 Hi everybody. Hi. Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. My name is Farid. Hi. I'm a volunteer with People's Kitchen and I've also been helping out with the petition that as you all know are gonna be on the ballot now. I hate elections usually like I don't like ever vote for candidates although the first candidate I vote for was infinite where's infinite right there and since that came pain like I vote on ballot questions because I do think that's that's democracy it's important. So tonight we have several ballot questions that's gonna be presented we have question number two which is the carbon impact and we have the community control of the police we also have proposition zero question eight anybody is there any other there's like there is like controversies in almost like every one of this you know like the redistricting map is unfair and there's concerns about that I wish we had people who could present on like their objections but the seemingly benign question like of carbon impact it's I thought it was suspicious and as it turns out there are actually legitimate concern about that question and I will hand it over to you. Thanks everyone for listening to us tonight you know we have grave concerns about ballot measure two can you all hear me okay we're concerned because you read it and it sounds absolutely marvelous I mean the question asks voters to vote to impose a fee on fossil fuel heating systems and new buildings for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions now that sounds like a great thing that I'm concerned everyone is going to vote for the problem with it is the ballot measure says a fee will be imposed on fossil fuel heating systems and not on renewable systems and the problem is that the ballot question doesn't tell voters what renewable systems are so it's really misleading in that way you have to dig through city ordinances to discover the things that the city considers to be renewable and those include biomass burning wood at the mcneal plant or in individual stoves biofuels and what else there's one other thing and renewable natural gas which is a total scam renewable natural gas its primary component is methane which is the same as natural gas natural gas is also methane so it has the same carbon dioxide emissions when you burn it as burning regular natural gas yeah worse you're right so we're concerned because these things that are renewable actually put more greenhouse gas emissions into the air than burning gas or even coal and they also emit harmful air pollutants that are hazardous to people's health ashley do you have something you'd like to add well i'll just mention that we've got some small um i'll i'll grab them maybe and show you some little quarter page sheets over there on that table we've got an informational event next sunday that we're organizing at the on north prospect street at the friends community center and we're going to be showing a film a short film and then we're just going to be discussing ballot item two to offer some additional information about it would love to have a carbon fee i think that'd be terrific but it needs to be done right the the fact that we have this sneaky little bit about really polluting false climate solutions in there really um oh i'm sorry i'm sorry that oh is that right i will speak up okay sorry and then plus the mask so um so the sneaky little bit about renewables being exempt from that carbon tax is uh is wrong and we need to defeat this ballot item so if you're interested in getting more information about it then please join us next sunday at three o'clock at the north prospect street friends community center and we can give you more information about it i also just want to mention um i won't take much more of your time but in my mind this gets back to the really underhanded um bit that happened when burlington used to have a climate action plan right there was a climate action plan no longer our climate future was placed in the hands of burlington electric and we now have this net zero roadmap and it's bullshit so what we get from that is yes we're going to electrify everything but what that will do is it will increase emissions from mcneil which are not currently counted 453 000 453 000 tons in 2021 alone um that could get up to a million tons of co2 emissions in any given year and that's just wrong so i mentioned that because we need to take back our climate action plan we need to take back our climate future and we need to get burlington to count all emissions in this city including mcneil and then reduce them and put a plan in place to reduce them we should have solar panels on every roof in this city we should have geothermal we should have clean healthy heat and power period and burlington needs to start getting on board with this so anyway i won't take any more of your time and uh thanks for letting me speak and i'm not sure what to do with this thanks so much again we have flyers over here the people who are farthest from me hear me even if i'm wearing a mask is that okay sweet okay so um proposition zero also known as ballot item number eight does everybody have our little flyer if you don't have one they're over there please grab one um so basically the thing that i like to start off by saying is that the powers that this charter change would enable um actually exist in nearly every other city in town in vermont what are those powers is the powers to do kind of three things um the first uh is to propose and so i kind of think this is the most exciting part it's the proactive part let's say you have an idea something you really care about you can propose ordinance uh so let's say you want to bring more funding back to our npa's and you want to create that as a proposition you can you can create that as a petition you run around burlington you get five percent of qualified voters to sign that petition saying like i think that's a good idea too it goes to city council they have an opportunity to deliberate on it and say yes they pass it or no they don't or maybe