 And good afternoon, folks. Welcome, at least virtually, to Fort Worth, Texas. We're delighted that you're part of this neighborhood USA conference and in particular part of our session this afternoon about creating more equitable communities, Fort Worth's Task Force on Race and Culture. I don't think I'll be saying anything controversial by commenting that almost exactly a year ago, the killing of George Floyd ignited calls for racial equity in communities across the country and around the world. And of course, Fort Worth, Texas was no exception, but I would say that we had had our own George Floyd moment, our own awakening to racial justice issues about three or four years before then, in December of 2016. So in a sense, we've had a three-year head start on many other cities in addressing these issues. And so we hope that our experience in Fort Worth, what we've done right and what we might have been able to do better, will be of some benefit to everyone in the session today. Now I see that we have among folks in the audience, Ms. Mitchell from Birmingham, Alabama. Ms. Mitchell, you all in Birmingham probably had about a 60-year head start on us. So forgive us for being somewhat presumptuous. Many of you have been involved in civil rights work over the course of many years and we would benefit from your questions and comments as well. I'd like to begin with a brief overview of our Racing Culture Initiative. And then I'd like to pose some questions to our panelists, after which we would like to entertain questions from the audience. So if you have questions, please follow the instructions that Catherine gave us a few moments ago and post those questions in the question box. And we'll be sure to do everything we can to address them. So I'm going to try to share with you a file with information about our Race and Culture Initiative. And this should be showing up in just a moment. You should see the cover slide with the title of today's session. Thank you Catherine. And you see the names of the folks who are serving in the panel. Besides myself, we have customer Bivens, Ms. Biggins, Rabbi Bloom, Mr. Sanders, and Mr. Tucker, about whom a little more in due course. As I mentioned, it was December of 2016 when the news media around the world and of course we live today at a time when news anywhere becomes news everywhere almost instantaneously. Headlines around the world captured the drama and Fort Worth associated with what ordinarily might have been a routine request for police assistance and it turned into an overreaction and calls for justice. And these protests extended over a period of roughly six months, many late night City Council meetings, eventually leading to the appointment of a task force on race and culture. In June of 2017, the Forest City Council held a special called meeting and announced its intent to appoint this task force with four co-chairs and authorizing those four co-chairs, so you see pictured on the screen, to select the other members of the task force. The City Council's intent was for this task force to be community based and to have broad discretion over its charge to address issues of race and culture in our community. And in fact, the task force took that responsibility seriously and discharged it, I think, in an exemplary manner. The presiding co-chair was Rosa Navajar who could not join us today, but we do have the other three co-chairs, Ms. Biggins, Rabbi Bloom, and Mr. Sand. We also had Estrus Tucker, who is our professional facilitator for the task force on race and culture and of course, a council member Bivens. Here's a picture of Estrus Tucker and the logo for the National League of Cities. We also employed the resources of NLC, which has its own program to promote racial equity. I would say that we were particularly blessed to have had Estrus Tucker in support of our efforts. Mr. Tucker is a nationally, actually internationally respected expert on human relations. He just happens to have lived in Fort Worth and because Fort Worth is his hometown, he assigned priority to working with us on this effort. So we're particularly indebted to Estrus Tucker for his leadership of this effort. The city council adopted a resolution in August formally creating the task force and giving it some modest tasks, including that of conducting community conversations about race and culture, assessing disparities in the way that we provide municipal services and providing some leadership training. But the task force determined at an early stage that their mission should be much broader. And in fact, they went back to the city council and asked them to extend their deadline from August of 2018 to December of 2018, so they have enough time to complete its work. Here you see a listing of all the task force members, the four co-chairs plus 18 others who were serving at the time that the task force completed its work. The task force's mission was to listen, learn, build and bridge in order to create an inclusive Fort Worth for all residents with the vision that Fort Worth becomes a city that is inclusive, equitable, respectful, communal, and compassionate. We provided leadership training to city officials, but also to community leaders and interested residents. We had many different public engagement opportunities, 89 different events, and involved some 2100 participants through those activities. And they identified various issues that we should be addressing. The top 10 included discrimination in education, failure to acknowledge the pervasiveness of racism, that this was largely an issue that we were not discussing, that we needed, first of all, to acknowledge it and then to explore it deeply. Discrimination, economic development and criminal justice, continuing racial segregation in the community, racial prejudice, lack of political representation, discrimination in public accommodations and employment and in housing. I'm sure that these are all familiar themes for many on this call. Some of the more salient comments that we heard more than once from members of the public included the perception that the city is doing little or nothing to improve race relations, that the problem is really systemic, structural and institutional racism, not simply personal or individual behavior, that again we had failed to acknowledge the problem causing the victims of racism to feel unheard. And finally the need to continue to expand and deepen community conversations about race and culture. This is an ongoing effort, not a one and done kind of activity. The task force determined that we really needed to look at the full scope of quality of life issues in Fort Worth, how residents in different circumstances experienced life in Fort Worth. If you live on one side of the railroad track, so to speak, you experience Fort Worth differently than if