 I'm excited for tonight's event today because we want a new society on love and acceptance. So welcome to the Kneeling Art Photography Project. This project we started almost two years ago with wonderful people because we believe that our society needs some reforms. We always have this question, what would a good society look like? There are too many people who are oppressed. We have people in our neighborhoods, in our city, in our town who are struggling. And we hope that we could do something. That's why we want to gather together and to start the conversation. How could we build a community where each everyone is welcome, feel safe and feel like is part of the society, regardless of its religions, sexual orientation, skin color or background? So, your presence is a proof that in the state of man, we still have people who believe in social justice. I know how busy life could be in America, but you find time. You find time because you know, is it the right place to be? A place where we could talk, we could open up, express not only our hope, but also what we could do. No one has the right answers. So I can't on your participation is important. Your voice counts, your voice matters. You are in this place, in this room for a reason because you are a leader. So thank you so much for your presence. Now I want also to say thank you for all of the panelists. It is an honor for me to have you tonight. You are amazing. I know you do a lot for the community, but tonight you are going to be challenged by the public. Yes. We expect to have the best of you tonight because we want the best state. Men should be the best state in the United States of America because we as a family, we are able to make change. So thank you once again. Now we let Elizabeth to just our MC of tonight to lead the rest of the event. Thank you. Thank you, Titi. Welcome everyone. I'm so glad to have you here. I'm Elizabeth Ross Holmstrom and I am a community volunteer and passionate about raising our vibration of community and love and connectedness and I'm a big fan of Titi's and all of you as I've gotten to know you just a little bit from talking already. My role is to facilitate conversation this evening and I hope that we'll have a lively passionate discussion. We're going to just give you a sense of format. You've got three questions that we're focusing on. Each panelist will have a minute or two to weigh in on that question and then we will give some time for people here that are present that would like to get up and maybe speak about that particular question and then we'll move to the next. So each question has about, we have about 15 minutes to cover each question to be sensitive to our time here this evening and I am the time keeper and the facilitator. So I can do that with hopefully some grace and I live in South Portland. I'm a South Portland resident. I've been in Maine for 35 years from almost 40 years from I grew up in Central California in the agricultural valley and I've probably had every job on the planet that you can think of. I've cleaned hotel rooms and bathrooms and I've picked cotton and I have been a secretary and I've owned three different businesses and you know it's I'm here to say that the paths are all varied no matter what we what people may think when you first see them. So and I'm a high school dropout but I've now since gone to college. So I want to have each of our panelists introduce themselves and I will start off with Miku if you can please introduce yourself. My name is Miku Paul and I grew up in Old Town. My family is from Lower Canada Kings Clear First Nations and I received both a traditional education from my grandfather who was a traditional elder and a formal education in white schools. I learned the value of credentials and having that formal education as a person navigating white society in Maine and I do lots of work around inclusion and Wabnaki curriculum in the schools. And I've been doing that literally for decades now and I'm also a writer and I'm happy to be here today. Thank you. And I'll turn it to Andy. Yes. Good evening everybody. Thanks for coming here and thanks to TT for having this important program. My name is Andy O'Brien. In my day job I'm the communications director for the Maine AFL-CIO which represents about 42,000 workers in Maine and fights for economic justice and workers' rights. I'm from Rockland, a lifelong manor, grew up in Lincolnville and I'm also a writer. I write for a number of different publications. I have a monthly column in The Ballard about radical and labor history, abolitionist movement and in Amjombo, Africa where I write about immigration history, history of immigrants and black history and I'm going to be covering state politics from Amjombo coming in the next legislative session. Thank you Andy. Thank you everybody for coming and my name is Baba Lee and I live in South Portland where I'm raising my four children and my wife, my wonderful wife, where we are raising our children together. I've been living in Maine for almost a decade and before I immigrated from West Africa, a specific country, Mauritania, which is a little bit nearby Senegal, probably you have never heard about this country, but a form of French colony and since I came to Maine so I lived what it means to be immigrating, leaving your home country and coming to live in the widest, one of the widest states in the United States. It