 Jenna, if you want to go ahead, I think we should be good to go. Sounds good. Hi, my name is Jenna Hirschman, and I'm a sophomore at Essex High School. I'm part of both the Sarin and Youth Lobby, the two organizations hosting this press conference. I'm here today to talk about youth priorities in the legislature. This legislative year should and needs to be revolutionary. We need racial justice, climate action, education reform, health, safety and community legislation, and over 100 youth agree. Vermont legislators need to implement the climate action plan, pass the environmental justice bill, pass anti-racism standards and education, pass the bottle bill, and so much more. We need to do so much more than what's in legislature. Youth care about these issues and legislators need to as well. That's why we are launching a Fridays for the Future Youth Lobby program. Every Friday, we will have students from Vermont doing legislative activism work because we care. We care about these issues. We care enough to be here. We care to be there every Friday. We care about the world we are going to be handed. It's our future and we want to say. Hi, everyone. My name is Django Grace. I'm a sophomore at Bradrow Union High School in Wyndham County. Every new year, I have high hopes. I have little dreams and prayers that things will go right that I will see direct and just climate action from legislators and decision makers that people who are supposed to deal with this start doing their job. I've had high hopes since the third grade and I have seen the momentum build and I've seen the beginnings of solutions, but I have seen far from enough to fulfill my hopes. The time has come to pair my hopes with expectations I've decided because it is no longer acceptable to me that people are allowed to sit in a position of power and make promises to me that they don't keep. In this legislative session, I want to see every decision maker hold themselves to a higher standard. We've all heard so many words, so many encouraging goals, but it's actually pathetic to see Vermont legislators continue to fumble the ball when it comes to climate change. And I've come to realize that the issue of climate change is no longer distant enough for Vermont to delay action. I live in southeastern Vermont in Bradrow. This summer we experienced the hardest rain we've ever been hit with. I remember walking with my friend to our old elementary school, and we saw how the playground had been literally torn apart by the water runoff that came out of the woods. A community run ski hill in my town lost tens of thousands of dollars in repairs to overwork snow making equipment they were trying to compensate for the lack of snow here. There are so many other examples in our state that show us that climate change is here, it's creeping in under our blind eye and it's no longer an excuse to say we have time. In this legislative session, I would like to see legislators prioritize resiliency and make big steps in sustainable development. Vermont is a very rural state so it is crucial to citizens that decisions made also benefit rural communities. Vermont is a project happening between Green Mountain Power and the town of Pantone, Vermont. Through a large solar array, this rural community will now have their own micro grid that produces clean energy and can sustain the town in case of a grid failure. We don't need more to invent more solutions, it's all here, we just need to implement them on a large scale. Vermont has all the right elements and tools to become a pioneer in sustainability and climate justice, but again, we need to see some action. The people in the state house have made some movements in the right direction, they've talked a big game, I want them to show me that they can play the big game. Thank you. Right. Hi everyone, my name is Willow Stumpru and I'm a sophomore in Pillar High School. Growing up in Vermont, a classmate tonight have already felt the impact of climate change, whether it be less snow in the winter or rainy or summers and the floods they bring along. I'm hosting tonight here today to call upon Vermont's elected leaders to take the decisive and courageous action that we did today to combat the climate crisis. I look forward to the day my peers and I will be able to vote and even run for elected officials ourselves so that we can make these decisions. But until then, we need elected officials like Governor Phil Scott and the members of the Vermont legislature to show up and do and show true leadership that will be necessary to eliminate climate change, to stop the climate catastrophe that's on the way. True leadership often making tough decisions which can be confrontational. To help stop Vermont climate change, some tough decisions are going to have to be made about changing the way Vermonters use fossil fuels as part of their everyday lives. Anything short of this will fail to stop the climate catastrophe currently engulfed in our planet. Some of the main needs for fossil fuels in Vermont is transportation and heating and cooling buildings. Keeping this in mind, there are many alternatives for these problems. Some of the specific changes I'm calling upon early day, including giving incentives to Vermonters to buy electric vehicles, encouraging carpools, also encouraging Vermonters to buy renewable energy and to switch their homes from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas to sources fueled by clean and renewable energy. Along with this, we can also start to raise taxes on gas guzzler vehicles and start raising gas prices. Some efficient ways to reduce the amount of fossil fuels needed to heat and cool our buildings include weatherizing our homes and radically increasing the number of homes we otherwise along with making this cheaper and more accessible, especially to lower income families. My whole life, my parents have encouraged me not to procrastinate and do what I can over still time. I'm calling upon the legislature to find the money necessary and make the changes we know we need to get us off of fossil fuels and make the adjustments while we still have the time to avoid the inevitable climate catastrophes. This generation needs you to step up and do the work for. Alrighty. Hi everyone. I'm Sydney I'm a sophomore at Colchester High School and a member of Vermont student anti racism network. So as a group we strive