 everybody okay we're gonna get started now thank you so much for everyone showing up on this beautiful Sunday to be with us so I'm just gonna share a couple words and then pass it to Bella Fern to do our land acknowledgement and then we'll have a couple speakers who are directly impacted by incarceration okay so once again my name is Jaina and I believe the National Council for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and girls free her campaign and we are a people-powered movement with the unapologetic mission of ending the incarceration of women girls trans and non-binary people we've mobilized in response to the state's plans to build a new 70 to a hundred million dollar women's prison we advocate for community dollars to instead be spent on services and supports that keep us safe especially education a crucial time to question what our state chooses to invest in especially when it negatively impacts our youth we have recently heard horror stories about the abuse faced by children while incarcerated at Woodside our old juvenile jail that was detailed in the loss of grace piece by seven days we've also heard about the 14-year-old in Bristol the Addison County is charging as an adult with second-degree murder for the accidental shooting of another 14-year-old and as always we're dealing with the continued fear mongering around the rise of violent crimes in our youth and with all these breaking stories we're dealing with DCF's attempts to build a secure juvenile facility and also the state is planning to open four secure residential beds in Middlesex at the site of a former psychiatric facility that could be ready as soon as January it's so important that we start creating counter narratives to those with me that proclaim there needs to be a place to incarcerate children when we divest from child care education and other social safety nets we are creating a pipeline for our youth to be funneled into the prison system we know the most vulnerable children often becomes Vic become victims of incarceration from children with mental health struggles and trauma to disabled children to those in foster care without safety nets and especially our black and brown children see juvenile incarceration at much higher rates if there is any age group to begin exploring what a world-free of prisons would look like it would be with our children if we do not develop alternative strategies for addressing youth with complex issues then we will continue to see our children fall through the cracks with nothing left to catch them but prisons how can we even contemplate spending so much on new prisons when our schools are crumbling as we speak we are the only state in northeast that lacks an active program to fund school construction there has been no money until the recent construction for BHS for the last 16 years the last time in school was bill in vermont george w bush was still president the national council developed a landmark bill the prison moratorium bill which we've introduced here with representative brian china the moratorium bill age 445 recognizes the linkage between how divestment in our education system leads to investment in our carceral system the bill calls for a pause on prison construction while calling for a lift on the ban of school construction it realigns our thinking to support education to prevent transgressions preemptively by taking prison construction off the table will finally have the opportunity to focus and create alternative solutions that solve crimes beforehand we will be able to fully invest in schools child care programs playgrounds and other community centers to build the foundation for thriving communities to have the resources they need to reduce harm promote healing and build resilience the possibilities are endless in a world without prisons join free her to strengthen our message that vermont does not need new prisons and can begin to build what different looks like here the state is plowing forward with the prison and juvenile sites without much community input we have to continue getting louder to force them to hear us and we are currently organizing more direct actions and targeted actions that we need your help with continue coming out for these types of events and consider becoming a member of our people not prisons volunteer base to help us build solidarity forever free her and free them and before I pass I just have a message for our sisters and siblings beyond the wall we see you we love you and we will never stop advocating for you this rally is for you center and a collective of incredible individuals so here we are living land and labor acknowledgement we recognize that we are on the unceded homeland of many indigenous people of what is now known as North America we honor and give thanks to the folks to the Avnaki who continue to steward this land known as Vermont as people from other native nations also reside in Vermont and have an enumerable and have made innumerable contributions to our region and continue to steward this land also the arrival of white colonizers force the Avnaki to continue to choose between exile fade into the forests and marshes or live a nomadic life along the river or assimilate to new French English American society the Avnaki continue to maintain their beliefs and customs despite forced removal from their lands despite centuries of colonial theft and violence this is still indigenous land it will always be indigenous land indigenous people are not relics of the past they still live here they continue to demonstrate their talents and gifts amiss a backdrop of ongoing colonialism and oppression today we celebrate their contributions we honor the legacy of the after knowledge and skills and labor stolen due to violence and the evolution of white supremacy culture we acknowledge that this country would not exist if it was not for the free enslaved labor of black people and that many people of african descent are still being met with violence and being killed today for simply existing we honor the legacy of many BIPOC ancestors who were victims of the same violent systems that stole their lives traditions and families our work together is about dismantling and disrupting oppressive systems that are deeply interconnected with historical and current violent colonial structures we want to acknowledge that the way in which these systems oppress that it creates a hierarchy around whose voices experience and perspectives is centered and uplifted we believe it is essential in all the work we do to recognize whose shoulders we stand on and whose legacy we are fulfilling to work together to dismantle this hierarchy and uplift the voices whose systems were made to oppress please join me in a moment of silence to honor the black indigenous and other folks of colors ancestors who sacrificed sacrifices of paved the way for us to gather in this way