 So I believe that Dr. Rhodes will be joining us. Welcome, everyone. Hi, happy Monday. I'm good to see you all, or at least to see you, Yvonne. And what an amazing, I was just so happy to meet you in person. It was so great. It was great to be there in person and see everybody. Yeah, it was a great event back too. I just really enjoyed it. Awesome. I'm so glad, yeah. And I actually had just a little time on the agenda. I was hoping folks might wanna share if they feel like about the event. But let me just check here, let's see. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead. I'm gonna call the meeting to order. And I am calling the April 3rd meeting of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly to order at 1203 p.m. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. I am aware that Dr. or Ms. Bridges will not be able to join us today. And I'm just gonna check in quickly like I normally do at the beginning of a meeting to see if Alexis can join. And I did get a note from Dr. Shabazz that he is here, but he's unable to participate. Oh, he's there, okay. Thanks, Dr. Shabazz. Let me just check in with you first. Do you, are you able to participate in the meeting or how are you feeling? I'm here, if I can, I will, but otherwise I'll send information later. Sure, that sounds great. Okay, thank you. And I'll just check in to see if Irv is joining. It just occurred to me that I didn't send you guys the minutes. So can we table the minutes? Sure. Yes. Okay. So I'm looking at the agenda. First I'm gonna do a sound check and I'll start with you, Hala, welcome. Can you hear us? Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Very good. And Yvonne? Yes, I can hear you. Excellent. And we heard Dr. Shabazz. Yes. Okay. And Jennifer, I think we can hear you, but let's just make sure. I can hear you. Okay, good. All right, so looking at the agenda today, I did have a few minutes that I thought we might just debrief about the town hall, the big payback screening and the entire day really last Thursday. We have a lot of work to do on our survey. And so Dr. Rhodes and I met with the Dunahue Institute earlier today. And so we'll have some, we have to go through the rest of the survey if we would like to meet our launch date of April 11th and just a note, we will not be meeting next Monday. Jennifer, it's officially a holiday next Monday. Is that right? Or is it the Friday? I didn't think there was a holiday till the 17th. So is Easter not? Easter is not. Oh, okay. So Monday is the town offices are open on Monday? Yes. Oh, that is really good to know. Okay. I don't know if that poses a conflict for others, but it's good to know that we in fact can have a meeting that day. And then we have some other items to discuss, but depending I'd really like, I need, I think making sure that we get through the survey is most critical today. And then of course we have two periods of public comment. I'm gonna begin now with the first period of public comment and then we'll have one later in the meeting as well. So if you are in the audience and you'd like to make public comment, please use the raise hand feature and I'll recognize you for up to three minutes. We did receive a public comment via email that I got about 10 minutes ago that I'll forward to everyone. But if you would like to make a public comment, please raise your hand now. Hi, Dr. Rhodes, can you hear us? I can hear you. Okay, great. And we can hear you well too. We just got started. We just reviewed the agenda, did a sound check and we're in our first period of public comment. And Ms. Bridges will not be joining us today and I think Alexis will be joining us but just a little bit late. All right, so not seeing any hands raised. I'm going to move right to just a little debriefing on Thursday's event. Actually, let me see. I want, well, I'll come back to Alexis on that. She might have some thoughts to offer but if anybody would like to offer thoughts on Thursday's event, this would be the time to do that. And Dr. Rhodes, I'll share that we missed you and we did acknowledge you a couple of different times and it was a really well attended and very, very rich event. It was wonderful to have Robyn here. She was here for the whole day and got to see, have a tour with, welcome Pamela. She got to have a tour with Ms. Bridges of the Civil War tablets and then a tour with counselor Lopes of the ancestral Bridges exhibit over at Frost Library before coming to the big event in the evening. So Pamela, I don't know if you can hear us doing a sound check with you. Yes, I can hear you. I'm sorry it took me a while to get in. I was having trouble with logging into Zoom for some reason. Oh, no worries. We were just, we did our first period of public comment and now we were just seeing if anyone wanted to make comments about Thursday nights. Event. So. Have other people commented? Nobody has, well Yvonne commented sort of before we started the meeting and Dr. Chappaz is a little under the weather and Dr. Rhodes wasn't there. Hala. I just wanted to say Thursday's event was like amazing and phenomenal. So much gratitude to you, Robin, Bruce Simmons and the young, the young people really inspired me. I have faith more in tomorrow watching how the students took charge, not to charge in that kind of way but just the knowledge, the thirst, the hunger to make a difference, have an impact and just beyond beyond. So I haven't processed it all or unpacked it all but I'm left with feeling more hopeful and inspired to keep on keeping up. Thank you. Awesome, thank you. Just gave me the chills. And I will share that we received some really terrific feedback. Town Manager Backelman sent some just really wonderful feedback. He was there with his partner. We also heard feedback from Michael Elliott at the college who was not in attendance but who had heard terrific reviews from folks that did attend. And I want to second what Hala said about the students. It was just really amazing to have their energy in the room and it made a difference. Robin I think is more committed now than ever to not only our community and just in sort of sort of processing everything with her after she is just even more committed than ever it seems to doing this work of working with different communities. I think it was really inspiring for her as well. So thanks to everyone for making it happen. And when Alexis gets here, I'd love to check in with her too because she was in such an interesting position doing all the tech stuff and interfacing with everything, you know. So, all right, excellent. So I'm gonna just see, I was buying a little time too because I was waiting for... I told Carrie at the Downing Hill Institute that we would probably be taking up other things until about 2.15 so she could make last minute edits. So one of those things that I'd like to bring up is on the agenda, it should be pretty quick. And I did speak a little bit with Yvonne about this at the event. There's an item on the agenda that says ACC grant. Way, way, way back when we first started as a committee, we applied for a grant with the Amherst Cultural Council. The grant amount that we applied for was $5,000. I think this must have been in the first two weeks of our time together. And the purpose of the grant was to document our work. So if we had been awarded the $5,000, then the purpose would have been to document our work as a committee. And I still just wanna set that aside as something that I think would be really amazing for us to pursue potentially, but just to keep things focused, the Amherst Cultural Council awarded us $500 as a grant and they are giving us the opportunity to amend our application so that we can use that $500 towards some other component of our work. So I wanted to bring that up. I think Pamela is very much in the loop now so it can help us navigate this as well. Is that right Pamela? Did I understand that right? Yes, I've been pulled into the conversation. So I think I might be able to help navigate but as you said, they're looking for an amendment to the grant application so the funds can be used. So I don't know if anyone has ideas and I would keep in mind that the $500 isn't, we're not limited by that. So if we wanted to pursue something that costs more than that, we would just have to find other means for, but we do I think want to make sure that if we're unable to amend it to receive the grant that the cultural council can take the money and use it for other purposes and other grantees. So I wanna be able to come back to them so does anyone have any ideas about how we might wanna use that or how we might wanna amend the application? And I don't know Pamela if you had any ideas just in talking with the cultural council last week. So I actually love the original idea. I don't know whether there's an opportunity to go back to that original idea and apply for additional funds. I think what the documentary showed was the importance of really recording this work from the beginning, which you've been working at it for a long period of time but through interviews I think you would still be able to capture the story of the process here in Ann Amherst. So beyond that, I'm not certain, I think one of the purposes could have been like the showing of the documentary, right? That would have fit in with the auspices, would have fit under the auspice of the cultural council but I don't know what other thoughts you might have for how to use that to use the funds. I guess Alexis is raising her hand but I actually, I'm gonna ask a question Alexis because you might be able to answer this. What opportunities would there be for someone from Amherst media to even start to put together an outline of what would be needed for the group to create a documentary? Like so could that $500 be spent for someone who would write up a proposal of what the work would look like to create a documentary and I have no idea what the cost of that would be but I'm just thinking aloud at this point. Alexis please, that's a wonderful question. Yeah, so I guess I wanna make sure that I understand your question that are you saying that the 500 will be used specifically just for the writing up of a proposal in order to apply for more funds? Well, not, well I think in addition to applying for more funds but so that you would know the scope of the work in order or you could document what the scope of the work would be to create a documentary and so a lot of things have happened over the last few days so I didn't get a chance to share this with Michelle but when I was at Smith College we actually created a small documentary piece about Otilia Cromwell, the first known black student at Smith and originally I had high hopes for having this huge hour and a half long documentary with all