 with others in the community to tell stories about what's going on in Longmont, and for guests to share their part in those stories. We are coming to you live from beautiful downtown Longmont in the Longmont Public Media Studios with a live studio audience. So anybody who would like to be here as part of the studio audience, no, we typically do this the last Monday of the month. I'm going to be out of town next Monday, so that's why we're doing it this Monday. I didn't want to miss this opportunity to share the story that we're going to share tonight. I'm joined at the table tonight in the conversation by five folks who play seriously significant important roles in the community. Rick Ebers, pastor of the Journey Church, and he's going to talk more about himself in just a few minutes. He's also a chaplain for the Longmont Public Safety Department, and he's going to share part of that story about what a significant date this is, but I'll leave that to you. Mike Butler, former chief of public safety in Longmont for 35 years, been in law enforcement for many years. But a few years ago turned the page, but is no less active in the community, and he's an important part of this story tonight for a variety of reasons. Debbie Setlock is the area 11 assistant governor for Rotary District 5450, and this story tonight is going to start with Debbie sharing what the Rotary Clubs in the Longmont area, which includes NYWAT, are planning, and why people might be interested and want to care about what's coming up on February 15. Wanda Snable and Linda Davies are co-presidents of the American Association of University Women. No one might ask, what would AAUW being, what would they be doing at this table with this group? We're going to get the answer to that because there's so involved in so many worthwhile things in the community, and so you're going to get a chance to talk about why you've embraced this, what we're going to talk about, but other work that you're doing in the community. So I want to say to each of you, thanks for sharing your Monday evening, you know, carbon an hour out of your Monday evening is a big commitment, but more importantly what you do in the community day in and day out, this community is, we enjoy the quality of life in this community because of people like you. So thanks for tonight, more importantly thanks for what you do every day. So about 40 minutes into the hour, we'll see how the questions go, how it flows. We may, at 40 minutes into the hour, give the studio audience members a chance to ask their own questions. So we'll see how it goes, and if they do, audience members will come right over here and I'll get the sign and I'll probably have to repeat those questions because of how we're set up with sound tonight, but to see what's on their minds as well. Debbie, I want to start this with you. As the Area 11 Assistant Governor for Rotary Clubs in this part of Colorado, you're kind of the point person on planning for an event that's coming to the museum on February 15. Talk to us about the event and then we'll just kind of drill down a bit on how Rotary gets involved in this and how does it fit into the bigger picture for Rotary International. What's coming? So the clubs then, not in Longmont, Twin Peaks, Rotary and Longmont Rotary, along with Nywat Rotary, got together wanting to do a collaborative event. And it was pretty, when we got together it wasn't really clear exactly what we wanted as our topic, as our focus, but it wasn't hard to really realize quickly its piece. That's a foundational element that's built into the seven areas of focus for Rotary. And so it just kind of grew from that organic point and it came pretty clear quickly also we need to invite the public to this. This has so much meat and so much richness to it that we wanted to share it to a broader audience. So on February 15th, this is going to be in the museum, the Longmont Museum. What time? It starts at 5.30. So there's no charge for the event. It's open to the public. You can register, but you don't have to. Nobody's going to turn you away at the door unless we exceed capacity. Which is a possibility. Which is a possibility. There's a growing interest in this. So that would be super awesome. There is food provided also. So free food? Yes. Members of the public, if they come at 5.30 to the museum, have a chance to do a little networking, enjoy a heavy order of a bite to eat. And then what should they expect when they're asked to leave the atrium of the museum and go into the auditorium, the Stewart family? You're going to experience a panel discussion. It's going to start with a rotary individual named Jim Halderman. And he is our peace committee chair for our district. Just a wise and rich man with lots of information because rotary has a long history. And he's relating back to World War I. So this is not a new idea, this idea of believing that peace can be possible. One community at a time. It's kind of our little tagline that we built because it does start in, it starts small. It grows into bigger. And so that's kind of how we're, and then there are two other presenters. So there's also partnering for peace. So that's focused on more peace core because that's another partnership that rotary has had been involved in. And then we wanted it to have a little bit more local focus. So we have somebody from restorative justice coming talking. So I guess our hope is that we lay out this entree of information and that we can engage our audience to want more of that. Is this like a one off event? People get a chance to come for a couple of hours, think about peace, and then leave the auditorium back into all of the struggles and conflicts that we experience in society these days. It better not be. It better. I wanted to say something different. Like techno? Yes, exactly. Exactly. No. We really