to make an impact by undertaking projects in schools such as encouraging curriculum changes statewide school policy reform and promoting anti racism in our K through 12 schools, because we believe it's important for kids to be aware of racism at a young age, especially in Vermont, with only 5.8% of the population being non white. It is easy for race to be an overlooked thing in school curriculum, but racism affects everyone. According to survey data we collate collected from over 200 current high school students in Vermont, 78.5% of Vermonters believe they did not receive a substantial elementary school education on race and racism. Furthermore, only 16% of Vermonters believe they had a beneficial conversation on racism in school, and only 26% of students said that they had characters of diverse representation in their elementary school classroom books. These results propelled us into action. This past year I had the opportunity to join eight other Vermont high school students in a pilot program to educate kindergarten through third grade students on anti racism efforts in a way that can feel impactful to them. The project started off with $1,000 grant from the Vermont Community Foundation, which we used to buy 25 sets of five different children's books about racism and inclusion. And last April we did a pilot program in Miss Lashers Kindergarten class in Heinsberg, using the book My Daddy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and our project grew to over two dozen virtual readings and lessons of four other books. Highlighting these individual lessons last year has been crucial and impactful. On the long term we've realized how crucial it is to expand anti racism efforts, specifically in younger age classrooms to a broader spectrum across the state, and have with that developed an anti racism bill within the institution. The HB 584 proposes that anti racist curriculum and culture be embedded within Vermont public school districts, meaning the examination of systemic issues inequality and oppression that stems from either subconscious or conscious racism in anti racist certificate showing the work towards making their school is safer and more positive space. Finally today we'd like to highlight the elementary initiatives. As for monitors, many of us who do not experience racism firsthand hold biases against those who do continuing the cycle of racism. For example, biases about race and criminality. These biases add tension and division to our communities, anti racism education would teach students firsthand that these policies are fit false. They would help unite our communities and anti racism education may seem like a threat or danger, but once it's actually implemented it will foster improvement in our whole society. We can choose to accept anti racism education or anti racism education in our schools, but marginalized groups can't choose the identity they're born into and implications coming with it. We all have the opportunity to help or hurt a cause like this, yet we have the obligation to choose this side of support. It's very entrenched in hate and today we still have people desperate to continue that legacy. This mentality may not seem detrimental to some but in fact it can strip humanity away from others. The mentality is very similar to those of hundreds of years ago and it is crucial to our future that we allow future generations to break the cycle between before hate becomes engraved in the wall. Thank you. My name is Addie Lunsner. I'm a senior at Arlington Memorial High School, and I'm a member of the Vermont Student Anti-Racism Network. In joint resolution H6, the legislature made a commitment to eradicate systemic racism in Vermont. They describe different ways that racism manifests itself in our state. For example, only 21% of black Vermonters own their own homes, while 72% of white Vermonters own their own homes. 23.8% of black Vermonters are living in poverty and are overrepresented in the homelessness population, while only 10.7% of white Vermonters lived in poverty. Further, black Vermonters are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. With all of these inequities, our legislators made the commitment to tackle systemic racism and make Vermont a model in the nation for racial justice. One year later, it's the beginning of the legislative session, and we must hold our public officials up to the task. From the perspective of us young people, there are an array of bills that the legislature could and should pass this session related to anti-racism. These include equity in housing, abolition of slavery, removing armed police officers from schools, prohibiting discrimination, and providing reform for the criminal justice system. This also includes HB584, a bill submitted by the Vermont Student Anti-Racism Network students to promote anti-racism standards in schools, which Sidney talked a little bit about. This bill will require standards in education designed to promote anti-racism in schools. Schools would become anti-racist certified if they meet certain guidelines for anti-racism, including addressing racist incidents, diversity in literature, and anti-bias training for staff. By passing this bill, we can ensure that society becomes actively anti-racist. As Visarn strongly believes, education is the key to changing society. If we make anti-racist schools, we'll foster an anti-racist society, and there couldn't be a more pressing time to make change. By passing this education bill and keeping anti-racism a priority this session, our legislators can help move society forward. As John Lewis said, ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in our generation must do our part. So let's work together across generations to eradicate racism. It's time to do our part. I have a few questions about that. Is it okay to ask? I think we have a few more speeches, and then we'll have some questions about that. Yeah, yeah, now I said we'll have questions, I think at the end. Okay. Through but yeah, thank you for the engagement. Yeah, I guess I can go. Hi, I'm Gabe Groveman. I'm a member of the Vermont Youth Lobby in the senior Montpelier High School. I'm incredibly happy and proud that we were able to make this happen, but I'm not all surprised. Even at one of the worst points in the pandemic, I've seen young people from around Vermont remain consistent and committed to finding for the issues we care about. 