of this information and then the individuals who have the real technical skills rolled it back into something that would be more feasible and we were on the campus able to interview her, a surviving relative who's also a Smith alum, interview students and alum and other people from around the country and then produce a short film and I think it's about a half an hour in length but that took hours and hours of like interviews and someone with the technical wherewithal to really put that together and so I'm wondering whether the $500 could be used to pay someone to do that preliminary work of like designing what the project would look like creating the roadmap to go forward and so that you could actually create a documentary based on the work that you've done here which would obviously take a lot more than $500 but if the $500 could get you started or at least create the roadmap that seems to me would be in alignment with the sort of the original purpose and I was, I don't know all of the services that can be conducted by Amherst media so I'm wondering like could it, could the assembly pay someone at Amherst media to do that work and whether $500 would be a start or a portion I don't know so. Yeah so I think that that's a, I think that that's a great idea and I think that depending on what the vision is for the final product would change how we would go about it, right? So I think that as you are suggesting it I think that that's totally a possibility. That's me not as the executive director of Amherst media I would absolutely have to check in with him but I can see it going a number of ways and I think that another thing that we were talking about too if I remember correctly was the possibility of having oral histories being recorded and I think that that's something that's totally possible within just that $500 budget. Of course we would also have to think about like, okay well then like is this becoming an exhibit where is this being exhibited? You know there's like other things that come with that but I think that just in terms of like the preliminary work if we were intending on doing a documentary style piece we would just need to know like what is the final vision? Like is, are we intending to create something like the big payback? Are we intending on creating something that's different from that? Are we, you know? So I think that like knowing what the vision is can help in laying that framework but I don't see how that's, like I like your suggestion and I see that as a great possibility. Yeah I think that's a really, really excellent suggestion Pamela and you know the public comment that we received by in writing today, which I'll forward to everyone talks about documenting our work here in Amherst similarly so I think that is something that the community would like to have and hold and be part of our work. So and I think that amending the application essentially to say like we had asked for 5,000 and we got 500 so what we can do with this 500 is we can create a roadmap with partners such as Amherst Media to determine what would be needed to pursue a documentary of our work. And then I think the question beyond that is applying for other funding for that either through the cultural council or through mass humanities or through a variety of other. And I know Rep Dom would be really helpful probably in helping us think through that. She's been helpful in connecting us with mass humanities and others like that. So does any assembly member have, does that sound like a good plan forward in terms of that? Because what I could do if so is I could work with Pamela and Jennifer to rework the language so that we can get an amendment ready to then send back to the Amherst Cultural Council but we will of course bring it for review by the full assembly prior to doing that. Yes, Yvonne. Who are you talking to with the? Great. Yes. So it's Matt and Matt Holloway and is it Julianne? Let's see, I'm gonna pull it up. Yep, Julianne Applegate. I think you should talk to them first and find out what the scope of what they'll fund is before you do a lot of work on it. Yeah, yeah, that's a great, let me just- Cause I think it used to be, it might be different now. I think that they're, you know, they always have been open to shoring up organizations, projects, you know? But I think often they're looking for something that there's a tangible outcome, you know? This seems like it would be an investment in a project that we would have to do the fundraising and organizing for moving forward. So there had to be some kind of guarantee that we would do it, you know, because they're giving us money so that we can do this thing. So I think that a lot, it would go a longer way if we are completely dedicated to completing this documentary and we have an idea of what that documentary is and then we're using this money as a way to finalize or formalize the, you know, it's like a strategic plan for this project, you know? And I think that they might fund it if they know that we're dedicated to completing to the final project is a sort of thing. And that would be the final project would be their investment, which is the video. So I would have a conversation with them first to find out if they're willing to fund this kind of, you know, adjustment. Okay, that's a great suggestion. Yeah, I'm looking at the amendment request. I guess the one question that I would have immediately is Pamela, did you get a sense when you spoke to them what sort of timeline they needed us to complete this in? I think that the timeline is sooner rather than later because I think that they already were past the reporting period for the original grant. So... Exactly, right. Okay, well, I wonder Pamela, would you be willing to set up a meeting where we could meet with Julianne and talk to her about what we discussed and I can send out the email to get that started and just find a time. I think that's a really good suggestion. Sure. Okay, Yvonne, your hand is still up. And I also saw Alexis's, I think Alexis's hand went down since... I was basically gonna say what Ms. Mendocin. Okay, perfect. All right, so there's that. And I do have the survey in my inbox now. So I'm gonna go ahead and pull that up. As I said, Dr. Rhodes and I met with the Donahue. We reviewed all of the notes from our last meeting so that changes could be made and then we reviewed the rest of the survey. And so we have some outstanding questions and things that we just need to address here. So if you just give me one second here. Okay, can everyone see my screen? All right. Great. So just to review some of the changes that we made here based on our last discussion is that we included some additional language here saying if you have any questions about the survey including the need for translation or a paper copy please contact. Right now we have my name, email address and I plan to put the office number but I also open to other ideas like having Pamela's name and email address and phone number which may be even a better way to go about it. I don't know Pamela how you feel or how other members feel. And then of course we have the Donahue there just in case there are technical issues with accessing the survey. I think it's certainly your choice either myself or you, whomever. Okay, I think maybe even both. I mean, what we don't want to happen is that somebody gets the survey and they don't know how to get their questions answered. They try to reach one and can't get, you know. So, okay. Any other comments or questions on that? All right, I'm just gonna be looking for hands as we move through here. So here we have this question we didn't have any issue with last time. This was just asking about if you live in Amherst. And as we go through this, I'm going to say who sees the various questions just so that you have an understanding of how it's going to flow as we go through and if we want to make any changes to who's seeing what. So here we changed it to as Black and of African heritage. And so if you, we're gonna come back to sort of where it flows but I wanna go through the questions first. And so here, let me just do this. Actually, you know what? I'm not gonna do any, okay. How do I, sorry. Let me just see something. I'm just gonna try to reopen this. What's the rationale for prefer not to answer? Sorry, one second. Dr. Shabazz, okay. This one here, you mean? And at other places. Okay. I don't have a good answer. I don't have a good answer to that question. I assume it's just if somebody doesn't wanna answer the question. They have an option so that they can continue moving with the survey because you can't unlock. I think you have to answer the question to unlock the next question. So I guess I would say that that's the rationale but I could certainly ask, what are your thoughts on that though? If it doesn't have a good function, a good reason, then I wouldn't have it there. If I'm hearing from a utilitarian point that the survey, electronic survey, this wouldn't concern the paper survey but the electronic survey doesn't advance unless you click an option. And so you're providing a third option for someone that doesn't wanna say yes but then doesn't wanna say no but we really need to know either yes or no. So for me, it would be, yeah, you'd want them to advance. You'd want them to answer yes or no and in advance from answering yes or no. But again, if it's a utilitarian thing that but it seems like there's something more to it than utility of the program. Actually it's usually in most surveys they give the participant the option of answering a question or not answering a question. And the data from that is whether it's relevant to our purposes or not but it wouldn't be interesting just to know if people saw this question and decided not to answer it. If you've got a large percentage of people who decided not to answer then that's information in and of itself. I, Alexis? Being that the survey is anonymous in nature I guess I agree with Dr. Shabazz and I guess I'm wondering like how that helps us to have that as an option when it's anonymous anyways. And I would argue that like if we have to be able to get data from this I don't know how that helps us to have that option there. Well, here's an argument for having ended. Let's say you had 20% of the people who took this survey they said they prefer not to answer. Well, that would be an extraordinary number and why that would be we wouldn't know but it certainly is data that would be germane to the final compilation of this survey. But no pun intended. The fact that non-black people can access the survey it could be just white noise. It could be people who don't see themselves as black but then don't wanna answer yes or no and they're just throwing and it's just noise. It's not