today this land acknowledgement by a multi racial group of facilitators who share a common goal of peaceful and just world this living land and labor acknowledgement one we know will be constantly need to be updated to ensure honoring the land and the people in which it upholds thank you so next up we have Lydia Diamond as our first hello the term BIPOC because the B stands for black but also because it is more inclusive of everyone but also I had to explain to my granddaughter what BIPOC stands for because she's a little bit of everything and I'm here today because no new women's prison is needed at least not in my eyesight they should have taught us joint down years ago those in positions of power they knew this they knew that they needed to be rebuilt years ago now I came to tell you I was released from this place in 1997 1997 and there was a shithole there so when I tell you they knew I'm telling you I experienced it that's why I know they knew and it was a dump then and I think the people in positions of power that decided it's okay for this place to be knocked down and rebuilt at a 100 million dollar price tag guess where that money coming from not out of a pocket enough is enough we spent four years in the pandemic where's the mental health treatment for our children okay I'm gonna calm down but I'm telling you prisons we don't need a damn new prison we need more education for our children stronger stronger people to abolish prisons I'm sick of this prison bull okay calm down after four years of the pandemic there are a lot of people still struggling they struggling with it food insecurity they struggling with maintaining and our children are struggling to so the hell with a prison let's build a new center for our children so they don't struggle let's find the mental health care because mental health care is a human right to thank you good people and I want to say thank you to all of you for coming out today because you didn't have to come and I appreciate each and every one of you thank you so much Lydia next we have our very own Tiffany Harrington so good to see such a great turnout here it's awesome very very encouraged to see this this is kind of Amazon he has to stand up here with me he's actually been here with me so you know it kind of fitting that he'd hear with me anyway oh hi hi oh no so I'm maxed out here on December 31st 2019 I just given birth to him while I was here a couple months prior and I resided here for several years often on over 15 year period and it was not fun it was disgusting it is a horrible it's a horrible system and I am encouraged to see everybody sticking up for women that are there and women I have been there these women are caretakers they are mothers they are sisters they are aunts they are girlfriends they are friends they are you know what I mean they are people that you that other people need when a woman goes to jail it's not just her it's inherently traumatic regardless of anything for me I was single mother and my children have suffered so much and they still are suffering because of my time being incarcerated and it's not fair to see it's it's horrible to see actually you know I have a son that has really severe mental health issues now and I hate to say it I think a lot of it due to the foster care that he had to receive while I was incarcerated and mind you I was incarcerated most of these times for technical violation and lack of residence so having no human rights because you don't have money and financial means to to do so that's just to me that's disgusting I really do think that this building needs to be closed but there are so many alternatives that we could invest in that are so much less expensive than building a for prison you know complex then I mean that's just horrible for me to even think about there's not even people enough to go there there are only 89 women that are incarcerated in Vermont half of them are only detained they're simply detained they are not convicted of anything so we have maybe 50 women how does 50 women justify spending that amount of money and furthermore the money that they get that they're pulling from is from the general fund of Vermont the general fund that that's not even like they could be doing like so many other things with that fun you know like what you were just saying I have to agree with her you know mental health care you know there's just so many other things that we could be doing the women in prison are not monsters they are not nightmares they are people just like you and me you know one one bad day you could be right in there too one bad night you're there too you know what I mean one mistake you're in the wrong place at the wrong time you're there too to be any of us and I really encourage people to support the prison for no new prisons because there are so many other things that we can be doing you know obviously I'm not saying it's okay to commit crimes or to hurt people anything like that but what I'm saying is that people need to have help they need services they need housing I mean even in Burlington alone look at the housing crisis that we have you know I feel I can barely stay afloat I'm on the verge of eviction every month every month you know what I mean like it's disgusting like there's no and I had to wait to even get you know to even get a place it was horrible and after you get out of jail mind you when you have a prison record and you're fell in it's much harder believe me it's hard to get a job you know it's much harder to get a job it's much harder to it's almost impossible it feels like there needs to be a more definitely more focus on education and that would honestly in my opinion focusing on the education is focusing on prevention that's preventing further incarceration yeah and I just think that um you know you know the children really do need the children really are our future I know that's on corny but it's true they really do need services and they need money put towards them not put towards this this is disgusting I remember I'll tell you I just really quick thing I remember one time I was in here and this is not seven years ago mind you I had him there so I remember one time we had a main water break there was tea seeds in water standing we were standing in okay everywhere we had no running water they didn't put that in anything you know nobody knew about it but it was disgusting like the stuff and guess what to clean that stuff up all the people live there you know nobody else did that they didn't call a claim to come in like it's disgusting mommy mommy hold on buddy almost um but anyway sorry guys like you know what should I say um but but thanks but no um basically this is we need to reimagine our communities and reimagine what they could look like without this kind of a system let's think about yeah let's think about what it would look like for us to be like involved