you live on the other side, and we need to understand that about each other. And so the task force decided that rather than looking exclusively at municipal sources, they would look at all aspects of life in Fort Worth including criminal justice, economic development, education, governance, health, housing and transportation. And actually divided into committees to address these topics in considerable depth. They analyzed disparities with respect to each of these seven topics, the extent of disparities, the causes of disparities, and made recommendations for strategies, actions, potential challenges, responsible parties and needed resources. And finally, we wanted to measure our progress. We wanted those measures to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time constrained. Where are we going to be five years from now in reducing identified disparities with respect to all the topics that we addressed? So here's a matrix depicting the 22 race and culture strategies to address identified disparities. Each of the seven topics that you see listed on the left hand column contains three or four strategies to address corresponding disparities. The highlighted items are the ones on which we've made the most progress so far, creating independent oversight of our police department, establishing a police cadet program, expanding the capacity of our minority owned businesses through a new business equity ordinance, establishing criteria procedures for redrawing our city council district boundaries. So as to make it more feasible for folks who elect people who represent their interests, establishing a new department of diversity and inclusion in city government, a new diversity inclusion program, and providing training for all of our 6,000 or so city employees in issues of diversity. And establishing a transportation equity policy and five-year action plan. We're now moving to establish a municipal equity plan that encompasses all municipal services. So these are the 22 strategies. We've made progress on seven of them to a significant degree. We're making progress on all of them to one degree or another. And we have a dashboard for tracking our progress with respect to each of the race and culture strategies. But as I mentioned, this is not a one and done kind of thing. We want to have an ongoing oversight group that ensures the work of the task force on race and culture continues into the future. And so we're calling upon our newly reconstituted Fort Worth Human Relations Commission to undertake that responsibility if they've done so enthusiastically and vigorously. You see a picture on the screen of a demonstration in 1965 that led to the creation of the Human Relations Commission just two years afterwards. The Human Relations Commission has divided into the seven committees corresponding to the same seven committees that the Task Force on Race and Culture had established. And those committees are addressing those identified disparities and the strategies to address those disparities. They actually briefed our city council earlier this week on the progress that they're making. We're quite encouraged by the work of the Human Relations Commission along these lines. We're asking them to address the following questions. How much progress have we made in implementing those strategies? How should we accelerate that progress? How effective had the strategies and actions been in reducing racial and cultural disparities? Are we just taking action or are we actually moving the needle in respect to identified disparities? If necessary, if we're not moving the needle enough how should we adjust our strategies and actions to achieve better results? How should we update our five-year objectives? And how should we engage community leaders and other residents in meaningful discussions about these issues? Here are the four main points I want to make that may be of some value to other communities. The attributes of our process to eliminate disparities include a data-driven approach. We want the process to be driven by objective data, not merely by anecdotes. We want to focus on outcomes, not just how much we're contributing to this effort in the way of resources, which is important, not just what products we're issuing, but what outcomes have we actually achieved in making for a worthy more equitable community with respect to the disparities we had identified. And some of those disparities are rather glaring. I wish we'd had time to give you more illustrations. We want this process to be informed by public participation. The public needs to be an active part of this effort. This is not something to be done by a small group out of sight and out of mind. It's important for the public to be engaged. And finally, the city cannot do it alone. We need partnerships with many different community groups. This is a community-wide issue, not a city government issue, and we need to approach it with that idea in mind. So let me turn our conversation over now to our distinguished panelists. Pictured from left to right, you have Councilman Regina Biddens, who has had a long career in many different aspects of the community relations and communications, including her current work as Chief Executive Officer for North Texas Lead, an organization that promotes career opportunities for underrepresented minority groups. Next, we have Ms. Lily Biggins, who has allegedly retired recently from a long and successful career in healthcare administration. As an executive with Texas Health Resources, we welcome Ms. Biggins. Rabbi Andrew Bloom, one of the foremost spiritual leaders in our community, and active in a wide range of civic affairs. Barbara Sanders, some would say a legendary figure in our community as an executive with the Forest Art Telegram newspaper and other popular media. But I think better known for being a kind of conscience of the community, one who is not afraid to say that, which may not be popular at the moment, but which needs to be said. We welcome Mr. Sanders. And I introduced Estra's Tucker earlier, our esteemed facilitator of difficult conversations about the race and culture. So with that introduction, let me stop sharing and pose some questions and let's see if we can begin with the jump ball. Let me ask any of the five who wishes to jump in to respond to the following. Why did you agree four years ago to play a leadership role in a race and culture initiative? What were your expectations at that time? And to what extent has the initiative met your expectations? You'll just need to unmute yourself if you want to be the first one to speak. And if I've never known this group to be vast, let me say Rabbi. I always need to talk before Bob Ray because it's been that way for four years, so that's why I'll take the first one. For me, it was a great honor. I'll tell