telling us anything and even giving them the option to say prefer not to answer isn't telling us anything. The function of this is to survey toward a program of black reparations in this town. You don't wanna do the survey if you don't want to participate in giving us an understanding about that. And in particularly here identifying whether you are black or not then you don't even need to do the survey. So I'm just really begging the question because we've gotta seem like you wanna get people's buy-in and not give like an option to just not answer. I mean, just don't do the survey if you can't answer the most basic question of whether you're black and you're speaking as a black person on reparations for black people or you're not black and you're speaking on it. For me, it really, I mean, it really doesn't matter. Again, it's one of those questions that are usually a part of any survey that the person taking the survey has the right not to answer the question. Now they could take that and then just skip it if they wanted to. I mean, again, it doesn't matter to me but it's just one, again, it is there because it is a regular survey function to have that kind of question in there. Yeah, and I'll make sure that it doesn't prevent somebody from continuing. So if we don't have it in, I'll get the answer to that question. And Alexis, I do see your hand is still raised so I want to check in with you again. Oh, well, I think I guess my final thoughts, I feel like we shouldn't have it just because if we get a whole, but if it did end up in that scenario where like a bunch of people answered that then I feel like we'd have to like go through this all over again because we wouldn't get the answers that we wanted. So I'm gonna take my hand down and yes, thank you. Okay, so unless folks want to bring this one to a vote, I don't see any, personally, I don't see any reason that we need to do that because I did hear Dr. Rhodes say that he's okay either way but please correct me if I'm wrong. Okay, all right. And then I should say that if you identify as black and of African heritage you will see the entire survey. So what I'm gonna be pointing out as we go along is how it's set up right now if you do not identify as black and of African heritage so that you'll know which questions non-black folks will not be seeing as it stands right now. All right, there's one exception but we'll get to that in just a second. Okay, so here do you identify as a descendant of people enslaved in the United States? And this again, coming back to Dr. Shabazz's question and whether or not to include a prefer not to answer does your feeling change when it comes to this particular question? I would again say if they would just skip. If they don't know, they don't know if they're not a no and if they're not a yes then if the system will allow them to just skip on then let them skip on and they'll effectively be telling us they prefer not to answer or they're skipping but otherwise then it's yes, you identify as a descendant or no, you don't identify as a descendant or that you don't know and I think those are the three valid things we need to understand from people survey. Great, so here I'm gonna just click on yes because we've added one pathway. This is one in which not all black people will see only people that answer yes to this and we need to do a little bit of work on this. This was in relationship, it didn't work. Okay, you know why? Cause I guess it's out of flow. So we'll get to it. It's the question, I see what she did now. It's the question on peoplehood. So only people that answer yes to this will receive a question on peoplehood that we need to do some work on but it comes a little bit later. So let's move on from here. And then we have this question that everybody will see. Again, here we have the prefer not to answer. I think the key here is figuring out if it essentially works as a skip if someone can just hit this arrow and not answer the question, we don't need the prefer not to answer. I think that's sort of what we've landed on here. All right, all right. And then we reviewed thinking about your own experience and then this is where folks will have the opportunity and again, this is only for yes, Yvonne. I'm sorry, can you go back to the last question? Of course, yeah, sure. So I think in that instance with whether someone agrees or not about reparations, I think it's a very complicated question and that I guess my question to the committee is, are there some folks who are taking this survey who could answer, I'm not sure. You know what I mean? Or is it that we're targeting folks who already have made up their mind about what reparations means and if it can be distributed? You know what I'm saying? I think that it might be valuable to find out how many people really don't know and they're relying on us or other people for information so they can make up their mind. But my question to the committee is, is this survey going out to folks whose minds have already been made up and then that's not an issue, right? You don't have to ask that. Yeah. I'm gonna go to Alexis and then Dr. Rhodes. Yeah, I guess it would really be helpful to know what information we are, like what are we planning to do with the information that we get from this particular question? And like if it is anonymous, how are we, even then, how are we using that information? And so I agree with Ms. Menda's that like if we do find out who's, if people are just generally uninformed, that's something that we can do something with, but even then, you know, where, I don't know, there's a lot of vagueness around it. And so I guess I'm wondering, yeah, I guess another question that I have is like, how exactly are we using the information that we get from this particular question? Dr. Rhodes? It, in terms of that particular question, it's really gets at the heart of what our charge is and if we are going to be dealing with reparations here in Amherst, we really do need to know if people have suffered some harms one way or the other. And that information, and this is information that is really critical because if you get a prepondence of people who answer no, then that tells us a hell of a lot and would go right into the heart of why we're doing this anyway. The assumption is that reparations in Amherst on some people's mind needs to happen, but how many people's mind, what percentage of the population believes that, et cetera, it is. Yeah, I mean, you know, if we don't have that question in there, then why would we be doing this survey? I think we should have the question. I think we should keep in, prefer not to answer or I don't know, so that we also are capturing. Yes. You know, like folks who aren't sure. So that'll tell us something as well. It'll tell us we need to have a bigger, let's say education aspect of the work we're doing so people will be more informed so they can have a decision. You know what I mean? Okay, let me just make sure I understand, Yvonne. So you'd like it to say the options to be yes, no, prefer not to answer or I don't know, add I don't know to this one. Well, I think it's just language. Do we want people to say I don't know or prefer not to answer? Yeah, some people have an opinion but they prefer not to answer. But when you ask someone, do you know? Right. And they say, I don't know. I think a lot of folks who get to that, I'm just saying, I know people who will get to that question and say, well, what exactly does reparations mean? Maybe I'm not right with 100% of like, I'm not for cash payments, which is what my definition of reparations. I'm just using that as an example. That's not my definition of reparations because, but it could be someone else's and then they'll read that into this question and say, well, I don't know how to answer this. Yeah. And I just want to push back a little bit on what you said, Dr. Rhodes. I don't, from my perspective, our charge is less about determining if there's community-wide support for reparations and more about determining how the already reparations legislation and reparations dedicated reparations fund should be used. So we've already committed to reparations. And because this is in a randomized representative survey, my concern is that if our only respondents are people who do not agree that reparations in some ways appropriate, then we're gonna have a very skewed, I think, or I guess we're gonna have data that's not actually going to help us because even if, is there a scenario where enough people come out and say that they do not believe reparations should occur in Amherst and where we turn back time and say, we're gonna give the $2 million back to the town council and we're not gonna develop. So it's just like to me, I didn't like this question to begin with and I don't really understand why it's here and it has such a high placement in the survey, but particularly because it's not a randomized representative survey. I could take your argument and say, yeah, it makes sense, but on the other hand, we are collecting data and it seems to me, if I'm out there doing this survey, that I'd really want to know what the general population has to say, what their beliefs are. It has, and as you suggested, it has zero impact on what we're going to do because we've always been given that charge. We've already have the commitment for the $2 million. It's not going to change that, but it does. What it does do, it gives us an idea, a general idea of how the overall population feels about that and that I think is very valuable. Not to have it, it's like we're walking around in some kind of a vacuum thing, all the entire town of Amherst agrees with it, et cetera, whereas it's better to know than not to know. Thank you, Dr. Rhodes. I saw Dr. Shabazz and then Alexis. Alexis can go before me. Alexis? Oh, for sure, okay. So I guess I also, I guess I'm still coming back to like, how are we using it? Like at the end of the day, all of this information, I agree would be helpful to know, but I guess that's where I'm inclined to then choose, the I don't know question because then at least the I don't know question or the I don't know option lets us know how many or maybe the options are something to do with how much I know about it or how much I understand it because I agree that like our charge is to do the thing and this is supposed to inform how we do the thing. And if part of that, which I feel like does have to do with education at the end of the day, does a no answer tell us that people need, like is that telling us that people need more education or does that tell us? And then we're deciding to use that information as like, okay, well then this many people have their mind made up already, but we're still gonna do it anyways. But I guess I'm still confused about how we're implementing this information in what we need to do to complete our charge. Thank you, Alexis. Dr. Shabazz? You know, I think that it's a good discussion we're having here and there is a value to having the, some form of question that gets at a snapshot at this point in time of where those members of the community who bothered to take the survey are on, you know, in relation to supporting the plan we're charged with developing. So my question might be whether, and we don't have to do it on the floor here necessarily, but whether the question ought to be tweaked to instead recognize where the current standpoint is that we're not, as you said earlier, Michelle, we're not at a standpoint of a question of whether there ought to be some form of material funding for programs, for direct benefits or for whatever kinds of work initiatives that we're putting under the label of reparative justice or reparations. Is there support for that as has been established by the town council? I just think if we could somehow tweak it to recognize that's the stage we're in. We're not at the stage of asking whether one should do X or one should not do X. We're at the question of, do you support that we're doing X? Uh-huh, yep. Dr. Rhodes. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, Dr. May. I mean, if we were going to rephrase that question in terms of support, that's a whole different ball of wax. However, it still would be very useful information because it's just no or I don't know or don't have enough information. But in general, we're gonna be going forward, but every year when money is asked for, we have to get two thirds of the council to approve it. I certainly would not want to be accused by anyone of saying, hey, well, you don't even know what the general population thinks about reparations. You never even asked a question. And that kind of charge to me is more detrimental than anything else, that you refuse to ask the question. So you don't even know, yet you had the opportunity to know. Yeah, and so if I could quickly follow up, I'm in agreement, we need to ask. It's just what I said before though, are we asking, do you support our doing X or do you, you know, because that's where we already are. Rather than saying, should we do X or should we not do X? It's just a slight difference there. And here's the rationale that I would say is important in making the distinction. Throughout these years, we've been sitting here and even before, you know, but as this conversation grows, so often what I hear is, is that many people, and I'm even saying black people, the default position is to be kind of not supportive unless you clarify what reparations is. Okay, and so just having it in the sentence there, it sort of begs the question. And if there's no sense of what it is, it is just the generic idea of some repayment for harms done by slavery, racism, or discrimination. Okay, which if you think about it with that, or that means that you're saying even somebody who got a ticket today, unfairly discriminated, say driving while black, you're lumping them in as a just cause for reparations. You know, there's gonna be disagreement. But if it's about the trying to get an assess, and the disagreement is what we're trying to answer in the report we're gonna generate in June, because by then we're hoping to have a more clear articulation of what are the initiatives, what are the scope, what is the framework of what we can do on a local level, that's what we are charged with publishing of putting out there for people. But we don't have any articulation of that to offer people in this survey. It wouldn't make sense to try to like give examples. Maybe it would be this or maybe it would be that. That would be a ridiculous approach. But to say, do you support where we currently are? And that is that we have a fund that has been established, that is being paid into to do this. And then do you support, do you not support or do you need more, I don't know, I need more information. I think that would be a good, that would be a worthwhile question it would get at. The, you know, I think what the, it would really help us in understanding where we are and in what we're recommending for the, in our plan that we will submit in June. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz, Dr. Rhodes. And then- Dr. Shabazz, you can hit on something, Dan. We really should deal with in this survey, probably in that the preamble are in the beginning of this survey by saying what reparations are. You know, reparations, you know, there are some standard words and wording and standard kinds of things that reparations seeks to do. And it's, you know, it could be done in a sentence or two. Just to say what, you know, when someone says, well, what are reparations? Well, there's an answer to that. And that needs to be somewhere. And you're correct, Dr. Shabazz, because it's not there. And it needs to be there. You know, we're talking about reparations, but no one and nowhere in there does it say, well, reparations is A or B or whatever. Somewhere in there, we have to deal with that question. What is or are reparations? Alexis, thank you, Dr. Rhodes. Alexis? I can really get down with what the amendment to the question, I think that Dr. Shabazz suggested. And I guess I'm wondering, being that are, you know, the reparations in Amherst that we're talking about is not the same as federal reparations. I think that it's hard to say what is reparations when it's very, in our instance, it's very contextual. It's in the context of where we are, it's in the context of how much money we're being allotted. Like there's a lot of context in this. And so I think that we might bypass some of the discrepancies and controversy in that if we say, if it's about what we're doing specifically, and then I'm wondering, so like I agree with how Dr. Shabazz phrased it, but I guess I'm wondering if it could add anything to also have a open question option to say, okay, like if you felt like you don't agree, or yeah, I guess if you don't agree, then like how could we change it or something? Or like what do you feel like could be changed about how we're specifically going about this? I don't know. So just a couple of things from what I'm hearing, and I think you're bringing up a good point, Alexis, about if you don't agree, I don't think there's a single space on the survey as we speak for a person, at least if it's possible in the section for people who identify as black and of African heritage to provide input, but we don't have any narrative spaces that are just about if you don't agree with it, there's nowhere really for anybody. I'll have to check at the end to see if there's any like final thoughts type of narrative. I also want to reflect back that I heard that maybe the possibility of a preamble or in our preamble to include what a local reparations program seeks to do, verse and compare that, or to at least say that our work is not, and I will get with Dr. Chabaz and others for wording on this, but that this is not a federal reparations program and that what we're pursuing is a local reparations initiative and what are sort of the confines or the contextualization of that? So I think that that might be something that's really worthwhile putting in our preamble up here and then being able to, as Dr. Chabaz say, do you support the town's decision to establish this local fund and to pursue this local initiative? Because the way it's stated right now is it's a very political question and it doesn't get at whether you're agreeing on a national level, on a local level, whether it really isn't in my mind getting at anything that could be helpful for us, but this new way of I think framing it really would get us the information that would be useful for us. Very quickly, one thing I do is I just pop back to our charge and it speaks of reparations and of the municipal reparations fund as part of a community-wide process of reconciliation and repair for harms against black people. So for me, I always, when in doubt, go with what our original starting point, what our original charge is. So it is about, you know, harms against black people and trying to deal with that in a community, on a community level. But you raise a good question in that our process understands and supports things at a national level. Is it, would it be a diversion or off topic to ask the question of whether one supports as a separate question, does one support or not the, you know, reparations at the federal level, particularly with the objective of closing the racial wealth gap? But again, I'm not suggesting we need that question. I know we've got a lot more to get through but I just throw that out there for thought. Yeah, thank you. I think that we should definitely sit with that. And I think we should even maybe take it a step further and decide if in our, I mean, I guess this isn't necessarily the place for the AHA to put out opinions about where we stand in terms of support of the federal level reparations, particularly to close the racial wealth gap. But this is a platform that we have. And if that is a message that we want to make loud and clear, this could be a place to do that. So I would ask that the committee consider that. Okay, so let's move on here because we do have a lot to get through. And so now we're gonna come down to thinking about your own experience. These are questions that are right now only set up for, because they were initially this next set of questions which asks about systems were set up for everybody but we Irv and I reworked these last week with the Donahue Institute. So this here is prefer not to say are we kind of going with the same theory not to include prefer not to say or do people have thoughts on that? I like the question overall. I still question the necessity of that as opposed to just skipping. Okay, great. And then this will give folks a chance to put in any details they would like to share. There's no limit on that in terms of words. Okay, here's what we went through these last week and we had a couple changes that we asked to be made here. We had the economic system, the healthcare system, the public elementary and secondary educational system. This one here I wanted to check in with you all about. So in the conversation this morning with the Donahue, the question of sort of community experience, so whether it's being in the library and it being a white space or walking down the street, is that a system? We talked about that last time and one thing that came to mind for me was just this sort of conversation we have in Amherst about spaces being white spaces and whether or not black residents are engaging in the political system, in committees, whether it be town council committees