 Excellent. And there's Alexis. Okay, Alexis is on the way. So I am going to go ahead and call to order the December 5th meeting of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly at 202 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. And I'm just going to do a quick sound check. And I'll start with you, Dr. Rhodes. I'm here, and I can be heard and I definitely can see other people. Great. Thank you, Alexis. Oh, we can hear I can hear you at least. Can you hear me. Yeah. Hi. Hi. Okay, good to see you and Dr. Shabazz. Present. Excellent and halla. Lord present. And you're outside that's so is are you cold or you bungled a little but it's going to keep the two year old happy so yeah. Okay, and Pamela I think you can hear us and we were talking so I know I could hear you but yes I can hear everyone. Okay, great. And Alexis as I said is on the way. Oh, and Jennifer is here. Yay. Hi Jennifer. Can you hear us. Okay, can we hear you. Can you hear me. Yeah. Okay, great. All right, well welcome, we have not met for a couple weeks. So it's really good to see everyone and hope that everyone's had some rest and relaxation, or maybe not. So today we are going to, we have a lot of items on our agenda but I was hoping to focus us on a couple, a couple particular items. We also have an item on the agenda that reads, League of Women Voters Racial Justice Committee potential collaboration, and that item will be joined by Meg Gage. So if Pamela if you could keep an eye out for Meg, she's on the road and will bring her in and sort of pause what we're doing when she's here. And welcome Ivan. Oh, mine just. There you go. Sorry. Yeah, how are you doing. Hi. So good to see you. Is that a necklace? Or it's a scarf. Oh, it's beautiful. I love that. Thank you. Trying to keep my neck warm. Yeah. So we're going to begin first before we sort of jump into agenda topics since we haven't been together for a couple weeks and a lot has been going on, I think, at least in my individual life and I know also in the community so I can imagine that others are having their individual lives happening as well. So I just wanted to pause and see if there were any just general comments that anybody wanted to make or air or share or anything exciting news or not so exciting news. Anything that anybody would like to, like Dr. Shabazz, did you end up going to Evanston I had that question for you. Okay. Oh, there you are. You're muted. You're muted Dr. Shabazz. Thank you. Just letting you know that from our area Kathleen Anderson did attend she may be in in the audience as well and if there's ever if there's an appropriate time can give us some eye witnessed or firsthand account. I have checked in with a number of people and during the conference itself, checked in with people and it looks to have been a really, really powerful gathering of local reparations organizers and advocates from all over the country. Thank you. And I do see that Kathleen is here and would love to bring Kathleen in to share an update on that if she is willing to do that. We have a packed agenda and I have a council meeting that begins an hour early this evening so. But I would still I would love for Kathleen to come in now and just share there she is. Hey I took that picture of you. Yes you did. I updated it with your picture with that picture that you took. Thank you. Yes. So what are you, are you still in Evanston further the conference or are you back. No I'm back I've been sitting in the hallway and town hall. Oh, interesting. Okay. Well we would love so just in case people aren't following Evanston and first repair hosted their second reparation symposium and last year, Dr Shabazz and Kathleen and myself were all there. And this year Kathleen was there and there is a town hall that happened on Friday night that I believe was recorded so if I can, once I get the recording I'll distribute that but please Kathleen tell us how it was. Are you still there. Oh I was muted. Yes, I'm, it was, it was a good weekend of people from all over the country. Some I saw last year's at last year's symposium. It was refreshing and good to hear what people are doing around the country as far as reparations goes. And another exciting and I think important aspect for me was to see the numbers of white people who are supporting and advocating reparations. I think that a collection of white people all over the country advocating and pushing for reparations will be extremely helpful. So that was good to hear. And let's see what else. I did post the recording of the town hall on the New England in Cobra Facebook page. So, people can go there and click on to that. It was just posted yesterday. By the symposium folks. You can also find it on their first repair Instagram page and also their first repair Facebook page. So people are actively working towards reparations. There's recently been a report back from the Providence Rhode Island reparations. There's a law or whatever it's called that seems to open the door for white Americans to access reparations. So that's a, it's not a point of conversation that came up during the symposium, but it's something for everybody to think about as we're looking as we're looking at reparations around the country. Um, so the, there's a group of us in the state of Massachusetts, three of whom were at the symposium, who are forwarding a ask letter to the newly elected governor, Mara Healy. And it's requesting her executive order to establish a reparations commission to study and develop proposals for reparations for the state of Massachusetts. So I'm going to be sending around that letter and asking people to sign on to it and forward it to Mara Healy's office. And I think the more people that she sees sending that in will be beneficial. Absolutely. That is super exciting. Thank you for sharing that I am really looking forward to seeing that Kathleen. Yeah. And also thank you for bringing up the Providence most recent dialogue around white Americans receiving reparations. And Earl Miller wrote to a couple of us this morning to say there was a CNN segment that was airing this morning, in which Amherst was being discussed to some extent, and our effort here and I think just doing a quick Google search that it related to the conversation because of course that's controversial. And so we definitely should find whatever information we can about that and and make sure that the committee gets a chance to see that. Thank you so much Kathleen appreciate you sharing appreciate you representing Amherst. And really just that's so great that you made it down there and when you have the letter ready to be signed on to please do send it to myself and Pamela and Jennifer and we'll make sure that everybody gets it. Yeah, we'll do. All right. And feel free to hang out. So, wonderful. That's great. So any other like any questions or comments about any of that before we move on. Okay, great. All right, so, as I said, in an email to you, folks about what I've been up to in the past couple weeks. I have. Yes, Jennifer. I'm