would like it to, in fact the tagline at the very top of our marketing material says a rotary call to action. This is not a one off event. No. We don't want it to be. We want to be able to offer some information from the get go, provide some resource material, and we even have an actual project that we wanted to offer up that night. But I do hope that it's even more expansive than just that one off, that just one event. The one action to which people will be called? Yes. Do you know about that? Sure. So it's, I really can't take credit. It's your creation. Your creation? Yes. Son of a gun. Yes. I have a panel here. We get to talk about something that I'm involved with. How about that? So it's focus groups in trying to enlist within the community an opportunity. We all have our circle of influence, no matter where that is. And so we've created, Tim has, but I'll take, I'll say we created a document that provides some clarity around how you would go about setting up a focus group. What would you ask? And obviously it's focused as peace, peace building in our community. So with that, and then we gather up this information and then I think we hope that it's going to give us the fruits that we can carry forth in more directions. So that's one call to action event. And we're also going to provide some resources for people, because Rotary, coming back to Rotary has lots of experience with peace building efforts. So we're going to provide a lot of information for individuals to see how could I get involved? Just to draw, just to spend a moment more on the action people will be called to that evening, there's an underlying assumption to that call. And that is if we're going to live into a future of greater peace and safety, it will be because of what we do together as a community. It won't be turning to somebody else to do that for us, number one. And number two, it really has to start with what our best hopes are for a future characterized by greater peace and safety. My own experience is that I hear a lot. I'm in conversations frequently, oftentimes on Tuesday nights where what I hear a lot of are worst fears, people driven by what they're afraid of and wanting to avoid whatever that is, and they start to develop strategies to avoid the worst fear, which oftentimes leads to the worst fear being realized. So this call to action is to ask people just to give themselves one opportunity in the next few months to spend a little bit of time envisioning a future that's a little more aspirational and would be moving us towards a future of greater peace and safety. So we'll see who bites on that. We have at least one organization that already has. I think there are some others in town. That's one of the reasons Rick is here. But now I want to kind of expand on that idea. Mike, in all your years in public safety, I've heard you talk so many times about the role and responsibility of the community along with whether it's public safety or other parts of government. You're here because I've heard you reflect on your experience in public safety and what we should all be called to do in moving us in a more aspirational future. Talk about your experience in public safety. What brings you to kind of this conversation, then I'm going to ask you, I'm going to follow in question, kind of drill down a little bit on the idea of social cap and what that means. Well, number one, thanks for the invitation and I am very happy to be part of a community that's going to be doing this at a grassroots level. And so let me just say that I do a lot of presentations all over the place and one of the initial questions I ask a group of people is what makes up a great community? Typically the answers are things like great leadership or great government or great school systems or improved services or specialized expertise. And ultimately I never hear the answer that I believe what makes up a great community and our answer is great citizens. And so that's kind of where I think this project is headed in terms of finding citizens in the community that can take the accountability, make the commitment and take action to make something happen, whether it's in our neighborhoods or their communities. And my own experience with this is sometimes many cities have approached this by passing legislation or by passing laws and trying to figure out how we can create civility through legislation or create peace and some sense of respect through new laws. And in my own experience, my own 40-plus years, I've never ever seen that work in terms of what that is. We can't legislate our future. We really can't legislate transformation. And so those things have to be chosen. They have to be talked about and talked through by citizens, great citizens in a community. But what I have seen work in this community as well as other communities that I've been a part of is that when citizens choose to want to be connected and choose to want to care, that that does produce civility. That does produce that kind of respect, that sense of safety that a lot of people want. That's kind of at the base of who we are and that sense of peace. And so that's been my experience over and over in this community with neighborhoods that were considered relatively rough, crime-ridden, lots of drugs, some gangs. And our approach with that wasn't necessarily to go in and try to clean up the neighborhood as much as try to help build the social fabric and mend the social fabric that's in that neighborhood. And doing that, we brought citizens together in that neighborhood who got to know each other, who began to connect, who began to care for each other. And ultimately, almost every single time what we saw was that they needed fewer public safety resources, they needed the police less, as they no longer called the cops for the issue, they called their neighbors. And that