2021 was no doubt a dark one, a stark reminder of our ongoing climate crisis, but I for one remain hopeful moving into this year at the start of a new session. The awareness and engagement of these issues has grown incredibly in the past few years and now more than ever I've seen the promise of actual comprehensive actions being put in place to address the concerns we share. I see more and more young people looking to get involved and more and more organizations working together to help. We cannot do this alone. As mentioned before, in the coming session, there will be actions taken every Friday from different youth groups around the state to bring young people deeper into the political process to ensure we maintain a consistent presence in the State House. Or even when that isn't an option will continue to advocate week after week. Together we have specific goals we have to reach and personal interest in this process. In 2022 I look forward to keeping on fighting to stay informed and involved in the change being made in the state. I hope everyone here can join us in this fight and get involved to so. Hi, I'm Miriam Sirota Winston. I'm 13 years old. I'm a member of Vermont youth lobby. I like to wrap things up with a message of hope on the climate crisis. Climate change is not a small problem. We know we cannot ignore it and pass it off to the next generation, as so many before us have tried. The wildfires and hurricanes on the news may be far across the country, but we know that climate change is here too, and it's now. So like so many before us, we are faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem. Where do we start? We start by speaking up for our home, for our rights, and for our future. We start by showing up together for what we believe in. A just, equitable and safe future for us all. We are here and we have a chance to fix this. The bills that other speakers today have spoken about include climate change, and we have a chance to fix this. The bills that other speakers today have spoken about include concrete action to fix this crisis. If we show up and if we work hard, we can take that rapidly disappearing chance to stop climate change in its tracks. Together, we can ensure that not only is there a future for all of us, that that future is just and equitable. We can make it to tomorrow and we can make that tomorrow the best it can be. Working together could seem impossible, but even in today's politically polarized world, we can agree on some common goals. A healthy planet and an equitable future. We can rally around our home and around each other. Together we can and we will overcome the odds to make our planet safe and just for everyone. Thanks everyone. So I think that was our last speaker. That's all great. On that hopeful note, we can now definitely move into some questions or comments from anyone else on the call about all this really cool work. I've got a question. Schools want to get involved in the Fridays for our future. Can you just remind folks how they go about signing up and, you know, is there a plan for kind of coordinating various schools so that we can kind of spread out that presence. So the youth lobby, we're currently in the next few days, you should get an email. If you're on the youth lobby mailing list of a doc of a spreadsheet for anyone to sign up with. So in that will have some actions that you can take as examples of things you can do and updates to sign up to do them. So hopefully, if we can pull this off it would be every Friday, at least one school from around the state will have will be doing either some kind of planned action online or at their own school or hopefully be at the State House and doing work there. So please stay tuned. I have a question for anyone who would be willing to answer it. How seriously do you believe the legislature legislators and most of the adults in Vermont. Take you guys as you go to them and talk to you talk to them about your concerns. Django. I can speak to that yeah. Okay, so I work a lot on a local level so I work a lot in my town's government, but I have been part of larger legislators actions, and I'll be honest, the, the most, like, the most common reaction I get is that people are really surprised that kids are readily available to do this, and I have been welcomed with open arms a lot of the time as I come into that. But then as soon as we work into the logistics of it. I'm immediately met with, oh we can't do this because of this and I'm kind of mansplained politics from all these adults. And I think it comes from the fact that a lot of times people who have been doing this work for a very long time, kind of get lost in the way politics works and kind of how bureaucracy kind of takes you down that spiral. And they lose sight of goals really easily. So it's oftentimes it's really refreshing to them to have a new voice and have some direct goals and just kind of a clear mind come into it and a lot of the time. I'm not with a lot of opposition because they're like oh well it needs to happen exactly like this because this is how the system has been set up. Yeah, that's me I don't know if anybody has. Also Abigail I saw your question in the chat. And yes there's a bunch of other bills we would love to get tasked. Some that were spoken in my speech and other speeches are the bottle bill and abolishing slavery and the environmental justice bill and so many more. Most of them we're not talking about as bill numbers, because it's more of ideas we want past, and the bills aren't enough, while they're great, we need more, and we need more concrete and bigger steps towards a better more sustainable future. And so that is why most of them were not as bill numbers, the h 5841 was because one of the groups here did submit the bill. Thank you. I have a few questions. My first question and I don't know if I don't know if you've considered this but somebody said that it would make sense to like removed on police places from schools but what about like people who actually bring in guns or things to school with what would happen to those people would they just be told to put the gun away and hope and be in hope that they people would comply. Um, I think that is a very separate issue. Well it is a very big issue. Um, I think that is not exactly what this is trying to talk about. This is, yeah, but