 and welcome to the Future Week. Good evening and welcome to the Future We Deserve. My name's Tim Waters and as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media, I have the good fortune of hosting this program, which is a series of conversations about the Future We Deserve that all build on these conversations build on a collection of interviews that I conducted early during the pandemic, the early months of the pandemic. I interviewed over 70 Longmonters and I make 67 interviews. And if anybody's interested, those interviews all are posted on a Vimeo platform if anybody wants to watch them. But when I interviewed Longmonters in the early days of the pandemic, I asked them three questions. And the third question I asked was, what were your best hopes for the post-pandemic future? What's a future you'd like to help create and move toward? And many of the responses to that question kind of unfold along a theme of balancing my rights with our responsibilities as members of a community. So tonight, I am joined by a panel of outstanding individuals and friends who have agreed to join me and join you in this conversation about my rights and our responsibilities. So welcome. Let me introduce Barb Bothis. Barb is a faith leader in the community. She's also the director of Crossroads School. Rich Marsh. Rich is an active attorney, a leader in the community in so many ways. He's involved with policy advice. He's a litigator. He's also active politically. And in fact, in addition to being a friend of mine, he is my precinct leader where I live. Ana Lucacci. Ana is a healthcare professional. She is a member of Longmont's Planning and Zoning Commission. And in those roles, she's had to deal with these issues of my rights and our responsibilities. She's also an American by choice. And part of her story, her personal story, is of a deeper understanding of rights and responsibilities that I think are important part of the story for all of us to hear. And Cameron Grant, one of the top two attorneys in tonight's program. Cameron is also a local attorney. And in his leadership roles in the community, and I know many people have worked with Cameron in leadership roles, one of them is as the chair of the Longmont Housing Authority Board of Directors until the Housing Authority was taken over by the city. And now he's the chair of the Longmont Housing Authority Advisory Board. And in that context, he's had to deal with these issues of my rights and our responsibilities with Longmont residents, with LHA residents in LHA properties. Welcome to each of you to tonight's program. I'm so grateful that the community has the opportunity to hear and participate in this conversation. It is difficult as we sit here in a live program on Wednesday. And by the way, for the viewers, assuming there are some people out there watching us right now, 40 minutes into this hour, you're going to see a phone number come up on the screen. You'll have an opportunity to call in. We'd love this not just to be a conversation that you observe, but one in which you can participate. If you have alternative perspectives, you want to build on people's ideas. But if you want your voice in this conversation, Longmonters, tonight's an opportunity to have it in that conversation, 40 minutes into the hour. So I don't know how we get into this without acknowledging the horrifying events of this week that occurred in Boulder. And so much of the tensions around rights and responsibilities in the broader context are around guns and gun safety and second amendment issues. And I don't want to take us there necessarily, but I don't know that we can, I just feel like I can't get into this conversation that would be at least acknowledging what a horrifying experience that has been and the reflections that we're all doing right now. Not just in this conversation, but across the state of Colorado and across American society right now. So we'll come back to that. I want to start with each of you, giving you a chance to talk a little bit about your best hopes. I had a chance to interview three of the four of you. I tried to chase Cameron down and couldn't nail it down in those early interviews, but you all were part of those. And you had a chance to share your best hopes with me. And I'd like to share them with the community tonight. So who would like to just get us started? All right, I don't go that same order. Barb, you get to start with. All right. Well, I would say the one word that would summarize my best hopes are relationship. And that I think it's all about people in Longmont relating to each other as individuals who care about each other and not as categories or as assumptions, but as people. And so being able to build those relationships to relate to each other in that way across all different kinds of lines of divisions and opinions, but to be able to build relationships that make for meaningful progress and meaningful opportunities to interact and work together. And that's what I love about things like this. Rich. In this day and age, it's important, I think, to be engaged with the community. And I do that in a number of ways, as Tim indicated. A lot of people don't. And I think it's important to knock on your neighbor's door. I think it's important to walk with people who are expressing an opinion. I think it's important to pay attention to what we're leaving behind for the next generation. So my hopes are that we pay attention to such things. Anna, you wanna pick it up from there? Yeah, my hopes, when we last talked were the environment, a clean air, we could take it with us. We had for a couple of months, we had cleaner air, cleaner water, better Mother Earth. It was more appreciative of what we were doing with less cars on the