has not been easy, of course, I've been very grateful to make a lot of friends and seeing you all coming to listen to me, an immigrant, to talk about this very specific topic, very important, it gives me a lot of hope and I've been since activist working with immigrant communities, advocating for parents in the education system. Thank you. Payas? Thank you very much and I apologize for getting here late. I was driving for about 10 minutes looking for a spot. I couldn't find any and so I'm sorry. My name is Payas Ali, I am from Ghana. I have been in Maine for 21 years. I first came to New York and then two years later I migrated here. I came to visit a friend and I never left. I like to call myself a public servant at large. I have a work in the community with both immigrants and non-immigrant young people, building the skills of young people. I have run an interfaith group where I bring young people, founded and run an interfaith group where I bring young people from different faith and culture background because I believe in people talking to each other even if they don't agree. I co-created with the speaker of the house a leadership program called KIN Fellows. After the principles and values of Dr. KIN, it's a leadership program for BIPOC young people. I currently work or run an organization called Portland Empowered. What we do is we work with immigrants who are new here to get them to understand the way education works in the U.S. so that they can support their students or their kids and during that they also get to build a community. Within the same program we have a program for high school students, build their leadership skills to navigate the education system. We also have a fellowship called Civic and Community Engagement Fellows where we work with immigrant and BIPOC imagine leaders between the age of 20 and 30 to expose them to what we call 21st century skills. All of these, my favorite thing to do is raise my daughter, I have two kids, my son is 27, he lives in Boston now and my daughter is following him. She's going to go to college in Boston, I tried. She said to me that, dad, you came from Ghana, you cannot tell me not to go to Boston and so I gave up. I am also a city counselor in Portland. It's a privilege that I don't take it lightly. I'm honored to be part of that. So thank you and I'm looking forward to this conversation and thank you all for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you all of you. Miku, I'd like to start with you with the first question and do you believe that Maine's political institutions are taking action to reduce inequities or do you believe they're continuing, they contribute to maintaining inequities and if you have any examples as part of your answer that would be helpful. Well first I don't think that it's as useful to limit that to political institutions but if we look at a context, the governor that we had prior, we did see some changes around that individual's approach to governing and management and we also, because of his behavior and the things that he would say in public speaking, I think we saw sort of a rise in speech, hate speech. So I think that that's important. The way a leader comports themselves, we all know what a model is. Parents are models, teachers model behavior for students. But I think that when you're a public figure, you have to realize that you do create impacts on society based on your behavior. Now we have a new governor, unfortunately, that governor does not support full autonomy and sovereignty for the Maine tribes and so we've had to work with building allyship and repeatedly move through the legal process and make requests so that we can gain the autonomy that all the other federal tribes have. So yes, political institutions in Maine do serve a purpose and they have a lot of distance to go I think in recognizing the necessity and the value of making framework changes which means legislation that will allow everyone in Maine to thrive. Andy, I'd like to go to you with that same question. Do you want me to read the question? No, I can answer that I think in some way. So I mentioned before that I work for an organization of unions and labor unions are a kind of political institution. We're part of the movements that help shape our democracy. We're a democratic institution, but like our governmental institution, we've also long struggled with issues of racism and exclusion and as we were talking earlier, the United States is a very young democracy, probably only what, six, 50 years old or something because how many people were allowed to vote when the country was founded? Because people weren't able to vote in Maine until the 60s, I believe. And so, you know, with labor unions, traditionally there were a lot of unions that excluded African Americans, women, the people of color going back to the 19th century. These were reserved for these craft union jobs that were predominantly white men and they kept out African Americans and women. And they, I even read of strikes that they'd have in Maine to keep, these were union members going on strike to keep black people from getting hired. So it could be used in different ways to either exacerbate racial racism or actually fight racism. And we have a long tradition as well of progressive unions that have fought for racial justice. But we still have had, going up until the 60s, 70s, 80s, we had a lot of unions really