they say yes and then the mayor vetoes it right at that point in our current system things just like die right but what this says is that you showed enough of burlington is interested in this idea it should get to go on the ballot and burlington should get to have the final say and so uh it would go on the ballot and then if the majority of burlington says like hey i think it's a good idea and passes it then it becomes ordinance uh so it just gives like a little bit more people power in that way it also enables two other powers that are maybe a little bit less exciting but you know i'll mention them anyway so the first is that uh being able to ask advisory questions on the ballot what's an advisory question uh it's just sort of like a temperature check so for example in the past there's been advisory questions like how the city feels about f-35s uh that kind of thing it doesn't actually do anything it just like gives you a sense of how how your neighbors feel uh currently uh you are able to petition to put an advisory question on the ballot you run around you could do all of that work you can get five percent of voters sign that petition and bring it to city council and then they could just dismiss it this happened with city health park they got enough like way more than enough signatures to get that on the ballot and uh city council decided they vetoed it and didn't put it on the ballot so what this could do is say like if you got enough signatures it should get to go on the ballot and then the third power is actually not new we already have it we have it through the vermont constitution um and it's the ability to um ask city council uh to repeal or reconsider a decision that they've made if they've like passed an ordinance so for example like the sale of burlington telecom we actually could have a petition to have that repealed if we had acted within 45 days uh so that's not anything new we're just like surfacing it so that burlingtonians know that they have it so those are kind of the three powers the thing that I think is really helpful to know is that this was actually passed by the voters of bonuski in 2015 and then had to go to the vermont legislature and they delivered on it and approved it and we're just stealing their language so uh and we're looking forward to you know keeping an eye on what they're doing to continue to make this a really smooth process and make sure it's one that is by burlingtonians for burlingtonians and we will want to continue to like adopt the changes that are you know things that they're continuing to add to this uh as well so I think that's everything that's the basic gist of it yeah does the legislature have to approve this if we pass it yes but since they already approved bonuski's in 2015 it seems likely that they would sure and I think the other piece is if we can show like it passes by like a landslide in burlington that helps so city charter it's it's kind of like the you know like when you do update your phone like update the operating system so the city charter is like that basic laws that govern the city but only the legislature actually can change it there the two ways like we can ask them to change it is by the petition and then also the city council can put something on the ballot that asks to change the the charter um so the city the legislature they're gonna look at it the same thing what it's gonna happen with the community control police so which we honestly like I I think it doesn't go far enough but um but the legislature is probably gonna change that they are working on police oversight for example like at the state level so we'll see like what they're gonna do with it they can do whatever they want like once once like it please present them because it's gonna as a bell and we do have uh our champions in the legislature brianzina who was here earlier uh and several other legislators that they uh they will fight for us we get uh the the the ballot uh the the the bill approved so I don't I think most since most of vermont already has this in their charter and if you hear california being mentioned or origan or even brexit I've heard like this is gonna be like brexit go to everyone but burlington.com california it's not like california it's more like vermont because south burlington has it montpellier has it any of the objection that's been raised uh it's oh there's brian right there any of the objection that's been raised like mostly people focus on they bring up california like because I guess it's it's supposed to be bad because it's a mess there but we're talking about a city of 50 000 versus a state of like 20 something million with 500 different municipalities of varying rules so it's more like winewski it's more like rottland it's more like actually let's not go with rottland although they do have it but it's more like winewski montpellier all the cities in vermont except for burlington has this rules already so and I'll just add to that I think something that can kind of throw people off is the five percent can sound either really big to some people or really small to some people but for context that's about 2000 signatures um you actually have to get more than five percent because a lot of them are going to get thrown out um as like not valid signatures because someone like moved where they were living or whatever they weren't actually registered to vote so you actually have to get quite a bit more and that took us like over a year to do that that's a lot of organizing so it's I think the concerns about things just like flooding the ballot uh takes a lot of work to get that amount of signatures and even still five percent is just to get it on there but then if it goes on the ballot the majority of burlington has to want this for it to pass anybody else has other like questions or whatever what's the first thing you would do with proposition zero what's the first thing you would want to do fund npa's I would like post it first I don't know I would drink to it I think like the npa probably is like the the the the