street, less pollution. But also connection, we saw so many people on the streets just getting out and out and about, out walking, biking, just picking up these recreational initiatives. And we need to do a better job of facilitating these things for people when we're planning developments and when we're revitalizing older neighborhoods, we should plan for those things because we all benefit at some point. Cameron. I'm gonna make two comments. I think the first one, Tim, to kind of pick up from your reference to the tragedy in Boulder, one of my hopes for the future is that I don't have to worry as much as I do today about my kid walking into a grocery store. One of my sons lives in Boulder, that's where he shops. He had planned to go to that store that day, but something changed his plan. So that's not the kind of thing that I would like to have hovering over my thought process the way it does today. So it's hard to kind of break from that, but on kind of a bigger scale, my hope for the future or one of them is that we find a way to end the or ease the divisiveness that seems to be around us everywhere. I mean, we just finished an election year where it doesn't matter what I had to say, if I was blue and someone was red, they didn't want to listen to me and I'll admit a lot of times I didn't want to listen to them. And I think that plays directly into what we're talking about today. And what I'd really like to do is see us kind of follow that old guideline to seek first to understand then to be understood. And I've got to think that helps close that gap pretty dramatically. Well, I'm gonna, anybody want to comment on anything they've heard so far? I'll pause. If not, and I'm gonna ask you to, I introduced you as an American by choice. So I think it is a good place to start given with your personal experience, you started your life in a place where you didn't have quite the options, I think, that Americans enjoy in terms of rights. And then there are some responsibilities to go along with those. So get us started with just your personal story. And from that, we'll talk about what might generalize to a broader section of society. Yeah, and I wanna echo what Cameron said. I think we all desire that future where we don't have to worry about our day-to-day lives that ourselves or someone we love would go through that. So that's for sure, I think. Yeah, I grew up in Romania. It's in Eastern Europe for those that don't know. And I moved here 13 years ago. I just have to recollect sometimes how many years have passed. And I was in my late 20s when I moved here. But growing up, I grew up in the 80s and I grew up during the communist era. So I got to experience some things that definitely, I don't wanna experience again and I don't wish anyone to experience. And we didn't have a lot of rights, but we had a lot of responsibilities. So I'm glad that today I live in a country where there are checks and balances. And I can have responsibilities, but also rights. So I'm fortunate for that. And yes, it was a choice to move here. And again, I'm fortunate for that. It was, I mean, I don't know how much you want to, we want me to talk about those years. It was the first nine years of my life. So I remember some things about it and like the food was rationalized. So you would have a punch card that you would go, you were only allowed to get one bread per day per family, for example. And oftentimes I was the one going to the store to get that for my family as they were busy working or flour. Again, only a bag of flour per month and everything. Oh, the food was rationalized, think of dairy, everything. So those things that are hard to imagine nowadays and in a lot of the countries, even those that are born now in Romania, it's hard to believe that those things were happening back then 30 years ago, more than 30 years ago. But yeah. Well, you were born into a society with a lot of responsibilities and not very many rights. You moved to a country where you have maybe more rights than responsibilities at times. And you chose to go into public health. So what's the experience been like for you as a public health professional in a moment or in an era where we're having to manage public health decisions and populations unlike any time we've experienced in our lives? Yeah, I think maybe because I lived with not a lot of rights and between different economies and through a transition period. With life, I became an advocate for people to speak about their rights. So not just for myself. So slowly I just became an interest in public health and I worked for a couple of years in Medicaid policy, where I worked on hospital policy and hospital benefit and making sure individuals were getting the access they needed in hospitals in Colorado. And then for the last four years, I have focused on walkability and accessibility for all. I recognize that I'm an able-bodied person but there are many out there that do not have the same skills that I have using my two legs to walk around. And when we build for the most disadvantaged, we are building for all because we all benefit from sidewalks and everything. So even though we don't recognize that because we take things for granted as able-bodied people but I think maybe that's what got me into advocacy and just dedicating myself to a public service that way. Barb, did I see you sitting where you wanted to jump in? Sure, I wanted to jump in on the part about how the difference between the culture that you grew up in Anna and the culture that we're in now, you're right, we have a lot more rights. I think the other piece that I think is different and maybe some of you have other thoughts on this but I think our responsibilities are more voluntary. There are very few things that we're