like it. I know it's not exactly related but if you were to remove police places from schools wouldn't that kind of, you know, be a problem. Um, that is dealt with in a much bigger way than just having an armed police officer at school at schools that is like a much bigger requires school lockdowns and like police that are working that are not working at the school to Oh, okay, okay. When there is gun threats. It's a very, very big issue. And it. Yeah, yeah. And then a response to the same speech. Yeah, that you answer my sense but somebody said that she said that black people are more likely to get covered than white people but that doesn't seem like the kind of problem you can fix though. Right. I mean, it's just I'm happy to answer that question. So it's not that certain people are more likely to get covered because of like biological reasons. Because of systemic racism in society. We have less access to like health care and health services and things like that that can lead to getting COVID and so it's really those inequities in society that we want to address and we can address them legislature does have that power they just have to use it. And I know if I asked a lot of questions but for the climate thing. What do people think about nuclear power I mean, like, I've heard that those like the small modular one nuclear power plants. Like, what do people think of that because solar is not as an unstable power source, and you're always going to need to have gas, but while the solar powers while the sun isn't shining because the batteries aren't going to be able to be good enough. I would say that's like a larger, more national issue and a lot of the work we're doing is geared towards. At least personally I feel the state. We can do, but does the state not have the power to build well for my Yankee was shut down. We don't have an active nuclear power plant in the state and it does not seem like, at least for my knowledge that that will be a thing that ever opens up anytime soon. So I think right now it would be, it would be a stable power supply. Stable and green power supply. That's out of like the reach of if you look at historically how nuclear power has worked in Vermont in the past. From my knowledge I don't think that's a possibility in the near future. And I think it makes more sense to look at other outlets but but it's not like that. There's no like solar is not a stable power supply. And if you just keep building a time of solar power it's that's great when the sun is shining except when the sun is down then. Well your entire society needs to just put kind of shut down so there's a diverse really want to get going at zero you need a stable green energy supply. I think we all are all in agreement I would defer to the scientists and professionals who work on energy resources and are doing research into what best works for our state and for the nation. And that's not necessarily for I don't think this organization to answer. People are lobbying for putting solar panels in places, but shouldn't we be. Is there a reason why we can't lobby for other green energy supplies. There, there is lobbying for other, and I think the part of plans, someone else can answer. I'm sure, but we do also have other questions in the chat so. Yeah, Anthony you're asking a lot of questions that a lot of people all over the country are asking right now and when we talk about this issue, we can talk about the scientific side of it, we can talk about the climate justice side of it. So a lot of the things that we've been bringing up today are focused on the people side of things. And, and how climate change affects with the people and how we have a reaction to that thing that's happening to us. And a lot of the questions you're asking are really important questions to ask and we're talking about the scientific side of things, and how literally scientifically the globe will deal with this, and how we can actually generate that green energy so these questions. I would defer you to a lot of I, it would really interest you to look at project drawdown really big really great source for a lot of solutions that are happening all over the world and you can kind of see the pros and cons. And a lot of beneficial research. And I think a lot of your questions would really be answered. I do see a question from Vermont digger on a status Fridays. And we actually have been in our meetings, looking. Thank you. By the way, for all the questions. It's great that people are asking these and getting involved. Just in sake of time. We have been talking about specific ideas for action and examples of things that people from other schools can use every Friday. It can be as simple as making like doing letter writing campaigns just getting a certain amount of questions in your school to write letters, or making banners or posters or some kind of our project or something more localized your town or hopefully it can be coming to the State House and finding your legislators and talking to them about what issues they care about and what issues you care about. And that's more just to get young people involved directly into the political process and make those relationships with their legislators. So that's one more question. Electric cars are a lot more expensive than gas cars. And people here. And I think that those kind of like people would be more inclined if they don't have a lot of money to buy gas cars, because they're cheaper right. So like, what about like, it's, it's great that, like, I love the idea but not everybody can get an electric car I mean they're like, at least twice as expensive exact gas cars man. So part of my speech was talking about how I want to get the legislature to make fuel efficient or just completely electric cars, even just hybrids more accessible to lower income families and making them more accessible and also increasing transportation like buses and stuff. Also, maybe trying to get more e-bikes and e-scooters. So there's a lot, there's a lot of work going on around trying to make electric or hybrid cars more accessible, especially to lower income people. Great. So, if there aren't any further questions or comments from the chat, I think we've all, yeah, you've said what I wanted to say and excited to kick off this legislative session in a productive way. Thank you all. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.