with our community member to be friends to have excited family you know that's maybe not your family it is your family you know let's think about that let's think about investing in our futures and um I guess that's about it that was amazing thank you Tim all right folks well we're gonna do a few chance before we leave just to extend to our siblings beyond the wall our solidarity and just a couple housekeeping things um the prison is not letting us park in the visitor spots so if you did park over here please just move your car across the street I believe that lot has some spots and if not fair park has some space and also just a big thank you to our sponsors the ACLU Vermont Justice Justice Peace and Justice Center Brooklyn Shung Black Lives Matter Vermont and People's Kitchen is giving us food and city market donated snacks so just extend your thanks it takes a village to make these kind of events happen so thank you everyone so the first chair we should do um since the theme is schooling and education maybe let's do build schools not prisons so I'll say build schools and you all say not prisons work okay build schools build schools build schools and then let's just do the classic free her freedom so I'll say free her you say freedom free her it's Jaina Ossoff and I am the lead organizer for the free her campaign as you can see we have our table out here we have some information about our bills we've introduced H 445 the prison moratorium and H 438 which would create an alternatives to incarceration working group to begin looking at how our system can transform to a new one that doesn't use incarceration we also have data about the folks that are actually in CRCF there's a lot of interesting data here for example half of the folks in CRCF are actually not sentenced they're just detained so we're looking at only like 50 folks that even need a long-term facility um we have our no new prisons petition please check it out on our website thenationalcouncil.us backslash vermont to help us tell the state that we do not want new women's prisons my name is Kayla Loving and I work at the Education Justice Coalition of Vermont we are a nonprofit that focuses on creating an education system that's just and fair for all students in Vermont we support youth organizers and we support educators of color we have retreats for educators of color twice a year we also support the act one ethnic studies bill and we've created a training course based off of that the updated education quality standards this is what i printed at home today the back of the postcard in front of its length and then this is a linoleum block image it was carved by one of our volunteers at the press and you're going to eat this oh my gosh thank you so excited you're gonna make your very own piece of art wow and this is free to the community it is every one of these 200 cards that i printed ready to go so now take this card and put this corner into that corner right here and keep everything nice and straight you'll come out to be a beautiful friend and this is a refreshing roller okay and then we'll roll across if you pull it this direction amazing okay and then come back one more time let's do it now lift up in the corner very carefully lift straight up beautiful amazing piece of art and now we're going to put some words on it you are welcome so thank you so much this is plant seeds not prisons and on the back of the postcard and it says uh support the oh that's excuse me uh letter press printed by the keeper the people thank you welcome everyone thank you for joining free her prisons people not prisons today what a what an incredible march thank you so much that was so wonderful um before we start i'd like to take a moment of silence to acknowledge that we live on colonized Abenaki land land that was taken without permission from people who call it home as well in this moment of silence let us mourn the Palestinians in israeli lives lost during genocide that could have been avoided in so many ways so many times so i'm just going to ask us to have a few a few 30 seconds of silence thanks so again welcome we marched and are gathering today to demonstrate our commitment to education over incarceration in 2020 the vermont state legislature proposed building a new women's prison in vermont the prison would house 158 women at the cost of 70 million dollars at least free her believes not only is this a poor investment it's an unnecessary and dangerous investment between 1985 and 2017 vermont corrections general fund spending increased 335 percent while our incarceration rate decreased 18 percent from 2008 to 2016 we have one of the lowest rates of incarceration in the entire country currently there are only 55 people sentenced in the chinden regional correctional facility the vermont women's prison in south burlington by comparison there has been a state-level moratorium on funding of school construction for 16 years before this pause in state support vermont used to pay up to 30 percent of school construction costs between 1985 and 2017 when the vermont corrections fund increased by 335 the general funding on education increased just 57 percent vermont state university announced last week that it will it will eliminate 10 degree programs affecting music performance arts and technology and photography among others in an effort to trim spending i should say also in elementary schools in public schools high schools the first programs to go are always the arts programs when we spend money on incarceration we're actively divesting from schools and other supports that are crucial to keep marginalized students out of our prison our criminal justice system today we're here asking why build a larger prison with space for 158 people we're asking what would our education system look like if we divested from punishment and incarceration and invested in schools and education programs that address the trauma of having incarcerated family members so i'd like to introduce you to our panelists who will address these issues and i realized i didn't introduce myself so i'll go first i'm debor Stoleroff she her pronouns i am recently retired from public education which is my love and my passion it was the personalized learning director for over 24 years at twinfield union school um and i live in plain field so you want to introduce yourself hello i'm lid i'm lydia diamond i don't use pronouns to oh just uh and by to oh i'm only 60 okay and at my age i just don't feel like i need a pronoun love you if you do okay but i'm here today because i'm totally against a new prison there's so much suffering going on as is we need so many other things but i'm also brooklyn strong i'm also black girl matters for mom and i speak for the poor because way too many people no matter what color gender any of that if you're a poor person you will be penalized and going to jail is one of