actually required to do in this country. There are a lot of things that we're asked to do and that are good for the society if we do but I think in some of those other countries it's much more mandatory responsibilities and that makes it harder because people can choose not to fulfill those responsibilities in this country. Yes, yeah, I think you're right Barb. Again, I grew up with a lot of responsibilities. So I think I still have those traits of, oh, it's my duty to help someone. It's my duty to show up. It's my duty to be on time. It's just things like that or follow the rule of the law. For those that know me, I'm a very rule follower even as an advocate where I'm trying to break the barriers I'm still following the rules. So I'm just arguing with myself sometimes. So yeah, I think you're right. There are not a lot of imposed responsibilities. Yeah, I think maybe that's part of what's made things a little bit harder in the pandemic is that there have been more imposed responsibilities that we're not used to in this country where they've said, you have to do this. You have to wear a mask and we're not used to that. We're used to having a choice. Even if we mostly choose to follow, it's still a choice. Yes. Rich, I saw you. Yeah, let me jump in a little bit. Values is a way I come at this not necessarily state sanctioned rights. And one of the values that I have deeply is the right to life. People having the right to live and in a good way, clean air, clean water. Those ought to be absolutes no matter where you are and no matter what political system you live in. Unfortunately, that's not the way it is, but as you move into other rights, I think they are more conditional and that you have to weigh what others, you have to weigh what effect your exercise of a right has on others. And so it really angers me taking the gun, taking the violence this week. And perhaps this isn't the best example in Boulder because I didn't hear whispers of it's my right, it's my gun, I'll fight to the death. That really, for some reason, that really pushes my button when your liberty is more important than my life. Same thing applies with masks. Whether it's mandatory or not, it's sensible. It's the human thing to do. And I don't really need a government telling me to do the human sense of all things. So those are some thoughts I had when you were talking to Barbara and Anna. Yeah, we're gonna follow up on some of those thoughts. Let me follow up on them a little bit because I'm right with you, Rich. And I wanna step back first and acknowledge that it was really interesting to listen to Anna talk about her life in Romania and the limitations in terms of your freedom and the responsibilities that were really imposed upon you. And it made me reflect a little differently things that I think of as my rights and challenges. And here I am trying to critique what our society does and coming from where you come from, my concerns almost feel petty. But I do think in a Jumping to Barb's comment about voluntary responsibilities, I think that's spot on. But I would kinda push this up further to say, we have some rights that come with implicit responsibilities. And one of the challenges that I think we're having now is that people are forgetting those implicit responsibilities. Freedom of speech, let's just use that one as an example. What does it mean to have freedom of speech? There's an implicit responsibility that we have to put up with other people's free speech as well. It's not just our right to say whatever we wanna say, but I've got a responsibility now to listen to some stuff I mean, I wanna listen to. And maybe take it a step further than that. Do I have a responsibility to maybe try to understand that? That may be too aspirational a goal. But I think where we are today, when you see the people protesting in Boulder about masks and you see the NRA coming out with statements about guns and everyone is laser focused on the right side of the equation, completely disconnected from the explicit or implicit responsibility side. So let me read two statements. You probably have seen these on the internet as memes on Facebook. But they seem to kind of capture some of what I've already heard and I think some of what more we'll talk about. You probably have seen this one that it quotes an indigenous elder of the Cherokee descent. And the statement is this, the difference between a Western settler mindset of I have rights and an indigenous mindset of I have obligations. One believes he was born with rights. The other believes he was born with obligations to serve past, present, future generations and Mother Earth. Different societies, very different perspectives on rights and responsibilities. Here's the second by a statement quote of Peter Marshall and Barb you can confirm this if you will, one of the great preachers. Baby, I don't think he was considered a theologian but one of the great preachers of the last century as a parish minister. May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right, right? So if you take the two statements, questions kind of surface pretty quickly like what do we owe if anything to one another? The future generations to the environment and then in Peter Marshall's quote, what is right, right? Now there are no easy answers to those but I want to pitch those to you just to ask for your immediate kind of off the top of your head reactions and as you do that I'm going to pick up the pen I dropped so I can make notes to myself. Who would like to start? I'll start. I love both of those quotes. Those are inspiring. Those are pre-dos to live by. They assume I think truth as one of their bases, truth of nature, truth of ecology, truth of before and after. I'm not going to be here forever and you