kind of response created that sense of civility, respect, and safety. So that's my own experience. And that's why I'm excited about this project because ultimately it's going to be the citizens of this community that determine if it's going to be peaceful, if it's going to be civil, if it's going to be respectful and safe. And that's been our experience in public safety. So you've talked a lot about social capital. Just unpack that construct, social capital, where it comes from, and why that should matter, just any time to a community, but in this context with this particular project. Yeah, so the phrase social capital was coined by a social scientist named Robert Putnam, who wrote a book called Bowling Alone. And it was based on a lot of research that he did around neighborhoods and communities where parts of a neighborhood or parts of a community in a neighborhood were able to kind of come together, build the trust, build connections, build that sense of caring and compassion for each other. And what happened were all the things that I just spoke about in terms of that community, that neighborhood becoming safer, that neighborhood getting to know each other and taking care of each other's kids and understanding their schedules and when they were home and not home, and just basically taking care and caring for each other. And so that in essence is a lot of what social capital is. It's around connection and care, but it also includes things like the gifts, the talents, the resources, the expertise, and that people have in this community. We have 100,000 people in this community. And as you know, what you were involved in a couple of times, Tim, we were involved in some of our neighborhood walks with myself and Dan Benevitas. And what we learned in those 200 plus walks and talking to 4,000 people is that people have gifts. They want to offer those gifts. The stumbling block is they just don't know how or they just don't even know if they have permission or they don't know whether or not those gifts are really going to make a difference. And so we have literally tens of thousands of people in this community who have gifts to offer, who want to offer those gifts and just don't know how. And one of the roles of, I believe, of municipal government can play at a much greater level is the surfacing, activating, and coordinating of that social capital in a way that just brings out those gifts and brings those gifts to life and brings them to the surface in this community where we can be able to deal with lots of social and health issues that typically have been reserved only for the professionals, only for the service providers. There's lots of people, tens of thousands in this people who want to be involved in it. And I would say the same thing around civility, respect, and safety. There's tens of thousands of people in this community. As we do this one community at a time that wants those things. And so if we can figure out a way to engage literally thousands of people in this effort, we're going to be much closer to that sense of peace, that sense of civility, that sense of respect. And as that social capital increases and is enhanced in our community. So I'm going to interpret what you just said as moving from, we're dependent upon someone else, whether it's elected officials or municipalities or we're moving from, depending on someone else, to create a more aspirational future. And it's up to us. It is, and one of the things we have to make clear to the citizens who are attending this is that you can no longer blame institutions and leaders and in the same breath declare your own innocence anymore. You're responsible. You need to make a commitment. You need to be accountable. And you need to take action. And what maybe this group can do is figure out what those actions can look like over the entire community. Yeah, great. Thanks. Rick, you've been in this community for a long time. You're doing real important work at the journey church. So talk about your work there. If you want to talk. I'm just going to go, can I just go ditto? And then we'll find somebody else. That's one of the things that I've appreciated about having ditto Mike for the last 23 years. These guys, these two guys have worked together for a long time. So I'm not only am I the pastor at the journey, but I've been a volunteer police chaplain, public safety chaplain for the last 23 years as well. And one of the things that actually I really liked about when I first came on board and talking with Mike in that role, he talked about policing in partnership with people. And that idea like this is a partnership. This is a citizenry. This is a partnership. And that's just really stuck with me over these years as not only in my role as a chaplain, but then also my role as a pastor and to be able to go, well, what does it look like? What does it look like to pastor a church in this city? What are we about? What are we after? And what are the things that we can do and where we can partner in this city so that we can have a better community? There's a passage in Jeremiah 29. If you know scripture, you'll hear this line. It's one that's like, I know the plans I have for you, the plans to prosper you. That's usually where people go in that passage. But prior to that, there's this line that says, basically, you're going to be here a while. There is rose in captivity. You're going to be here a while. Settle down. Have kids. Have grandkids. Get married, right? You're going to be here a while. But then it says this, pray for the prosperity of your city because if it prospers, you prosper. And that really struck me in that sense of, I have a very particular theological bent, but this idea that says part of what we do as a church and as people in the community and as people who are people of God is our calling is to benefit the city