or even just municipal community events. So that's sort of where it was maybe gonna get worked in here unless folks felt strongly that having a separate system was necessary in that regard. Can you scroll back up to the one before the elementary school? Yes. So the healthcare system, are we asking this as a general question? Because many of the folks who have healthcare, let's say in Amherst, it's connected to their jobs. Is this about, I'm saying I'm not sure, this is wildly anecdotal information. I'm just not sure how if it's designed to gauge something about the population in Amherst and their relationship with their own health systems, health, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm not sure. Yeah, and it even came up today that the healthcare system, are we talking about mental health? Are we talking about physical health? Are we, there's a lot to that. Do we wanna be able to see the difference? So I don't know what other folks think about that. So open-ended is what I'm saying. I'm not sure what kind of, yeah, what kind of information we're trying to get to. The public elementary and secondary educational system makes a little bit more sense because it's our town's elementary and secondary education system. I mean, it's Amherst system, right? So I see that you will get some good information there. And then the economic system is the same thing. Like, is this the United States? No, so the intention of all of these and Irv made this very clear in our meetings is the Amherst economic system, the Amherst healthcare system, the Amherst public elementary and secondary. So it sounds to me like we need to add that. Amherst, yeah. Even though it's up the top anyway. Yes, exactly. I would, just as a reminder, yeah. That's great, okay. And then of course, down here, we put Hampshire County courts because Amherst doesn't have their own courts and judicial system. So that's how we dealt with that one. And then here we wanted to see, okay, we added at Jennifer Moyston's recommendation last week, we added social services. And so one question that we, you know, is whether there was a distinction between social services and healthcare. But I think that that's sort of been answered if we put Amherst in front of everything. And then there's two additional questions here. One, based on the feedback we got last week. Are there other systems that we haven't identified? And then would you like to share your experiences with any of these systems as an open-ended question so that folks can expand if they'd like to share in a more of a narrative way? Any questions on these or shall I move forward? Okay. All right. Oh, here we come with the people hood. So this is the question that I was saying. If you answered that you identify as descendant of an enslaved person, then you would be brought, only you would see this question. And this was Dr. Shabazz's, we talked about this last week. Dr. Shabazz, this is what we put as a preamble here. However, I'd like to get to understand from you or others what question we're asking here. What we're trying. I think it's in the ballpark. It's a bit long and I'm not sure right now the value of the parenthetical information, but this is a good start. Okay. Why don't I send this to you? And if you wanna take a look at it and then send me back some thoughts on a question. I'll do, thank you. Okay. Anyone else is welcome to as well. Obviously, yeah. So let's see here. All right. Okay. So here is where we get into the eligibility questions. And I just wanna make sure that I'm following all my notes. Okay. All right. So the first question, this is gonna kind of be, I think a bit of a discussion for us. So before we get into it, I'm gonna ask for a time check. What time, if we could just start with you, Hala, and you could say what time you need to leave today. I'll come back to Hala. Dr. Shabazz. I'm here. I have class at four. Okay. And Alexis. I'm available. Okay, Yvonne. I'm available. Are we going till four or three-thirty? I mean, I'd like us to, if we can get through the rest of the survey, because if we don't, it's really gonna set us back. So- I have time till four. Okay, great. And Dr. Rhodes. Yeah, I'm here, because I really, really wanna get to the end of this survey. Okay. We don't have a lot of time to have to deal with this. Okay, great. So these are the two primary questions that we have right now on eligibility. And these are set up right now only for people who identify as black and of African heritage. So the first is, should descendants of enslaved individuals be eligible? And then this one is the one that we really need to open up for discussion. How do we want to pose this question? Is there a particular date or milestone here that we want to include? Dr. Rhodes, maybe you wanna share what your thoughts were on this, if you're up for it right now. Yeah. To put in a kind of milestone and like a date like 1865 or 1868 or whatever. Assumes and also would require some kind of proof. And it seems to me that we're not in that game. We're not in any position to judge whether a person was or was not here. Their ancestors are here before or after that date. It would also, it assumes also that we would have some way of verifying that. So to me that's, it's put a milestone and it's problematic at best. Anyone else like to weigh in on this? I agree. Maybe at this questions a little preliminary before we can really know what requirements we might have for identification. So let me ask the question like this. And I'm also not adverse to the question. I think there's a big debate about whether this is something that is valid in the whole idea of reparations. I think, I mean, I've had people who've been sending these stuff and asking questions and I'm sure that everyone else on this committee as well. I mean, I'm not against having this in here because it again, it goes back to what information we're trying to glean from these questions. And this one, yes, no, I don't know. Even if 50% of the people answer, I don't know, then again, it tells us something about what's out there. People, maybe people are curious, but they don't have all information that they need actually to make decisions. So I'm okay with leaving it in. Okay, Dr. Shabazz? I don't see the value of these questions. Separately like this. I could see the question, should eligibility for reparations be limited to descendants of individuals who were enslaved in the United States? That would kind of put the two of them together and give you the information as to where, again, the snapshot of people who fill out this survey really, really feel. Finally, I'll say this in regards to both questions and the extent to which they are, and how I see it may support the position that I'm advocating for the assembly. I've put out a little document, black paper, if you will, earlier on. I hope we will, I expect we will be revisiting and discussing this a little more thoroughly. I am advocating that we acknowledge as a priority or as a community of concern or maybe at the center of our work is the question of black individuals in Amherst, residents of Amherst who do have a lineage that goes to someone who was enslaved in the United States, that that is a priority community. I prefer to conceive of a way of thinking about our reparative justice work as one that can center and hold space for that particular community within the black population of Amherst, but doesn't make the initiatives purely exclusively about that group, ethnic group, national minority group, whatever you wanna say. In that, I believe to get the most people on board is to have a more expansive idea about the reparative justice process, that the reparative justice process is expansive, that it is inclusive of those who have also experienced racialized trauma, racial trauma and racial harm, even though they do not have a lineage that extends to an ancestor that was enslaved in the US. So for me, it's not one or the other, it's both and. And that's the framework I will continue to advance. However we vote it up or down, that's the framework I'm going to advance. So these questions here are a little bit, seem to me a little bit at odds, but again, I'm not afraid of a question that does ask the public that takes the survey, do what they think about it, do they think it ought to be specifically limited, eligibility ought to be limited to exclusively this group? That's fine. If we wanna get that snapshot answer, I would like to think however, of questions that might get people to think about it in a more expansive terms, but that's fine. Either way, you all wanna go on this. Can I just ask you a follow-up and then I'm gonna go to Dr. Rhodes. Dr. Shabazz, I like that languaging, the way that you've reframed that to combine these questions and I think that gets more thoroughly at what we're trying to establish. Were you implying that you think this should go to all community members or that if we were to combine and have one question like you've outlined it, should it go still only to residents who identify as black and of African heritage? So right now you're telling me these questions are just popping up if you've checked that the box that you're black, that you identify as black, right? Yes, correct. Yeah, so it could be exclusively within that community that are saying identifying as black that we're asking this question to. I'm not afraid of it being asked on the larger level as well, but in either case, these are really, it's gonna give us feedback that to me is really neither here nor there to what I'm gonna be advancing because what I'm advancing is, again, not based upon the definitions or the derrity model at a national level. It's about right here locally, how do we think of this process in the most expansive way that deals with racialized harm against black people overall, not exclusively to black people who have lineage of an ancestor in the United States. That's just where I am on it. But again, I'm not afraid to asking it to the whole survey or to just the subset of black folks taking the survey. It's fine either way. Thank you, Dr. Rhodes. So Dr. Chavez, I like what you're saying, but I wanna go back to the first part, first question to say, should descendants of enslaved individuals? I don't know if you have different language for that, but I was thinking that it should say should descendants of enslaved individuals who live and ammors be eligible for reparations? Well, it's an interesting question to ask. Either way, like I said, it will just be kind of data to see what people are thinking about it. The interesting thing, for example, the bridge's ancestor who was enslaved was not enslaved in ammors. The ancestor of the bridge's family was enslaved, I think it was in Maryland. So, they