know who cares but so I think truth is one of the things that guides through those. The ability to see beyond my life and the ability to look back and see how I got here or how we all got here. So that's one thing that popped to mind. I think that also relates to what Cameron was saying with respect to speech. Speech is not unlimited. It is bound by the offense I may cause others. It's bound by whether I'm telling the truth. Those are a couple of things that I think should restrain anybody's right to speak. One of the benefits of having Cameron Ewan rich in this conversation as attorneys with your legal background is what you brought into that conversation just now, Rich. So let's build on that just a little bit. We have heard Cameron may reference to the demonstration last weekend in Boulder and there were demonstrations across the country and I'm looking at the Sunday paper here the maskless marchers, right? And the signs about, you know, go naked with your face or whatever those signs were, right? Bear your smile that can. And without meaning no disrespect to anybody. Part of what we've heard a lot of in the consents to beginning the pandemic is what my constitutional rights are to not wear a mask. Could you just unpack, either or both of you unpack that kind of a statement in terms of what the real legal parameters are, both from freedom of speech and then, you know, how does one think about constitutional rights even before you get to what we owe one another and what's the right thing to do? Go ahead, Cameron. Well, I was gonna let you take a stab at it, Rich, because, you know, my, I don't live in the constitutional law world but I don't see anything in the constitution that gives me the right to decide for myself which governmental rules I wanna follow and which not to follow. That to me is the crux of the issue. Part of my responsibility, if I choose, you know, and as an American citizen by choice, if I choose to take advantage of the society that I'm in now, the community that I live in, the city of Longmont, the state of Colorado, then I also have a responsibility to live under the guidelines that are established for how that runs. And one of those is that the government can establish some rules. I may not like them. I may completely disagree with them but if I'm taking advantage of the benefits, I gotta follow the rules and that to me, you know, is the crux of the issue. I think there's no constitutional right to just pick and choose what rules I wanna follow. All right, Rich, you can pick that up and then I saw both Barb and Anna, even though they'd like to jump back in. So that's the, we'll take that turn around and screen you. I'm not sure this is so much constitutional. It's going back to what several of us have said. It's the right to be free from your disease. It's the right to be free from your lack of truth. It's my right to be free from, I mean, it's, it works two ways. And I think where the constitution, the constitution doesn't try to cover all of those bases. I think the founders assumed that, well, they didn't even assume, that, you know, liberty came after life and pursuit of happiness came after both. And if you wanna view that as a moral spectrum, that's where the founders were coming from. Their first, their first, first in line was life. And if I'm hurting somebody else's life, I'm wrong, even though I think I might have a constitutional right to do so. Well, and I would say too, one of the things we often overlook, and it's a very, it's a clear example is the mask ordinances, is that nobody has declared that anybody has to wear a mask. You can stay in your house and never wear a mask. It's only if you choose to go into a restaurant or into a store or in a crowded place that you're required to wear the mask. So that's your choice, whether you're gonna go to that place and wear that mask or not go to that place. Even students who have to wear masks, supposedly have to wear masks in school were given the option of a homeschool program for the year so that they would never have to wear them. We tend to narrow this to either or when there are really more options that we're not willing to consider because we don't like them as well. So I think that's an important thing to remember too in that. Anna, did you wanna add to this? Yeah, I was gonna say that how are we gonna, you know, respect each other's responsibilities and rights? If we all have the same right, how are we gonna respect each other's right? And then, you know, we all, I don't know if you guys played the board, the game board pandemic, there is such a game board and it has been created long before the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is no winner and there is no loser. We actually all win or we all lose, it's a team effort. So either we all work together to win a battle with a virus or whatever it is, or we all lose the battle. So we all have a responsibility, you know, towards each other to help each other, you know, towards our health, towards our life, to protect each other. I would add to that though, that I was encouraged at the beginning of the pandemic when we started seeing the modeling of how viruses spread and if certain percentage of the people followed the rules, then the virus would flood. I was very encouraged to see that if 70% of us followed the rules, we would pretty much be able to contain the, you know, the problem because I know that there are people who can't or won't choose to follow the rules. And so to know that there's a 30% margin for that makes me feel a lot more like we can get through this because there are so many who want to do the right thing but then there are always a few who either don't want to or choose not to. And it's good to know that it