a little bit lost where we are in the agenda. I'm sorry. I just don't want to make sure that you guys approve the minutes. That's all. Sure. Why don't we go ahead and do that right now so that we don't forget or get cut, you know, time cut that that that would be great if everybody has had a chance I'm going to read the dates out and then we'll approve them as one. Unless somebody says, I haven't read this one and wants to pull it out. So we're approving May 2nd, May 9th, August 1st, August 15th, September 12th, and September 19th. Thank you Jennifer for getting all of those to us. So unless somebody wants to pull one of those out. Can I, I'm making a motion to approve those minutes and looking for a second, please. Thanks, Dr. Shabazz. Okay, so I'll start the vote with you, Dr. Shabazz. Yes, Shabazz. Okay, and Hala. Yes, Hala. Yes. Okay. Ms. Bridges. Okay, great. And Yvonne. Yvonne Mendez. Yes. Great. And Dr. Rhodes. Thank you. And I'm an eye as well. All right. So let me just take a quick peek here. Okay. So in terms of where we are on the agenda, a quick agenda review, we just approved the minutes and we had some conversation with Kathleen Anderson about the first repair reparation symposium that happened over the weekend in which she represented us. We had, we have on here our discussion around engagement and continuing with our consultation campaign. And then, and that's where I really wanted to start our focus. I wanted to share some of the feedback that I've received in the community from the members that I've been speaking with. And also, I would like for us to find a date that we can host our next outreach event and just have a general conversation about that. And then the other piece that I wanted to make sure that we talk about, which is also under this agenda item is the community survey and, and I, as I said in the email I have some. Something for you to review and have some thoughts about that. So, in the past couple weeks, I've been trying to meet some residents of African heritage who maybe haven't been at the listening session or who we haven't heard from who I know have influence in different communities. Within the black community in Amherst. The two that I wanted to focus on because that's where the feedback I think right now is really helpful for what we're working on is a meeting that I had with Sid Ferrara. And a meeting that I had with Paul Wiley. And so both of those meetings were really helpful in giving feedback. The particular feedback that I received from Sid Ferrara, and actually it was sort of in the form of an idea or a concept for us to consider was. So he received specific feedback that there were some elders in the community who weren't able to get to the listening session that we hosted in person. So he suggested that we plan a listening session as soon as we could that is either completely virtual, which is my preference but we can talk about that or a hybrid virtual in person event. And he further extrapolated and said that from that listening session, which I think we've already talked about providing more of an educational component at the beginning of the next listening session, maybe around the areas of injury and harm and some other just foundational informational pieces that would be helpful to those who are attending. And then to try to from that listening session identify individuals in the community that are in subgroups of the larger black community that can sort of act as liaisons to our committee and have the ability to impact and influence them. And this is something I think that Jennifer had, we I talked to Jennifer about a while ago she had a similar thinking around this I think so that those individual liaisons can then provide information to their community communities and then get information to provide back to us. And by building that buy in you know because we're a committee of seven, and we certainly don't represent every person of African heritage in Amherst, and being able to sort of have those individual leaders that can influence their individual communities I think was Sid's concept. And he thought that the listening session if we can do specific outreach to folks, get them there into more into the virtual space, and then invite them sort of post listening session to continue discussions within their communities. So I'll pause there and just see if anybody has any comments or discussion related to that right now, we can come back to it. Okay. So I would like for us to identify a date I'm thinking January is probably going to be as I said in my email the next possible time. I think that doing an on an all virtual event will give us more simplistic sort of. I think our capacity isn't spent on trying to find a location and set up a location and all the equipment and everything that comes with that. So and parking and whatnot. So, um, the second conversation I had that I think is relevant to what we're discussing was with Paul Wiley, and Paul. I think was very interested and supportive of the work that we're doing and wanted certainly to know when our next listening session was going to happen. He works with some different organizations in the community that he thought would benefit from learning about our listening sessions and has offered to help us with that. And he had similar ideas about reaching. I think the conversation that we had really related to trying to reach folks in the community and how we talked about at the last listening session. We know who was in the room but who as Dr. Rhodes said was not in the room and what were the reasons for that. And so, pausing there is everybody good with a January virtual only event. If you're not raise your hand and tell us why. Okay, and I think we'll do some educational programming upfront for that and we can talk about that as we get a little bit closer. Are there any dates I had in the email referenced Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday nights and maybe the second or third week in January. One thought occurred to me after I sent that email about whether we wanted to capture. In particular, you mass college students, but they could of course attend virtually but the likelihood is that will, and I'm curious what Dr. Shabazz would have to say about that as he works at the university. Do you think timing. Do we want to capture you mass students Dr. Shabazz and would they be more easily captured if they were actually on campus when we hosted the virtual event. We are on a new calendar for the spring classes don't presume until February 6 to the first week in February. And as such, students are in a wide range of involvements through the entire January month of January or J term as it's called so some will be in various kinds of online some will be classes some will be doing study abroad some will be in just a wide range of things so it's really a new area for this kind of calendar so I just can't say what kind of participation we might secure and what kind of outreach we could really do. Maybe if we had it nailed down