one that has the most support I don't know if everybody's familiar with the npa it's the it's called the neighborhood planning assembly so this is the neighborhood level institution of decision making and public input that was created when bernie became mayor um so he his his victory was by 10 votes so it was like this freak accident that uh that then like the established powers in the city really tried to suppress like they thought they could just wait him out so they blocked all his appointees like they blocked every any proposal that bernie had and so uh part of the way bernie got around that challenge is by creating sido the community and economic community economic development office and so he started channeling the money towards sido and sido in turn also created the npa's so if you have not gone to an npa in your ward every ward has an npa and it is a very grassroots it's very directly democratic one person one vote npa's can create resolutions and it used to have a lot more power neighborhood planning assembly so they usually have a monthly meeting and it's the same day and same time like every month and they used to be a lot more powerful like when bernie first during the bernie era they had at least like $15,000 budget at this is in the 80s so they were able to do many things many like innovative things a lot of like the best things that berlington is known for as the result of this kind of neighborhood level like grassroots decision making ability that berlington has pioneered and unfortunately in the last 10 15 years the administration has actively sabotage this process they have been defunded so now like the budget is 800 something dollars i think and there is it doesn't have the same power as it used to partly because they it's not as efficient to manage would that is the one of the reasons that i've heard and you know our several city councilors have said if people are happy they won't come out and vote they won't come out you know like that just the fact that the low attendance at the npa or even turn out during the election they take it as a sign that everybody is happy with the way things are so it's i think it's a little convenient too convenient but it's hard because we also don't have that much power right like we do elections and then what do we do we just choose between people who could afford to run to make all the decisions for us and that's why i think like proposition zero was is very important and the pushback that we've received i thought i didn't i didn't expect it i thought like because most of the people we talked to when we were collecting signatures they were like oh really we don't have that already it's such a no-brainer but and i thought this was like this was a bug in our operating system but no it's like it's a feature to like to the powers not be they like it this is what they want they want to be making all the decisions we have what 12 people now just like you know it's like it's that's it that's that's the only people who could who get to make the rules in barlington like when you think about it is that democracy you know it's like it's that representative so i think you know better what you want you know better we could we could work together come up with what we need and so we just need the power to do it it could also be a pathway for things like participatory budgeting or citizen assemblies and i bring that up as a point because sometimes people will say well there's so many valid items how can people get educated and really make an informed vote but for example i believe this is an organ they actually have a citizen assembly that they create which a citizen assembly is like a random lottery of people like like you're you're pulled for jury duty okay and then they present all these different sides for each ballot item and then this citizen assembly prepares a report out on how they advise people to vote on each ballot item you can do whatever you want but now you have this perspective from your neighbors who got really informed on the topic so there's a lot of ways to go about that um to make sure that people feel comfortable with whatever gets put on the ballot anyways any more questions yes so we are trying to fundraise for to do like the mailing it it does take take money we we're talking to some organizations which hopefully could help us the phrase of the cost but we also will be accepting donations because we're gonna be registered as a public question committee with the secretary of state so please let us know your contact information before you leave so we can get in touch with you and especially if you're willing to help spread the word like talk to your neighbors maybe have a lawn sign that you could put on that would be great I think the ballots are gonna start coming out this week and some people are gonna vote right away through the mail so we're trying to raise money as fast as we can and also get this printed and get the lawn signs and stickers and flyers and all that good stuff um and also if you're willing to post on your prom porch forums that's like we can't afford their rates for like for campaign ads it's better besides it's better if it's like you know if it's if it's us doing it it's like for for the people by the people so I was wondering if I might be able to comment so the question is did you talk at all about the opposition perspective that if we have proposition zero that people are going to spend money to pass ballot items did you talk about that already no but there's somebody brought that up earlier so Liz okay this microphone is totally sufficient okay go ahead yes yeah you can you go but the city this is where I understand that city council voted to develop the waterfront and then it said well wait a minute we better go out to the people and ask if they really want this and when they did they found out they didn't yeah so thank goodness the people had a say because we would all be living in an entirely different city yeah so so it was a referendum that you're right so and you know what else like