don't descend from someone who was enslaved in ammors. I don't know that there's a person alive that descends from anyone who was enslaved in ammors. No, yeah, but I guess what I'm saying, I'm saying something different. I'm saying should descendants of enslaved individuals who live, currently live in ammors be eligible for reparations? It doesn't say, hey, they had the people had to be enslaved in ammors. Is that- Sorry, misunderstood you. No, that's a good question. It's a valid question. Okay, I'd love to get Ms. Bridges to weigh in on this as well. So, I will be in contact with her. So, if it's okay, I'm gonna take that feedback and I'll work, Dr. Rhodes and I will work with the Dunhu to rework this a bit and I'd like to move on if that's okay. Okay, and there is an open-ended question here if there are other eligibility criteria that one field should be considered. Okay, so here we get to the type of repair. And one question that I had here as we go through these, actually two that I wanna highlight. I asked for Dunhu to add cash payments. And I'm gonna just tell you why. I know we talked about this last week and I know that what I heard last week was that if we don't have something in place right now that allows for cash payments to occur then we shouldn't ask the question. But what we learned with Robin here on Thursday is that Evanston just recently, maybe two weeks ago approved cash payments as part of their reparations program after doing and going through some legal work that they needed to go through. So, I'm open to what folks, I put it on here to have a conversation about it. I also wanna say that these are in no particular order. So, if there is an order that folks would like for us to think about these in or have these placed in that that's part of this discussion. I also asked that they added do you support financial assistance for renting a home as a means for repair? Because I don't think we should assume that people want to have a home that they own. So, the floor is open. I see Dr. Shabazz and then Alexis. Or I'm sorry, I saw Dr. Rhodes and then Alexis and then Dr. Shabazz. It's all you Dr. Rhodes. And then we'll go to- No, my hand was up. I should have lowered it at the time. All these things, as far as I'm concerned, there are questions that are really good to ask to get information on including the past payment thing because that is something that is always a controversial one. And to know how folks are thinking about it here in Amherst is would be really, really helpful. Okay. And right now, I believe this is open to all respondents. Is there an opinion on that about whether it should be limited or open to all respondents? Because, yes, Alexis, please. Oh, sorry, I put a date, but I would like to go after Dr. Shabazz. I don't see Dr. Shabazz's hand raised anymore. So I'm not- Dr. Shabazz, did you have your hand up still? Or would you like to speak? Nope, these are all good. Okay, Alexis. Okay, I guess I'm wondering what would be the point of asking everybody if everybody's not going to receive them. I guess if somebody has a good argument for yes, but I think that my inclination is to have this only be for the folks that say that they're black. I think this is a really interesting discussion because I will say, I will share that I had a district one meeting recently and a white resident asked when, after my presentation, asked when the public, all of the public would have the ability to weigh in on how the funds, how the funds should be used. So we're talking about type of repair that you support, but really are we also talking about how the funds should be used in terms of how we're going to understand the data that we receive and interpret the data that we receive. And so I think that there is an expectation from members of the community that do not identify as black and of African heritage that they will have the ability to weigh in and yet the most primary tenant of reparative justice is that the harmed community decides. So I'm, yes, Alexis, please. No, yeah, you ended with what I was gonna say. It feels, so if it is necessary for us to know how folks that aren't black to know how they feel about it, which I'm not sure about that, but if we did need that, couldn't there be a separate question where like if you did say that you weren't black or end of African heritage, that you do get like a separate, so that like if we did need to collect that information that it's listed separately, like that data is listed separately from the answer that the folks that are black answer it, but I agree that I think it's harmful because there's already this notion of like, well, I'm not gonna give you the money unless I agree with how you're gonna spend it. And that's been a harmful narrative that's been present since the beginning, so. Absolutely, and I think we can desegregate this information. So we'll be able to see who is responding and identifies as black and African heritage versus who does not identify that way. So it actually may be really interesting to look at the two and I think it was Pamela that sort of said that ideally, and I don't wanna speak for Pamela, so if I'm speaking out of turn, let me know Pamela, but like if we see that there's a lot of similarities between those, that's interesting versus seeing that there are differences in the way that people who do not identify as black and of African heritage see that the funding or that the type of repair should happen. I do wonder though if we should include in this preamble that basic tenant about the harmed, using this again as a platform to communicate something to the public, to say that a basic tenant or the primary tenant of reparative justice is that the harmed community decides how the atonement process or how the repair process should occur. And I wonder if people have thoughts on including just a sentence or so about that. Could you summarize that again? You know, this is feeling kind of long, so I'm not excited about adding too many, too many more. Yeah, fair enough, Tate Shabbat. It is feeling kind of long. I was just saying quickly that in this little preamble that I'm up here circling, is it worth adding a sentence or two just to communicate or educate to all of the community who is seeing this, including people who are not Black, that that's a primary tenant of reparative justice that the harmed community decides. Or is that sort of like saying that and then asking is like, well, what's the, you know, I'm just wondering if it makes sense to- That clarified. Here's the thing I think we have to really think about clearly for ourselves. The survey is a set of, is to provide us back with some information and an analysis that helps to inform our report writing, our process. I don't see it as in and of itself directing, you know, that this is suddenly now determining the course of reparations. We've done a lot of other things and they're all valid inputs, our listening sessions, our weekly, you know, almost weekly meetings and the public comments we've had come before us. You know, there's just been so many, there's just been so many things we've done. And this survey, whether it gets filled out by a hundred people or a thousand people or 10,000 people, you know, it's still just another data point of an entire process. So I don't think we have to load it up with preambles and, you know, whatever that, because it's not what is determining what our final report is going to be, our final decisions, let alone the final decisions of what the council will support or of what will actually be done down the line somewhere. So, you know, I just, that's how I'm looking at it. If others see it the same way then, yeah, I think we can just take it as part of our, part of our consultative informational, information gathering process. Excellent, okay. And just before we move on from this, if anybody has an opinion on placement that if you're seeing something that you don't like the placement or you'd rather the placement look different, please call that out. Yes, Dr. Rhodes. One thing to keep in mind, this document, this survey, once it is completed, will be utilized and looked at by all kinds of folks in this town as for an information source in terms of making decisions, including the town council, et cetera. It is going to be a data, it's going to be a data point that is constantly going to be referred to. This survey, and people need to keep that in mind. May I offer one question on this one that's on the center of the screen right now in terms of symbolic, what's being referenced as symbolic acts? You know, and I'm asking this of all of my committee members to kind of weigh in, but I have really thought of whether at some point we ought to be asking the town if surveying around the town support as part of this whole process, a conversation ought to be had on changing the name of this town. You know, Jeffrey Amherst was the military officer over the settler colonies that not only was part of eliminating the indigenous people but also of maintaining the emergence of the racial enslavement of African people. That was part of the law and order that he upheld as the chief military officer. So, you know, it's really, whether you see it as again part of a symbolic struggle or not, I think it is definitely one that has been on my mind throughout. It's even one that was on that Sandy Darity challenged me through the challenge to me when he spoke at the program for Jules Chemetsky that if we really were about something as the African Heritage Reparations Assembly, why don't we talk about the need to change the name of this town? And, you know, and my answer back to him is, you know, yes, I agree, it's a relevant discussion for local reparative justice that we consider and ask the town, ask members who, people who fill out this survey, do you support the symbolic acts inclusive of a conversation on changing the name of this town? Whoa. Dr. Rhodes, did you want to respond to that? Yeah, I'm not feeling it, Dr. Seabass, for this question. I think that that would take us down a whole other road that we don't need to go down with this particular survey. It adds another dimension that really does not need to be added at this particular point in time for our purposes, for our purposes as the reparations assembly. I just, yeah, that would cause all kinds of other issues that we don't need to have be attached to this at this particular point in time. Any other opinions of assembly members? I think Alexis, I'm just taking a look in the room here. Alexis just said she had to go for briefly, so she's not here, but I believe she is coming back. Yes, Suzanne? I do agree that that is a topic that has been brought up many times about changing the name. I actually don't know how far it's