today exactly when it would be in January, we can try in this last week or so of classes to really push push the word and and get people thinking about, you know, reserving that date but if we don't get them in the next have the ability to kind of let them know about it in the next few days. They're going to then go into finals and then they'll be dispersed dispersed out there so it'll be would be rather hard at that point to try to organize them and secure them for a time when when technically they're many of them are off the clock as far as Amherst and in class instruction at Amherst is concerned. Okay yeah that makes a lot of sense. So, I'm looking at a calendar, and I see that the week. So January 16 is Martin Luther King junior day. What would it be like for folks either on the 17th, 18th, or 19th. Yes, Pamela please. So, January 17 is the National Day of Racial Healing that's sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation, and Jen and I are in the process of planning an event for that date so if we, I mean we could happily join. Invite people to attend our event and connect with reparations that could be a theme but we certainly we're going to plan some event for that day. Perfect. Okay, thank you for. So do you think that might be a lot then in that same week, given the Monday's a holiday Tuesday, we would want folks to focus on that particular event. So do we want to look at either the week of the ninth or the 23rd. Yeah what happened with the night or that first week in January. Yeah, I don't think we should do, I haven't checked town council I think I have a town council meeting on the ninth. But we could certainly do the 10th, 11th, or 12th, we should check the community calendar. Let me see if I can pull that. Do you have that up Pamela right now, by any chance. I know or were you just thinking along the lines of the racial healing day I can pull it up. But generally I would be able to pull it up so. All right, and I'm pulling it up right now because if I think if we could try to settle on a date today. Let's see here. All right, January. Right now it looks like the 11th has an event. And that's at 10 to 12 that's the senior center cafe that they're doing. I don't see any other events. So for, for committee members, which night of that week, beside Monday or Friday would be best. Anyone have a preference or something that doesn't work. Yeah, what day are we talking about. So we'd be talking about the 10th, 11th, or 12th of January. Yeah, you might have when the 10th, 10th is a school committee meeting. Okay. So I think Thursday nights can be really good for these events. Sometimes, but maybe we want to do Wednesday, Wednesday night to try to encase Thursday people start drifting into the weekend. Does that work for everybody. So that would be Wednesday, January 11th. All virtual. Wednesday is better for me than Thursday. Okay. Ms. Bridges, does that work for you? So far, that's fine. Yes. Okay. Evening event. Yeah, what time. I think we definitely want to do it in the evening and, and maybe I felt like the last one was a little bit rushed. It was an hour and a half that we had set it up for, especially if we're going to do educational I'm thinking that we'd want to do 630 to 830 or seven to nine. Depending on you know what people think would be best in terms of people who have children or definitely don't want to keep people up too late if. So what are we thinking 630 to 830 or seven to nine. Whoever says it is going to. 630 is a good time. Okay. All right, great. So let's do 630 to 830, January 11th, Wednesday, January 11th. And details more details to be determined. I will get our postcard. Yes, Pamela. Can't you put your. Sorry. It's likely that Jen and I might have a conflict for the 11th, but one of us will be able to attend if both could because Wednesdays are tends to be our HRC or the CSS JC meeting in the evening, but we can, you know, one of us will be able to attend you probably won't have us both. Okay, that's great and we would want those committees to be involved if as as if as much as they would like to be so I could also give them an early heads up so that maybe they would not plan a meeting that particular night. But that's up to them of course, but that makes sense. Okay. All right, good. And then I'll get the postcard updated to and ask Brie if she could update the website and we'll, we'll do all that, but let's we'll start getting the word out that's great though that we have a date. Okay. So, let me just check to see if Meg is here yet. I don't see her yet. So she should be here soon. A quick update. Yes, Jennifer. Are you going to have a flyer for this event. Yeah. Okay. Because I'll send it to the PGOs and to other places. I just want to make sure we can get it out to as many folks as possible. Thank you so much. That would be so awesome. Yeah, if I will get you that updated flyer as soon as possible so that you can start getting it out there. And if there are any other ideas about how we all of course send it to all of the same people that we did last time but if there are and do individual outreach but if there are other ideas about how to reach more folks I am meeting with Talib who is the, the principal at the high school, hopefully coming up this coming week so that's another, I think getting it out to the schools is really, really important to Jennifer's point. So, great. I did want to give a quick update because it's on the agenda. And I just, I think most of us are following the news but in the town but there was an agenda item about the July 5 police youth incident and I wanted to let the committee know that the council had another very thorough discussion of this matter a couple weeks back now and took several actions, including passing a pretty comprehensive motion, as well as some other motions that I know Pamela and Jennifer will be very involved in. So I don't know Pamela or Jennifer if you wanted to comment there's no need to comment if you don't have anything but just wanted to give an update to the committee about that. I can just say that I have had an opportunity to briefly look at the motions that were passed and that the town manager and I had already discussed some of the initiatives that that are ongoing so that work has begun and is ongoing but I have not sat down with Jennifer to plan like in detail what the calendar of the events responses will be but yeah we're working on it I guess is the summary. Thank you. That's great. And I should also mention that Jennifer and I meant with thanks to Pamela who organize and set us up with folks over at Hampshire College. I can't remember the title of is it the we do you remember it Pamela. The title. Yeah, go ahead. I'm probably going to miss speak as well but it's basically the Vice President for diversity equity and justice I think they're using justice instead of inclusion so it may be diversity equity and justice. That's what I remember too. Yeah. And we met with the team and it was a really another really good outreach and will certainly