it's also an example that maybe we we still remember is Burlington telecom actually was established through the ballot like the majority of Burlingtonians wanted to have a city-owned telecommunication infrastructure but if you look at how we lost it the decisions were made behind closed doors like they they didn't the entity that they sold Burlington telecom to did not even exist until the day after the decision that's how like messed up like the process is but because we are we are so uneducated and our leaders don't educate themselves or us about the referendum process it could have played out differently the night of the decision that to to sell Burlington telecom to a private entity the next day we could have gone out and collected 2000 signatures to put to force the same thing that that Liz was talking about to force that decision to put that on the referendum and nobody like even like even the mayor like democrats nobody liked the way Burlington telecom decision went down but we're we've been so like uneducated about it like it wasn't even in anybody's radar when I first learned about referendum I was like oh we already have this power why don't anybody talk about it what they did tell us is like there's gonna be a 60 day quiet period when in truth like what that is is we do have 60 days to collect 2000 signatures and put that on the referendum but they don't call it a referendum period they call it a quiet period so and so I just want to raise that point that under the current system the people who have power can do that so why can't everyone have that and and if people are going to spend money to pass an item then if people oppose it we either have to raise money or just organize and go out and talk to our neighbors and defeat it like we did the downtown improvement district but I just think it's important to like make that point because people are stoking fear around this idea of giving like power to the mob and that's not what this is you know this is about empowering people at a time in history when we've been incredibly disempowered and we need to heal as a community we should be bringing people together right now not dividing us over fear of the changes that need to happen so that's all I just wanted to make that point to think it's an important argument that you may need to defend this and that's a good thing to bring so yeah money is already playing up far yeah and I just want to quickly tag on for you to correct me if I'm wrong on this but when you ski is working on things like for example like do you create criteria for who can be an election or sorry yeah who can be a signature collector so you can make sure it's not like some out-of-town money to interest that's like running around getting signatures and paying people to get signatures you can make sure it's burlingtonians collecting signatures for burlingtonians so the process could definitely be more streamlined and we are using we know we're hoping like the next step as either the city council will will propose this or we can propose it that the process be so that before the signatures are even collected we basically we register as petition taker with the city clerk and city attorney so they also get to see and and and correct and like work with us to develop what the language of the position petition is going to be and that happens before we even go out to collect this petition we know ski already had has this figured out and we just have to follow their lead and that's the legislature already approved that as well I think a lot of something on the ballot they have to get a lot of signatures and people are these packs are paying people to get like a dollar per signature to go out and like get all these signatures and then they're paying for these like PR campaigns for stuff like that so those those kinds of things could be like early propositions just to like safeguard the democratic aspect of proxie or yeah so that's like that that's like that's the kind of ordinance like that would regulate it would basically say you need to be a burlingtonian or like even like chinden county and so we will have like who can actually we know who's taking this we know who's collecting the signatures sure yeah and I mean honestly it should be not just with the petition ballot question but any ballot question so we know who is like giving like the mayor's mayor's pack all this money to pass them all or like you know or like to to oppose the police oversight board right there is a pack that he created like we don't know like it's a pop-up pack we're not gonna have we're not gonna have the the numbers until after the last one how can someone who's interested get involved uh so uh you can come see me uh or also put your info on uh the sign-up sheet and we can reach out to you but we have like online organizing you're welcome to join us um especially as like the heat of the next two weeks because we're making this happen so we'll definitely need help with people posting your front porch forum also flyering around town will be um really helpful and also things like lawn signs and that kind of thing as well infinite yeah infinite was uh involved in uh trying to revive the npa all ward which is the you know the the gathering of all the different npas as a method of decision making that is directly democratic and that is so so like each npa already have that but then we need like a citywide assembly of the of the different npas so and it needs power it needs to have their resolution right now npas can pass resolution and it's only advisory um most of the time it's just for the administration to get their project proposed project robber stamp um it doesn't really have any like real power although when the mayor tried to sell memorial auditorium i think that's when like the all-word npa got revived um it was it was able just through its moral like power like i was able to like slow that process down and and we've so far we've been able to keep the memorial auditorium but they will they will probably try that again next time um thank