doesn't have to be. We all do it in order to win or we don't all do it and then we lose. Cameron. I think that's an excellent point. And one thing I want to make sure that this doesn't become is that we're not bashing the anti-maskers. I think I absolutely want to hear what they have to say. I want that input. If there are things that I don't know that they have studied and evaluated and can convince me or more importantly, convince the people that make the rules that the rules should be different, more power to them. And if they want to march down the streets and demonstrate, absolutely, that's their right. I'd kind of prefer that they do it within the boundaries of the rules that are established for whichever city they're walking around in. But there's no bashing of the opinions that they have. I just think we have an obligation because we're members of a society and a community to do it within the structures that we've all established. Anna, if people wanted to learn more about the game that you took, the board game, how would they, where would they learn? Where would they get the information? Can they just Google that and learn? Yeah, I think you can get it online. And there's actually a store in downtown. Now I can't remember the name of the store. And I don't know if I should name drop anyway. What is it? The local public act, this television, we could do anything about it. Is it 5th and Main, I think? There's a store that has all sorts of games, game boards and comic books. If you're familiar with the comic book store, again, the name escapes me right now. But it does have the pandemic game. Yeah, we just got a new edition and it gets more complicated. Like it has some spy in there. So I was like, okay, this is, I don't know if you want to deal with that in real life. Well, the longer we've been in this pandemic, the more complicated it's become. So what are the parallels that come to your mind? As I think about trying to understand, Cameron, your comments are well stated the whole purpose of these conversations aren't to bash anybody. And in fact, if there are folks listening tonight who would like to join this conversation, I hope they will. But I personally continue to reflect on what are the parallels? When it comes to at least public health and safety, if you take guns out of the equation, what are the other examples where we've all agreed these are things we do together because we owe it to one another. Because it's not just about how I want to exercise my personal rights or authority, but what we owe one another is a social order. Like you don't drive 60 miles an hour through it, school zone, right? Or secondhand smoke. People just pretty much, don't they? Or am I just making that up? People are sensitive to secondhand smoke and not can't smoke in a lot of public places now. But examples like that where they haven't been controversial or they're not emotional or they're not politically charged the way the masking issue became so politically charged. Barb. Well, no shoes, no shirt, no service. Nobody argues about that. Yeah. I'll pick up on smoking. I've been in bands, blues and rock bands often on. That's right, yeah. That's right. And when the smoking bands came into play, it just shot a hole through the heart of live music. And we had six or eight people in the audience and 20 or 30 outside. But your point is well taken. Traffic is one, you stay in the right lane and they stay in the right lane and we don't run into each other. And I think we take it for granted after a while. And I'm gonna go back. The respect is for life and the respect is for your safety and the safety of others. That's implicit in both things. You just mentioned traffic and smoking. So anybody wanna help kind of advance the thinking about how the masking issue itself became so emotional and politically charged. What was it as Barb suggested earlier that it was simply the newest form of government in the view of some overreach, right? Telling us what we can do or can't do. But the government does that as Cameron is that that's the nature of an orderly society, right? That there are rules to follow, you know, lanes to stay in traffic and otherwise. What's your take on how this one got so charged? Don't make me talk. How about somebody else talk? And maybe Anna, go ahead. Well, just a small observation. I think this country, since we were talking about the Constitution earlier has a history of resistance to change because there haven't been many amendments to the Constitution. So it requires gradual transformation and this was coming really fast at people. So it was hard for them to adapt and accept. And then the second part was, as you were saying, it came from top down. So a lot of people were having a problem with that as well. Yeah, maybe that was just it, that it was overnight, right? There was really no transition time, right? You're having to adapt in real time, Barb. I don't think in our lifetime, I haven't been through a situation like this before in my lifetime. So it was overnight. None of a sudden. Yeah, well, I would say something. We all took polio, well, not all of us, perhaps. I remember getting the polio sugar cubes when I was very young and that was in the midst of apparently a polio endemic, at least, and I don't remember it a lot. I remember the sugar cube. You know, it's interesting, guys our age, people, men and women our age, but I would say guys because the two things we would all remember when we were fourth graders were those sugar cubes and our lottery numbers in the 1968 draft, right? Two things you never forget. Barb, you were going to tell me. I would say another one that's happened in our lifetime, but not as quickly, but that I remember having some pushback on was seatbelt