ever gotten. And I think that if we're gonna include something in our final report that says what stands and where we think Emma should be, then I think, yes, we should include that in our report. I'm not sure that we wanna start it in this survey, but I definitely think that if we're asking questions like this, that's like, do you support this one thing as a means of repair? Some of them are like this one says symbolic acts and public apologies, et cetera, memorials. I think that it warns us addressing this idea of changing the name of the town as a recommendation and then subsequent action, I think to follow up with that if that's the charge of this committee or another committee. But I think that if we're gonna move forward with trying to change the name of the town as something that we support, then it's not gonna just be this committee. It's gonna be us partnering with other town committees and other people to actually make it a reality if it becomes that at all. So I do agree that it's something we should address. I'm not just not sure that this is the vehicle to address it right now. That's fair. I appreciate both answers. Maybe just besides saying public apologies, memorials or commemorations, we could just say in that stream. Naming. Renaming spaces. In fact, maybe even more so than public apologies, we've already sort of done the big resolution in that respect, but public renaming spaces. That makes a lot of sense, yeah. Go along with that. Renaming spaces, definitely. Okay, perfect. All right, great. I'm gonna move on here. Okay, these are the sustaining our work questions. So we have a little preamble just to say that our charge ends and we wanna ensure continuation of our work and the recommendations that we've made. This is what we have here. Would you like to see the town of Amherst form another committee or assembly to continue the work of the AHRA to ensure recommendations are acted upon? Instead of another, could it be a successor or a succeeding committee? Yeah, I think that's, what was the second word you used? A successor or succeeding committee or assembly. Yep. I wanted to get feedback because these are two similar questions but they could have very different functions. So the second one leans in more to Dr. Shabazz's thought process around like a CPA type model. I thank Dr. Shabazz. So a committee that would specifically be tasked with making recommendations to allocate the money in the fund. Do we wanna be asking two different questions here in the same vein? Not necessarily. If it's a successor group, you know, and then money was a part of the original group, money should be a part of the successor group. I don't think you need the second question, you know, breaking out specifically about the money. Was part of the original charge of AHRA. So if we're creating a successor kind of body, that body would take up the same, you know, a similar charge of which included, you know, the question of disbursement of funds. Okay. I think the phrasing of the quenchment, if you go back up. Sure. So the town has made a dedication to actually doing this work by creating a committee. And so the perpetuation of that committee I think is the question more than, you know, would you like to see them form another committee? I think it's the continuation of the work that we're getting at and the, and you know, we want the town to, so maybe the question is, you know, do you agree with the town supporting the continuing work of a committee to work on reparations? You know what I'm saying? Not a, you know, it couldn't, I mean, they might call it another committee, but this is the work that we started and the town is our partner in it, you know, so. I love that. Yeah, that really makes a lot of sense. Yep. Okay. I'm saying, because another committee gives you that idea that people are starting from scratch and it's not starting from scratch. It's not another committee. It's continuing the reparations work. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. Okay. And then this question is, would you like to see educational opportunities designed to build and sustain support for reparations? And then this one here is about the creation of a private reparations fund managed by a black stakeholder body. Just don't know if we've got much of a foundation established in terms of community, educating the community about that one. I don't know. What do others think? I see Yvonne shaking her head. I'm not sure why, but please. So I think someone, I think this question, I think it's a valid question. I think saying that the stakeholder has to be a black body is the part that's like, are we saying we want that to be that way or it's a requirement of a private reparations fund because there are plenty of allies who are not black people that could manage, you know, that could be included. Like this question pushes away all of the allies that might maybe fund a reparations fund. If I understand you, and I think this is important, you're raising the question of management versus ownership and the directing of the spending of it. And whereas we learned a while back when we visited Evanston, they were creating, they had gone through a sort of a local community fund for a while was actually managing gifts that were coming in for reparations. And they, you know, and they managed it, but then when it came to decisions of how those funds should be spent, it went to this group that was black directed. I don't know. Which is why it is directly related to this idea of how the town will continue to support reparations. I mean, I think it's about sustaining, you know, that sustaining that effort with, while also creating a system for how reparations, you know, are distributed. There's a whole system. A part of me feels like this should not, this question shouldn't be in here until we have a, you know, as a group. Which I don't think we're gonna get during our term. We're already, like I said before, supported, you know, like by having a town committee. So the town is, you know, supposedly, I know it's probably just because of, I don't know what, I'm saying that the town has already supported this by having a committee. So how, I think the part, one of the charges of this committee was how the monies would, what the policies would be and how the monies would be distributed. And then to ask a question that's like, would you, do you want a private reparations fund? If you keep the question and then there aren't any, there shouldn't be any other qualifiers because we're still trying to figure out what those qualifiers are as a committee, you know, as a committee. So we don't need to qualify that question. We just need to ask, do you think it's a good idea to have a private reparations fund? Because the money we're getting now is not private money, right? It's all town money. So there's lots of little distinctions in this question that open up larger, larger questions. So fundamentally, would the edit be, should there be created a private reparations fund for Amherst, in Amherst? Yes, that's what I'm thinking. It's just ask the question, should there be one? Yeah, I could see. Do you want to say though, at least to say for the benefit of Black Amherst residents? I mean, a reparations fund generally, if it's not, if we're not indicating that it's for Black residents, reparations could be seen as for all sorts of groups. So... For Black Amherst residents. Right, exactly, yeah. Okay. But not, I see the distinction. Okay, yeah, perfect. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, definitely, because you know someone's gonna jump in and say reparations for everyone. Right, there's other groups that are owed reparations and maybe those need to be, but that's not what we're doing. Right, and as far as managing that particular fund, that's a bigger question that we should tackle as we do our committee work. Great. All right, we're getting close here. So here is a question and this might be one that you wanna provide an email to myself and Pamela and Jennifer on if we aren't gonna do it right here live. But this is to say that we're recommending a truth and reconciliation process for Amherst now. I do wanna highlight something that Robin said on Thursday about Evanston and at least her philosophy on a truth and reconciliation process. She was asked a question at the public forum or at the town hall about doing a truth and reconciliation process and her response was very direct. She said that it was her philosophy that other organizations that I'm paraphrasing in Evanston should sort of hold up that end of the work and that what she was focused on was very much the legislative aspects of the reparations program and the direct benefits to people, to black residents, not so much focused on a whole community wide which includes folks that are not black, reconciliation process. But our charge does talk about truth and reconciliation. So I think we have to think about that from both perspectives and wonder if there are thoughts on that. Please select all that you would like to see Amherst pursue. And so the question you're asking is what are some of the items that would be filled out here if we agree? Yes, exactly, exactly. Well, A for me would be the question of renaming the town of Amherst. Back to that one for me. A truth and reconciliation process on the name of the town of Amherst. Okay, on the name of, I'm gonna just throw these in here and we can discuss them, okay? Okay. If you've captured this question so that we can move on and make our timeline, if you've captured this question in your mind or you've screenshotted it or however, you could send me and Jennifer and Pamela your thoughts on this. And we can take it from there because I think it takes a little more thinking probably, maybe. And I'm right. I wanna tell the ones to perhaps capture is the idea of cannabis and the disproportionate criminalizing and mass incarceration of people of African descent when cannabis was illegal that there ought to be particular efforts made to identify people who have been harmed here in Amherst and think of ways that, whether some direct cash, whether help getting into employment or getting their records expunged. I mean, I don't know. I know some things like this are envisioned at the state level but maybe there's a need locally to just even counsel people. And it's a question of whether, Crest people or somebody could be trained to help talk to folks in the community that might need help around that area. But I'll think of others in terms of a relative to truth and reconciliation. I got the snapshot in my head. Okay. So I see Dr. Rhodes and then Yvonne and I am gonna stop my share real quick because I see a third person but it's someone in the audience. And since I did say the