you so the last i think the last valid question that we we're going to talk about is the community control of the police or independent police oversight um and i just want to start with just a little story uh that i asked somebody who lived in barlington for over 25 years and have an interest in the police not hurting people i uh often we we we see all this you know all this like scandalous uh violence that happens in other states but we also have the police violence in barlington uh although that's the one that dominates the media uh there actually a more um the more insidious type of police violence that we don't usually know about that we don't see in the media or even aware it's happening um in september last year this is just one example i witness the police um stop a man uh and this was in during downtown in in downtown during the weekend uh they had the vermont state police officers helped supplement the the police force to to patrol downtown so the night was there was no incidents until around two o'clock when the police stopped the man who it was pretty clear this man was struggling like he had some mental health issue um but they stopped him and this was this is on camera like if you look in wcax you'll see like what i recorded what happened is like so they stopped him and when he demanded to know why he was being stopped the police would not give him the reason and instead of de-escalating the situation they kept pushing him right and they kept pushing him until uh eventually four or five officers surrounded this this man and he his black man he and they tackled him and uh it is in front of 200 people like watching this incident they dragged him to their car and stripped his pants down so he was naked from the waist down and and put him in the car in in their cruiser and took took off um so i recorded this incident and i filed a police complaint but what's so what but i really want to talk about though is what happens two days after that so after they booked him they released him because they couldn't actually they didn't really have any reason to to detain him and they definitely did not charge him because he didn't really do anything he was he was he was standing his ground so but because he was already struggling with mental health issues that the the act of being humiliated in front of a crowd so triggered him that this man was then found like assaulting somebody and witnesses described this man as being dissociative so if they didn't have a reason to arrest him to charge him after after that happened now they did because he like when he escalated he they escalated him so that he actually ended up assaulting somebody and now he's in prison waiting for trial and so it's it's the kind of things that happens here it's the kind of treatment that it's not just people of color but poor people also and i have that wasn't even that the only like incidents that i it's just the most recent one that i i just happened to have my camera with me and i was able to record when i was serving food at sears lane when they got affected i saw this kind of treatment over and over again they don't escalate they actually escalate so that there is reason for them to to deploy violence most of these officers they don't live in burlington they live somewhere else so they don't really have to deal with the aftermath they don't really have to deal with the impact of their action but as people live in burlington this is like it's up to us we have to deal with that with with the aftermath we have to deal with you know the trauma um and it's just it's just one of those things that i i feel the police especially in burlington has they've been operating with a culture of impunity and i do think it has to do with the administration and his supporters unwillingness to hold the police accountable six months into the weinberger administration there was a nonviolent civil disobedience uh protesting the meeting of new england governor uh that that happened and burlington police officers opened fire on peace like nonviolent protesters burlington was shocked there was an outrage like we called for independent investigation and this was one of the choices that mirro had to make and he said no he refused to do independent investigation a few months after that wane bernett somebody who was experiencing mental health crisis his mom called the cops they showed up within two minutes they had him shot dead then like this was in 2013 i think we called for an armed response then we wanted an armed response then the what we call now the csl or the cso's we've been asking for that for at least 10 years and it's now it's like somehow you know the chief has like innovated this thing that we've been asking for for 10 years and we and it kept happening there are more people who died at the hand of the police under this administration than all the previous administration in burlington's history combined after wane bernett there was phil grenan same almost same story somebody who's who who who's experiencing a mental health crisis we had a new chief and del pozo but instead of instead of like and he he's very he was he was very good at talking at like saying what people want to hear about the escalation but what happened is he actually escalated like the chief actually he himself this guy had retreated into his bathroom and had hiding it was hiding from the police because he said like i have this vision of me being killed by the police so he ran away from the police went into his bathroom and stayed there and sure enough like the police instead of just leaving him alone or like having a social worker deal with that the chief actually went back to his house get a drill so he they could drill a camera into his bathroom to to monitor this guy yeah phil grenan yeah so i mean i people have been likely who've lived in Wellington for a while they they know this uh so and del pozo was supposed to be like the the philosopher chief he's like it's the good liberal like police chief but he like he went to his house to get the