you before the task force for race and culture began, I'd been serving on the mayor's faith-based cabinet on Compassionate Fort Worth. So it's all sort of like a natural progression. And to me, each morning when we say our morning prayers in synagogues and around the world, one of the first prayers we say is, we thank God for making me and his image. And it doesn't say, made me Caucasian in his image or an African American in his image or Hispanic in his image or straight in his image or LGBTQ in his image. It says in his image. So to me, ensuring that each person's image is seen not only by God but by each other is essential to my daily life and essential to my communal life. So when I was asked to do it, the answer was, of course. Maddie Parker called. It was, of course, I would do it. I think the process itself was a great process because we all got to meet and understand different aspects of the communities that we may not have known and thereby bring them together in order to help make a better fabric of the city. And I'm sure Bob Ray and Lily and Fernandio remember this. When we walked into the first meeting to meet each other, I said, I hope this is communal, not political. And they laughed at me. But I think in the end it was very communal and not that political because we made a decision in the beginning that we were going to drive this, we weren't going to allow outside influences to drive it. And I think it's been a good thing. Have we gotten everywhere where we need to go? Absolutely not. But a walk of a million miles of a thousand miles starts with one baby step. And we started and we've continued to going. So I think we're a better, more compassionate city. But I think we have more to go. And I'm honored that I've been part of this little step moving forward. Bob Ray? Yes. Well, as Ben suggested, I was probably the most cynical of those people who were appointed as co-chairs. In fact, they had to be a little on twisting by the mayor and the city manager and Fernando, I'll say, for me to agree, because I was skeptical. I've seen groups before, commissions and task force and committees, worked for a year or several months and come up with a report. It gets filed and nothing else is done. And I wanted to make sure that if we were going to do some serious work, and if I was going to devote my time to it along with everybody else, that what we did would actually be recognized by the city council as something that was important and would be dealt with. And I was assured of that by all of the people that I talked to. And my statement was with the warning, hey, if I find out we start doing this, and it's just for show, I'm going to be out again. Well, as it turned out, it wasn't just for show. We sometimes got signals that what we may be considering in terms of recommendations may not ever get done, maybe dead on arrival, that kind of thing. But we as a group decided that if it's dead on arrival, it won't be because we killed it, it'll be because somebody else aborted it, not us. And to be honest, I am more than pleased with the progress we made so far. The fact that we have a police monitor, the fact that we have a director of diversity and inclusion already on board, those two things alone moved us forward. And I'll just say this, I mean, in terms of George Floyd, this city, we had demonstrations for several weeks, I mean, three and four a day every week in forward to George Floyd. Our demonstrations were peaceful. They brought together a group that I didn't expect to see in forward. A lot of young people involved, a lot of young Anglos involved. And I think because we had already gone through this process with the task force, we didn't have the violence that happened in many other cities. Because we were already a step ahead. As it turned out, our deputy police chief holds a liaison with our group. He heard everything that we heard. So a lot of the things that were being implemented, he was already on board with. Fernando, I mean, the whole city manager's office, they knew what we were doing and helped facilitate where we should go in terms of dealing with the city council. So I'm pleased. Yes, I will die unsatisfied. You got to understand that. I mean, I realized that about 50 years ago, I won't live to see everything that I want to see done in forward. But I'll die a little more satisfied than I would have, say, five or six years ago. Miss Lily, just need to unmute yourself. Sorry. I'm you, Lily. You're still muted. Lily, I'm you still on mute. Let me try to do it. If you don't just don't touch it. Hold on one second. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Kathy. I will not let me unmute you, ma'am. I'm sorry. We we still can't. Yeah, we cannot hear you. It's not letting me unmute you. I'm sorry. It's not. It's something on your end that I can't fix. Can she can she press the mute? Where the microphone is, if she presses there, yes, that's all she needs to do. No, she just needs to push where it says mute on your screen. A little bite the button. If you'll just push that down and unmute you. She's done several of them. Is there a number she can have to call in on? Because she's done several virtual. No, that we don't have a phone number for this. Okay. It's not one of those. It's just an unmute. Oh, this is a shame. Yeah. Miss Lily, you can use the chat function if you want to and type in anything that you want to say there. I'm so sorry. I'm not sure. I'm going to call Lily. Let's keep working on it and see if we can come back to Miss Biggins. Yeah, but she's doing that. I want to say that Lily was a person who insisted that everything we did had to be driven by data. She would ask for that. And as it turned out, to my surprise even, the city of Fort, all the data we needed, the city of Fort Worth basically had. Yes, we had, you know, the National League of Cities and all those people. But the city of Fort Worth had data that I didn't even know we had that substantiated a lot of the disparities that we were looking at. But Lily was one when every meeting said, what's the data? We've got to have the data. So I thank her for that. Thank you, Bob Ray. We are thrilled to have the Estrus Tucker connecting with us. Estrus, can you hear us? Estrus Tucker, can you hear me? Maybe not. Estrus, can you hear us? I can only, I can hear you. I heard you just then and I heard Gina earlier. Other than that, I haven't heard anything. No questions. So I don't really know where we are. A question is, Estrus, what was it that made you want to be a part of the, how did you feel about being a part of the race and culture task force? And why did you want to accept that? The briefest response is that Fort Worth is home. I'm a native Fort Worthian and home is like family for me. So I do diversity, equity and inclusion work around the country