that we're a part of, to be able to not just pray for its prosperity, but work towards prosperity. We're not just talking about economic prosperity here, right? We're talking about a kind of prosperity that takes place when people have this incredible respect for each other and we can work together to be able to draw us into the kind of community where we watch out for each other. So we've been able to do that through a variety of different things. One of the things that we got involved in about 15 or 16 years ago was housing homeless, doing emergency homeless sheltering. Again, I wish I could say that was my brilliant idea and it wasn't, it was somebody came to us, would you do this? And I was like, sure. But what was amazing about it was while we said yes to the use of our facility, the number of people from the journey then that participated in that volunteer effort along with other churches in town. And how that became then a part of who we are. This became a part of our identity that this is one of the things that we do to the point that when we moved from our old building and bought the present building that we have, we literally had 100% of our people that when we said what ministries we want to keep doing, 100% of our people that are like, we want to continue to do homeless sheltering. That's an important aspect to be able to care for the marginalized in our community, to be able to care for those that are, that are the least of these and that's significant. And that was just really, okay, the joke is like it's 96% of the people that said yes. We had four people that were like, you know, we're doing the whole putting stickers on the wall sort of thing. And people were like, I didn't put my sticker there because everybody else had their stickers there. I would have, but I wanted this too. So, unofficially. But the beauty of that was this idea that really kind of bore from how do we be other oriented as people. In fact, this is, as I was thinking about this, one of the things that struck me from a cultural value perspective that on the one hand we're fighting against and what we're actually talking about in this kind of a context and this kind of a conversation. We have a value in America of independence. We grew up with it. It's almost 250 years of this idea of independence. And yet independence is an adolescent value, right? So we go from dependence to interdependence. That's as we become maturing adults, we talk about interdependence. And so there's this one on the one hand we kind of rub up against this cultural value that we have of independence except part of independence is selfishness. Because I'm going to take care of me first. And one of the things that we want to talk about is we're going to talk about a community that is a peaceful community, a community of safety. In fact, one of the things I love is this, the Hebrew word for peace is shalom. And the better definition of shalom than peace is the way it's supposed to be. What we desire is we desire a community where what's supposed to be is that we honor each other. We respect each other. We respect each other as men and women. We respect each other as equals. We respect each other in that context of them. And out of that respect to be able to go no longer, well, how do I protect myself against Mike and get what I want? I say, well, how can I serve you? Knowing that if we're creating that kind of an environment, what I'm getting back is, well, and how can I serve you? How can I serve you? Well, how can I serve you? And so to have these kind of conversations within the context of the broader community, but certainly within the context of the church, this makes so much sense to me because within the context of the church, the definition of love is other-orientedness. And so to have this flow from not just a biblical theological perspective, but to actually have this come out as real tangible application in the way that we live with each other and the way that we love each other, the way that we respect each other so that we create a community in an environment that says, what can I do to make your day better today? And mean that and move that. We create that kind of an environment in this community, taking the social capital that we have. That is a powerful movement that happens one life at a time but becomes incredibly difficult to stop. And you see this project, this project, Peace and Safety as a means. This is one of the multiplicity of means to be able to do that. To be able to have to sit down and have the kind of conversations where we talk about what's our worst fears and it's always easy then to take our worst fears and go run that one. But to be able to stop that and go, hang on, worst fears because we have to recognize and understand what are engaged in. But to be able to stop and move to the side and go, and how can we actually undermine that worst fear by being able to lift up this idea of peace and safety because it's growing from a respect for the other. So for me to be able to hear like, one of those pieces that I looked at, is to be able to go, what's your heart for this? For me, okay ladies, what's your heart? And then for to be able to hear that and say, how can we make that happen? Like for me to be able to say, how can I make that happen? How can we make that happen? There's a beautiful engagement and energy that flows from that. And as I looked at this, Tim, I thought, this is one of those ways to get people around the table or people in a room to be able to speak those things, to be able to get to that point and release that kind of movement in our communities, one person, one group at a time. And what listeners may want to understand, Rick is putting his hand on a description of this project. He's pointing to the possibility that we could just spend a couple of hours of our lives