the ways poor folks are penalized so i'm glad to be here i'm thankful to be here and y'all are good give yourself a round of applause hello um my name is Amelia and i am a current junior at the university of vermont i did an internship with free her vermont this summer and i also um just stepped down from running a club at uvm where we volunteer in the women's prison i have been aware of a lot of issues around the school to prison pipeline since i was 15 and i was going to braddleboro high school in southern vermont um where there was a restorative justice program to start to combat that and so i come here to today to talk about all the all of the things that we can do as alternatives to building another prison i'm really excited to be here so thank you all for coming hi folks my name is infinite cold pleasure i use he him pronouns and i'm here because lydia told me to show up i um i moved to vermont and 91 and a few months later i was incarcerated uh for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and so i was in and out of federal prison until my mid 20s and then graduated from uvm worked the spectrum for a little while i went got a master's degree um and i'm here because i know that if it wasn't for you know the education piece i'd still be in the street i'd be in and out of prison right um and right now i'm working as a full-time para educator in a elementary school in the old north end so seeing uh close up what our education system is like and you know direction we need to go in so i'm gonna ask questions and whoever wants to answer just call for the mic the first question um which actually a student of mine um wrote and i'm gonna have her answer at first and then we can open it up to others is how has your life been impacted by incarceration my name is hailey barnhart and my life has been impacted by incarceration there's two big stories to tell you today the first is my biological father's story my bio biological father was incarcerated when i was uh when i was about two and a half years old for the attempted murder of my mother his story is a little bit more cut and dry he needed uh he needed to be there for his own safety and for the safety of myself and my mother the first time i noticed that everyone else wasn't living in that in this kind of life was when i started school in kindergarten people would talk about their families and very quickly i knew that i was not one of them for most of my early years in school i coped through elaborate lies the most notable lies centered around him either being dead or that he was the popular rap artist and he was the popular rap artist m&m i didn't just i didn't correspond with him at all until i was a little bit older in second grade he started writing me letters i actually just found those the other day they were honestly extremely inappropriate i read through the things he was saying now that i would and now that i'm 20 i was appalled that he would uh he would only call me a good daughter if i wrote him back promptly let me scroll down to the end incarceration has affected my life in many ways with my dad's extensive record and appearance we lived on very little income working under the table means that you can't you also can't use your money to buy anything on the books so not only were we poor but with the money we did have we couldn't buy any property cars or anything substantial we lived in fear constantly that someone would come snatch him up for his warrants that's where she ended so anybody else want to answer that question well when i came here i'm originally from brooklyn new york born and raised i'm never given that up nope but i came to vermont in 94 and i came through my mom may she rest in peace and i have a large family here now i came in 94 i went to jail in 95 96 i got out in january of 97 and i haven't looked back uh i promised myself not to be stupid enough to get caught up again and end up back in prison because that was a rude awakening for me coming from brooklyn with all that i had already been through to come here and get locked up anyway i survived still here but going to prison hurt my mom my children i have four adult children and i have six grandchildren oh seven i just had one a week ago seven grandbaby and i fight for them i have three beautiful granddaughters and for the state to want to build a new prison is ridiculous i could think of a lot of things my grandchildren could use of it in a new damn prison so incarceration is just not the way you know i i didn't expect to go to prison when i got here you know and it it shook me but it shook me in a good way because i i never went back i'm not going back but it hurt all of those around you as well and so that's part of why i'm here too my sister was here her daughter showed up my sister has she's gonna be mad but she got 17 grandbabies so we're a big family but living in vermont there are certain things that happen no matter who you are and it's been a struggle but we still try to stay strong stay safe stay on that straight and narrow line so that we can live better lives and i'm happy we back outside from the pandemic yeah so yeah thank you lydia um like like i was saying i saw education as my way out because you know you get the felony on your record you get two felonies on your record there's not a whole lot out there for you so um but the tradeoff was i had to borrow money to go to school so uh now that i'm employable with the education i have six figures worth the debt right so i see um i see that it's being related right i see you know the impact of my incarceration and me feeling like i need to borrow money to go to school so that i can be employable right it's a thing um and still to this day right i say i will say five years ago once upon a time i ran for public office and uh it came up right it came it came up even though uh it had happened 20 years ago it came up during you know my run uh that i had you know been arrested uh and i mean charged with felonies before so that stays with you right no matter what you do and how much you overcome you know people will still come back at you like hey you know remember this thing you did a long time ago when you were young well why did you know you know as if it really had anything to do what you know where i met 20 years ago right there's that and i'll just say one more thing my partner worked at four seas in 2017 and that was a lot she was she worked as a social worker um and that was her last full-time job that that job crushed her she came home and it just ate up our relationship because she's like so empathic with all the people around her she would bring that stuff home so it's not just the prisoners you know the people who work inside that building are suffering too um because there's you know i mean you you've heard the stories right you know correction officers don't do well um so it's not really not