and some places beyond this country. The opportunity to engage a diversity of leaders to advance equity and inclusion and diversity in my hometown was powerfully compelling and continues to be. And I also think of James Baldwin when he's talking about his own racial equity work back when I think I was a year old and Baldwin was asked about his voice in America. And he simply says, I love America more than any other country in this world. And exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize America perpetually. And though my role wasn't about criticizing perpetually, but it was about bringing a critical eye to these issues in Fort Worth. And because Fort Worth is home and because I love it, I feel that it's imperative that I do my part to advance equity and inclusion to help us be better together than what we've been historically and what we were in 2017 when we started this. And even where we are now, there's so much work to do that requires all of us. And that was powerfully compelling to me. Thank you. Let's, let's see if Councilor Bivens wants to add any of the observations at this stage. Yeah, I thought it was appropriate that I go last. I did talk with Lily and she's going to hang in there just to see, but Lily has done many virtual meetings all the time. So she knows where that little mic is. I think there's something technical. But Fernando works with me and has worked with me long enough to know that I'm always going to be the person being painfully realistic. And so pardon me if I don't have a raw, raw response for you. I will be the first to let you all know I was not excited about a task force like this being formed because I didn't need a task force to let me know that there was a race problem in Fort Worth. And that was my position. I saw kicking the can down the road. And again, this is my realistic response to that question. When it comes to no violence in Fort Worth, Barbara, I love you dearly. But once you use tear gas, I think we had violence. Now the difference about Fort Worth is when we had the tear gas go off, people in Fort Worth knew who some of those people were. So we had back in the days the Black Panthers use the term agent provocateurs. We had many people who came to Fort Worth because they wanted to see this city burn. And when police spotted our protesters, the Fort Worth natives, they told them get off the bridge, go home and they did. But tear gas was used. And so for for practical purposes, it didn't go across completely non violent. I will tell you that there are people in this city still today who don't know some of the challenges we had in getting the public what they wanted. Every week we had what I call a verbal beatdown because people were telling the audience on cable TV they can fire the chief right now. And I know you all remember that too often what people see and perceive is not reality. That demand that that criticism came from people who did not understand the council manager form of government. Now what I can tell you is I am delighted. Please excuse me while my repairman waits for me. Do not leave. I will be there shortly. I've had no internet all day. I will be out there shortly. What what what has come from this process that is good for me is to see the data that we pushed for is to see those things that we can measure that we brag about all throughout this United States. I hate that it took the Jacqueline Craig situation to bring that about. But it is what it is as the saying goes but just know that I was not one in full support of this being formed so you can evict me from the conference at this very minute if you choose and I'll go on about my day or else I'll just hang around. You're good council. You're good. Fernanda we have a couple of questions. Yes. Fernanda we have a couple of questions that you want me to read those out or do you want to finish your questions? I have to read the questions so any of us any of us can respond. What is the racial makeup of your police department? This is coming from Ian Randolph. What percentage of the police officers live outside the Fort Worth area? Do you think any of the above statistics impact policing in your city? Anybody want to take a stab at that question? Well I don't know what the what the percentages are. We have those in our report the makeup of police and including the makeup of the incoming cadets which was very underrepresented for minorities. And in terms I can tell you in terms of Fernanda you probably know this better than I do in terms of people who live outside the city the vast majority of our police officers do not live in the city of Fort Worth. They live outside the Fort not only outside the Fort Worth they live outside the county and that's true of most major cities in Texas and probably around around the country. But one of the things we said what we had to do we had not been doing recruiting the way I thought we should be doing recruiting before and I think that's one of the things that came out of our discussions so that we would get more minorities. We've had classes where we had no blacks at all. We may have had a couple of Hispanics but no blacks at all and Gina made those figures better than I but no that that was a problem and that was one of the things that the police monitor was supposed to do. Not only look at the external issues involved in the police department but look internally as some of the issue that we needed to be addressing and representation of minorities was one of those issues. I can add on keep in mind I didn't hear everything but you're talking recruitment. We have to give hats off to Julie Swaringen who has all but held the hands of recruits. We had a class I think two classes ago where we had three but another police related incident took place not even here in Fort Worth and we lost two and that class had one African American. That was the last graduation I went to. I remember the days back in probably the 80s when we did a lot of advertising on KHBN and Barbara that's when Elvira and D would come on the radio and say we want you to join. It's very difficult to get civilians to cross that blue line when they don't see trust coming across that blue line and so we continue to struggle counterwoman Kelly Allen Gray and I have offered our services and both done videos encouraging recruitment and so we continue to offer our support in that area but it's really not the career of choice for many people of color. Good observations anybody want to add anything? I think it's fair to say that minorities particularly African Americans have been underrepresented in the police department generally and almost totally unrepresented in many of the specialty units of the police department and we had a lot of work to do to make the police department itself more closely reflect the community that it