envisioning our best in Heinz-Tobes for a future of greater peace and safety and then spend a little bit of time talking about what are the strategies we could work on together to make that happen? And what's one thing we could do when we leave this room that would help actualize that? I mean, that's really the project, right? And for in a church to be able to bring faith into that conversation is absolutely spot on. And if you're not in a part of a community of faith, but it's a rotary club, which wouldn't, you know, they would keep religion out, but a rotary club could take this on or a group of elected officials or... But there's a, but in that, right, there's a, we talk about a basic foundation of which we say there is value in the person sitting across the room from me. Like there's intrinsic, every person has intrinsic value. I may get there from a theological stance, but other people get there from the very fact that just we're human beings, we're people, and there's value in that person. There's intrinsic value to sit across the room, to sit across the table, have that conversation and have that be kind of a baseline of conversation and build from there as opposed to, now I'm going to sit here and I'm going to see how I can get my way out of this. It's a different framework that I think take the social capital that we have and be able to move that. It just becomes, the intentional movement forward becomes powerful. Anybody who would walk in and listen to Rick and didn't know what he did for living, I say, that meant you'd be a preacher. Sorry. No, no, I'm a... Occupational hazard. I was just being critical. I was just acknowledging how articulate and how clear you are with what you bring to this project and to your work and to your relationship. So, now, AEW is neither a church, it's not a service organization, it's a professional association, but you are involved in so many aspects of this community. So, I want to start by saying again, thank you for being here, but give you a chance just to talk about AEW. What is AEW, if people don't know, in the range of projects of which you're involved and then why you've embraced this particular opportunity. So, who wants to start? We'll start. AEW has been a presence in this community for 75 years, but the organization itself has been around since 1881. And I think we found with this project, there's the realization that with peace and safety, is the method, one of the things that has to be in place for, which allows us to proceed on with the different partnerships and programs we have here in the community. We also want to recognize that our mission is about gender equity for women and girls through education, research and advocacy. And that also means women having security for their families, which is an extension of the work that we want to continue to do. I'm going to come back and drill down a little bit the last part of what you said, Linda, in terms of security for women and their families, because of some other work that I know you're involved with and involved with some things that cross my path. So, I want to talk about why AEW would be involved or interested in this project. Well, I think it has a lot to do with the sense, I like what you said, Rick, about we're kind of all in this world together, and we, you know, the line, you're not, you've got to live here for a relatively long time, maybe, and hopefully, and therefore make sure that you can become a valuable and integral part of whatever is going on in the community. And that, whenever people get to know other people who may be different or who maybe have been thought of as the other, suddenly they're somebody you know, and they're no longer the other. And that value that you were talking about of each individual, I think, is so important. And it's such an important part of what AEW is working for and trying to advocate throughout the community and also, you know, on a national basis and even, you know, to some extent worldwide. And our focus certainly is on women, but some of the, one of the things you were saying, Mike, about the community and getting involved, in so many cases, I bet those neighborhoods were led by women. Because those are the people who are out there with their kids, and they are the ones who will get to know anyone. And in my own life, most of my own involvement in either social or other kinds of organizations, let me put it this way, I kind of did it, you know, got us involved, and then, you know, my husband came along because very, very, you know, traditional in many ways. But that's how you become a part of a community that is then focused on objectives, such as this peace initiative to be successful. And so, AEW has made some commitments to this project. Talk about what's on the docket, right? What's kind of in the future for AEW. Well, we have decided as a board that we will be setting up focus groups, and it'll be three or four. We've already selected or asked our moderators, who have some experience in this, to lead small groups. And I think March 18th, March 18th is our day. And we're all going to do it in a private residence. And, you know, we're just, we're going to follow some of the suggestions that is part of that peace initiative or what your piece of paper there that has so much value, I think, to start with what do we hope for? What do we want? And how can we get a little start on making it successful? So, Rotary's going to kick this off. Maybe the Rotarians will pick up the opportunity. Sounds like the journey church is going to embrace this as an opportunity. Mike, I happen to know in your neighborhood, I don't know that you're responsible for it, but I know who is in your neighborhood, reaching out to organize some of your neighbors in this conversation. I think the person doing that is in the audience too. She is. So, I know