meeting would be ending close to four there might be someone who's trying to make public comment. So I just, please bear with me a second. Yes. So we do have someone in the audience. So what I'm gonna do is pause this discussion just for a moment. We have one person who has their hand raised in the audience and that will conclude our second period of public comment and then we'll finish the meeting by finishing the discussion on this. And we're basically done. We have one other thing to cover quickly and then we'll be done. So I'm Chiara, I'm in charge here. I think right now because, so let me see if I can do this. Let's see here. I think it's, I think you should be moving over. It's like that moment when they're no longer in the attendees but they have been joined as a panelist there. There we go. Hi Chiara. Can you hear? Okay, now I can I think. All right. The floor is yours. Thank you. I got a couple of comments quickly. So I'm turning to the survey. I wanted to ask whether there's a working definition for African heritage or descent because that's a very expansive and kind of a nebulous concept. So I'm curious if you can provide within your survey a definition for that so people know it. That's referring to also the question about whether you're a descendant of enslaved people. So what I want to say is regarding that question, it's not so much what we're trying to get at when we say slavery, descendant of slavery, et cetera. That's not necessarily like the main part of the conversation. It's more about ethnic of black Americans like as a native black American because not everybody is necessarily traced their descent to a person that was enslaved. So I'm asking if you can perhaps maybe alter that alter that question just a little bit to indicate that it's not asking you whether or not you've done your genealogy confirmed to be a descendant of an enslaved person but rather conveying that you are someone who is a native black American or we're here for that particular atrocity. Because slavery is just one element of the genocide as a whole. It's not like the singular factor. Also, I'm asking if you can ask descendants specifically what work ratios look like to them. I know Alexis kind of raised that a little bit earlier in terms of the context of black or African heritage people but you can also ask that question specifically to descendants. So you can actually see that data and compare it as needed to the broader population. Also I want to note that historically black Americans have been actually ethnically cleansed out of Amherst. So our proportionality even within the black population in Amherst is going to be low. So your data is going to be skewed in that way anyway in terms of the feedback. And I also want to note that I sent you all some information. I know I've been saying in the past times about the office of management and budget and the work that is happening at the grassroots level to ensure that black Americans I think black Americans have an actual recording category on government documents and how important that is in terms of genocide prevention in this country ensuring that we have actual better access to federal funding that the research can make their way to our community. And it will actually track our civil rights violations against our population and also to give us more accurate data on concerning our population. And unfortunately there are some organizations that are trying to resist this work. They're actually having emergency meetings this week to fight against us being able to be recognized as an ethnic group, as an actual people group in this country. And if your work is asking about peoplehood and that sort of thing, this is a direct violation of that effort. And this is by the National Black Cultural Information Trust which the person who's founded this is actually a commissioner of foreign arts. And so this is actually the perspective of many of the leading organizations are on the reparations issue. So that's really a concern because this is actually a human rights issue having data equities, a human rights issue. It's not just black Americans that are pursuing this. Asian Americans are actually leading the charge for data equity in this country. All communities are asking for this. So it's deeply concerning that there is an effort underway to sort the work that's been happening to ensure that black Americans who are in court have ties to this land whose ancestors may have been enslaved on this land and to actually have equitable data on our population. It's really, really egregious and it's really, really disturbing. And I'm really impacted by this, it's very hurtful. So I wanted to note that in these organizations, I mean, I personally respect the work that has been done in terms of building the groundwork in past generations to further the issue of reparations but I do not support ethnoside and it's really, really disgusting if these organizations aren't anyway advising your process. So I just wanted to make that clear. Thank you. Yara, can I just ask a follow-up? I didn't hear, there was a noise in the background. Your first comment about a working definition and I didn't hear what you were asking about there. Yeah, so when you say African heritage, many people may assume that you're just meeting with someone who was black or, you know, but African heritage can mean someone who is Hispanic or someone who's done their DNA and see that they have 12% African, like it's very, very broad. People within who are maybe, you know, North African who are currently classified as white but are considered African, it's just not very specific. So I'm curious if you can just add some kind of working definition for African heritage or African descent if there's any kind of temporal specifications for that at the time period that your family was descendant of Africa, that sort of thing. So it's more clear. Okay, thank you so much, Kiarra. Thank you very much. Thank you, I just kind of say one last thing that the five injury areas of slavery that you all are using referencing, peoplehood is the first one on the list and for us to be being denied the right to have our ethnic identity and our distinct people recognized by our federal government is directly in violation with that tenant. So I wanted to just make sure that was clear. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, let's see here. All right, so we are going to come back. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen again. So we were discussing the truth and reconciliation and I see Vaughn's hand was up and then Irv's hand was up. I thought Irv was first though, I think. Irv? So I just want to make sure that everyone understands that there is a direct correlation between the percentage of return in relationship to a survey and its length. And we really need to be really cognizant of the fact that the survey is rather long. Ivan? I agree. This question about truth and reconciliation syncs with the other areas that we were asking questions about and been talking about, which is justice, health and wellness and housing. And so I think we should include those in this section about truth and reconciliation. Well, this says what process for Amherst, even if it is as Dr. Shapa said, some kind of like survey or information gathering tool for each one of those areas around justice and health and wellness and housing. Irv? You know, the whole thing around housing and this country and where we're going and just as a background, I've been involved with the last two years in developing a housing project out to the real estate investment trust. But one of the things that's there that is incredible is that we're becoming a quickly a two-tier society, one of the very rich and the very poor. The middle do not exist. And it is something that is incredibly disturbing, but yet it's there, it's really there. And it's there and Amherst and probably more in Amherst than anywhere else that I can imagine. And somehow why I'm saying this is that because of my being immersed in this to the point of wherever we're getting ready to launch when I get back to Amherst, a national program, aimed at this is that it is, and when you talk about African-Americans, we are being put into a position of almost housing servitude. And it is something that is very deeply disturbing. I know it has nothing to do with this, but I guess when you mention housing and you see this in relationship to reparations and how this impacts upon us and Amherst, it is incredibly critical that this be addressed head on. And I'm not saying that we should address it, but it's something that we really need to have within our thought process. I second that. Yvonne, your hand is still up and I'm also seeing that we have lost a quorum. What's that? I said, we're out of business. We're out of business. So there was one additional matter to cover, but I am confident that we can deal with that between now and when this launches. So I'm not gonna over stress about that. Oh, we have Hala back. So that is, we have Hala back. So that's great. Hi, Hala. Thank you. I was just saying that we lost a quorum and Irv said we were out of business. So the only just quickly we can look at it and then people can send there. So we had gone through all these demographics and when we got to the question about, which was trying to capture the income or the economic experience of people and Amherst, we initially, we had in the last 12 months, we've now changed this to ask the question. And then if you answer it broadly, it takes you to another question. And this is where we wanted input on what options to include here. So in the past 12 months, in the past year, in the past five years, and the bigger question is, what are we really trying to get out of this? So if you, what are we trying to get out of asking this? Is this a demographic question or is this actually, do we wanna assess this more as part of the survey in terms of economic experience in Amherst? So we can certainly, it's cause it's, it is six past four and we promise four. And so we don't have to deal with this right now. I am gonna hold a call a meeting for next Monday given now that I know it's not a holiday. So that gives a little breathing room for us. So we can still get things down and launched on the, on Tuesday the 11th. So are there any other questions or comments before I adjourn the meeting? Well, thank you. This is like heavy, not heavy, but like it's heavy. I'm just spinning up this call then. But Dr. Rhodes, did you have any comments before we adjourn? Oh, you're muted. No, I do not, but this has been a really good productive meeting. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you to everyone. I'm adjourning at 4.07 PM and we'll see you next week.