seeks to serve and we're making progress but not as rapidly as any of us would like. Let me see we can answer here's a related question how do you assess the progress of the task forces work in the wake of Atatiana Jefferson's killing which occurred in October of 2019? What impact did that event have upon our efforts? Anybody want to take a stab at it? The Atatiana Jefferson incident. I hate to do all the talking but I can say this we had five shootings police involved shootings in five weeks what two years ago three years ago the Atatiana Jefferson was one of the most horrendous because she was a woman in her home unarmed somebody had called the police to come check on her because her front door or something was open and the police went to the back saw her silhouette in the window and shot so that hurt but what they did do in a way and I think God for this I mean we have a new police chief by then who had been with our task force as a liaison I can tell you for a fact that because I was involved in this the police chief the mayor the well and one other person the city manager met with that family at a private home and I was there and we asked the family if it would be okay if those people would also attend the funeral so we had we had a group of police officers in addition to the mayor of the council and several other city council members who attended the funeral of Atatiana Jefferson that showed the community that we were trying to make some progress even if we weren't so to me I mean to be there and witness that made me feel better and I think it made some other people of community feel better as well Fernando oh I have to be measured you know in my responses because of you know legalities now but Ray Charles can see that there are two areas of employment that that shooting sparked number one training number number two training number three training my AT&T repairman who just left here was so concerned about the issues of the day and this is an Anglo from New Orleans he talked about the mission of police that being to protect and serve versus the mentality of military personnel which is to kill or be killed I had never thought about it in that vein now back I refer a lot to the 80s because the 80s for me were were quite impressionable that's when we had John Wally Price Mary Helen it speak out a whole bunch of advocacy journalism talk shows all across this nation that was new to me being a formally trained journalist where you do one side and the other side but what what I can tell you is when you look at the training capacity of those who we train but those others who come in with additional training the AT&T repairman made me think you know what what if we take note of how we retrain those from military backgrounds bringing them into this civilian form of life of protecting and serving maybe outcomes can be better but you know the the shooting of AT&T and a Jefferson is something that we will bear as a city as we should we should do right by that family but we also need to take measures that keep that from ever happening again and in addition to training the the idea of knowing what's in a cop's jacket what's in that personnel that HR folder has this officer had trouble elsewhere has he had trouble here and so I think personnel training those are factors that spark for me about AT&T and a Jefferson I can't deal with the death emotionally I have to see what can I do as an elected official to keep this from happening again and so thanks to my repairman today that is something I'll be taking up with Jay Chapa later on this week hopefully tomorrow to talk about that military aspect because back in the 80s I digress back in the 80s the uh I think it's the SPLC Southern Poverty Law Journal Mars thesis organization uh did report on how there was this call and estrus will remember there was this this military call nationwide urging white supremacists to join police departments all across the nation that has recently made news in the past three or four years but this happened and we all know it for those who follow social justice issues and so since they heated that call and they are members of police forces around this entire nation it at least lets city staff county staff take take note maybe we need to do some deeper training and debriefing and so my head goes off to my AT&T repairman estrus thank you for nodding in agreement I know I'm not crazy and I know they did that back in the 80s well there's a rabbi rabbi bloom and then we'll go to the next question I just want to make a general comment you know I don't want to look at the necessarily the negative negative just for one thing and one thing I want to mention when we were doing the task force and Lily and Bob Ray and Rosa can attest this we kept coming up with almost hitting our heads in the wall with the police chief at that time I think what has happened with the last two chiefs Ed Kraus and Neil notes the current chief is that they learned first of all I think they have servants hearts that's the first and foremost the most important thing I think they learned the importance of showing that servant's hearts in the entirety of the community and not being the chief from an office but being the chief with the chief's feet out in the neighborhoods and I don't think that necessarily would have happened had the task force not come up and had the city not dealt with such issues so yes there's all these issues that we see we see but there's no longer a denial from the top of what's going on there's actually an embracing of the need to change and the need to be out in the community so to me those are two of the greatest things that we could have done that there's a recognition from the chiefs of what needs to be for the betterment of the community that they have that servant's heart and that they're actually following that servant's heart in being within the community so I think that's something very positive that came out of this within the police force thank you Rabbi there's a there's a related question in the box from Steve Epstein who's one of our neighborhood leaders in Fort Worth a Fort Worth neighborhood policing officer said he did not want to live inside the city of Fort Worth because he does not want his family or himself to be a target for upset people he has interacted with is this a common problem and there is a comment by the way related comment in the chat box from Mr Randolph in Memphis who says that Memphis Tennessee passed a law that says our officers have to live inside our county and preferably inside the city and that's in Memphis Tennessee I will tell you that state law in Texas prohibits us from doing that right we cannot legally require any city employee and certainly not any police officer to live in the city of Fort Worth and and so I think Mr Randolph makes an