trying to keep out African Americans and people of color. At the same time, we've had the CIO recognizing that they want to organize entire shops of workers, including all the people in the lowest-paid positions, which are often black workers, and women and everybody in the shop. And so they had to do anti-racism training with workers and they had to educate workers about that to awaken them to the idea that people with wealth and power are always trying to divide working people on the basis of racism from the founding of this country in the colonial era. That was why the whole racial caste system was created to designate one people as chattel slavery and the others as upper, higher on the caste system. Thank you. Very much. Yeah, I will respond to this question from the lens of an immigrant and the lens of a black man who's been living in Maine for the last 10 years. So I've not been involved in the politics, but I'm watching it from distance and then looking at how it is impacting my particular life, my children's life, and their education. So I would say there is a lot of progress because when I learned about the Civil Rights Movement when it came in, there were a lot of changes, but all of these changes came with a lot of fight. And every move that has been done in the United States in general, which I know it has to take really tremendous fight and also people sometimes sacrificing their own lives to make a little change, like now a little legislation that make a move. And sometimes also the next maybe government will make two steps back. So it's really very complex in a way that I would not say it did not contribute. It did, of course, but with a lot of cost. Thank you. That's a good point. And Pius, we have two minutes. Thank you. I think this country in general is a work in progress. Maybe I should switch with him so that he doesn't say what I want to say. I think like he said, we make two, three steps forward, and then we take a couple of steps more than what we gain. However, by taking that forward step, we've established a change that is possible. We've established a principle that we can all uphold too. An example is at national level, we had President Obama for eight years, and we're all excited about him, right? And about some of the things that he did or what he could possibly do. And we're all hoping for that, okay, maybe next time we'll have somebody that will pick up from where President Obama left. What happened after that? The pendulum switched to the other side and it went all the way as possible as it could. And we also, while we have to endure as a country for four years. And even before then, those of us who live here in Maine have endured that for eight years. So inequality is not just within politics, if I may say. It's cut across every aspect of life in this country. It could be at a grocery store where people are standing in line. It could be, and people do things and treat people differently unconsciously. So I believe that conversation like this, and hopefully it's not just those of us who agree that will be coming to these conversations. It could be everybody so that we get to shift the needle a little bit in our small community here in Portland. Thank you, beautifully said. We are, in terms of time, we have a couple of moments. So I'd love if there's someone that has a viewpoint that might be different from what has been shared and would be willing to share it. You could step up to the mic for two minutes if that, if anyone does, anyone, you can raise your hand if you feel like you have something that you would like to contribute because we want this to be a discussion with all of us as much as it can be given the format that we have here. Is there anyone that would like? Yes, go ahead. So I do have to kind of play timekeepers. You have a couple minutes and please step up. Thank you. Hello, my name is Nora Jean Ferris and I am an artist that works in political activism. Upon hearing the perspectives of all of these wonderful people that came together and knowing also the history of the inception of this country, given the fact that for 500 years and probably more, there has been so much trauma in this country that we're all now sometimes just figuring out, finding out, how do we keep it going? How do we keep it going? How do we, because we know it's only been, what, 200 years since slavery, you know, was not, you know, was outlawed and abolished in this country, but it's still going on and also to the indigenous people of this country are still being subjugated to injustice. And, you know, women like me, so it seems that everybody is affected. So how do we keep moving when there's been a system that's been in place for so long of injustice? Thank you for that question. And I think that we're here to talk about that and to move, I believe, from talking to action. And so there will be time at the end, which is why we're timing these questions, so that we can talk about how can we move forward to begin taking action. And we'll do that as a collective at the end. And then we'll have a little time after the filming is done, too, to talk. So thank you very much. It's a key question. So Pius, I'll start with you this time for the second question. And the question is, what are ways that we can organize cultural exchanges so that we can... And you talked about some of them in the work that you do to learn from one another, but