laws. That's another safety issue that was mandated by the government and it was a change. It didn't go into effect quite as quickly, I don't think, but there was a generation that wouldn't wear their seatbelts and then there was a generation who now wouldn't imagine starting the car without it. It's become an accepted thing. Yeah, that's a great example of adaptation, right? And it did take time. And I suppose that's true of the second hand smoke issue as well. I'm seeing that we're 20, we have 20 minutes left in this hour. So if there are, if anybody's listening and you'd like your voice in this conversation, there should, you should be seeing a phone number that shows up and we invite you to call in and I'll get a cue, a signal that there's somebody in the queue and we'll welcome you into the conversation. In both the Peter Marshall statement and in the Cherokee elder statement, there's this reference to what we owe one another. Anybody wanna just reflect on from your perspective, what do you feel like you owe? Not just your family, what do you owe your neighbors? What do you owe the larger society? And what do you feel like people owe you, right? As a member of society? I can start off with that. I think that what I owe my neighbor or the stranger on the street is that to not allow my kind of exercise of my rights or whatever I'm doing in the moment to kind of unduly overlap into what they're doing. I don't wanna impinge on their ability to do something. The traffic laws are a great example. I would love to get an I-25 and drive as fast as I can to my next destination, because it's fun. But it's not gonna be safe for anybody else. Maybe the people way behind me, but the people in front of me are not gonna be in a good position. And so I owe it to them to be cautious with how I maneuver around them. Even though I have a desire and maybe a right to get from point A to point B, but there's a way to get there without causing them undue risk. Rich? The Cherokee elder statement probably grabs me more than the other one a little bit. I think the Cherokee elder was speaking in terms of cycles. And I think Native Americans came to recognize that there were people of the earth living with the earth and it was sort of natural to see earth's cycles. And it was important, I think there's a saying to the seventh generation. No, what I do today, I do for the seventh generation after me. And it was a respect for those cycles. And Anna mentioned it earlier about concern for the environment, concern for the planet we live on. And that's what comes up for me with the Cherokee elder. Any other comment on this? Sure, I will. One of the things that, I'd like to kind of turn this around a little bit because one of the things that's in our constitution or at least in some of those documents is the pursuit of happiness and our right to pursue happiness. But the truth is, and I think we all know this inherently is that you can't pursue happiness. You can't make happiness a goal. Happiness is a side effect of doing what's right, doing good, serving others. And then you find yourself in a place of happiness because you have done those other things. So it's not necessarily just an obligation. It's also the way that I can live a life that is fulfilling and satisfying and brings happiness for me is if I focus not so much on myself but if I am an other oriented person. Thinking about what's best for other people ends up being best for me. I like that. Yeah. We're about to, well, before I move on to this next question, in the context of your school, Barb, my guess is you, whether it's masking, but in a host of issues, you have to deal with this balance of rights and responsibilities within the context of the order you've created in your school. I know the same is true for you in your work as a healthcare professional. Respecting the differences, the divergent values as Rich has framed this, I think it is a values issue. Cameron as the chair of the Alumni Housing Authority Board of Directors and now as the chair of the advisory board, you've had to deal with the same issues within the context of properties, LHA properties and residents, some willing and some less willing to comply with or abide by the rules and rights. And Rich, I know this is true in your work, both in the community and the variety of things you've done and as an attorney. So, how do you, in those settings, what's your approach? What's the message? Or the, and the methodology for helping people learn their way through whatever those conflicts are or those tensions are when they're presented, because I know they're presented and you've had to deal with them. Well, I'm not sure the attorney framework is a place from which to answer that question. At least the type of law I practice which is primarily civil litigation. But even so, there are rights, there are ways how you exercise or how you put forward your thoughts. There's rules of evidence, there's rules of procedure and so forth. So there is that framework, but I'm not sure there's an element of transcendence from a lawsuit or at least most of them. Yeah, a little more transactional. I'd say from a school perspective, we deal with this all the time in helping kids figure things out. And one of the things that is really helpful is to frame things in terms of choices because the truth is there's always a choice. A student can choose, you can tell a student that they can't disrupt the class, but the truth is that they can. They can choose to do that and we can't stop them. So the choice is, do you want to be in this class and be respectful of the others in this class and allow them to work? Or do you want to go work in the principal's office? That's your choice. You still have the choice to continue