working for anybody thanks thank you infinite so our next question is how does the school to prison pipeline function and what steps can be taken to combat it you want to start i can start with this question um i think that there's a lot of ways that we can see the way that our school systems today recreate the same punitive systems that we're seeing in our prisons um and the the solution being to send students um out of school to suspend students to give students detention so that they can no longer participate in their education is the same thing that we're doing when people are suffering and then we send them to prison so that they can no longer be a part of their community and i think that this system that we have set up as both of these wonderful people we're just talking about it feels the people that it supposedly says it's trying to help and so the way that we see that play out at a school level i think in a lot of ways is where we need to begin because no matter how many times people have said this i'm going to say it again is the youth the young people today are the people who are going to be growing up and living in this world in 10 and 20 years and they're going to be the ones who are either again being conflicted with the same being afflicted with the same system that we're seeing today that are destroying people's lives or they're going to be the ones that can see a hope for a different world that we can create if we are not sending people away isolating people from their communities from the people that they love when other things around have failed them and i think the last thing that i want to say about it is that it's not about reacting to the problems that we have and that's what our system does right now it's about understanding why these problems are happening in the first place i truly believe that the people are incarcerated in vermont the people are incarcerated around the world there is a reason that people are being convicted and incarcerated and these reasons go much much deeper than what we're addressing people are experiencing houselessness and intense poverty and if we're not able to address those first and start there then i don't think that this is that's is going to be the way to fix the system so i'm going to pass it to you both as well thanks amelia i just want to say that um there's a little oh the word is key and it stands for keep educating yourself and i've held on to that for a very long time and i would recommend you hold on to it keep educating yourself and you won't have to worry about prison thank you though okay can you repeat the question so it's um how does school of prison how does the school school to prison pipeline function and what steps can be taken to combat it you know i think it's funny to call it a pipeline right because kids will say to me that they're in prison that school is prison like we'll feel like this feels like jail right already so you know to to think that you know it's that this is jail is waiting for them after 12th grade i think is kind of a misnomer it's already happening i think that what we forget that is is that we have a compulsory education system they have to go if we don't send our children there um we get truance we we we go to court right so unless you can home school which you know even as an educated person i don't have the chops to be my kid's father and his teacher at the same time right unless you have like all these resources for tutors and stuff like that you have to find a way to get you kid to school so it's it's it's a hard dynamic you know and to think about it as a pipeline that starts from you know pre-k to you know then move to prison i think it's it's actually happening every day as we send our children to school because we've all inherited this public education system that is not not only is it compulsory but it's set up where there's one um usually one teacher doing a lesson for maybe let's say about 20 children um maybe there's a power educated in the room you know maybe there's other support staff around um and the needs vary you know from you know say in one third grade class you have children who are reading at kindergarten grade level and you have children who are reading at fifth grade level because they have all these variations of different like abilities for young people um and for one individual to be responsible for all those children and then also to be engaging with their parents on a regular basis that's a setup right it's a setup so you know if we're going to say um education not incarceration we need to really be clear about what education is and what that looks like um it's hard to just throw that out there and expect that you know what we have now it's not it's not what we have right now right right we we have to i think be a little more specific about what we're talking about when we say education here here we could talk i think for hours about how our schools could possibly change to keep kids engaged and i also i think i want to also add in terms of the school to prison pipeline the role of capitalism and that we're looking at a corporate structure of prisons and that corporate structure needs to be fed and the constant feeding where's that going to come from right so they're finding they find people and they keep them in prison and they and that continues on and on right so there's so there's that basic structure that continues the school to prison pipeline because of it's a business right um so okay the next question have you witnessed racism transphobia and other forms of discrimination playing a role in the incarceration of individuals who know because i forget i forget that i was locked up i don't wake up like oh i got a grip of the record like i forget but then there's always something that reminds me like all right okay i forget you know i'll run into somebody coming out of the federal building who's just getting out of the system and like yo what's up how's it going you know um but here's here's how a lot of it goes in the old north end right um there are people who have been you know uh selling drugs doing drugs for years and generations and us and and never saw the inside of a prison right you know you can go around you you can go you know where the trap houses are depending on how you look right you can last maybe about two weeks up in in burlington doing that right so there is um you know the enforcement of who gets the trouble who gets targeted who gets investigated you know i mean who where the police where the and we don't that's not even talk about the drug enforcement agent the DEA the ATF who are they targeting would they watching where they going who's you know um yeah that's a thing and if you want to see for yourself all you have to do is go down to the Costello jail and look outside on the courtroom and look at the list of names and you will see the names and