what are some ways that we can organize cultural exchanges to learn from each other? Okay. Culture is a very complicated... There are many cultures. You have the culture in education. You have in culture in politics. You have culture in sports. And a community like Portland, we have in terms of people's cultures, we have many different things. And I think when we, the mainstream, the people that have the spaces, I think when we have things like First Fridays, that is the first thing that jumps off the distant for me, when we have things like on First Fridays, right? We shall invite people who are the margin of society or the margin of our community and give them a space where they share, the way they do things, and the way they live, their food, and I'm talking about probably immigrants and other racial minorities who live here, right? Including indigenous community leaders and members. Let's create space for them to share their culture, because the white culture is the dominant culture. Whether we like it or not, we are forced to live within it, right? So those of us who live in it, including the white folks who are our neighbors, our friends, we need to work and make sure that the cultures that have been pushed to the margins of our society are giving the space for them to share and for us to learn. I think that will be a good seed to plant, to have a society or a community that talks to each other, that learn from each other. Is it possible? Yeah. Is it going to be easy? No. So. Thank you. Beautiful idea and observation. Baba? Yeah. For me, the culture, we are talking about culture because at some point, I think a lot of people, when we talk about culture, they think about others who have culture, not us. So we are standard, others have culture, which, you know, inside to kind of looking the others in a side way that, you know, they are strangers or they are exotic. So I think to create this change is we have to shift our minds into how we look to the different people in terms of culture or not even quality culture because, you know, who we are, who you are. If we're going to call it culture, we call it culture for everybody. And also maybe to normalize the seeing as a different person, as practicing things differently. And that's all, you know, I would summarize it into openness, being open to see somebody who is normal, even though he's doing it differently. It has not to be like the way how we do it. Standard, I think, is creating a lot of these prejudices because we are standard and they are a little bit exotic. So this language, I think, has to change so that the mind will shift and then everything will follow. Beautiful. Thank you. So I grew up and live in a community that's probably 99% white. And, you know, I used to be a legislator and represented the districts that I heard from a lot of people and talked to a lot of people and talked to people about immigration and things like that. And what I found time and time again is that people have not had interactions with people from different cultures and backgrounds of different races and this is how you stir up fear and hate. I used the example of my band teacher who was a very nice woman but sort of went down this hate-filled rabbit hole where she just became really rabidly anti-immigrant and the family across the street from her, the daughter married an undocumented immigrant from Mexico and she loved him. She thought he was the most wonderful guy in the world. She thought it was great. She loved the family, blah, blah. She went to the party that he had when he finally got a citizenship and was able to stay here, but never would draw the connection between her political beliefs and her personal relationships. And we need to have more of these cultural exchanges. We need to figure out, you know, find out what our commonality is, whether it's through music and food and culture, interest in language and all of these things and create spaces for us to have these exchanges with people who live outside Portland because so many people just think of Portland as this liberal, you know, whatever. They have a lot of prejudice about, nor they're made and so they're made and people want to break off into different mains and things because they don't like what that mains doing. And we really just need to figure out ways that we can bring people together through that and create those spaces. I think we can. I think we can do it through our schools and a number of other venues. Yeah. Thank you. It's hard to talk about this in such a specific way because I think about things like the origins of xenophobia and the way that we other people. You know, as an Indigenous woman, I can tell you that after decades of working with Portland schools and doing some DEI work and using my art as a pathway to hopefully enlighten and educate and engage people around mains Indigenous cultures. I still encounter some of the same barriers. And I'm not sure how we can change that, but I think being celebratory is marvelous as human beings, we love that connection. But I also want to encourage you to consider the encounter. Don't wait for Indigenous People's Day to learn about Chikwamanaki people. If you run into someone and they identify, connect with them. Find a moment of connection where something might be built. Because then I think when you do that, you are actually fostering an awareness of their humanity. And that