to be disruptive and be relocated and not be with your friends. And we have that in society as well in so many different ways where we actually have more choice than we recognize, but they may not be choices that we prefer. And so we can choose the way that allows us to have the outcome that we want. Well, some of what you described, there are consequences for choices and exercise that may not be the outcome that somebody wants. And that's part of what's happening in the larger social context. In the school settings, there's just a little more, it's a little more clearly defined where the authority lies and the presence is more timely probably than in the larger social order, right? When people are free wheeling. But I think the lesson is an important one. We raise our children to understand there are parameters and there's a respect that has to go with the welfare, safety, learning environment, right? That others are experiencing and it's not just about what your preferences are but about what we need to do together here. How does that play on it? Go ahead. Well, for those that know me very well, I don't deal very well with change, but that's because I wanna hear everyone. Like I want everyone at the table. I want everyone to speak up and let me know why they want something or they don't want something. And this is valid in both my work as an advocacy or when I worked at Medicaid, we had to reach across the aisle. We had to talk with the legislative branch. And we gotta meet somewhere, not necessarily in the middle, but we gotta meet somewhere. So everyone might give away something but we gotta meet somewhere and have a dialogue and learn from one another. Why are we thinking this way? Why are we choosing this way? And where can we get to a common decision? Yeah, I think, Anna, you hit on something really crucial which is you want everyone at the table and you wanna hear what they have to say. And I'll give you two examples of that. In my world, one the legal example and another housing authority. The legal example, I don't do litigation like Rick. So that's a tough one for this because it's by nature adversarial. But I do a lot of contract work, so there's negotiation. And there's built in give and take. If my client says, I want A, B and C, there's a consequence that, okay, well, if you want A, B and C, that means that the party on the other side has to get D, E, and F. And you've got some give and take constantly. And so you really have to strive to understand the perspective and the interests of the person that you're dealing with and see how they can be married with yours. It can be a little more challenging in the housing authority situation. And the example is you have an individual who's living in an apartment. So their home is in the building and they are adamant that they want to do something. They need to be able to use their space in a certain way and they're demanding it. And the rules say no. How do you bridge that gap? That's not a negotiation anymore because they're already in a setting that comes with predefined parameters. But I think we have an obligation as the housing authority, as the people helping provide that housing to sit down with them and really start by understanding, listening to them. But let me hear where you're coming from. So I'm not just, my job isn't just to tell you no to whatever you say, it's to understand what you're saying and then say, okay, I hear you, but here's the bigger picture. Here's why we can't do that. Or maybe, aha, I've heard something in your request that I think we actually can do that our simple no might have overlooked. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. With my duty on planning and zoning commission is about the same. It's a quasi-judicial commission. So we got to follow the code most of the time. We don't have a leeway to... Pardon? Only most of the time? Sometimes we can say, okay, we approve this. We can modify. We have the authority. And we can interpret things, right? We can interpret the code and that's fun when we can do that. But sometimes it's pretty black and white and we can't change things for the residents that are coming forth with complaints. So that's hard. We've got just a few minutes left here. And we're now on a regular basis watching and listening, depending on whatever news source you're looking at or whatever news cycle you're in about the reopening of society. And the reopening of society where in many places around the world including in the United States, the trends in terms of infection, not death rates but infection rates and hospitalizations are starting to turn in the wrong direction, right? We've seen such dramatic declines or decreases in the last couple of months. And with the hope, right, introduced by vaccines, people are anxious to get back out. We all are for all the reasons we all understand. Any reflections, concerns, advice, perspectives you wanna bring for this conversation and for anybody who listens as we anticipate the reopening of society, how do we do this in a way that takes us right back to this balance so that we don't do to ourselves. We've done a couple of times now and that is provoke another spike, right? Another way, Rich. I must be hard for the policymakers to deal with the economic forces, the business that's closing down or suffering over against the societal need to deal with an animal that knows no boundaries and doesn't have any feelings and could care less about how many people it kills. I mean, it's a virus. And it's interesting that we have a worldwide problem. That has been interesting to me instead of just based in one state or one country. And we have a whole world working on this one way or the other, but I'm just glad I'm not the policymaker