want to include them and notify them in relation to the upcoming listening session as well. Okay, so I have something to share here. And just to give a little background into my thinking and gathering of information over the past couple weeks as it relates to a survey. We had discussed getting a survey out into the community and Dr. Rhodes did a lot of work, gathering different information from the Dunnehyu Institute and thinking about doing a representative survey verse just a casual survey is what is what Kerry from the Dunnehyu Institute calls it. It was on the table a couple weeks ago when the July 5 incident was being discussed the possibility of a townwide comprehensive survey that would touch on reparations public health community policing. We briefly discussed and Irv and Lynn and myself met with Kerry Spitzer from the Dunnehyu Institute to talk a bit about what that might look like. However, it doesn't appear that the town is going to move forward with that at this time or that there will be many more discussions that need to occur for such a larger survey to occur. So I think Dr. Shabazz, I don't know if he, oh he's in the audience. He must have got. Okay. So, the, my thinking around this is we don't have the luxury of time right now given when our charge ends. And there's no, I think, harm in sending a more casual survey out to residents of African heritage as best as we can do that. In particular, we may want to consider sending it to the entire community but we'll definitely want to be able to hear the voices of black residents as we're starting to think about our report. So I happened to run into Kerry in a coffee shop actually just a couple days ago and she gave me some really good tips about doing a more casual survey and how we might reach people and then also not sort of letting go of the idea of a larger larger survey that might come at a later time that's more representative. So what I've done and I'll share my screen here is, I essentially copied our, our inclusion portal, and then I added some additional questions that is, and that's the piece that I want us to, to talk about today. Let's see here. Would Jennifer Pamela be able to enable me to share please. So it's saying the host disabled participant screen sharing. Oh, okay. Now I'm good. All right. And so, can everyone see my screen now. Okay, so this is a copy of our inclusion portal. I haven't changed sort of any of the language yet up here but we have the, you know, we asked the email we asked for a name. We have these basic questions like do you identify as black African heritage is Amherst your primary residence. Are you over 18, your address. Are you currently a student. And then these are the new questions that I've added that I wanted to discuss. They're not questions right now they're really just blurbs. Let's go one by one. The first one is a question that relates to the five areas of injury. And my thinking that is that we would provide either a link to those or we would a real easy simple link to something that takes us to a simple discussion of those, or we would have a little information here. Because I see your hand is raised. I just a question in relationship to the earlier part of this form. Yeah, and if we were going to be sending this out I'm assuming we would not be asking for names addresses and anything like that, because it really certainly should be anonymous. Oh, that's interesting I hadn't thought about that. Do we want to so we wanted to be entirely anonymous. We do okay. I, I think that you can add something at the end of someone wants you to know who they are. You could it's optional. Yeah, those should be optional at the end but at the beginning, this should be anonymous, because most surveys that are sent out they don't ask for that kind of your, your home address you who you are. But age, age, age, ethnicity, those kinds of things are appropriate but certainly not named and addresses. Perfect okay so I think there's a question about residency right. Yeah, so it's. Those questions are fine. Yeah, yeah. So we would want to move. So actually the they've been taken out here but so we would want to remove email. We would like to name but provide something at the end that says if you would like to provide your personal information. Okay, that's easy. All right, great. Thank you. So this first one here is thinking about which of the areas of harm do you think Amher should be focusing on. Do we want to have them rate them in order or do we want to have them check off, you know, a list of all of the ones that they think do we want to give an area for them to talk about their own personal experience in relation to a particular harm. And then are there other areas of injury or harm that haven't been included in those five. We want folks to think about whether, and this question may not be appropriate for this actual but the community versus individual benefits. How are we looking at that and that might be in a different, I think I added that in the wrong area but let's just stick with this. So, in terms of a question about the areas of injury. What sort of way would what feedback do you have so that I could create a question here that would get at what we're trying to get at where where would what, where would you have the information that they could go to that would indicate the five areas of harm. I think what I would do or as I would create another Google doc that had a very succinct one pager about the five areas of harm. I know Dr. Shabazz has something of the like that I've already seen, but we could approve something here and and then the link would just be a short, like I would do a tiny link or something that would take them to that Google doc. That would be online. So that's the first. Next, the question, the other question about that is you, you have about, let me see. Three or four questions within that one area. Yeah, and that is problematic I think because they should have their own space. In other words, they need to be broken out in terms of their own individual questions. One of them says something about write them in order. Well, you know, what does that mean. You'd have to spell that out in some kind of way and have that listed. I think that the other thing that I would I would suggest is that if, if we're going to go this route that we really should sit down with Carrie, or someone else who's experiencing putting out questions for questionnaires or surveys to guide us in terms of how we structure these questions and also how we even ask them. That's a really great idea. And I, I, I think that Carrie would be open to doing that without any, you know, just as a sort of friendly collaboration with us without getting into some sort of contract around it. You know, so, okay, let's hold that thought I think that's a great idea Dr Rhodes to do that. And so I've sort of just created these three buckets that I think we need to ask about but I think if we can have Carrie help us to formulate the questions in the way that they'll be best