 Okay, welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us for this important event. It is energizing to be in the same location as all of you. Thank you for being here and working with us to make this a COVID safe event. I ask that everyone here, and it looks like this is what you're doing already. I'm hoping everyone here will keep your face covered and try to be physically distant from people around you six feet away from those around you. Believe it or not, we've actually marked out X's here to keep everyone participating in the program six feet apart and people will be keeping their face covered until they come up and speak. Today, Burlington joins a small but growing number of cities who have declared that racism is a public health crisis. We are doing it the Burlington way by making this declaration as a community, not just issuing a city government decree. This movement of attacking racism as a public health emergency is gathering strength today because coronavirus has laid bare for all to see a terrible long standing truth of American life. As a result of deeply embedded structural racism, black and brown Americans experience far worse health outcomes than their white contemporaries. In this pandemic and just the last four months, black and brown Americans are getting infected at three times the rate of whites and with adjustments for age, are dying at even more disparate rates. While Vermont is charting a far better trajectory in this country than virtually all other states in this pandemic with much lower infection rates, the same racial trends persist. Though black residents comprised just over 1% of Vermont's population, during the current pandemic, as of July 8th, they account for approximately 10% of the total confirmed COVID-19 cases in Vermont. The broad array of structural reasons that black and brown Americans are getting infected at such disproportionate rates are also instructive and demonstrate the deep and vast work that is required to eliminate racial health disparities. Black and brown Americans are more exposed to the virus because of where they live, the work they do, the shortcomings in the healthcare they receive, and because of the cumulative effects of enduring a lifetime of racial offenses and stressors. To do away with these health disparities, to give meaning to the words, black lives matter that will soon be painted on Main Street, just behind us, we must confront all of these causes and more. We must, in short, eliminate systemic racism in Burlington. Here's how we're gonna do it. We are announcing today that more than 30 Chittenden County organizations have joined a community declaration that racism is a public health emergency. This is more than just a piece of writing. Along with it, participants, including the city, have also made three new commitments. First, that they have committed to the sustained and deep work of eradicating racism within their organizations. Second, that they have identified immediate and specific actions that they are taking to address this emergency and the work they do. And we have a document in your packets today that lists all of these commitments, including three new commitments from the city. The city's commitments address training, they address the hiring of a new public health equity manager, and they include the city's commitment to working in partnership with the Racial Justice Alliance to advance the goals laid out in the Racial Justice Alliance's Operation Phoenix Rise agenda, and to use the million dollars that working with the city council, we have just appropriated to start those investments and lay the foundation for the securing additional resources, substantial additional resources that are gonna be needed to eliminate systemic racism. And the third thing that we have asked all organizations and all organizations behind me have committed to do is to participate in the ongoing joint action grounded in science and data to eliminated race-based health disparities and eradicate systemic racism in Chittenden County to commit to that work in an ongoing way in the months and years ahead. This event would not be happening without the vision, activism and the hard work of the Racial Justice Alliance. Today's event has been organized fully in partnership with the RJA, and it is my deep hope that this is the first of many steps that we take together on the path to eliminating systemic racism. I wanna thank RJA leader Mark Hughes who we'll hear from in just a moment for the many, many hours we have spent together to get this event right and for trusting me that we could do this. Thank you also to Taisha Green who is standing up at the top of the stairs here. Taisha joined our city team in April in the middle of the shutdown, which would not be an easy transition for anyone but is especially challenging for the city's first racial equity inclusion and belonging director who moved here from Minneapolis to do this work during a pandemic and a national reckoning with the ongoing need for racial justice. Taisha's partnership on the city team over these past months has been critical and that work has included being the very first to raise with me the idea of declaring racism a public health emergency. Taisha, I am grateful that you decided to make Burlington your home and for your service as a core member of the city leadership team. Thank you. Thank you too to the city council for being partners in this work and I am pleased and honored that I see several city counselors here today including city council president Max Tracy, new Norda then counselor Ali Zhang and also from the new North end counselor Sarah Carpenter who I know was just here a moment ago and I want to specifically thank counselors Karen Paul and Zariah Hightower who are part of the speaking program this morning we'll hear from shortly. Finally, I want to say thank you to the dozens of partners who have worked hard in recent days to become a signatory to this declaration and be part of launching this collective effort today. We have with us the broad array of stakeholders necessary to take on the massive challenge of eradicating systemic racism and the profound health disparities that racism creates. We have with us health providers, housing providers, educators, businesses, religious leaders, activists, elected officials, childcare providers and more. Together, these groups represent our community's largest and most impactful employers, service providers and