drill so they could like sneak in a like a camera to monitor this guy that's not what the escalation looked like and unfortunately the lessons learned like what we got out of that incident is the erv vehicle the the ambulance looking police like cruisers that you have with all the tools was that yeah well i think it's like 350 something thousand but that's one there was one of the justification was that so in case anything like phil grenan ever happened again the chief doesn't have to run through his basement to grab his drill like all everything is going to be there in this car that's when we're not yeah yeah yeah phil grenan is like the the guy who was living where was he living in one of the housing yeah yeah yeah so i mean even the from actually the governor had like something to say about that so and we had like on elmwood there was another so police involved suiting it was the feds this time and supposedly it was a drug dealer and even if you support executing drug dealers on the spot i think the big bpd as the local enforcement agency they had a responsibility to evacuate the area um so there was a near miss this guy i think steven kelly kelly was his name cannot steven's he was supposedly a drug dealer and they the feds went in at the uh da went in and killed him but in the process his neighbors was like sitting in his couch uh in the house next to him had a bullet went through his living room and missed him by an inch i think bpd even if it wasn't their operation they have an obligation to clear out the area if they really are there to protect berlingtonians that was a near miss that was uh seven years ago and you would hope that we'd learn a lesson but if you read the news or like you know about the uh the manhattan drive shooting that's the same thing happened like by an inch somebody missed like almost got killed sitting in his car so and it's interesting like how like this near missus happened in the old north end right it's not it doesn't happen if he was in like summit street or on the hill section it wouldn't happen there it's like they don't do they care about us if like what who are they really protecting and we have like another like mental health uh crisis that end in death with dog philben who was trying to see his wife in the hospital and ended up being punched like to death by police officer we had um a mom who was trying who won who called the cops because he she wanted to teach teach a lesson to he to her son who was you know who who sharp lifted some vapes ended up getting ketamine injection and and the late the latest candle is how we spent 20 million dollars on our police department but when you call they can't do anything nobody shows up but river watch home owners association contracted directly with the burlington police officer association to provide security there so if you want the police to show up in addition to the tax money that we're already paying there's 80 an hour on top of that to ensure that they show up in city car wearing wearing police uniform to deal with your security issues yeah and that's all and they're and we only know of this one contract I think because they they're so the culture of infinity is so such that they have the hoa like which is a private business send the check to the payroll for burlington police department to be processed and so that's how it became city business right but in reality there is like there's no way to know what actually happens between any hoa and the burlington police officer association because those are between two private entities so when when they're when people say people we distrust the police like these are the reasons and like and I'm like I'm not even impacted by the violence all that much so the melee brothers like I don't like so like right now because that's still that's still in in trial right like that's like the court the court is still in court the melee brothers you want to you want to so I don't know if you know about the melee brothers they were you could see the the video there the the bodycam video there the melee brothers were these two brothers like they were hanging out in what is it what ails you and there was the was it Joe Coro who's was that the the officers or Campbell yeah okay was it Campbell yeah so Coro was yeah so the the court Joe Coro who's now the police officer association's president this is what happens this is this what happens too like what happens when when the police is we we have him on camera beating up these two brothers and even results in like in like permanent injury the the melee brothers one of them was going to be an engineer and now they're like permanently disabled because of the injury that's our people that's our neighbors um and we have Joe Coro who is on camera being seen being really violent with with with civilians and instead of losing his job he only got two week suspension which is less than what they punished the two officers who stole like who ate who drank the beer that they confiscated there were two officers who drank the beer that they confiscated they got three weeks suspension um so and if you don't know if you about the fraternal order order of the police i i suggest you look it up and see the parent organizations of the police union they are right-wing like trump loving anti-black lives matter organization they're not a union they they won't they don't they claim not to be a union and but they enjoy all this protection uh they fundraise for their chauvin like the like all these cops we see in other states killing people like their trial they fundraise for those those those cops then this is the people we are entrusting our public safety with they they hate us they they hate burlington they hate our values how can we trust them and that's why i think it's really important for for us to have police oversight i don't just hate the police i have family members who are police officers um there's definitely a mentality there that i noticed like when when other cops are around they definitely change but i do have relatives who