received that would be very helpful and I see you take off our shoes. Sorry. That's two year old stuff right. It's cute. Jennifer. I was just going to save something very similar to what Dr wrote said about rate them in order. And like you should conform it so that each one has its own area and question format but none of that necessarily matters if you're going to bring it to someone else because then you could also hyperlink each of the words that you put there. The definition of the word comes out. Oh yeah that's a really good idea. Yep, I know what you mean. Okay. You have the five and they're bulleted down and then people can pick what they want you can do it so people can pick 12345. Yeah, and then be able to comment on those individual areas of injury. All right. And so the piece about personal experience. I'm curious what folks think about that it seems that's more getting at, like, oral kind of history information like I, I can imagine certain folks might really. It would be like listening, like the listening session but in a written format. Dr Rhodes. Yeah, I should have my hand down but anyway, I will comment on that is that I guess, are we going to mix and mix and match your relationship to how questions are answered. Obviously one is multiple choice one is just rank choice another one is whatever in other words, how are we going to structure these questions in a way in terms of how they're going to be answered because if you look at answers that where people give their own individual opinions and they can write those down. That's one thing. The other one is multiple choice, rank choice, etc. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's a good carry question I think, because I do think we want to make this really simple and accessible. And we want to give people the opportunity who only want to take three minutes to do this to take three minutes and the people who want to take as many minutes as they want to have that flexibility as well so I think we would probably end up mixing and matching but we definitely want to do that in an organized way. I would imagine you want it so that people who want to take three minutes to do it can boom boom boom take three minutes, and then at the end you have an opportunity for people to speak more broadly. Yes, even I was going to say that if you really want to, it's really valuable to actually get some of the personal experience in writing, you know, I would do it as a separate optional question that goes along with this so that it's some people who want to can and people who don't want to share anything personal don't have to. Excellent. Okay, excellent. And I imagine anyone I don't know if you know the answer to this but do we need to put some sort of disclosure that says, you know, that this information is being used to create a report that will eventually be made public. You can keep yourself anonymous, but you know I'm just so that's another question. I don't think it helps. I don't think it hurts to do that. And I also think that once you do that you have to be careful with the information that you gather and who has access to it. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where I really need to talk to Pamela and I think Brie and Jennifer because we had talked about that in a previous meeting in terms of collecting information and wherever it wherever it lives, somebody has access to it. She being it secure. Yeah, this this form ends up on the towns. Is this a is this a committee Google Drive that's secure just for the committee or is it a town Google Drive where everyone in the town has, you know, like on town council or whatever has access to the drive. It's a Michelle drive. And that's all you need, because the whatever you know it comes, the responses come in on a spreadsheet and the spreadsheets attached to wherever the survey lives so it would be on your drive right. Yeah, right now it is but that I don't think would be the appropriate way to keep it I think Brie had some really good ideas about how to do that in the sort of, and I think maybe Pamela is going to speak to that. Yeah, I think it's probably okay to gather the information but if the information is going to be used for the town purposes we probably do need a disclaimer or some waiver of people are going to self identify, and it would be subject to records because you're going to put it into a report. So, I'm not certain just having it on Michelle's Google Drive will get us out of those situations and we really should, you know, lean into having a conversation with Rihanna about that. Absolutely. Yes. Okay, that's and this is literally just for our visual purposes right now. Yes, Hala. Thank you I was also going to say there could be an option of I'm sharing to share this information with the committee checkbox, or I'm also sharing to share with the public in a report. I love that. Yeah, yeah. So that way the committee if somebody shares just to share with the committee it's, we have it, we have that voice in our resources when we're creating the report but we're not actually reporting anything directly from that person's survey into the report. That's kind of what you're saying. Okay, I'll come back to Hala on that. I saw Jennifer I'm going to go to Jennifer and then Dr. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, what was the question you asked me. The question was how I understood what you said is that if somebody checked the box that the information was for the committee, then that information would be that voice would be in our resource kind of our consciousness for the creation of the report but it nothing direct from that particular survey would be used in the report. Correct. Okay, that way they can choose yes I don't mind the story being public or if it's a story that's then can identify someone. I just want this privately for you all to know this lived experience here in Amherst. And I apologize work and work you know how it is. Yeah, don't worry no no apology necessary thank you for being here. Okay, Jennifer and then Dr. Rose. So I was just going to say when the CSWG did their survey, all of the results came back to me personally, like not personally but through my Amherst MA dot gov. And we sent it out that way and then we linked, we created links to it and put it on flyers and sent it to people individually. So, great, yeah. And I would just always just put name and then optional, you can write just write optional next to it. So that people know that they don't have to. Perfect. That's a really good way to yeah so you actually put name and then just put optional and then it prompts them but they know, right. Okay. But yeah I like the idea that you the way that that worked with the CSWG that sounds good for you and Pamela to be able to get the sort of data and then, you know, put it together for us to review as a committee. Dr Rhodes. So, the question for me is, we're going to do, we're going to do this survey. I keep asking myself what is what are the questions or that we really want to