important point and many of us would want us to be able to do what Memphis has done but in Texas we're not legally permitted to do so would anybody like to respond to the question from Mr Epstein I'll give you just a little addendum to that because when I was a city department head in San Antonio as an appointed official by the city manager I did have a residency requirement and so so that people won't get confused there is a difference in being appointed I didn't have to take the job but if I were to take the job as that city's public information manager I had to live within the city limits we had the uh the same criticism of police in San Antonio and it's statewide because of the law as you described but I thought I would just add that for clarity thank you thank you ma'am also we have been had instances where we had chiefs who tried to encourage people to live in the city either if they could take their cars home with them and there was a twofold thing first of all they had transportation they didn't have to drive their own cars back and forth but having a police car in a neighborhood overnight led to some kind of assurance that hey there you've got protection here but still you I know we can't we can't make them do that uh and it's sad but to hear that that that first question was really disturbing to me because you've got a police officer saying he thought he would have to interact with the people who may not like him because he's a police officer or whatever uh that's the opposite of what we want in a person wearing that uniform we want them to interact but positively not negatively we want them to get to know those kids in that neighborhood those elders in that neighborhood and not be afraid of them that's part of the problem with some police they come into our community already afraid it's like the people from Johannesburg coming into Soweto we we don't want that kind of attitude and we have a related comment uh in the chat box actually it's in the question box it's more of a rhetorical question from Adrian Pearson from Birmingham Alabama if that is the case and the police officer does not want to live where he works then why work there I think many of us would would agree with you was Pearson yes why do you want to work for the city of Fort Worth if you're not willing to live in the city of Fort Worth so a good point there's another question from Tina Shaw how did you get access to that data and is it open to the public yes all of our data is open to the public and we derive data from multiple sources wherever the expertise happened to be located and the whole effort as we mentioned earlier was driven by objective data I think stories can help us to understand the data better but stories alone are not enough we need to have the hard evidence in fact hard evidence is the only way which we can persuade a lot of folks about the reality that many experience every day it's simply not something that people are prepared to accept unless you can confront them with hard objective data hence the the reliance upon the data in all of our work okay well let me let me see if we've answered the questions that are in the box at the moment let me pose the next question that I wanted to be sure that we addressed what advice would you give to other communities that are interested in tackling racial equity issues based on our experience in Fort Worth well we did right well we could have done better if if someone from another community were to approach us and say we'd like to undertake another similar effort to promote racial equity what advice would you give them Estris Tucker you've done this kind of work in uh in South Africa in Northern Ireland in Mississippi and who knows how many other places what advice would you give them Estris well first of all Estris can you even hear us Estris what advice would you give to other cities who want are interested in doing this type of work okay one don't seek perfection two engage and involve early a very diverse stakeholder group don't be limited to what the usual suspects don't avoid engaging those who are critical of the city in fact they are essential their voices are essential for any viable sustainable plan and never assume that because a resident is critical of the city as it relates to diversity equity inclusion that they are that they can't be of value that they don't have good will that they don't care about the city none of those things are true so find people of good will who have a critical eye and and particularly a critical eye because of historical and current disparities and inequities and never allow of the void of not including people most impacted by disparities and inequities they should be at every table and not just because someone has the same race or same surname or same language select vocal people from the particular communities impacted by the disparities and inequities those are critical it's hard to work on the front end but it buys you leverage as you go alone it helps you demonstrate that you're sincere and that you're real it's a more lengthy process it can have more conflict but it is more viable and more credible so we you need all of your people that are willing to roll up their sleeves and engage and not just limited to people that you feel will agree with you or will have predictable messages that's a sure way of just wasting everybody's time thank you estrus and my advice if you're interested in undertaking this kind of effort is to hire estrus tucker as your facilitator again estrus didn't hear me but everybody else did so that's my advice and i'm happy to see that lily bigans is back with us this bigans can you can you speak you're still muted what a shame can can you hear us now miss lily i can hear you i've always okay perfect there you go just so you know in response to that last question i'd say don't give up don't give up because i'm so desperately wanted to be a part of this event that i went to my cell phone so that's where i'm talking about the the community was was really hurting about the time that this happened and and i'll just go back just a little bit to state my my impressions of being asked one of the things that made me want to be involved in this was because of all the pain and it wasn't just pain from one person or the other much like with mr floyd people saw that all over the world and so no one could hide from what they saw and and people saw the the uh they saw that all over the world so you couldn't hide so people were hurting in a different way a collective way where it was all of us not just black white brown it was all of us that were hurting and and the one question i asked uh fernando when he gave me the call was not only who wanted me to be a part of this but who didn't want me to be a part of it fernando you may remember that because you have to