innovators. We need representation from all of these groups because systemic racism means that all of our institutions are implicated and responsible for this work and because the social determinants of health are broad and involve virtually every major sector of our community. Our declarations confront this challenge with urgency and substantive commitments to change our practices. This work will be difficult and we'll need sustained focus and energy from our full community to meet the aspiration of being better anti-racist organizations. Our community has a record of taking on difficult public health challenges that this effort is grounded in. In recent years, we have created a collaborative mutually accountable work model that has dramatically reduced opioid-involved overdose deaths in Chittenden County and we intend to apply the lessons of that effort to this new one. The work we are committing to today, reversing 400 years of injustice and oppression, will be even harder than that challenge, much harder. Today, we are welcoming that challenge and creating a model to hold each other accountable and our commitments. These organizational commitments being announced today are meaningful, they move us toward an anti-racist vision for the community and decisively commit us to identify and work to eradicate the impact of systemic racism in every organization, every corner of our organization's work. I'm confident that our work is going to have an impact because of the organizations and leaders involved in standing here and because these organizations are announcing immediate steps that we are committing ourselves to collectively achieving. I wanna close by acknowledging to all of you here today that this is not an event I could have or would have organized in my early years as mayor. I was first elected to fix a municipal financial crisis and knew a lot more about rebuilding the waterfront than eradicating systemic racism. In those early years, I had not personally grappled enough with the 400 years of layered injustice that is central to the history of this country or of the potential of this office to begin to reverse those injustices. Thanks to all of you, I'm a different mayor and a different person today. In my years in office, I have grappled with President Obama's 21st century policing recommendations, learned something about how to talk about the challenging topic of race, come to fully understand how deliberately and systematically this country segregated itself and denied home ownership and wealth creation to black Americans. And with my wonderful partner, Stacey, who is here today, I became in the time as mayor, the adoptive parent of a black child. In my remaining time as mayor, however long that may be, I intend to do everything in my power to make Burlington a city where Ada and all black and brown children enjoy all of the privileges and joys of life that I have in my 50 years. With this declaration and the coalition that we are launching today, I am confident that that is a commitment that we can make good on together. We have now, we're going to have a powerful speaking program that will address many facets of the work that must be done in our time ahead to make good on that commitment. I am pleased to introduce my friend and partner in this work, Mark Hughes. I wish I could shake his hand. Instead, we'll have an air fist bump or elbow bump marker. It's been a real privilege and an honor to work to get today with you in recent weeks. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Somebody behind me said preach. We don't have time for that. I do, I wanna first, there's no way I can tell what my face looks like now. I had this mask on, so I wanna just, how do I look? Okay, so first of all, acknowledgements. I want to just echo back to the mayor himself. It has been a long time coming and we have truly developed a relationship that I'm incredibly proud of. I want to say, first of all, to Stacey and also Vermont Digger. It's not true, we're not in a relationship. We do have a lot of phone calls and I did call him from my honeymoon and I wanna also apologize to my new wife, Christine, because yeah, we were on Old Orchard Beach and I don't think we really got that time in, but we'll go back to that, but acknowledgements. Mr. Mayor, I just wanna say to you, for me to you, I thank you for your commitment. I thank you for what you've done in the transformation that you've made in yourself and the hard work that you're doing inside of yourself right now and that it's become evident to me that you are working really hard at being the mayor that you wanna be. So I just wanna applaud you personally and I just wanna ask everybody just to give it up for my mayor because I'm not gonna stand in front of you and tell you anything else. You should know me by now, okay? The other thing is I wanna give a shout out to my sister, Mayumi Cornell, who is a steering committee member who resides in the old Northean African American sister of mine. She was on the schedule today, but fate would have it and it's not fate, she's sick. So she's an African American woman living in the old Northean in Burlington and she had a health crisis and we're here. Think about that. I'm gonna say a few words for her towards the end of this. I wanna give a shout out to Dr. Leffler, Consular Paul, Mora Collins, Tom Torti, Consular High Tower, the Queen. I wanna give a shout out to Reverend Christopher von Cockrow who's right here as a pastor of New Alpha Missionary Baptist Church now and I think if there's any time you should be clapping it ought to be now. We have a pastor in our church right now, okay? Who is also a member of the Racial Justice Reform Alliance. So I just wanted to give some shout outs there. Where are we and why are we here? Hey John, where are we and why are we here? Well, I'm glad you asked. So we're in the middle of a global pandemic. We're in the middle of the third national attempt to make this nation live up to its true aspirations. Black Lives Matter, that's where we are today. Just to be clear, also we're here to write that which has been wronged. We're here to get back to the work that was started. We're here in this moment to be chain breakers, to be waymakers and we're here to be dreamers of the future that will make America, the United States of America a better place for all. But where have we come? Where have we come from? Is what I'd like you to reflect on just for a minute is we're gonna keep