have answered via this survey that will help get us further towards our objectives, a for the report be in terms of how we structure reparations, etc. So what are those questions that get us to those two objectives. And those are the questions that I would want to focus upon. I do feel so I have the areas of injury and harm. I have, who do you think should be eligible for reparation benefits and I went back to Dr Shabazz's piece about residential lineage identity. Are there different benefits for different people. So the sort of who's eligible as one the areas of harm is another. And then the third is how the funds should be used. Related to the areas of injury and community versus individual so I think the three buckets that I have right now are the areas of harm, the eligibility question, and the use of funds question. And then, of course, we can create an open ended opportunity for people to share whatever but I think those three buckets. I had in my mind, but if there are other buckets that we want to cover. Then, you know, again, within these three buckets will work with Kerry to formulate hopefully to formulate the questions, but are there additional buckets. I guess those buckets are fine. I guess the details in terms of the questions that are asked within there are going to be the most critical. For instance, if I go to how to use reparation funds. If, if I don't have any prompts, or if I'm not familiar with it if I don't have any background with it or do I know anything about reparations here in Amherst. That question. And that's one and two is, if that question is going to be asked, are we going to do pick ABC dear E. And anyways, just, I think that, again, I think that Kerry can help us with this in terms of structuring these questions. Yeah, and if you, Dr. Rhodes would be willing to work with me on that that would be fantastic. I think your background lends itself very naturally to this and I would appreciate that and I also think that we will need a cover letter. And if folks aren't, you know, going to spend the time to read it just to as herb said provide some general background information about Amherst initiative. So that if it's coming to somebody that has never read anything in the paper doesn't know anything about it, they at least have some information. So I'll take all of that. If there aren't any other comments or questions at this moment, I'm going to ask Meg gauge to join us but let me stop the share here. If you have any other buckets or ideas about this just please email them to me and Pamela and Jennifer and then we'll work with them to get them incorporated into our process. So, Meg gauge is joining us in a moment and I think she's here. And so I'm just going to frame this briefly for folks on the agenda as I said, we have an item League of Women Voters Racial Justice Committee potential collaboration. I've spoken or heard from Meg previously I think in public comment. The League of Women Voters has a strong racial justice committee that's been working on a variety of issues and supporting our new initiatives crests and the DI department. Very robustly. And so there's been discussion about a potential collaboration or collaborations and some of us have had smaller discussions about this including Dr. Shabazz and Meg and myself, and maybe some others. But Meg is here today to, we're going to start fresh and have that conversation as if we, you know, with an open mind and heart and and then the committee will discuss it so welcome Meg. Thank you. Would you like me to describe the project. Yeah, I really appreciate appreciate this and I, I, because the meeting was changed from last week I was apologize if I didn't show up at the right time at the meeting but we're traveling. At the racial justice committee of the League of Women Voters have been wanting to do one of our public sessions we've been calling them Judy Brooks conversations. This might or might not fit into that category but we've wanted to have a conversation with the public at large about reparations and to take advantage of the fact that Sandy Darity and his wife Kirsten Mullen have written this extraordinarily important and reparations, and several of us know him and have been communicating with him about this idea. I have felt I've been the one organizing this project, partly because I think I know knew him from before when he used to, he grew up in Amherst, our dads work together. And they would like to do this, come to not physically come on zoom they would be on zoom to do a lead a discussion about their book and give the community an opportunity to understand reparations better what some of the different communities are doing what the different options are. And for me, it doesn't make sense for the League of Women Voters Racial Justice Committee to have a big session on reparations without collaborating with the assembly, which is all about reparations. There is a lot of our different opinions about what is the correct route for reparations and I feel it's healthy to have those discussions out in the open. And I don't see them as contentious at all just a chance to talk about what's one of the most important programs right now ideas of the current current work on racial justice is reparations. I'm hoping that we'll be able to collaborate on this. The racial justice committee and the African heritage reference assembly. We're willing to do a lot of the work. But I would hope we would share, you know, we would really work on it together. I would I say we'd be willing to do a lot of the work because I know you're extremely busy you have a huge agenda and I wouldn't want to add one more burden to what you have to do. So we would take our collaboration seriously and it's a really a partnership if we agree to do this. The deal is Sandy and Kirsten normally get $6,000 for a speaker fee when they do a presentation, and they're willing to do it for us. Instead, if we buy $2,500 worth of the books. I think you probably all know there's a second edition that's out now. I think it's in paperback too. So what we would like to do is to find a way to buy the books Jones library has a budget for this kind of thing for example, but I haven't engaged them yet because I wanted to be sure we're what we're talking about. But my idea is that we could have a book reading group. Either people would buy the books or we would provide them. Providing them would be better because people would be more have a greater incentive to join the group if the book was free. And we would buy them from Amherst books locally so that we'd be helping our local bookstore. So there would be a book group reading group project in conjunction with their presentation. I don't know if we would do the book reading before or after in the middle of, you know, would their presentation would be in the middle of it but that's the sort of framework of what we're thinking about. So I'm going to stop talking and see what you all think. It's good to see you all my on my iPad I only see Michelle but I know others