are police officers i think it's it's it's irresponsible for us to just have people who are empowered to take lives to injure us even permanently uh and to be investigating themselves it it's irresponsible so i'm sorry do you want to say something um yeah a couple of things uh i wanted to correct should i use the microphone okay thanks for you uh this is just for that camera uh i wanted to correct something you said but then you contradict it yourself that even though the violence doesn't always directly affect someone personally in reality like i feel your passion and like this you know swell of angst that i'm sure everyone in this room feels too that violence against anyone affects all of us personally you know so it's not just happening to one person it's happening to entire communities um i wanted to relate a little bit of uh my personal experience i'm from a suburb outside Philadelphia and my dealings with the police there have always been horrendous um recently uh a fight with my dad that like you know things happen um police had been called before and actually had helped me lead me to better services to like check in with someone because i'm going through a lot i admit to sometimes having some mental health issues going with like some physical stuff i'm dealing with uh but this time around when they came i was immediately slapped in cuffs charged as a felon for trying to murder my father we had to go through this several month process with my parents hiring a lawyer them sitting behind me in court on the day with the arresting officer on the other side while i'm waiting for a fucking major surgery you know so i can like get my airways open up and i'm writing to a police officer who became the chief that used to run with us in high school so like there are less subtle forms of violence not just immediate like life and death matters but things that a lot of people are dealing with like i'm from Pennsylvania um i remember learning sometime many years after had been given a misdemeanor for a very like innocuous flyer when i was a kid uh teenager that they had a policy that we want the police to issue as many summary offenses and misdemeanors as possible it makes us look good if we have a high count you know that denotes to like whoever that they're doing a good job the more of these tickets that they hand out which obviously is like completely inverted and you know wrong thinking so i just want to ask like in terms of civilian oversight not just to be aware that like you know very obvious forms of police violence like life or death matters aren't being addressed but also these more subtle things like somebody getting slapped with a fine over something innocuous misdemeanors summary offenses those are all very like subtle forms of violence that can play out pushing many people like police not doing something when they show up yeah when things could be very easily de-escalated um i always remember this book i read many years ago called verbal judo uh where this english teacher became a cop himself and started going around like from police department to police department educating these officers how they can just talk somebody down with communication um so police in other countries security for their communities without weapons you know killing people yeah using their wits um yeah can you talk more about like what civilian oversight well so so civilian oversight this is like so just to step back here and just to be fair to the police officers who are actually serving this community is unfortunately like the failure is at the policy level when when we use the police to deal with the symptoms of inequity which is what this is what what it is it's like the housing policies is for failure you know the economic policies are failure so we have homelessness you know we have people who are on the brink of homelessness people are desperate and increasingly like we just rely on the police to solve all these policy failures right so to address the root cause is like the the way we fix this is actually let's fix the economic policy like we fix the after route we fix property addiction homelessness that's what we need to fix but this civilian oversight for now and it's not going to change the world it does do some harm reduction and that's kind of the idea like we want the police to be accountable to us and we we know so I've just described to you like examples of harm that's been done in this community but there has never been a acknowledgement by any of the chiefs that harm has been done let alone apology which I think would have gone a long way we would like that in in in terms of building trust rebuilding trust and like healing the community just acknowledging that harm was done and you know they even if they don't have to apologize although that would be great I just acknowledge that it's done and like we're doing something about it so most of the oversight is in that spirit of harm reduction we don't we want to make sure that people aren't targeted based on their race or their economic status um and or mental health stock yes so thank you barb so I think it's worth one of the official duties of the mayor and he has failed at that miserable it's not just the department it's all around the bus ward I don't think he has the courage to hold that department accountable yeah we I mean he I agree I think if we look at Miro's actions like we can't trust him to address systemic racism and he's under his own administration when we have a really good strong leader in Taisha Green who was hired to be the director of racial equity and inclusion and belonging and she had the trust of a lot of leaders in this community she was in Miro initially put her in charge of the police transformation but because of the pushback from police and their supporters he decided to to replace her with the director of the Burlington Electric Department who's a white man um so right so and you know it's and we it's it's he's like we can't trust Miro like to do this it's almost like the the Burlington Police Department