this thing moving. I wanna just acknowledge Operation Phoenix and its mission to transform the lives of black and brown people by investing in their lives and holding space for their culture and providing them the opportunity and also ensuring equity that they deserve to thrive. So I wanna give a big shout out to the Racial Justice Reform Alliance today. For all of the work that you've done, leading up to and laying the scaffolding for what it is that we're doing today as well as the planning, the organizing and all of the hard work countless hours and I'm gonna pause for a moment because there were times I was climbing in bed and you guys were still on a conference call with the city council. So I just wanna say thank you so much for all of your work. Also, I wanna just do just a little bit of framing and then we'll just go on to maybe just laying some groundwork and moving forward. You see how we frame this thing is it has been centuries, 400 and one years it has been that the backs of black people have been ridden from the time of 1619 when the first black foot set soil in Hampton, Virginia, which was then Point Comfort when the first black foot framed in colonial English history by the way was set foot on this soil. It was immediately enslaved immediately. Framed in a way where we're looking at the fact although this nation did realize a hope for prosperity for 12 years after 1865, it came to a crashing halt. Framing in a way that we understand that a civil rights movement was ended in extreme violence, incredible disaster. It was ended in such a way where there were assassinations of activists as well as elected officials that still today political prisoners are still incarcerated as a result of that. That we as a nation dropped bombs on our own people to stop that from happening, our own military not to mention during that time where literally hundreds of massacres happened across this nation with impunity. We are framing this in a way where we understand that this is our third attempt at trying to get something right as a nation. So we are trying to move from a place of where folks backs are being ridden to where we can stand on the shoulders of those same people. There's hope for the future. There is hope for the future. And I believe that with Operation Rise and with the work that we've laid out to do, now, this is not a silver bullet. Rise is just one aspect of many things that we must do as individuals and society, okay? So don't start running victory laps. I wanna just haul everybody in that are running around that track, let you know that that line you just ran through was not the finish line. That's where you're supposed to stop because we're getting ready to start, okay? So Rise, what's going on here is there's a R, restructuring of public safety, I, implementing cultural empowerment, S, securing equal opportunity, and E, expanding racial equity, belonging, and inclusion. That's the work, that's what we've laid out, that's what we're doing. Now let me give a special shout out to the youth and the organizers over in Winooski that had a victory last night. Because things are happening. So for those who are in front of the bus, you better get out the way. For those who are behind the bus, you might get left behind. If you're getting on the bus, make room for everybody else, but the bus is leaving, we're doing this with you, or we're going to do it without you. So economics is the key. There must be, there's got to be, there has to be in a nation where the median wealth of a black family is one-thirteenth that of a median wealth of a white family, there must be a radical redistribution of political and economic power in this nation and in this town. That is the root. That is the root. So where are we going? We're creating community discussions. We're creating vision for, to work groups and vision. We've already started that with some people of color groups that have come off of the Racial Justice Alliance. We'll be expanding upon that. Those discussion groups will go into the broader community as well. We'll be talking about health and safety. We're building capacity and framework at the Racial Justice Alliance and Justice for All. We're coordinating a succinct working relationship with the mayor's office to ensure success. We're drafting a standalone reparations bill, a standalone reparations resolution that supports the resolve clause of the historical Racial Justice Resolution sponsored by the first black woman in the city council right here on June 29th. Past, we're partnering with organizations and businesses and the administration to marshal our collective resources and fight. There are tough times ahead. There are tough times ahead because every time as a nation we do this, every single time this happens, there is a severe backlash and some of it is already happening even as we speak. There are tough times ahead. So if you're signing up for this, sign up for this, but know that there are tough times ahead. There's gonna be some hard choices that you have to make. You as white people are gonna have to make. You're gonna have to make some hard choices. There's gonna be some awkwardness. There's gonna be some uncomfortability. There's gonna be some opposition. There's gonna be some pushback. There's gonna be some, let me see if I can get this right, political and economic weights. To say it nicely, politicians and those of you who are following money, there's going to be some potential deterioration of relationships in families, even with your friends. But we're up for the fight. We can do it. We can do it. I said we can do it. Can't we do it? We're up for the fight. Bring it, right? Somebody said bring it. Said bring it. Bring it. So in closing, I just, you know, before I tell you what Mayumi had to tell you is that there's an advisory that we put out. I encourage you, businesses. You know what? Let me just stop for a minute because it just occurred to me and this is awkward, but I'm gonna do it anyway because I can't leave this podium without doing it. I want to thank the 30 plus organizations and businesses and those who are represented that are standing behind this. I don't think that I said that when I opened and I am not going to leave this podium until I do. Give it up for these 30 organizations and businesses that have stood behind this and all the many dozen who will come with them. Because we're going to work. It's time to get busy. So I want to encourage you to take a look