of you who are there. Thank you Meg. Thank you Meg. And so the way I'm going to structure this Meg is I'm going to give the committee the opportunity to ask you questions. And then what we'll do I explained earlier before you got here Meg we have a big council meeting tonight and it starts at 530 an hour early. And I have to get myself prepared. So we'll probably discuss this as a committee at our next meeting. Great. So I want to open it up at this moment. I have a couple of just logistical questions. But before I ask those. Are there members of the committee that have questions they would like to ask in relationship to what Meg is proposing. It seems pretty logical to me. Hi Meg it's Yvonne. Hi Yvonne. Oh good. Now I see you. Yeah good to see you. If we do this. Maybe you and I can work together on it. Again. I know. Like the like the good old days. Yeah I think I think it's fine. Sadly I have to leave it's three o'clock and I have another I have to make my way into an in person meeting. Wow. I think it sounds like a great idea and if I can help out or do something, you know, I'm happy to do that. Once we identify what that looks like. But it makes a lot of sense to me. All right. Awesome. We'll see you. Yep. We'll see you soon. Thank you. Yvonne and I work together. Creating Emma's cinema many years ago. Oh yeah. That's awesome. I didn't know Yvonne was a part of that as well. That's great. Okay. So any other logistical questions or otherwise for Meg, I had a question about when. Dr. Darity. Do you have any sense of timing for when this. Potential event would occur. Well, they had proposed January. But now we, we put it on pause because of all the other things that were happening in Amherst. So I don't think it could happen before March, but we would have to negotiate that with them. But we could control that by saying we can't do it until March or until April or whatever. Okay. I don't think there's a rush. I just think it's important to do it. Sure. Yeah. And I, so sort of a followup to that, Meg, if, if you could maybe look into an idea that I had around this is. I spoke on a panel at Boston college school of law a couple of weeks ago that had a variety. Folks were bringing different perspectives about reparations. And it was really interesting to be there with people that had different views about it, but we're able to have a really great discussion. So one thought that came out of that is continuing the work with the Boston college school of law and they work with to create a patent and also with pretty high up administrators at UMass, the discussion has occurred to have a panel that would present different perspectives. And so wondering if Dr. Darity and Kersim would be open to this being not just a solo show, but being a perspective sort of panel. Let me go to Ms. Bridges though, because I see her hands up. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. Hi, Debra. Hi, Debra. Good to see you. I love the idea. I'm at my brother, David's house, by the way. Oh, tell him I said, hi, please. I will. He might walk in, but we shouldn't do that during the meeting. I love the idea of talking with Sam. He was president of my high school class. And I really admire his contributions to reparations for, to discuss them. So that would be a, that's a great idea. Awesome. That's so cool that he was present. Your class. What year was that? Ms. Bridges. Nevermind. My brother, who's place on that right now is, was in the same class. I think. No. No, he was. No. Two years older. Right. David was with, with my brother. Right. And Rob was in your class. Rob was in my class. Yeah. And. Dad. Anyway. It was very good friends with Sandy's dad. Awesome. Okay. Well, what I'll do, given the timing here is we'll make sure we have a more thorough and robust discussion about this next time so that we can report back to you. If you could in the meantime, see about the question that I posed. That would be great. And we can talk offline more about what I was. Sure. Right. And if I can be helpful at your next meeting, let me know. I totally understand the crunch of time. And thanks for making time today. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming and feel free to hang out. We have to still do a public comment period. So. I'm going to go ahead and call for that now. So if, yes, Ms. Bridges. Is your hand still up? Okay. It is, but it's. Okay. Great. All right. Any, okay. Anything else for Meg before I call for public comment. All right. Great. Okay. So if you would like to, if you would like to, if you would like to make a public comment, go ahead and raise your hand. I will read our statement quickly. Let's see here. During the public comment period. I'll recognize members of the public when called on. Please identify yourself. Okay. So if you would like, and Dr. Shabazz. Are you also in the audience or do we have a junior in the audience potentially? Cool. Okay. So if you'd like to make public comment, please identify yourself by stating your name, pronouns, and address, and you are welcome to express reviews for up to three minutes. And we will not. Normally we won't respond, but we will certainly be listening closely. So I see one hand is raised. I think it's Ronan Ronan. So please welcome. I wonder. Oh. Sometimes when they're moving over, you. There we go. Okay. Welcome. Hi, thank you. Sorry. I've never joined as a panelist before. So I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to do for a second. So this is a little bit different. I really appreciated being able to listen on your meeting. I appreciate you having me. I'm a student journalist at UMass Amherst. And I'm running a story on not African heritage reparations, but Native American reparations, a magazine piece. And I contacted your guys office. A couple of weeks ago and I followed up and I was just looking to see if I could reach any of you to have a conversation. About some of the work that you guys are doing in relation to the broader conversation of reparations. So yeah. Thank you. And I normally wouldn't do this, but because I think this is a great opportunity for members to be able to ask you usually in public comment, just so you know, we're not supposed to sort of respond to public comment, but I think. Um, we did, I did, uh, Jennifer and I. Included counselor Anika Lopes in the communication with you. So, um, I hope that, um, you'll be able to get in touch with Anika to speak to this, but are there other questions that folks have that they would, could you pronounce your name for us? Yeah, it's Ronan. Easy. Okay. That Ronan any questions that, uh, that any of our members would like to ask Ronan in relation to this. Okay. I'm not seeing any hands, but oh, I do see Dr. Shavas. Yeah. Not so much a question. Ronan, but if you, um, email me at Shavas at you mass.edu. I'll be happy to put you in touch with one of my, uh, doctoral students who is, uh, working on this topic, uh, in a paper with me this semester. And, uh, perhaps there's, um, uh, uh, might be fruitful to what you're, you're