we have neighborhood groups, and here we have a professional association that's already put on the calendar, March 18th, is an opportunity. And I think that's going to be coed, is it not? Oh, absolutely. It's going to be couples, right? So, it'll be fun. It'll be a social kind of experience as well as. An opportunity to share what your aspirations are for a community of greater peace and safety. Well, and also, just let me mention on this coed thing, men are now invited to join AAUW. Just because it still says that does not mean we are exclusive. Well, before we leave AAUW, are there other more specific projects you want to share that you're... I just think the community, if people know about AAUW, that's great. If they do, maybe they know about some of the things you're involved with, the specific projects. But if they don't, they certainly would be surprised. But I don't know, both how AAUW, how you leave your fingerprints or influence the life of the community. And I know I'm a beneficiary of, because I'm involved in another project that benefits dramatically, seriously from your work. Well, in your case, is the Early Childhood Coalition or the Early Childhood Alliance, I think is the new name for it. Yes, but we've also... There's always been a public policy aspect to all of the things that AAUW has been involved in nationally and on a local level. And so, for example, prior to COVID, we had a sexual harassment kind of seminar. That was, I believe, at front range. Yes, it was a panel, and you were not there. You were on another panel. I was on a panel for AAUW. Yes. That was the precursor to getting involved in our Early Childhood work. Exactly. We've also been very supportive financially of community action grants. We give a certain amount of money every year to nonprofits within the community who are working on things like Elko Mitag got one last year. So a number of organizations, usually centered around children's schools, again, maybe to some extent the other. And then we have scholarships, have worked diligently to empower women, particularly in their further education. There was a speaker at the Longmont Community Foundation who was one of our wonderful scholarship winners years ago. She's now teaching. Actually, she's a counselor. And so we have had great success with that over the years. Can we add about the safe shelter? Oh, yes. Go ahead. 501c3 here in town. We have an immigrant. We also partner with Front Range Community College. We have ladies that do tutoring, ESL, and we have a food pantry that we contribute to on a regular basis to try to meet their needs, whether it be food or toiletries or other things that students make. As a teacher, listen to Debbie, what you're offering the community, what Rotary Clubs are offering, Rick, the work that you do both as a shelter and then the ministry, the outreach you do in AUW. No wonder Longmont's a good place to live. And potentially can take to another level who we, who we, the future we want to live into. Now we promised audience members that we get to this point in the program if they have questions. So if anybody in the audience has a question they'd like to ask right over there so I can see who it is. If you have one, this, here's your, we'll see if anybody has a question. Here's your advanced organizer. Once we see if there are questions from the audience, I'm going to ask you all, I'm going to, we're going to wrap this up by asking you all to share some of your best hopes for a future, for a future, another future for greater peace and safety. So that's your advanced organizer. We have, we have a question. We have an audience member with a question. So as you have been formulating this wonderful project, I wonder what some of the things that came to your mind were as you envisioned a great future for Longmont, what would you, what would you add? Ah, well that was the advanced organizer. Let's hold that one. I want to come back to that because that's how I want to wrap it up. But I see a Shaquille over here, Shaquille. Welcome, question. Tim, you used the phrase peace and safety. Yeah. And then Mike discussed the need for civility and the reduction of crime. It sounds like you're talking about policing, which is often only peaceful if it's not happening to you. Could the panel discuss what they mean when they say they're calling for peace? Yeah, right. Who wants to start? Well, I definitely wasn't talking about police. Let me just repeat the question. Okay. In the event that not everybody heard it. The question was, is this about policing, right? If you think about peace and safety, it does, does that equate to more policing? And the comment was, you experience more peace and safety typically when you're not involved with the police, right? Is that fair Shaquille? Yeah. Yeah. So pick it up for me. The case I think we're trying to make here is that if the citizens of this community take on this initiative and become and embrace it, that you'll need less of what we've tried before. The things that haven't worked in terms of trying to bring about peace and safety, including the police, including government, including all the professional service providers, because there will be this immense gathering of great ideas and great care and connection amongst thousands of people in this community. And then as I said before, what we want are we want people to rely on each other. And that's the sense of health that I think we want in our community. But that also means more safety. And so it probably does mean less crime. That was my own observation from being a police person in this community for a quarter of a century. Anybody else want to try to respond as you keels? Yeah, I'd like to. So I've got the rotary hat on totally for this. So rotary does have a lot of material, a lot of information, a lot of history, like I