at that advisory. We put that out this morning. There's some things that you can take a look at where you can learn a little bit more and you can do a little bit more. And I want you to, the other thing is is be encouraged. This is not about how fast we run or how far we run. It's those of us who make it to the end. So what we got to do is we got to be encouraged in this work. The third thing is I would leave with you is remain committed, okay? I know it's difficult. It's difficult work. But remain committed. Take a look at around you and look at the folks who've come before you. Look at the folks that are beside you but most importantly, understand where we are as a nation. Understand where you are in this place and time. This is a time like no other time. Your children and your grandchildren never lived in this time. We'll never live in this time. Your mother and your grandmother, your grandfather, they have never lived in a time like, this is a time whereas we will never ever have an opportunity to seize a moment like this again. So remain committed. Remain committed. And then give something up. Give something up because I'm talking to white people right now, I'm talking to you, okay? I'm talking to white people right now. Give something up. Do something because as white people to do nothing, it benefits you. To do nothing, it benefits you. As white people, this thing called systemic racism, not only does it benefit you, but you also automatically contribute to the pain and suffering of black folks if you do nothing. So do something. Don't just do anything and get all crazy, come and ask us, but I'm just saying do something, okay? So I wanna just encourage everyone to move on. Later tonight we'll have Hidden in Plain Sight, The Truth About Systemic Racism. We do that every now and then. That is a broadcast that we'll be doing. It's a Zoom that you can sign up for. Go out onto our Facebook page and you can find that, it's just Truth About Systemic Racism. It's called Hidden in Plain Sight. Imagine that. Hidden in Plain Sight, The Truth About Systemic Racism. We're gonna have the powerful Rajni Eddins on with us this evening who will open up and we're gonna unplug him about halfway through it and let him throw down. And then after that we'll go ahead and close it up so I'm welcoming you out this evening. That is something you can do right away. I wanna talk, I'll tell you a little bit about what Naomi said and I told her, I said just go ahead and text me if you have anything else to say. And the conversation went like this at about 8.32 this morning. Naomi said, Mark, I am really sorry I've let you down. I am really sorry I feel horrible about this but I can't come because my back is hurting really badly. I could barely get to the phone. The reason why I didn't answer the phone the first time you called is because I couldn't get to the phone. And after I assured her that she had nothing to apologize for and she let nobody down as an African-American woman living in the old North end whose mother was an activist in this community and died tragically who's struggling with the system. What she wanted me to say, she said, Mark, housing. She said housing, Mark, she said, it's hard out here. We're so afraid, we are terrified. There are benefits getting ready to run out. Some of us were unemployed before COVID-19 and we've never received any benefits. She said, Mark, many of us are unbanked. Some of us, we don't have that kind of financial history. We never received, some of us never received a stimulus check, Mark. She said we don't have that kind of access. She said, Mark, we don't have access to even people. She said, Mark, you have access to all kinds of people. She said, I've been living here and she said, then listen, and this is what resonated with me most, listen to this. Listen to this. She said, my mother rented from the father of the guy who rents to me. Oh, that's funny. That's what she said. That's what she said. She said, I can't seem to figure out how to get ahead. She said, tell them that this is much more than just about health. But you know what she said? It's killing me. It's killing me. And the story goes on, disproportionate access to education technology, not having the ability to have language or language translations, even though there's money available. Folks with learning capabilities and disabilities out of school right now with no hope, largely poor people, but most black people are poor. Though, although most poor people are white. Lack of hazardous pay, lack of provision of personal protection equipment for people of color, mission essential. So we got lack of access to civic and political related information and updates as it's being disseminated across the state. A disparate justice system which has offered increased surveillance and monitoring in this time. Because there have been more pretext established for it to occur. Lack of access to department of corrections data, lack of access to health data. And the list goes on. In closing, I would just say, Mayumi is really the star of the show. She's at the center of my heart when it comes to what it is that we're here to do. People like Mayumi in places, Mayumi and people who are in places where she is. I may not be far off. I've got a great CHT house on Riverside, apartment in Millview. That's great. But I'm saying I'm looking into the North end. I'm looking at generations who have suffered in this place. I'm looking at women. I'm looking at black women. I'm looking at black women with disabilities. We can talk about black trans women if you want to. I'm looking at the heart of this issue. I need you to look at the heart of this issue of what it is that we're talking about in every single bit. All of this stuff that I told you about in addition to the direct impact that systemic racism has on people's, brown people's, black and brown people's health. All of this stuff combined also has a collective impact on the same. And COVID-19. And COVID-19. Plus unrest with policing across the nation in here. So we got some work to do. We've got some work to do. But we're gonna get it done. I wanna thank you for your time. I wanna thank you all for showing up. I wanna thank everybody for supporting this administration and what the mayor is trying to get done because he's sincere about what it is he's trying to get done. I know it because I've tested him. So all you have to do is get on the bus. I wanna welcome everybody who's come in any way you can to get down with this. This is an emergency. This is an emergency. This is an emergency. This is an emergency. Get on board. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Mark. So first off, I'd like to start and say that the UVM Medical Center is pleased to join this community-based effort. To echo Mark, racism is a public health emergency. Locally, regionally, and nationally. As the mayors told you, the black community is being harmed by the COVID-19 virus and much higher rates than the white community. This is also true with other illnesses. Coronavirus just signed a spotlight on the problem. We also recognize that people who are individuals who are black, indigenous, or people of color have suffered from systemic injustices, discrimination, and bias for over 400 years. To be clear, the UVM Medical Center is 100% committed to this declaration and 100% committed to becoming an anti-racist organization. The UVM Medical Center sees great value in working together as a community around this effort. No one organization, no one part of the system can address this issue alone. It will take everyone standing here today and many, many others in a sustained effort. We learned this through the opiate crisis in this community. We learned we couldn't just medicate our way out of the crisis. We couldn't just arrest our way out of the crisis. We couldn't just educate our way out. We needed everyone working together, the same is even more true now. At the UVM Medical Center, we are committing today to three specific action items. First, we're working to collect data from across our clinical areas to understand how our BIPOC patients are being impacted by illness compared to our white patients and to identify other health equity trends beyond outcomes. For example, we know that patients to identify as black have lower rates of mammography than those who identify as white. Second, the UVM Medical Center will implement a workforce diversity assessment of its 8,000 employees in August to ask them how they experience equity and racism at work. This assessment will be used to increase recruitment and retention of BIPOC staff and leaders, identify gaps in equity within the organization and reveal learning opportunities to increase cultural humility throughout the organization. The assessment will also take place across the UVM Health Network. Third, but definitely not final, we have been hosting listening sessions on racial equity and justice to amplify the experiences and voices of our BIPOC staff. Based on what we've heard to this point and at the direction of our equity, diversity and inclusion steering committee, we'll be taking several additional actions including implementing employee resource groups, instituting an anonymous hotline for employees to report racism and training our leaders and staff about how to address racism whenever and wherever it occurs at the UVM Medical Center. Finally, I wanna thank the mayor again for his leadership and bringing us all together today. The UVM Medical Center looks forward to collaborating with everyone involved to make change and promote a healthier community for our BIPOC individuals. Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here and an honor to be here this morning. My name is Karen Paul. I'm a city counselor in Ward 6 in the south end of Burlington. Racism, as we all know, is a toxin on our society. It infiltrates all aspects of daily life. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a study that, quote, racism affects every aspect of American life, none more so than our medical system. These persistent disparities in health outcomes are not due to genetic or biological differences between the races, but to entrenched racism in American society. It is really truly tragic that the serious and long overdue discussions that we are seeing in this country about race have come about in large part due to some very heartbreaking deaths, deaths that never needed to happen. Lives lost should have meaning. And if we take real action and dismiss incrementalism and comfortable responses, their deaths can promote real change. While this discussion should always have been focused on those in our society who have influence, power, and the ability to fundamentally change the narrative, that focus is squarely on the majority of us, on people like me and on people like many that are here today. Because we have the clout to use our capital to collectively lead and do the real work so that our community members of color know that we absolutely are no longer bystanders in a crisis that we can solve. Dismantling racism means coming together as a community, from key partners to private citizens, to reshaping the discourse and agenda so that we are all actively engaged in racial justice work. All that we touch, every policy that we make, every initiative we promote must be grounded in that declaration. I am so proud of the work of the mayor, of the administration, of the city council, in the actions that we took in the mayor's recommended budget a few weeks ago. A budget that included a million dollars in immediate funding to support and move forward the action steps of Operation Phoenix Rise. Mostly and most notably, the support for a cultural empowerment community collective and further funding for the Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Office of the city. Is one million dollars enough? Not by a long shot. But it is a meaningful start. This Sunday on Main Street, a few steps from where we are standing right there, our community is invited to gather and we hope that many will to participate in the creation of a street mural, standing in solidarity, insisting that black lives matter. I realize that there may be some who will say that this mural is a performative distraction from real policy changes. And if it weren't for the actions that I've just mentioned, as well as the actions to move forward with substantive change, such as the ones we're talking about today, I might be inclined to agree. And while some will view this symbol and just as a symbol, the reality is that murals have long been a tool of persuasion. At their most fundamental murals help create, murals help communities create meaningful public spaces often in the name of inclusion and equality. And what better place to do that than right in front of City Hall. Putting together an event such as this coming Sunday takes a collective and significant effort. And I would be