right now, in real time, one of the most epic collection of states working together to achieve a single goal in the history of the United States. And it's very much under the radar of mass media. But we hope with the participation of media that you have here today, that the word will get out, that this is something that is happening. If you've seen 13th, that told you what the problem is. We are the answer. We are the solution, and we're dealing with it right now. We are dealing with it right now. And I think what I'm gratified about is that there is a peeling back, if you will. There's a crack opening up. There's a light that's coming on that, you know, I said, I was listening to an artist, the Reverend Saku, I think his name is. And he said, he said, what a time to be alive. What a time to be alive. And then he said, the revolution has come. I said, wow, and I think about where we are and where we're living right now in this time, of all time that we could have lived, of any place we could have been, that we would be entrusted with this awesome opportunity to take the United States of America to a place where it's never been before, where we are actually a nation without slavery. Land of the free. Make no mistake about it. United States of America, because you hear people say, oh, slavery's always existed. Not like this, not like this. This type of slavery, this shadow slavery and now this prison slavery and as it has gone together and what it's created, because we just illustrated it. It creates wealth, massive wealth, wealth beyond imagination, pornographic wealth, that to the extent that you have poverty that's just incomprehensible, where 140 million people out of 330 million people are poor in this nation. Poor people's campaign, Souls for America. So you can see that playing itself out. And you think about the brutality of what this thing has created and the trauma, the generational trauma, white and black that is created across this nation. Nobody has had slavery, like this nation has had slavery, but what a time to be alive. What a time to be alive. I think we're doing the work. It's awesome work. I'm grateful for what's going on with the Abolish Slavery National Network, but I'm also enthusiastic about the work that we're doing here. I wanna just encourage folks to get plugged in, get plugged in. Others on any other state work, is there any comments on any additional updates or thoughts on national worker hottest plugs in? Can we get Jamila to say a few things in regards to California? They're doing fabulous work out there. And they're just to the edge now where they're about to get their bill in. She also brought in a guest with her. Good evening, everyone. Pardon me, I am multi-tasking. I am actually at the post office right now. Thank you. Excuse me, I'm shipping in my husband's dress out clothes. He's been incarcerated for 24 years. He has been recently granted parole and we are anxiously awaiting him to come home. He is the original author of the proposal that became ACA 3, which is also known as the California Abolition Act. We co-chair the coalition here. I just wanna say that I'm pleased to be here with you in this space. You all are doing incredible work. We look forward to banding together and being able to support you in all of your efforts and endeavors. If you don't mind, I actually just kind of need to slide this back over here and then I will come back to you all. But I am here and I'm listening and I'm very, very pleased at what I am doing. Jamilia, thank you for stopping just for a brief moment and taking the time to share with us, especially what's going on with your husband coming home. Thank you for that. The abolished slavery, this policy against PR2, this constitution in Vermont is the grandfather of all of the constitutional slavery. This is like 244 years, this amendment in the state of Vermont is far more than just being symbolic. The exception clause in the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was modeled after Vermont's constitution. Vermont doesn't allow the federal government to tell us what to do when it comes to our values surrounding a woman's reproductive rights. They don't tell us what to do when it comes down to immigration or even cannabis. We cannot allow them to tell us that slavery as defined in the exception clause in the 13th Amendment is okay either. It's just that simple. We gotta finish the work that we started last biennium and bring an end to this crime against humanity in our state and in our nation. So there is a call to action and I've got some bonus slides and some additional open time here on the back end because we wanna bring it to a close, but I did wanna just bring it to your attention that you can demand that this proposal be immediately taken up and referred out because it is right now in house government operations right now. So the chair of house government operations for those who are watching is Sarah Copeland-Hanses, Representative Chair Sarah Copeland, C-O-P-E-L-A-N-D, hyphen, H-A-N, no, there's no hyphen there, H-A-N-Z-A-S, there's two last names. Sarah Copeland-Hanses, so she is the chair. The speaker of the house is Mitzi Korinski, Mitzi, Jill Korinski. So you can go out to that website that is, you know, where it says find your representative, you can go out to that website there, just go to legislature.vermont.gov and you can find your representative. You can find your representative right there and then you can reach out to them directly. What you could do is you could just, once you find them, a profile of them will come up and there will be either a direct number for them or the number, write this down, it will be 828-2228, 828-2228, write it down or you can just reach them at whatever number they have there or there will be an email address where you can reach them there further. With house government operations, if you, again, just take your camera out, get a screenshot of this or something like that or else I'll have some contact information for you to reach out to us later. But if you go out to house government operations, if you wanna reach the house government operations committee, all 11 of them, at the same time, notifying us that you did it because we're on that Google list, as well as the senior leadership, just send an email to this address. The email address is a long one but it's real, is vermont-house-government-operations. Just remember, vermont-house-government-operations, vermont-house-government-operations at googlegroups.com and we will get that email too so we will receive notice that you've actually done it. And a lot of times what I will do is I will reach out directly to you, so don't freak out, I'll reach out directly to you and say, hey, thanks a lot for doing that. So these are, this is some of the ways that we can make this thing move and we can make it move quick. So we're pretty confident we got some traction but we wanna get this thing out of committee because the first thing that needs to happen is that there must be a public hearing because the constitution ironically says that there must be a public hearing in house before it comes back across. So there must be a public hearing. That is what we're calling for. For those who are watching here, thank you for joining. This is Mark Hughes. I'm with the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance here in Vermont. We're talking about PR2. This is a constitutional amendment. We're lifting off that campaign. We've been talking about it all of this time. This is that. What we're doing is we're lifting it off. We're having a conversation. We got the folks, the representatives from the state operations and also some of the coordinators for national, the Abali Slavery National Network on the call with us tonight. We've got Vermont Interfaith Action is gonna be partnering up with us as well. We're gonna be driving this all the way to get out to vote. We will have multiple activities. We'll be meeting here again on the 30th of December. We really want these guys in that committee to get that thing off the wall, get it into hearing or get it into public hearing and we want you to show up at public hearing. We want you there. Very important that you're there. Likely it'll be virtual. Everybody knows the COVID climate here in Vermont. Ain't nobody trying to go nowhere right now. So we're gonna push that thing to be a hybrid. It would be a hybrid situation. So we're gonna get that information to you as well. And when it comes down to this thing being voted out of the full house, we plan on definitely capturing that, memorializing that, but you will be able to hear that on VPR. And if we're fortunate, we'll be able to capture some of that and share it later with some of our archives and so forth. So I'm gonna leave it there. And I'm gonna just step back for a minute and what we'll do is I'll share with you just some ways in which you can contact us. I think, let's see here. Maya, are you still there? Yeah, I'm still here. Okay, so before we wrap it, how about if we just find out if there's any closing thoughts we got about, we're inside of 10 minutes, but I want it to be respectful of folks' time, but we do have a couple of minutes if anybody had anything else. Yes. Please financially support the efforts that are happening here in Vermont, as well as the national efforts. You can also text one word and the exception to 52886, and that will send a letter of support directly to your congressperson as well as your senator in regards to the national efforts of the 13th amendment. So that would be very helpful. And check us out at abolishslavery.us. That's our website for the national organization and you can see what we're doing there. This is an opportunity for us to be great, for a generation to be great. We can even challenge the greatest generation because we're about to enslave. It's all up to us. Are we gonna do it? I think we will. I want to just throw that up real quick. I'm glad you said that. I can't believe I didn't have a slide of that or anything is that there is the, this is the abolish slavery for those who are watching. This is the abolish slavery national network site. Again, it's abolishslavery.us. What I like about it besides all these people breaking these chains is, there it is. And there's a video there and there's some resources up on the site as well, five, two, eight, eight, six. I did that. What I did was, because I'm nosy like that. And I went out there and I did the text in the exception to five, two, eight, eight, six. And I got a response. Got a response back from Peter Welsh. And what he said was something like his staff or whoever made me aware of the fact that the bill did indeed exist. And he's made some comment about how criminal justice reform, prison reform, this, that, and the third. And what my response to him was is, Peter, I didn't ask you about, I didn't ask you about prison reform. I asked you about abolishing slavery. So there's some folks who wanna step around it. I'm still waiting for my response, Peter. There's some folks who wanna step around it, but this does work. This does work. They're getting the messages. I can assure you of that. And if somebody comes back at you and they're saying, yo, yeah, we wanna do this, this whole prison reform, don't let them get it twisted. This is not about prison reform. This is about abolishing slavery. This is about abolishing slavery just to be clear. So Peter, I'm still waiting to hear back from you. I'll probably vote for you for Senate maybe, but I still wanna hear back from you. I want to, for those who have joined, Mike, I think I'll just take and close it out. For those who have joined, I wanna thank you. I wanna say thank you to our guests. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you. Who else am I thanking? Max and I'm thanking. Billion, Savannah and Dennis. Nathan and Lena. And in my own staff, I was just in Maya and folks who've done the research, who worked on the slide decks, who've done the digging, who are doing the advocacy. There are so many people, so many people that are doing so many different things out here just trying to keep this thing moving. It's amazing. We're getting ready to go on to our fourth year and we were actually on it like two years before that. But it takes four years in the state of Vermont to move a constitutional amendment and we are moving into, in the next four weeks or so, three or four weeks, we'll be moving into our fourth year of this work. I am so excited about the work that we're doing. I'm excited how it ties into systemic racism, the work that we're doing, ties into this conversation about the 13th amendment, how all of this stuff kind of goes together. And it wasn't until we started understanding what the United Nations says about this nation until we started understanding what the 13th amendment says about slavery until we started understanding the impact of systemic racism as it pertains to economics and wealth, political and economic power and the fact that it doesn't just create wealth, it also creates poverty and it was designed to do that. And what it does is it transforms itself that it mutates, so to speak, that all of this stuff goes together. But the lynchpin, the foundation, is this whole thing about the fact that we are a nation that still for the last 402 years has permitted and continues to permit slavery. We gotta get out of this. We can do it, we can do it together. So for those of you who have joined, thank you for those who are watching on Facebook, for those who are streaming. Oh, I wanna thank also the community TV folks, 17 folks, love y'all to the death. Thank you so much. We're streaming live over on the YouTube channel there. Thank you so much for your support for all of the work of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. You can reach out to us at info at vtracialjusticealliance.org. That's info at vtracialjusticealliance.org. Catch up with us on Instagram is popping over there. That's vtracialjusticealliance. vtracialjusticealliance is always something happening over there. If you get bored, if you run out of books to read, in Twitter, Vermont allies, make sure you hit us up on Twitter, Vermont allies. And then again, vtracialjusticealliance on Facebook. Racist America, that's the book we're recommending. That's Joe Fagan and Kimberly Ducey. This is the fourth edition. This is where you'll find your definition of systemic racism. And of course, holla to girl, Nicole Hannah-Jones. Definitely, this is my home girl. She's from my hometown, Waterloo, Iowa. We grew up both back there. So thank you all. Thank you all for coming out. And this is gonna be a wrap. Good night, everybody.