you can guess where people are from and that's not all it's not all drugs you know some of this domestic violence you know what i mean some of it is for stuff that people do need to be pulled off the street for but the point i'm trying to make is in terms of enforcement the people who are getting locked up all poor people um and uh for sure yeah i'm i'm not connected to the trans community you know what i mean i'm sure this there's a lot going on there too but when you look at the names of the folks who are showing up in the court system it looks like there's a lot of people there's not that many people in burlington but there's a lot of people calling going to court in burlington thanks i think to look and answer this question we need to look at the history of what our system in of incarceration was meant to do in the first place um and i i'm lucky enough to be able to study this and look deeply into it at uvm and every time i learned something new about it it becomes all that more clear what the system was meant to do and the original intention of this system was to incarcerate black people and it was a way of and there's a lot of literature about it as the new jim crow and what is being done now i think we cannot detach that from the history of this country and what has been done for for hundreds and hundreds of years and so to answer this question and look at the people who are being incarcerated right now we have to look at why this system was created and it wasn't created to incarcerate black and brown people and it was created to incarcerate poor people so yes the the transphobia and the rate the transphobia racism all of that is ever present and perpetuated by the carceral state itself so to answer this question i'm going to tell you a little story about how i went to hannah foods to get something to eat i tried to do self-checkout but the machine was broke so i paid for my food from the the what's the first lane 15 items or less any hood as i'm leaving hannah foods in south burlington this poor little white child come running behind me miss miss you gotta pay for that and i had to catch myself from chopping his head off i smacked him with my receipt i don't mean that literally but i was like i dig up my receipt you know like really a child uh he might have been 1819 that's a child to me but who taught you to run behind a black woman and accuse of stealing food it really hurt and i could have reacted differently but i didn't i didn't i did not chop his head off i smacked him with the receipt it didn't touch him i didn't touch him i don't mean it literally like i hit him but i did let him know that i paid for my food and so i'm making it happen to making sure i get my receipt anywhere wal-mart target because people are taught to react and assert and manner when they see me and i don't like it sometimes i can handle it sometimes i can't and talk about jim crow i met his grandson jack that boy is out of control he had grown man with a family but he violated my civil rights based on race gender and disability in 2019 i'm gonna end it there thanks oh we got a hand up all the way in the back that's uncle roi uncle roi would you like to say something thank you thank you roi v hill 80 years old been in vermont some going on 40 years she just shared an incident let me share one also see how i'm dressed this is how i dressed on my sundays it is after church after church i stopped by this new place up here relatively new cross the street from um shawls you know the store i'm talking about right so i went in to get my wife something that she enjoys and they didn't have it so i start to go out and leave the store this rental cop stops me at the door what did you take i ignored him because i'm saying this guy this can't be real so i i go to stop again and at that point one of the people who worked for the store came in oh at that time they had a kind of uh security on the the things you put your groceries in okay and so it had stopped me initially and then the rental cop came over and accused me for stealing nothing in in the cart but he accused me of stealing she came over and released the whatever the security was on the cart that you put your groceries in i ignored him again i called the store manager she wasn't there she was there the next day she called me she said we fired him first of all it's not their responsibility to stop you there's another procedure that they go through and secondly we really really you know apologize so on and so forth the point i'm trying to make is this thing is so deep it is so deep i walked in the store i've been going in and out of stores on that used to live around the block when we first moved here for years he saw a black person whether it was a black african-american female or black person and i don't know what they do to the native americans but i'm saying that what we're talking about here right now is serious it is very serious this is not a play toy because what we're seeing is an escalation of the rage that initially was attributed to road rage now we see it in a grocery store we see it in the classroom i live in franklin county and little children there and i go to the school board meeting on a regular basis and some of the parents who come with the kind of bile that is so provocative so you understand then why their children come and they started age three or third grade whichever and they're very smart because they know the law they know that you can't touch them and they know that certain teachers cannot touch them or they will sue you so we have a tremendous job we who are members of the same human family this color game that politicians and others are playing is destroying you destroying me destroying the country that we live in this is an important important place to be right now because we're all being educated on so many different levels so let's make a difference i'm sorry to interrupt but she hit a point here that speaks loudly and it speaks 24 7 to all 660 residents in this state thank you thank you uncle roy so um any other thoughts about that that answering to that question at all thank you uncle roy um so the new women's prison is expected to cost a hundred million and if we have a hundred million to support schools and youth what possibilities could open up i'd like to see more art in school because the children thrive on it i'd like to see more reading out loud in school because the children thrive on it and they love each other i would like adult teachers not to punish them in ways that traumatizes them and i have a seven-year-old granddaughter in the cold chest of school district which is a first for my family and she was traumatized so that's why i speak to that but children they love soaking up education they might not show it the way you want to see it but you see it in ways that say oh it's working good job yay i'm a grandma of seven i got