will make it a lot more, I think, difficult for you to other them. So we know that. And we also know that, for example, children develop pre-bias before the age of five. And I do a lot of work with the web studies. I don't know how many of you know that in Maine, in terms of cultural exchange and connection, we have a 20-year-old mandate to teach Wabanaki culture and history in the schools. And it fell by the wayside as an unfunded mandate. And even when I worked with schools, many times they weren't necessarily funded well. Or I would be up against teachers that didn't understand an Indigenous teaching paradigm. And so then I would end up getting sort of pushed into the category of entertaining people around my culture. And it's OK. It's good. But it's not enough. So a wonderful thing happened to me years ago. I started doing some work in faith communities with Reach. And I met a gentleman who was a Quaker. And he dropped me off at home after some meeting. And he said, can I be your friend? And I was really taken aback. And I said, well, yes. He said, no, I want to be your friend. I want to get to know you. I had never been asked that question by a Wenooch person in my life. It's not that people weren't friendly, but I found it a rather formalized frame. But that connection has now grown into collaborating on professional work and doing work with faith communities and sharing of my culture with a number of people from different areas. So I say, seize the moment. Yes. That's beautiful stories. It's those micro moments that we can take that action and ask that next question and connect with another human being. We also have a couple of moments. Does anyone have something from your heart that we'd like to share? We've got the mic, if you would like to. Yes. I'm Sam Brown. I live in Casco, Maine. I've been living in Maine since 1972. And it's ironic to come to this conversation with that position, because even though I've been here since 1972, I'm still referred to as from away by most people who have lived here from all their life. So the conversation has a number of different levels to it. We have a wonderful community here in the state of Maine. And it is a fact that it's a sort of badge of honor to treat everyone as though they're from someplace else, no matter how long they've been here, and no matter where they come from. And I've lived here since 72, and I meet people who are younger than me that treat me as all from away. And it's somewhat humorous. I'll never forget walking into the small engine shop near our home and telling them that my children were born here and went to the high school. And they said, just because your cat had kittens in the oven, don't make them biscuits. So the conversation has multiple levels, because further on, I come to this in, frankly, I think the position of the greatest privilege. I'm a tall white man. And I try to be sensitive to people of color and people who are indigenous. It's not easy. We all step into piles of poop by making a mistake. But I think it's important to talk about. I don't know what the right path is. I do think one thing, and that is that Maine is the whitest state, rather. It's also the oldest state. And I think one thing that can appeal to most folks is we all want a house. We want a roof over our house, or our heads rather, and we want food on the table. And we want to live someplace where we have opportunity to economic privilege, if you will. We want to make a good living. And I think that what's important to remember is that it's so great that we have this growing immigrant community here. Because what I've seen is, and hopefully we'll see more folks from an indigenous perspective coming forward, because I frankly don't meet a lot of people who admit to their indigenous roots. But that, to me, is what can appeal to everyone, is that a growing immigrant community creates more financial opportunity for the state. It enriches our work pool, our candidates for employment, and any growing company in the state of Maine needs good workers to come forward. And I think that that can help to bring people to a middle ground who maybe are afraid of people from away, because they don't understand them. But if they can understand that it can help us continue to be a really positive place and a place where everyone can earn a living because of a growing population that welcomes people from other cultures and backgrounds in color, that can be a real positive. So that's my thought as I was listening. Thank you. Thank you for talking. We're going to move on to our third question. And this question, I believe, is so perfect to really roll into the, I think we'll have more time for input from everyone after this question. And just reminding that we have a couple of minutes each. And the question is this, what kind of change would you like to see in Maine? And what is one action that we could take, because this is a really important aspect of this, is that we'd like to turn these conversations into action. And so what's one action that we can take to make a difference and to make change that could be many more steps forward and then a couple of steps back won't be as bad. Baba, I'll start with you. So the changes really I would like to see after living here for about 10 years is seeing a Maine that is more inclusive. We are having diversity in a very fast pace within the last 20 years or like last 30 