it's like where people with with officers with bullying problem or with anger problem they go there and then they fail up Del Pozo is now like a consultant for police reform he's like he teaches at Yale you know he's like it's and you know like recently like the the latest one is Jen Morrison who has failed to take racial incident seriously and she is now our state's public commissioner of of safety it has to hold this like accountability it matters and then it impacts our state as a whole Sherling was in charge of the police when they shot at protestors but because Miro went out of his way to shield him from independent investigation he never had what we were never able to hold him accountable when dog Finbans after dog Finbans death death was determined by the state's coroner as a homicide caused by the police he ran interference he tried to influence he tried to get the state to change that um instead of from homicide to having what was it like the existing condition we can't trust not it's not just Miro either it's actually like you know like John Shannon has been like a strong supporter of the police and she's been in the city council for even longer than that um she also asked Miro to get her daughter a job there it's like the the conflict of interest between people who like support the police and like and John Shannon also sold the pozo his house before he became a chief like by influencing like the council decision to hire him it's it's it's incredible to me that we don't hear about this and we don't call them out um i mean i don't care like that but it's so uh if any question about the the ballot question itself amy you want to well just on the point that i feel like the thing that you hear from a lot of people is like okay okay we hear you so we'll work on it and um i just want us to be careful of like hearing that promise and believing it uh because for example um so on uh monday the city council um held well they had their meeting and uh they proposed a resolution that basically said like voters don't vote for this and we promise that we're going to create something after um and one of the big there's a number of really problematic things that were stated on that resolution a lot of things were misleading and some of it like completely false but um i think the other the other really important point that councillor Bergman pointed out is that uh one of their big points was there wasn't enough community feedback and engagement in the creation of this petition which i want to call out that in 2020 when it became aware that uh oh it's the problem is that the city charger makes it so that only the police chief can has the disciplinary authority right so they realized that in 2020 the mayor was like this is a monopoly of power it's an aberration in our democratic system we will have to change it and i promise that we'll do something about it nothing got done um well sorry they basically they they brought this petition or they brought this proposal it spent time in the charter change committee it then went to public forum and like city council where they listened to hundreds of hours of people talking about this including one night on december 7th when they had 150 people alone that night call in in support of this proposal right then the city council itself passed it in seven to five vote and then the mayor vetoed it right and then not since then the mayor has done nothing right so um the reason i and at that point this group of folks like picked it up we talked to lots of people and got 2 000 signatures to get on the ballot so this has gone it's it's like blatantly inflammatory to say that this has not seen community engagement it's seen probably way more community engagement than a lot of things that are on this ballot and also the point of getting to is if you look at their timeline for them coming up their proposal they're like we're going to do this and we're going to come up with a new proposal in two months so you're you're going to get more communication than we've gone in two years in two months so just i would say be cautious when you're listening to these narratives of like just wait just wait we'll fix that if it wasn't good faith objection like the ballot process also allowed them they know this language they could have actually also put forward a ballot proposal that would address all this objection that would put some guardrails against what they're being concerned about and they could do that but i don't think they're they're arguing in good faith because they just say don't vote for this and that's not that that tells us like you don't really care to me it's like the question is really do black lives matter like the homeless lives matter like do we do the poor people have the same rights to be protected as people who can afford a house or afford private security that's the that's the real question that's the real ballot question for me is that we as a city we would be the first to like paint in big letters black lives matter but what does that even mean like when it comes to police oversight they go out of their way to prevent this from happening thank you for coming here if you have more questions please talk to me talk to me please talk to your neighbors we do need we do need public safety but please so if you go to one million experiments dot com you can see what other communities have done in terms of public safety that are not based on the police not based on state violence and i think burlington should be in the on that list please check out the site one million experiment dot com and please talk to your neighbors we do need we do need public safety we need to put the public though in control of public safety thanks make sure you leave your contact information over there there's a sign-up seat you can also you can also give me a call or give a me call my my name is farid 802-272-8339 you could also contact a proposition zero dot org is the website thank you for coming and please there is there's still a lot of food please take some home thank you