four adult children i call them petas pita but the education system could use all of that money every penny to be better to be better for our children for our community to be better prepared for the future of this world don't nobody want no new prison oh i'm a pastor thanks a hundred million dollars could go a long way and i think the first thing is paying all of the staff members and teachers a livable wage and social workers and all of the people who are helping the children learn to thrive and especially in a setting that in a lot of ways is recreating the punitive environments that don't allow children to thrive and so in addition to paying and giving everybody the opportunity and resources they need to make this system less punitive where children are growing up we can also teach children to resolve conflict between themselves and among themselves with restorative approaches as opposed to punitive approaches and that in in itself could use funding there are already so many so many institutions and places around the states who are doing the work for people who are coming back into the community community after incarceration and all of these places and people who are doing that work are underpaid and underappreciated so just diverting some of that a hundred million dollars towards programs mean that most of the women who we're trying to build another prison for will have the resources they need not to have been incarcerated in the first place yay thank you you brought up capitalism earlier right and i think what's happening right now with this uh the proposal around a new prison is you know if you build it we'll fill it right what's that happen in new york state you watch that around the country um what's the prison population grow as jobs disappear right it's a surplus labor thing right um and i mean in burlington we're going to build a new high school right so there's a big business it's a hundred million dollar business and then literal sort of a burlington right um and so you know it's hard to think about alternatives because i haven't seen you know the closest thing i've seen to uh something that could be scaled up is uh the family room right i don't know if anybody's familiar with the janet s month family room in burlington but that model of um you know working with whole families and their children uh it's the closest thing i've seen to you know something that works right i mean we don't have in a whole state of ramon we have nowhere for folks to go in detox right um at all and there's still billions of dollars and covet money floating around right our state has been in a surplus in a black for the past couple years because of all the covet money and so all this money is going to come and go and we'll have nothing to show for it and it's in in part because um it's all about the market it's all about the market and um you know if you if you um had the most recent uh seven days where they're talking about blight blighted properties uh vacant properties around the city um they tell you and black and white that develop is smart for that they just wait we're going to wait it out we're going to wait for the market for the best time for the market to to move forward and so it's it's it's the same thing it's solving no story um that we're reading about or seeing on the news is not related to this woman's prison it's all related to this woman's prison and the the mindset of not not just our governor but our our uh with all due respect to our public officials um you know the state legislature the senate our city council um there's this mindset around uh the market um and what the market says and what the market doesn't say and you know we we're held hostage to it right we have we have an air base here that we're held hostage to because of the economy that's connected to it so yeah i the only thing i've seen in this state in this country the closest thing i've seen to like this this is an amazing model there's a lot of trust here and this is a place where you know children want to be and where uh families want to bring their children is the family room and i don't know how you scale that up with the hundred million dollars that's a good start yeah did you want to say something else Amelia about that i guess the only other thing i'd say is everybody was housed during covid in vermont and people have been unhoused since and i think it's important to think about that because we're capable of doing that and we did it and so just to keep that in mind especially as we're having these conversations around building this new prison is there's ways and it has already been done and there are people actively making choices not to continue to do that so what can we do instead lady do you want to say something else i want the people in positions of power that make these decisions i want them to spend the night in a prison so they could know what they're making a decision on for others sick of this shit let's put them in prison for a month i i would say in a day but a month sounds fantastic but it's just it's ridiculous to keep this doing the same thing over and over again now we hear against the prison but you know they're gonna build it anyway they're gonna spend that money anyway but it's still disgusting to have people making these decisions purely because of money purely because of what money brings to the table no i'm sick of that i want something better how to see people penalized and punished all the time like i said for being poor for being black for being female sick of it and jack crow that lives in colchester his day is coming i plan to make sure of it thank you so yeah you keep that one um so you guys have sort of alluded to this question so i'm just gonna ask it um and see if we can dig a little deeper what are alternatives to building a new women's prison in vermont i'm running for office i'm running for south berlington city council and not because i want the job but because i want those that look like me to know there's nothing to feel step up and help your community because people who look like me need to see people who look like me you know what i'm saying and when i found out that no person of color had ever stepped up to even try in my town south berlington i was shocked i mean it's 2023 not 1923 so i want that that's my way that's how i'm taking uh a stand for change because i am sick of that okay i'm gonna say that i'm a pastor right now okay alternatives to building a new women's prison thank you lydia i'm so glad you could step in up to office i think i think we've all alluded to this already a little bit but something that i go back to a lot especially learning about the criminal justice system we have right now is a lot of it is really hard to hear and the more that you learn about it the more alarming it is is my experience and so i think it's important to recognize that because we're