say, dealing with the interest in peace since World War I. Well, we had World War II, so we obviously haven't quite mastered that whole thing. But anyway, in my studies, I came across kind of a concept. You articulated it, you know, grassroots, but it was called negative peace, which is it's fear of violence or action of violence. There's that kind of when we talk about peace and we're trying to figure out, what are we talking about when we say peace? Well, the Institute for Economics and Peace, which is one of the partnering agencies that Rotary works with, has kind of drilled down a little bit into trying to understand that. So there's this negative peace concept, which is fear of violence and actual violence. And then there's positive peace, which is really looking at the attributes of peace. And you guys articulated it when you talk about community. So they identified like eight pillars of peace as it looks at that positive peace concept, which is neighboring, whether that's a neighbor next door or that's a neighboring country. They looked at civility within the structure of the community. And I can't think of the six other ones. It'll come. But it was powerful information. So I don't know if that helps to answer your question a little bit about where Rotary is coming at in terms of its idea of understanding of peace. It's not policing. It's really persons and focused on that. The predicate for the project that we're talking about as the action to which people will be called on February 15th, is almost the opposite of policing, right? And that's not, I say almost the opposite. That's not to suggest that policing doesn't have a role in society, it does. But the predicate is we will not live into a future of greater peace and safety if we are dependent on policing to get there or legislation to get there or ordinances to get there or government. There's a role for government. But if we are, but if we're going to live into a more aspirational future, it has to be really driven by kind of the interdependence brick that you were talking about earlier. In fact, as Mike was making his comments, I was thinking it is from dependence on them, the government, or some set of elected officials to solve my problems for me to, how do we solve these together? Because it isn't going to, we are not going to live into that kind of a future if we aren't clear or at least a little more aspirational and willing to work together to make it happen. So it's a great question. Shaquille, thanks for the question because it's just, this initiative is just the opposite of dependence on the police department or really anybody else. Let me, let's go back to the question that our guest asked or our audience member, you're our guest. But they're also good. About your aspirations, your best hopes for a future of greater peace and safety. Well, you want, we'll start, I don't want to put anybody in the spot. Well, we'll start on this side. Yeah. I think if we can let people know with working together with other organizations and that by working together we're stronger and the benefits of working together will make a difference. So your, your best hope is that this, this will give way to, to greater interdependence or connections within the community. And organizations work together to achieve that. Well, and mine is that we have a strong participating community because it's very lonely if you're out there all by yourself. But if you have a lot of participation by organizations, by individuals, by leaders, that can make a tremendous difference in the willingness of more people to come forth. And so that's my hope that this will encourage a lot of participation and then with a lot of participation we become a much more welcoming community and that all leads to a much more peaceful, a much safer, a much calmer environment for everyone. In some ways, as I listened, one of that, that's almost like back to the future. You're talking about moving, well, but I think that's important to recognize moving us forward to the, to the kind of connections that we all knew existed once upon a time and seem to be so fractured and fragmented in today's society. Well, people do call me a Pollyanna. But I do think that there is, we have to have hope. Otherwise, you know, why bother? If I thought, if I thought that was Pollyanna, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Oh, I know. So it's not Pollyanna. It's the only option we have, right? I agree. Is if you think about Shalom, the only way to get there, it won't be through who regulates us. No, it will be through the commitments and the sacrifices. The relationship that we have. The relationship that we have. The relationship that we have. The relationship that we have. Debbie? Well, it's, you know, kind of spinning right off of what you just said. To believe that piece is possible. Well, I do. And, you know, I have some personal experiences around my belief in that and I won't go into that today. But I'm really so happy that, you know, going back to Rotary again, that Rotary is an organization that there's AUW and other organizations, the people at the table, the group in this audience, we believe that piece is possible. So it's unpacking it a little bit, keeping it not just Pollyanna, so we don't have to apologize for our, you know, people calling this that, but that we really rally more to that belief and not intellectualize it, but study it a little bit, break it down, look at the pieces of it and say, there it is, right there for us. Yes, we have these things we're scared of, but we have things that are strong, foundational elements that we can see and build on. That's my hope. So some of the inertia that we deal with every day is somewhat betrayed by what the media delivers to us. They can really dramatize the human condition, they can market fault, they can market