remiss in not acknowledging that while this is in many ways community funded and community led, it is also done with a tremendous collaboration of many city staff and community members. My thanks to the Department of Public Works, Burlington City Arts, the Church Street Marketplace, the Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, and the amazing Tayisha Green. Yes, Parks and Recreation, the Administration and many others. In closing, I would just say that symbols and murals remind us of who we are, of where we have been, and most importantly, where we really are going and where we really want to be. Declarations such as the one today are gonna hold us all accountable. Backed up by action, they move us to a better place, one of justice, one of truth, and one where we all do belong. Thank you. My name is Maura Collins. I'm the Executive Director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. And we're talking today about racism as a public health emergency, and that makes sense because some of the statistics in this declaration should make us all sick. Only 4% of Burlington's black households own their home. And we know that owning a home is one of the largest sources of wealth for middle-class households. Paying a fixed amount over decades can not only make housing affordable, but it can free up the money that's needed for healthcare, for childcare, for higher education, and more. We know that with years of paying a stable price for housing, wealth accumulates as households slowly pay down that debt and the home price appreciation grows. It's that system and source of wealth that is what black and brown households were blocked from all the years of redlining and discrimination. Throughout the U.S., and here in this region, there was a building boom that happened after World War II and that was followed by several decades of unprecedented home price appreciation that we will likely never replicate. There's no way to make up for that time lost and the wealth created over all those years. And it's that wealth, that home equity, that white households like mine used to send children like me to college when I know so many others didn't have that. It's what was used to move up to nicer and bigger homes closer to more opportunities. It was used to share with grown children when they wanted to buy their first home and ultimately, it's what's used to pass on as an inheritance to future generations. The access to wealth through housing is unmatched and that wealth leads to better health, longer lives and better educational and job prospects. But the reason for hope comes from the actions we've been hearing about today. We've seen action sparked by the killing of black men before. The Fair Housing Act, which was part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed just a week after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and it was that act that finally made overt housing discrimination illegal. And yet, the problems continue. Not just here, but widely, systematically. In Vermont, the home ownership rate for blacks today is lower than it was when that Fair Housing Act was signed all those years ago. Let that sink in for a minute. I thank the mayor and the city council for working with the Racial Justice Alliance and inviting organizations like VHFA and all of us to action. A spark was ignited by George Floyd's death and we watched that spark turn into a torch that marched in the streets to demand justice. But torches burn out and arms grow weary from the weight. We now need those torches to light the hearts in our homes, our businesses, our governments, and in our hearts so that we can remain as committed to this work a decade from now as we are when we stand here today. We cannot relent. There is too much to make up for and the stakes are too high. Good morning. My name is Tom Torti. I'm president of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce. Mark, mayor. Thank you for including me and including the business community in this proclamation. My remarks are short, which for those of you who know me realize that's a rarity. Speaking about the plight of black Americans in May of 1969, the author James Baldwin made three points that are regrettably as true now as they were back then. He noted that black people cannot depend on America's moral credit to protect them or to help them solve their problems because America had no moral credit to spend within that community. He noted that the despair of black people over their treatment by the white majority accumulated by the hour. And finally that we needed to ask ourselves then what was going to ultimately happen to this country if we fail to change. To watch what has been unfolding on TV these past months and begin to try to comprehend what black indigenous and people of color have been living with in the generations before Baldwin's interview and subsequent to that interview answers his last question with absolute clarity. We have failed in the most basic of ways to create a country where equality of all sorts is a practice and not just a buzzword. So some of you may rightfully ask what in the heck is the Chamber of Commerce doing here? Because for so many we symbolize and embody white privilege and entitlement. And in many cases that's correct and it's been correct. But you know this is Burlington and this is Vermont. A city and a state we're trying to do better by our residents. Citizens and non-citizens alike has been the hallmark of our public policy and our business practices. You know most of the 1,500 businesses that my chamber represents are locally owned. Their owners and those who work for them are our neighbors, our friends and often our family. Frankly we have a track record that we can point to with some pride for the advances that we've made maybe all be it too slowly. But the advances that we've made when it comes to improving pay and working conditions, benefits and often simply trying to take care of one another. Because know this, no business can survive without their employees. No employees can climb the economic ladder to success without a good job. And our communities cannot survive and not prosper without healthy businesses and healthy employees and healthy families. It is a bond that is inextricably linked. But yes, we do have a long way to travel. Have we as a business community done everything we should have been doing over the years on issues of fairness, equity, equality? No, I'd lie to you if I said we were. On issues of racism, diversity and inclusion we have much to learn and much work to do. But what sets the city apart and this business community apart is our willingness to learn and to change. At the chamber we've already begun engaging our members. In fact, we're doing it on a webinar now in discussions about racism and diversity and we are committed publicly to doing more. And so today on behalf of the chamber and its businesses we pledge to listen, we pledge to become educated, we pledge to take risks and we pledge to push our employment practices beyond our comfort zones. We pledge to be an equal partner with all of those behind us and all of you as we evolve down a path of humanity. We have to. We cannot as a city, a state or Lord knows as a country afford to be here in another 51 years and see truth once again in the words spoken by James Baldwin. We will not survive if we do. Thank you. Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for including us in this event. My name is Yakuba Jacobo Gray and I work for the association of Africans living in Vermont. Our organization started as a group of individual men and women helping the African community. But over the past 15 years we have opened our doors to many refugees and immigrants for all work of life. Today, we are home to more than 200 individuals who come on a yearly basis to access our services. These are men and women who fled their home countries because of war or all sorts of persecution. And we are grateful that the state has become and remain one of the resettlement place and like many other places in the country that are closing their doors to refugees and immigrants. We are also grateful that the community is supporting the work we have been doing on a daily basis. We have been always trying to answer this question. What are we going to give to our younger generation? How are we going to work to make sure that these young men and women who are graduating from our schools and colleges can remain and give back to this state? Sometime I struggle and I know many of my colleagues at work also struggle to answer these questions because some parents will come and say, this is a great place for us. But I did everything I can. My son or my daughter went to school. He is not or she is not able to find a job. What can you do? He was interviewed and was not hired. He is capable. Can someone give him a chance to prove that he is capable to work and give back to this community? Few years later they will move out of state because they don't have the opportunities they were looking for. Yet as an aging state we are struggling to retain or attract new workers. It is my hope that the state or the city will look at investing in skill, training opportunity that will retain our young men and women in this state and also help them give back to the community that has welcomed them. Because they don't have and we don't have another place to call home beside our state or our city here in Burlington. It is not just increasing the minimum wage hour but making sure that we have long lasting opportunities that can help all of us sustain and give back to this state. Thank you. Hi everyone. I'm Zariah Hightower. I'm a city councilor for Ward 1 in Burlington. And I sponsored the resolution that originally created or declared racism of public health emergency. Which again, was Tyisha's idea. I'm not gonna talk about that too much just because I think there's some other things that need to be said. I was proud of that resolution. I'm also proud to be the first woman of color on the Burlington City Council. But I do feel like I have to call out that there is a tremendous amount of luck and privilege that made me the kind of person who has enough privilege to run for this position. And if my black body and the kind of person that I am is the only type of black body that we're willing to accept as a city councilor, Burlington does still have a lot of work to do. And then the next thing that I would say is that when we say black, my lives matter. Some people do choose to get offended. And then I've been hearing a lot of responses along the lines of it's like, oh, so just imagine that a black people are like a house on fire. And that house matters more to the fire department than the other homes because it's literally on fire. It needs special attention. Others say, remember Jesus, we got a pastor here. I'm sure he uses this sometimes. Remember Jesus and how he went in search of the missing sheep. Doesn't mean he doesn't care about the other sheep. He just wants to find that sheep. And that's how we explain racism over and over again. And sometimes that's okay. And I understand that there's populations and we have neighbors that that's how we need to explain it to you and that's okay. But for those of us who are here and who are listening to this, I do expect a little bit more because the problem with that story is that it's a corrupted narrative. You missed the beginning of the story. We don't wanna talk about the fact that the sheep was lost because it's been hobbled and blindfolded while the rest of the flock moved on. We don't wanna talk about the fact that the house is on fire because someone hates the house and doused it in gasoline and then threw a match on it. So we're changing the narrative when we say that from a narrative, from a history of fault to an opportunity to be a savior. Why do we need black people to be symbolized as property or as sheep or as children? Because it changes the narratives to be one rather than a history of oppression to one where we get the opportunity to be a savior. When we leave out the beginning of the story, yes, we talk about slavery, yes, we talk about Jim Crow, but we forget the racist history of the medical field, the racist policies of the housing authorities, the racist tendencies of the people who are supposed to be helping us, the public defenders, the social workers. And more than that, why can't we empathize with black people as humans? Haven't we been through enough to deserve the empathy in our own right? Being black means you're more likely to be locked up, passed over for a job, evicted, denied housing, homeless, and all of these have mental and physical impacts. Being black means you're, when you go to the doctor, you're more likely to be misdiagnosed or denied healthcare point blank. Being black means you will pass these inequalities onto your children and your children's children's. The disease we suffer from is overall systemic institutionalized racism. And as we all, I look out and I see so many leaders, and as we start to think about how to remedy the situation, I encourage you to see people of color, not as sheep that are lost or a house that you need to save, but rather as humans. Humans who have been burdened by the racism that America has deliberately institutionalized with such effectiveness that it is definitely present in your institution. Our job is not to be saviors, but to find areas where you have embedded racism in your institution and to remove it. I encourage us all to take this view as we start to make a plan to tackle the crisis of racism in our public health. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. I couldn't wait to get that thing off my face. I am Reverend Dr. Christopher Von Cockrell. I am the new interim pastor at New Alpha Missionary Baptist Church. I am elated to be here today. I come here as a transplant. I come from Mississippi. I come from the land of Jim Crow. And if you didn't know it, Jim Crow had eggs, eggs hatched, and some flew here to Vermont. Jim Crow is alive and well here as well. But we don't look at it the same way. To my white brothers, I look at you and I applaud you for being here today. I thank you for being here because I come from a South where this conversation is not starting yet. I come from a South that had healthcare despair. I grew up where white doctors really didn't wanna touch black patients. Well, we had separate waiting rooms. Blacks on one side of the office, whites on the other side of the office, whites got served first, and then blacks. I grew up in a system where just being black was enough to be arrested. If you got caught walking in a certain neighborhood, you were arrested. And if you happened to be working for a white person, they would call that white person and ask, were you working in the area? And they said, yes, they'd let you go. And nothing was said. I grew up in an area where interracial relationships were frowned upon and many black men were hung because they missed with white women. I grew up in a South that people viewed you only as servants. You know, it humors me sometimes when I hear white people say, I don't see color. I take great offense to that because guess what? I'm color. When you say you don't see color, you're saying that you don't see me. I exist. I'm here. And guess what? I'm human. I'm human. I have needs and desires just like you. And so for us asking for a level of equality, a level of opportunity, that's not asking for too much. That's the American dream, isn't it? My grandfather fought in World War I for freedoms that he never enjoyed. My father fought in World War II and came back to an America where he could not benefit from the GI Bill. My brother, who was a National Guard officer in Mississippi, worked at Lockheed Martin which had a good job, was murdered by a white man at work in Lockheed Martin in 2003. The Lockheed Martin Killings in Meridian, Mississippi. It's on YouTube. That's what I've had to deal with. And to come here to Vermont and see you all dealing with it, I am just tickle pink. I'm so glad that finally someone is catching that there needs to be something done. I'm glad someone's not saying we got to have another meeting to discuss this. Or we need to conduct another survey. I'm glad to see you're finally putting the tire on the road and you're rolling in the right direction. This will be accomplished not by will or might, but by the hand of God. And God has touched many of you to be here today. God has given you a desire. He's given you a burning passion to do something that's not normal. It's normal to do nothing. It's normal to not get involved, but it's responsible to stand up and do something. And I commend you. And be not dismayed. This work is nowhere near over. And if all God's children get together, what a Vermont this would be. Thank you very much. Well, that is our event. And I wanna say to all the speakers who have shared the podium today, it's thank you. It has been an honor to be part of an event with you. I think you have contributed to this discussion and where we need to go mightily with your words today. The one thing left to do in this event that I think we would be remiss if we didn't end with is to read out the names of the 30 plus organizations that have hustled and worked hard to be part of this event today. Many of these organizations did not get an invitation to this event until the end of last week. And some of them, it was even less time than that. You all, all the organizations standing here and on this list are at the vanguard of a movement that must be, as Maura said so well, a movement that still must be still alive and making progress a decade from now. I do expect in the months, days, months and years to come, I do expect and hope there will be many more organizations that sign on to this list. The doors are very much still open and the mayor's office will be helping to coordinate and expand this. But let's hear now the names of the organizations that are signing on, that have signed on to this important milestone declaration today. The City of Burlington, the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, Howard Center, United Way of Northwest Vermont, the University of Vermont Medical Center, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, Burlington Housing Authority, the Boys and Girls Club of Burlington, the Burlington School District, Burton, Cathedral Square, Champlain College, Champlain Housing Trust, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, the Community Health Centers of Burlington, the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, the JSM Family Room, Housing Vermont, King Street Center, Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, Let's Grow Kids, Local Motion, the New Alpha Missionary Baptist Church, New Seasons Vermont, Opportunities Credit Union, Sarah Holbrook Community Center, Seventh Generation, Spectrum Youth and Family Services, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, the Vermont Cannabis Partners, the Director of Racial Equity for the State of Vermont, the Burlington District of the Vermont Agency of Human Services, the Vermont Department of Health, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, the Vermont Racial Equity Association, and the Greater Burlington YNCA. Thank you all for being part of this. Let's get this done together. Thank you.