know not that it was my mind as to whether i would participate but what it would do is it would let me know who had an issue so i could address that issue with them and become their representative as well as the other people's representative uh when it comes to um how would we go about this it's already been mentioned that you have to collect data because data trumps anything else and i think our group did an outstanding job of data the city council i would agree with councilwoman bivens i don't think we had all the support we needed i think some people thought we would uh quiet it down and and keep people out of city council meetings if they wanted us and and it did happen that way but but at the end of the day i think our energy and our commitment to the council all of the members not just the ones who were for the task force formation but the ones who may have come in half heartedly i think it let them know that we were curious and they had to get on board and uh and i think it's just a matter of caring enough listening from the heart and being kind being kind to each other and and being and showing empathy that got us a lot of the traction i can't add anything that's already been said about the progress being made uh i will say though that have people sitting in the horseshoe who aren't bought in and i think those individuals it's time for them to step up and buy in uh the time that we extension was needed because we were so heartfelt about all of this and had so much support from the community uh and and i would i would be remiss if i didn't go back to the posting on the internet create a communication tool so everyone has the opportunity to see the progress and monitor it so they know something's being done so it created this uh this program i don't know what happened in the last meeting you could go to your computer look it up and see what was the system what the outputs were so congratulations to all of you who are uh on this uh conference with us apologize for having such a difficult time with my audio but you know what this is a whole new arena for us and uh we'll we just we have to stay committed and make sure that we are focused and make it happen so thank you for the opportunity to come comment thank you miss biggins for your comments and for your ability to negotiate the technology despite despite the the problems i love you call on rabbi bloom uh to share his his advice for other communities who are interested in tackling similar issues rabbi yes thank you very much and it's it's great that lily was uh able to get on i think one thing we need to mention even before i give advice or it's probably part of the device there was four of us and no matter how we argued uh our debated our voted uh within the room when we were trying we're tackling issues once we left that room we left it completely united as one because if we hadn't left united we would have shown already cracks within us which would have affected the cracks within society and we would not have been able to get where we needed to go we all understood that we were serving a greater good than our own cells and i think that's very very important i think when we're talking about race and culture we need to understand that if someone is embracing such a task sometimes we get down the pigeonhole of dealing more with the race and not with the culture and i think we needed to expand that because when you talk about culture you're not only talking about how someone looks but what religion they may be uh where they were brought up so i really think you need to put emphasis on both of them or otherwise you're not fulfilling your your goal and the third thing i would say is you know don't be afraid to take people newer to the city who haven't grown up in the city one of the things which was i think it may have uh given uh i actually think it gave councilwoman bivens a a second thought which is terrific because she cares so much about the city is i was i didn't grow up in fort worth i was new six years i had been in fort worth at this point but all my experience and my love of fort worth which is deep in the the community which is deep helped me bring another perspective to to this so i would say don't only take the people who have been in your city are grown up in your city but widen it because that that's already showing that the culture of the city is growing listen there there are bumps along the way but i would suggest to anyone who's undertaking to undertake it and to undertake it in a way to know that the work is difficult but the outcome is blessed and if i just might add one other thing i'm sorry uh go ahead just seconds if i could just add one other thing they're community leaders who are community advocates all over the place just like leadership leadership uh you know people talk about being effective leaders the one thing i learned and and had driven home to me with this with this particular effort was how do you was how to get other people's perspective on what's going on because if you if you are really an uncommon uh community advocate and you really are invited to the table to be a part of a solution you can't take the baggage that you have into that conversation you have to take in uh into the conversation a willingness to be uncommonly open uncommonly willing to to hear what others are thinking because this is a very diverse community and people live in very different situations you have to hear people from your heart and that's the thing i think that made this work is that we were uncommonly willing to hear and and to speak on behalf of those who were speaking from their hearts and then take their first their perception of what's going on and and bring legs and life to it so people could understand and hear from their hearts so i think that's something you have to do put away all the old stuff come in with some new things and and be willing to be criticized be criticized thank you miss figgins let me let me ask uh you left mine out for nando no no actually i want to ask you and bob ray a more pointed question uh because i want the two of you to comment about the dynamics between the elected officials and the widely recognized community leaders at the grassroots uh i think there are some who would say that the elected officials uh have other forces that influence their decisions and find it difficult to support all of the recommendations coming from a grassroots uh task force others would say no that's not the case at all the elected officials come from the community and they're responsive to the community yet i want to see whether miss bivens and mr sanders are willing to comment on the interactions between the task force and the city council miss bivens well from the very beginning i thought the city council had messed this up enough and it was my position