blame, they often exploit the wounds of a community or the wounds of people and look for that kind of of a retributive responsibility. And so a lot of people are kind of driven by, not just the mass media, but by our social networks. And so there's all that inertia out there, but my mantra It does generate fear, but it also generates this idea that we ought to see things through the lens of the deficiencies and seize things as problems. And you've heard me say this before, Tim, that the moment we begin to see our community less as a problem to be solved and more as a possibility, that's the shift that I think needs to take place in the conversations. And so my add-on to this is that the new change model in this effort ought to be is how do we leverage the goodness that exists? How do we leverage all the things that are working well? And I used to say that for every bad thing that happens there's a thousand good things that happen in this community. And when I was in my job, I knew more than anybody else in this community all the bad things that happened, the child molestations, the sexual assaults, the domestic violences. But I also knew from living in this community for 40-plus years that this community, what was pervasive in this community was all of its goodness. And so how do we expand? How do we leverage and take advantage of that goodness in a way that it can begin to basically crowd out all the things we don't want to see? Whether that's in a human being, whether that's in an organization or whether that's in a community or a country. The change model has to be not seeing things through the lens of deficiencies and there's a problem to be solved, but seeing things through the lens of what's good and what's possible. From deficit to abundance. There you go. From scarcity to abundance. Or from scarcity to abundance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rick. You know, one of the things that I've been a part of over the years has been the community development world, right? There's this A, B, C, D in the community development. Asset-based community development. So often we go and like, you think somebody goes into an incredibly poor situation like Haiti or something like that and they go in and you're like, and all you're doing is looking for what they don't have compared to what we do. And when you do that, you always end up with short-sighted solutions in order to be able to understand how this community can actually move forward if it's sort of looking for its assets. What assets are there? And it's asset-based community development. It's one of the things that just, you know, being in your sphere over these years kind of moved me one step forward. I put these pieces together. So he's like, one of the beautiful things that we get to do is we've, to lament the loss of the ability to have conversation and to understand where somebody else is coming from and be able to understand their point of view and why they've gotten there. You know, why am I here, right? I'm the child of immigrants, right? That's critical to my story and to understand my perspective in this world. Others have that as well. Or others don't have that. I've got other friends who've been in this country for their family goes back 300 years. They view this country very differently than I do. You know, my history in this country goes back to 1963. That's a, but we don't understand that if we come with a bunch of assumptions. So to be able to have an opportunity to have conversation and as part of the conversation to be able to hear where others are coming from and just listen and learn and respect that piece and be able to go, oh, that's why they have some of the fears that they have. Oh, but that's also why they have some of the aspirations they have. So one of my aspirations is, again, over the long haul, right? To be able to kind of have to be able to have the kind of community that we hope for. Doesn't happen three weeks from now. Right? It doesn't happen even by summer. This is, this is setting a direction and saying this is what we're going to choose to do with the assets that we have to move forward over the next generation so that the generation behind us that's coming in, this is their normative. And out of that normative, then they move the next piece forward. So the next generation has a normative about how we engage each other in this kind of dialogue of respect and mutuality toward the way that it could be. That's my hope. I look at this thing. Shalom. So I look at this thing and I go, my aspiration is that 20 years from now when I'm watching something like this for the next generation's leaders, I get to hear that we did something today that affected our kids and the next generation of leaders that are coming behind us in this community. Well, I can't tell you how much I appreciate who you are, what you do and the fact that you're here tonight. Number one. Number two, the prospect that anybody in the community and obviously we have a number of people in the community who would embrace an opportunity to spend even just a few hours rather than perseverating and trying to avoid worse fears, to acknowledge our worst fears are possible but so are our best hopes. We just need to be clear on what they are and develop our own strategies then for moving forward not to avoid what we're afraid of but to achieve what we aspire to together. That's what this project is about and I so I'm so grateful for you helping to articulate that. The Rotary Club is inviting the community to the beginning of something on February 15th, not the end of it, the beginning of something and we'll see where it takes us as a community. So I hope this studio audience would join me in welcoming or in thanking this group and I will say Longmoners, that is your backstory on Peace is Possible One Community at a Time.