years in Maine, but mostly focused on southern Maine. So what I would like to see is this diversity to spread all the way up to the north. And also the diversity that is existing here, we work toward educating manors who we found here to better understand the newcomers, us, that we are just human being like them and we are not a threat to anyone. And when we take time to know each other, you will find that what you were afraid of is just a fiction. So I want more inclusion. We already have diversity. Now, what to do to change that? That comes to one thing is open up. Don't let your fear win over you because when you are fearful, you are more anxious. It can even impact your health on every day. And these are things that you cannot change. The migration has been with us since this earth was existed. It's not new. It's just like the different people are moving around in different ways. And also, we have to acknowledge that racism is still existing everywhere. It's not just in the United States. Maybe in different forms, but we have to acknowledge it at first to be able to deal with it. What can we do to change many things? First and foremost, I'm going to go on what my friend here have said. I will give you an example. I will still touch on the dominant culture. In the wanting to do the right thing, recently, there's a group of activist organizers who happen to be BIPOCs. And because of the issue that happened with the Nazi sympathizers who were in Augusta, these group of young people decided to organize a rally in Portland. And then they have a very credible information that made it impossible for them not to. And then on social media, someone responded to say to them that, oh, if you are canceling this event, how will you make the like you don't have a backbone, my ways, of explaining what you are giving in to fear, right? And when you look at the person that didn't use their name, it is likely, and I'm going to make a wild assumption, that this person may be white. And this person was not able to look at the situation through the lens of these individuals who are BIPOCs, who have credible fear and had a credible, because they will have to put their bodies on the front line. And they are afraid that they're not going to have protection. But in this person's way of their activism and wanting to confront, because a person of color's confrontation to a system that we live in is completely different from that of somebody who is coming from the dominant culture. So yes, the dominant culture should support us and work with us and take the lead. But please do not look at through your lens. Look at through our lens what our fears are. Or by saying to us that, oh, you're not doing enough. Or you should have done it this way. We have a fear, whether we are from here or wherever we are. I am from Ghana. We're colonized by the British, right? So colonization doesn't just end because, how do we call it, the colonizer pick up their stuff and left. Psychologically, they have left an imprint that will take generations to go away. But for it to, yeah, for a group of people irrespective of where they are to heal. And we see it all over the world. So people from the dominant culture, one thing that you can do to help in building a society that connects with each other is when you are doing or when you are having your advocacy, please go easy on us. When we say we cannot do this, don't see if that we are afraid or we don't have the courage. We're trying to take care of ourselves. Thank you. Thank you for that perspective. Nico. Speak up for your neighbor. Speak up for your fellow human being, your member of the human family. I know it's not always easy. And there are times when my partner counsels me not to be too outspoken. But I can tell you that this woman has gone into a downtown bank here in Portland around Halloween time and Thanksgiving because they had a string of little pumpkins decorated and the staff were all being asked to vote on the best one. And one of them was done up like a goofy Indian brave. And I went right into the bank and I told them that was inappropriate and I told them why. It's a small thing. But I think that if we look out for one another, if we see something happening, you see it on social media. It's happening sometimes now too. That those small gestures, if you see someone being mistreated and someone acting out or what have you, go ahead and make a small gesture back. If we protect each other by speaking out against injustice, that will have an impact. Beautiful said. Yes. We have an old saying in the labor movement, an injury to one is an injury to all. And I strongly believe that. It's sort of how I try to guide my life by that message. I think to Pius's point, one of the most important things we can do as white folks is to listen to people of color in marginalized communities and not just try to take it over or berate them if they're being put in harm's way for activism or something like that. I think we need to look at our areas of influence and where can we can make a difference. I looked at what I could do I could write and I could write about history. I think that the history is very important. I don't think a lot of Mainers get that history. And to your point, we have unfunded mandates about teaching this history. We need to fund those mandates and we need to lobby our school boards. The people that are coming up en masse and