writing to connect with, with him. Yeah, great. No, I'd really appreciate that. Great. Um, any other comments or questions for Ronan? Yes. Um, yeah, he definitely should get in touch with, um, Anika. Yes. He have for information. You should. Hi, Ronan. Hi. I do. And I don't have Anika's information. It's Anika. And what is her last name? Low. And actually Ronan, you do because when I responded to you, I copied. Anika. I see. Okay. Yeah. I think that's her town. Email. So if you, you could use that to reach out to her. Okay. Thank you. Ms. Bridges, do you want to provide, if you want to provide your information, I'll loop you in with Ronan on the email. So you don't have to read it out, uh, in the public meeting. Okay. Um, and Ms. Bridges, would you just say quickly why we're, why it would be relevant, like why we're suggesting to Ronan, you and, or Anika would speak to Ronan on indigenous, uh, reparations. You're muted, Ms. Bridges. And indigenous. Well, if he gets in touch with her and he speaks on, um, ancestral bridges. And that will, that will give him a lot of information when she speaks to him about that. Yeah. Absolutely. Hey. All right. Awesome. So, um, Dr. Shabazz, is your hand still raised? Okay. Good. All right. Um, if, is there anybody else? Um, thank you, Ronan. Thanks so much for joining us. Yes. Thank you. All right. Anybody else like to make public comment, please raise your hand. All right. Um, wonderful. Well, thank you. Oh, I see. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. I think you have to unmute yourself. Let me, if you're having difficulty, let me see. There you go. Is this okay? Yes, you're good. Okay. Um, I came in a little later, uh, but I saw some of the, um, the, the form that you guys are, are, um, making. Um, and I guess I had some questions about that, but, uh, I guess, I guess my own opinion is that, um, it's, um, these are very deep questions. And even for myself, they. It's calling on a lot of creative power to try to, um, make, uh, make answers to those things. Um, so I guess I was going to suggest that, um, for some, you know, just first information about what the, what the need could be for some people is that it could be, you know, multiple choice and other or, you know, something additional that our person could think of, um, but to maybe just try to work to simplify the form. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That is really great feedback. Thank you. Um, and I don't know what your interest level is or your capacity, but, uh, would love to keep you, um, engaged in this. Um, so I would love to keep you, um, engaged in this. Um, so I would be happy to share it as we go along with it with you for feedback. And of course you're always, always welcome to come to a meeting, but yeah, I'll, I'll, um, as I keep getting the links to, to look on, maybe I'll come in a bit earlier and I'll see what you guys are really talking about. Excellent. Oh. Thank you. No problem. Thanks. I think we're on time. You're not going to get the messages? Are you leaving? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. Anybody else like to make public comment today? All right. Not seeing any. Um, I would like to just give, uh, the opportunity here before we adjourn. If there are any other final comments. Dr. Rhodes. Thank you. I just would emphasize one approach is to just to recall the some of the areas of harm or injury areas we talk about and and maybe even in that specific question or question for each of these is just to highlight the question of health care, the questions of education, the question of land, housing, home ownership, the question of wealth, the wealth gap and wealth formation, and finally peoplehood and dignity. And and I say this also in relation to planning for future listening sessions, what about having a spotlight on a specific one of these specific areas? So a listening session that can be open to anything, but could specifically raise the question of home ownership, black, black home ownership in Amherst and the question of space of land of of, or on another occasion, looking at education, the academic achievement gap, the different disparities in terms of college going rates, in terms of discipline, discipline rates, in terms of other areas that we note a racialized disparity in our very own Amherst regional school system and elementary school system. These would be then areas in which we could then elicit very concrete suggestions if people would say in the area of education feel like, you know, if we had additional counseling services or people specifically with awareness and lived experience of the African American community, maybe they'd speak to something like that or someone specifically to help with preparing folks to submit their information to the Common App and to to apply for college. I'll tell you where we have a young person finishing high school this year. And in my own home, this is a this is a major effort to try to figure out the resource navigate the resources necessary to get the Common App completed and letters of recommendation requested from people. And you know, and I shudder to think of folks that are working, you know, two and three different jobs and and all kinds of things just for basic survival, the challenges that might be on those kinds of families to to be able to to get this Common App stuff done and FAFSA and navigate all these things. What are the resources in our schools to help students in general, but our black students in particular, maybe people would speak to these things if we open the discussion around specific harm areas and in specific asking for specific testimonials, as well as suggestions about what what people think would benefit would benefit the community. Thank you. Absolutely. I think that's great. And I know Pamela had spoken to something similarly previously. And so we should talk at our next meeting about that next listening session for folks who weren't who are in the audience. We weren't here at the beginning. Our next listening session is Wednesday, January 11 from 6 30 to 8 30 will be entirely virtual, and it will be partially educational and then go into the listening piece of Dr. Rhodes. So I'm really honored that Emile Carr-Chabaz Jr. appeared before this panel. I did not know that Dr. Chabaz had Emile Carr Jr. I mean, I just can't imagine if my son, Dr. Rhodes, appeared on here and spoke. I would really like to see more of these kinds of interactions, especially with Emile Carr. I think that was very special. So I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. And I saw that in Deborah's eyes, too. And it's a family affair today. I hope Dr. D. Chabaz wouldn't mind me mentioning that she's also here with us in the audience. So that is really special. So all righty. So if there aren't any other questions or comments, I'm going to move to adjourn, but one last call. All right, well, everyone have a wonderful week and adjourning at 3 23 p.m. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great meeting.