making decisions on masks or mom and pops business. Any advice for the policymakers? That's the question. I still think you have to favor life. I mean, that's my mantra. I would counter that a little though, Rich, by saying that it's not just life, it's being able to live. Because I would argue that an elderly person who is stuck in a room completely alone, unable to see family or friends, unable to go anywhere, is not really able to live. And so do we completely take away living in order to preserve life? I'm not sure. I think that's a really hard balance. I think we've used blunt instruments for a while with respect to the pandemic. And hence, we have elderly people stuck in the room. There may be a different response next time around. And I would agree. I don't think that I don't want to condemn the policymakers that tried to make the best decisions they could, certainly. But I also think that we need to be a little more nuanced in how we look at both life and living. I'm just gonna insert, right in this moment, I'm not part of this panel, but if I were part of the panel, right? I think the, oh, I just lost my train of thought. There you go. I should have just said it rather than, go ahead, either Cameron or Anna want to jump in, on this reopening of society. You know, I think the advice to the policymakers, I don't have any advice. This is a challenging, challenging step. And in some degree, it was almost easier heading into this because there was a bias towards action, just do something. Now we don't have quite the urgency. So I suppose my advice is this, don't fail to take action just because it's not urgent. And you probably need significantly more thoughtfulness now as we work our way out of this carefully and to have some flexibility, you know. The city of Longmont may have a great way that they roll it out. And then we should look down the road and see somebody else doing it differently. They say, aha, maybe we ought to adapt. You know, one of the realities or the facts of this whole series of conversations is the, at least the intent that one builds on another. So the first of these future we deserve conversations, the topic was redefining the role and responsibility of government. And it went from there to truth and truth telling. Rich, you mentioned truth telling or speaking truth as part of this experience. And then equity and justice and then the common good and tonight rights and responsibilities. But one of, if I go back to the very first conversation, one of the things I continue to wonder about is whether or not, I don't know that government learns well or learns fast. And I'm not certain government has the memory, you know, for what the important learnings were to never be forgotten, right? As we go into the future. So just in terms of what should we never forget? What are the lessons we should have learned that would be long remembered? Any perspectives from you on that question? Because I'm gonna start wrapping this up in about 35 seconds. Well, I think one of the things that we all need to learn and remember is that the government and the people making these decisions are not demons or big government. They're people like us in really tough situations trying to make really tough decisions and trying to do something, Cameron's bias for action. We just need to give them grace and we need to support as much as we can what's going on. I would say try and make informed decisions and educate yourself on the matter and listen to the specialists. They, you know, they dedicate their lives and years to learn about these things and we should trust them more. Richard Cameron? I like Barb's comments. Everybody's comments. It's about the collective. It's not about the individual. When you're talking about a government, you're talking about a way to promote a society and societal values that you want now and that you want for the next generation and perhaps the one after that. I agree with the Grace comment. Yeah, and I would say I think once we didn't ever forget would be that the people that have a vested interest in this are just trying to do the best that they can. They may not be succeeding all the time, but they're trying. And then secondly, the answer that we come up with in the moment needs to be open to adjustment. That, you know, a week later, new information may come out and we got to be able to pivot. Well, as an individual who spends part of my life in that role, I can assure you there are no perfect people. They're just trying to figure it out as they go along like everybody else. I thank you so much. I know how busy you are with your lives and I know what kind of service you deliver in your day-to-day routines to this community. So as a resident of the community, I'm deeply grateful for who you are and what you do and how you do it. And then especially grateful that you'd give an hour to me tonight and to the community. I, as I said, I think this is a gift. I hope people watch this. They'll never have another chance to listen to the wisdom and perspectives of this group on this particular topic. And to any of the viewers out there, if you like the program, tell your friends and neighbors. If you don't like the program, let me know what I can do to make this program better. The next of these programs is on April 14th. Our topic will be recovery in the post-pandemic future. And that panel will be comprised of leaders in this community who are day-to-day involved in recovery efforts. So it'll be probably the only time you'll have a chance to hear them as well. I won't finish tonight with my Seth Godin post blog because we just ran out of time. So thank you. Thank you viewers. Have a great couple of weeks. See you in two weeks on April 14th. Nice to talk with you guys.