screaming at school boards are the people that want us to go backwards and not teach any of this stuff. In my experience, I got my master's in education and I student taught for a while and I was a teacher. A lot of teachers just don't know because they don't have enough time in the day to learn all this information. You need to provide space for them to do it and you need to pay them to do it and you need to pay for their professional development. And we should be lobbying our school boards. My church, I was very disappointed back a number of years ago when Paula Page was taking away assistance for asylum seekers. And it's just, I was just so beside myself because my church wasn't doing anything. I was like, here are people in your own state that are gonna be, we're gonna have a humanitarian crisis. So we need to think about how we do that in our churches, how we make our churches address these issues and stand up for each other in our fights. I heard something once around that this was just recent in a, I was in a program during COVID around, it was a book reading club with Ruth King's book, Mindful of Race. And we were talking about things that we can take action on. And one question that Ruth asked, she's like, who is sitting at your dinner table? Who, when you have a party, who are you inviting to your parties, to your neighborhood parties? Who are we including? And that really took me because I have business contacts, I have friend contacts, but who is sitting at my table? It's mostly white people, or it was at the time. I wasn't inviting. And I feel like we, the small steps are the big steps in learning about each other. And I wanna open up this question to others too, to comment, this is what this is about. What is a step that we can take that can make a difference here? That we can leave and take tonight, or we can take tomorrow? And if somebody who hasn't spoken yet first, I've, your hand up here, yes. Thank you. And then we'll keep coming around. God bless you, happy face. My name is Umaru Paldi. First of all, I wanna shout out to my brother, T.T., for doing this, for bringing us together. And for everybody who participated, who shared their thoughts in the book. It's amazing if you don't have it, check it out. One thing that I wanted to say about the whole conversation, I'll start with the conversation around culture. The first thing is for us to recognize that unless you identify as a Native American, I don't say Indian, a Native American, you are one of either the colonizers, the occupiers, or a snooper. We are all immigrants. So the second one is cultural shift starts with the education, the mindset. We have to change the language. I'm a huge advocate for language change, the terms that we use. If I keep telling my students, I teach a course, undergrad course in college, on global citizenship, one of the words I decide to eliminate is minorities. Because minorities means that it's a majority. Language is complicated. Majority means also superior. So if we keep implanting that idea of minority majority in our kids' heads, that is gonna keep going. We have to be comfortable to use the word privilege. The more privileged and the underprivileged. I think that makes more sense because that's exactly what it is. There is no majority minority here. If you go to some countries in West Africa, you are white, you are definitely a minoritized person. You are minorities, in the minorities. But does that mean you are inferior to anyone? No, but other people will look at it like, oh, it doesn't know our ways. It doesn't know our cultures. It doesn't know how to do this. So then that means you are inferior because we know better and more than you do. So unless we start with changing the language, the narratives, the expressions, we're not going anywhere. Secondly, we're going through dangerous times. I am so much into the social justice and equity work, but we do not want people like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis because when you cannot even teach about social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion in your schools, we are all screwed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. We have time for another comment. Yes. I do see you and we will come back. Thank you. What was I thinking? So I'm Carolyn Tkach and this doesn't make my voice lighter, I understand. And I'm from South Portland and I was thinking, I've got so much I want to say, but I'll keep it brief. Yeah, we just have two minutes. Thank you. I can do that. So there's a quote by James Baldwin that I am really trying to get now. We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my impression of the denial of my humanity and right to exist. And that speaks a lot to me. You know? Yes. I'm not going to just, when it's not acceptable, it's not acceptable. You know, when it's evil, it's evil. And we don't need to reach out and embrace the unacceptable and the evil. I was thinking on my way in today, because I've been thinking a lot about, how do you pull people together to act? And why are some people seem so blind or they don't care and they have this, you know, when, why can't we get people to show up to do this work? And I realized I was walking down Congress Street and there are a lot of people suffering on Congress Street. And I don't see them a lot. Sometimes I do, but sometimes I don't. It's like, oh wait, where am I? Where am I