operating based on what we see right now and so the things that we can hope for and see in the future aren't things that we're looking around and able to see and it's challenging it's challenging to create something that we don't see existing around us but i think that that challenge is also really exciting and i think that there are things in there are places that that this has begun to work um and some of my i mean this is a personal project of mine too so i'm a little biased but um one of those ways to me is creating um more restorative ways to address punishment and not just addressing things once they've already occurred but giving people the support they need so that the thing and the harm that occurs doesn't happen in the first place and so in the state of vermont there's community justice centers and they're doing a lot of wonderful work um and there's also places where people are able to go and find housing after they've had experience incarcerated like dismus house and other organizations around the state and again all of these things that are already in place and beginning to happen instead of prisons instead of punitive environments need the support and need the resources and that a hundred million dollars that would go to an environment which although the state is saying will be a rehabilitative environment i strongly believe that a prison where people are inherently locked up and unable to leave is not restorative or rehabilitative or rehabilitative and it will not be great thank you so so i brought up the the family room right and i will i i'm gonna keep holding that up um because it it it works and it's happening right it's it's concrete um but i also brought up that we don't have uh any detox any folks place for folks of detox and you know you'll find that a lot of folks who are in and out you know are struggling with substance you know abuse and so i don't know if anyone's heard of nada and a da um but they do acupuncture and they do it in um communities that have been like fraught with trauma you know like harvick and crane katrina as an example and they train you know people to treat each other right and and and acupuncture and so communities are empowered to care for each other as opposed to um you know having treatment centers and having to go to a center you know you can uh through spread trainings through a community where people are actually you know learning to work with each other you know and i and i'm telling you and i'm in the old north and i'm in the heart of it and i'm seeing people you know just like just dropping like like just falling over in front of me you know every day you know in my garage you know in the car you know some days in in my car you know um and so it's it would be more empowering for me to know how to work with individuals who because the police are not coming right we know that right if you need the police you're in trouble right so we need to figure out how to take care of each other and how to respond you know um without having the need of police because they're not coming you know they're coming after the fact right so uh if there are ways that we can you know empower communities to try and um you know address some of the acute stuff that's happening you know in front of us and then i'll say one more thing i think just using that hundred million dollar number again piloting what other folks are doing and this is not this will not be new um guaranteed income guaranteed income you know you follow the the zip codes you know who's where and what they need and just just see what happens when you cut people a check you know that mean because you know they need it and see just let's just see what happens if you cut people a check you know for two years you know what will happen you know and and those households right i mean what do we have to lose right at this point with all the coven money thank you so much so elissa just gave me the the three-minute warning we've run out of time and thank you so much for your powerful answers i think you guys really it's so so informative thank you thank you um i do want to end with a quick no new prisons no new prisons no new prisons no no new prisons thank you and let's give debra and the panelists one more round of work at the education justice coalition and we have a few quick announcements upcoming events ways you can plug in and help out with this really important campaign and so the first one is a lot of you have made postcards we printed a whole bunch more and we want to encourage people to take an extra one and send it to your representatives or send it to crcf um in jana if you sign up for the event we'll be emailing out who to send those to or you can look up your representative um because we want to make sure the legislative season that starts in january this is kind of front of mind for our elected officials um jana wanted me to share and encourage people to join the people not prisons meeting and campaign they have a meeting this tuesday november 7th at six o'clock online is that right jana and you could just see jana if you want to go to that meeting or you can sign up on the list but just check with jana about that but we need all the support we can get as we go into the campaign season yeah give it quick i think um check with jana on that yeah yeah because i don't know what's that i'm assuming that the the main political parties do support it but yeah and then k oh and then there's a um never again for anyone ceasefire now around what's happening in gaza in palestine um this thursday at 7 30 dabra's helping organize that some other folks in the room are helping organize that we need to keep coming out until there's a ceasefire and we keep coming out until there's a free palestine um and that is thursday at 5 30 on the city hall steps in burlington um and i will invite kail up for a brief announcement and then i have one more thing about cars and rides um i think a lot of you just got this sheet of paper um as jana mentioned at the beginning of the march a 14 year old black boy is being charged as an adult um and we want to urge you to urge the governor the state's attorney and the executive director of vermont state's attorney and sheriffs to um not charge this child as an adult thank you um and the last thing is there are a handful of people here that have cars and then there's a number of people that may need rides their cars so could you raise your hand if you have a car here and you're willing to drive people back to crcf all right so look around who has a car and if those folks can kind of meet maybe near the food exit area and keep your hands up so people know over there and so if you'd like a ride meet up in the next three or four minutes right by the exit area and i think we might have enough rides for most folks um and that's it thanks everyone for being here grab a postcard in your way out