never to attend any of the meetings and i did that respectfully i later learned that the task force thought that was a pretty good idea too but i thought that the task force needed to operate with it it's on realm without us you know peering from from the ceiling if you would so i'd never attended a meeting i will tell you that if you there there are i'll just get the elephant out of the room uh subpoena power civilian review subpoena power uh i mentioned the name hector santos rodriguez and uh barbara knows that name that was the young teenager in dalas who was killed and not until i mentioned that did i hear from the hispanic community here in port worth i guess those who approach we didn't know that you know we read papers but i was a reporter in dalas at the time uh that's a sticking point and there are people who have criticized us on the city council for our lack of unity i'll put it that way in recognizing what what should be addressed uh i did commend our police chief yesterday or or tuesday in council meeting he is progressive thinking and i don't know how long it will take but i do know that he has not shut the door on that i am not stating in this body whether i'm far or against but i just know that when you deal with police matters and they're not handled to to bring about peace that subpoena power comes into play and so you can talk to chief notes to see what his thoughts are the previous chief and the uh i think the chief of most chiefs this day in time are being more supportive of that than i have ever heard in my life as a journalist so i'll answer that question that way i hope that's not too wishy washy uh what what i would like to do though is back up on how to do this fernando and to this task forces defense the time we introduced the task force to nlc's real the uh national league of cities real program they didn't have the data that you guys were needing to to proceed in the professional way that you did but i would submit to any city who wants to take on an effort like this you don't have to recreate a will there are cities all around the nation now touting the benefits of the real program of the national league of cities fernando you recall councilwoman zeta and i wanted the city of full work to bring the redlining tool and so there are there are so many tangible tools and exhibits and workshops that people of all races need to see and when when i did the redlining tour in some city my response was oh i'm not crazy redlining was put in by the federal government and so education is so very important i'm sure people are are learning the importance of tulsa oklahoma black wall street not all black folk even knew about that but when you hear the saying pull yourself up by your bootstraps well hell what if your bootstraps were taken in a mob that wiped out your entire black community because of the wealth and so there's much to be stated and shared in the benefit of education and i think when we are all open to being educated with truth not fake news then we're all make the better for it that's well stated thank you the citizens we're going to let we're going to let bob ray have the last word bob ray sanders bob ray you need to unmute yourself sir there you go um when we got together for the first time the four co-chairs and we had to come up with the number of people that we were going to add to this task force and how diverse it was going to be uh and we didn't want it too large because they wanted to get work done so we came up with adding 19 more people to make it a total of 23 people uh and i thought we did a good job it was seven blacks seven whites seven hispanics uh one asian american one iranian american uh two people set identified as lgbt so i mean for a city the size of four wars that was a pretty representative group but in terms of other diversity we we got a couple of people on that task force who were down to city hall calling the mayor names every tuesday night jumping on the city so we included those people in the process now for me yes i was one who was concerned that wait a minute the council members of the council and use a police association as one group most of the council was supported by the police association i had my own doubts i mean how much would they listen to us about changes in the police department if they were going to be listening to the police association just agreeing with everything we recommended that was that that's just me you know that's the way i thought as it turned out you know we communicated well uh the mayor communicated well with us other members of the council communicated communicated well as did the uh the uh city manager so we got together with you know i can and as rab i alluded to a minute ago we talked to the police chief on more than one occasion trying to get him to understand some things that at that time he just didn't understand at least in my opinion but we worked through all of that and we still came up with a report that we were able to present to the council with the backing of the city manager and we're progressing on many of those issues and we set up a process and in motion that those things will be monitored and reported back to the council and the city as a whole every three months or every six months so it's not over we're still in this as you see we're still here and our our jobs were supposedly ended what three years ago three years ago but we're still here yeah but now why didn't you mention D on the police that chant i guess that's another topic that's that's that will be the next workshop council member givens for what has already been operating that way and it's just so much misinformation i just want to i just want to thank every one of you for being a part of this workshop i think that um well first of all based on the numbers i think so far this is the most popular and well attended workshops of the conference um mostly i would assume it's because of the honest conversation if there's one thing that um this task force is known as it's being is sharing their opinion and being open and listening to others and so i really appreciate the honest conversations sometimes it's not easy to hear or to even be a part of conversations and and i think that it is just extremely important that we continue to have them so thank you so much thank you for being a part of the conference for being a part of this workshop and just to everyone else who is moving on to the next workshop if you look up in the left hand corner it says back to lobby click on that and then you can pick your next workshop and make sure you join as a viewer so thank you all you have 15 minutes until the next workshop begins thank you so much thank you for inviting me i had fun thank you i'm glad that you guys were here really appreciate it i asked louise about you she told me you were cool