blind? You know, and now I'll try and be more conscious and maybe we all can be more conscious when we walk down Congress Street to see the suffering that we haven't seen before and to understand the humanity of the people who use humanity. We don't. We're not aware of. Just because, you know, we want to go somewhere. We don't want to have to take in the truth about what's going on. We need each other. I started organizing a group a while ago that is not yet fully coalesced, but after the last year with the Supreme Court's decisions where abortion and all these different communities, rights were taken away or threatened. And I was thinking, wow, you know, it's all these disparate things, but we're really all in this thing together because it's all one agenda. And so I thought, we're in this together. And so I started to be called in it together. And it's about people from different communities and different communities that are targeted, coming together to support, to defend each other, to be in community with each other because alone we're in trouble. So anyhow, I've got a lot more, but that's, I've also got a time limit. So thank you. You have time for one more comment? Yes. Sorry, we're trying to grab people that haven't had a comment yet. Did you get the comment before? Yeah, approximately. My name is Jean Pierre. I try to listen to everybody here. And I'm very hopeful to be here. When I was here before then, I didn't know what's going on. So we get the information, then it came late. It was not late, we came before. But it's a very nice topic, but the big issue, the big problems, it's, you can talk nice, you can think nice, but if there are no results, it's like to turn on the problem. Why? If I have a problem and I come to you to explain my problem, and you show me, you helping me or you want to help me and you don't like to help me, and I have a mindset, I have an idea. I can provide or I can contribute to give how to solve my problem. So I say that, but I'm not good in English 100%, but I think it's a lucky day. Here, when I arrive in man, it's very good society. I can say people are very, they like people. I can say even more than 90%. But I have get a chance for traveling different countries to be raised with different, different, like my brother, they will say different people from the end to be different countries. So last time we make a meeting with the general managers of DHHS and GA, they try to understand the problems of immigrants. We see it's a problem because if a person coming running to you, you try to help him, don't think he don't know that. He know that, but people try to show them we know we have a problem, but we can also contribute to give ideas or to see how to get that problem become a solution as soon as possible. So I'm here like four months, I think. And I have, I'm 49 years. I have 20 years of experience in business and whatever. There is some, I go, I get like a registration for school, one time they ask me something, what did you want to go to school? I say, okay, I want to go to school. I have experience of life, but you can be in the office, but the one person who is outside have that experience who can bring the solutions. Why you don't take that person and you don't ask anything. You ask just to, if I have idea, if I see that idea can work, what can I talk to? We try to go to the city hall. We call the managers. They give you the economy, they say, somebody know you, give them the phone, then they give you the appointment. Sometime you get that benefit and you run too much. So my question is, if I have that idea and turn left and right and whatever, there are some opportunities here. And if there is like a volunteer of government and that thing they take, because you can say there is opportunities and there is possibilities without way something coming from Washington, you understand? We can create that things. We work for free, but I don't know where, who. If I go to one person, I have been to some addresses, they told me. I even internship to work for free and whatever. I do volunteers. Tuesdays, Monday and Fridays and Saturdays. So maybe I take longer. I told you that because I was asking just today, it was just to, they told you they give you insurance, for example, you have the insurance, I'm very sorry. So yeah, we're gonna talk to after, like what you said, what we need, it's just to get just a few minutes to understand and try to help us, we can get something, it's very good. Thank you. Thank you for talking and I wanna say. I'm hearing you that the solutions that we have, you have ideas for solutions. And it's about connecting to the right people to share what your ideas are for those solutions. And that is an action that we can help take together. And I want to honor our time here. I don't think Titi is saying closing words, but I would like to know if, I wanna thank all of you for participating. Is there one thing we've got, I think two minutes, one minute. 10 seconds each, one word. Before we close out. Support sovereignty for Wabanaki peoples in Maine. Thank you. Thank you. For the union is a good way to get equality in the workplace. Beautiful. I would say silence is complicit. Let's collaborate to promote belonging and do our way with ordering. Yes. Thank you all very much. I appreciate every one of your time. Then I appreciate all of you. And when this is done, we will have more time together.