 and welcome. I'm James Milan. This is a one-on-one conversation with Makaya Healy, who is a candidate for the Select Board in 2020. Makaya, thanks for joining us. I'd like to use this conversation to flesh out a little bit further, a number of things that have come up in the debate and in the campaign in general. One of them is that, although there are a number of contested races this year, the Select Board is always the highest profile race really. And you are a candidate who has been linked to Arlington Fights Racism. The group has endorsed you and as I said this is the most prominent of the different races. Last night in responding to a question or at the debate, excuse me, in responding to a question, I was asking about the various points of the platform of the AFR and whether you would support all of them and you said no. And that might have been surprising to some people. I wanted to invite you at the outset to just kind of clarify where you stand. Thank you. Yes, I have wanted the opportunity to share more context because that question was a yes or no question. And I absolutely believe in advocacy groups like Arlington Fights Racism who pursue ideals that are very much in line with my campaign message and with who I am as a person and how I tried to live in this world. And I absolutely support the spirit of all of those policies outlined in the platform and rather get hung up on some of the wording of it, of the language and the presentation of the actual platform, I'd rather spend my time talking about the ways that I do support or the ways that I do agree with some of the things. So I do agree with actively pursuing diversity and cultural competency for all of our leaders and employees in our town. I support the annual implicit bias and cultural competency in training. I really think that we all need to be moving in this direction to continue to grow like professionally and just viewing other people in different ways. I agree with the communication policy, calling for a code of conduct for all of our town employees. And I agree with creating guidance for the use of their sort of justice should it be used in future cases. And restorative justice, as a friend of mine has said, restorative justice should be on the horizontal plane of things and not necessarily like a vertical usage of that. So setting forth those guidance. Sorry, could you elaborate a little bit more on that in case people don't automatically understand the difference between the horizontal and the vertical as you're referring to it? Sure. Yeah. And the way that I would see that is, you know, restorative justice is meant for individuals in the society who don't have rank, who don't have title, and who have made mistakes. And it's meant to kind of level the playing field in the criminal justice world. So it wasn't, you know, I don't think it was meant to be used in this employee-employer situation, which is kind of what I was saying of the hierarchical plane. So I mean, a lot can be said about restorative justice in the use of this, but I absolutely agree with that we do need guidelines for how we're going to be using that in the future. And I know that we have support, you know, our state, one of our state reps, Sean Garbley, was either the creator or the co-creator of this, of the state enactment. And so I think that he would be a good, good resource to help us do that. So yeah, so it is, it has been a complicated, it was challenging. And I think if I were asked the question again, I would say yes, I would support the AFR platform with qualifications, you know, you know, again, like minimizing some of the fault, some of the problems, parts of like the language. And like, you know, I think people get hung up on how is this going to be implemented, you know, how is this, you know, it's so brainy, like, but that's not the purpose of advocacy groups. Like it's, they're supposed to be, yeah, just far reaching and just like keep us to a high standard. And that's, and that, yeah. And so I do, I hope that they have a long existence in our community because there's a place for that. Appreciate you, you expanding on that, because I know that it had to have been frustrating to have to answer just yesterday or no to that. So on another topic, what do you understand in terms of the select board? What do you understand is the work that is involved in being on the select board? And how do you, I noticed during the debate that you were referring to coaching that you have done of various individuals in different kinds of situations as being a good qualification for you. How do you see that working? That wasn't immediately clear. Yeah. So there, there are three, you know, like in terms of the work that the board does, I think there's three primary works. And I know over the years you've heard this over and over, but for, for a lot of this campaign, it has been educating people about what the select board does. And which has been really exciting to me because it's involving more, more people in what, how our government functions and how, and so, so the three statutory roles, you know, are the oversight of the town manager. They, the board also makes policies and the board is also a voice of constituents. So, you know, I think that a board member needs to have like this extensive network that I've, you know, that we've talked about within relationships within the community, they need to be open and inviting and a safe presence for people to bring concerns to. They need to be able to sit with people and validate their concerns and make hard decisions about those, about things that don't align with, with everyone's priorities. But, you know, a lot of the work that I've done in the diversity task group has given me this extensive network that I talked about. Again, it's across neighborhoods, it's across age groups, religious backgrounds, and sexual orientation in class. I'm professionally trained as a counselor and a pastor and a community organizer. And so I'm very comfortable with sitting with pain and not adopting it as my own. And though it's uncomfortable, I'm, I'm able to make difficult decisions. And so a lot of the work that I have done within this community has been has been talking to individual people, but also leaders. And these one on one conversations, most of the time we're talking about something that's that they're stuck on, like it's a problem, it's a value, it's a situation that we're trying to wrap our head around. And so it's a little bit of, it's a little bit of, I can't call myself an executive coach because I don't have that title or training. But when I'm talking to a parent or when I'm talking to a leader with a position, and we're struggling, we're wrestling, we're asking these questions, and we're trying to, or, or coaching, you know, coaching through an issue to try to move forward on a tiny, you know, tiny problem. I think that's the work of, of a good manager. And I think that's the work of the, of a board member. Okay, you, obviously, both have empathy for and perhaps experience with what it feels like to feel aggrieved about decisions made and processes followed by, in this case, the select board. How will you deal though, if you are elected to the board, how will you deal with the disappointment, disagreement, disapproval, once you are inside that structure? So from constituents, or from? I would say, thanks for asking for clarification, because I'm referring to disagreement within the board, and then also from constituents, you know, from from outside. Yeah, that's really great. So I can answer the, the outside one first, because I have been part of institutions, you know, I mentioned them being a pastor. And so I'm a part of, you know, as part of the religious institution, where there's a persona and a perspective of a public, a public, you know, I'm a public figure. And with a personal personal story and personal thoughts. And you know, that might not, those two might not always connect, right? Like being, being a public figure. And so, you know, I'm assembling a little bit about this. But, but basically, like I'm comfortable with being an individual person, within a public setting, and having a perspective that may not connect necessarily with, with someone else's perspective. So not everybody is religious, you know, not everybody believes in God, or not everybody has faith. And that's fine, like, I can still be who I am, I can still wear my title, my role, you know, and not try to, you know, persuade anybody else. So within the board itself, you know, one of the, the one of the first conversations that I had with, with the town manager earlier on this year, when I told him that I was going to, to pursue candidacy for a selected board is I said, what are you know, what are the qualities that you look for in a board member? And he listed off a couple of things, I'll try to remember them. But one of them that I hold on to is being able to work with, you know, work with other people. But also to be able to let issues go, right? And to move on to not hold grudges, and to take everything issue by issue to come prepared. And so I, I think the current, you know, I think the lot of many of the board members have that persona, they have the ability to take an issue to not hold on to it personally, and then just to take the next agenda item. So I feel very comfortable with, with being with disappointment, and to let things go and not hold on to grudges. But I will, you know, I still, I still have veto power, right? Like one of my, my mentors that I reached out to, early on in this campaign said, you know, you, you still, you don't have to agree with everything. You don't always have to say yes. You can say no, and you can say you abstain. And so even any of those answers, say what your values are. So I can still, I can still be myself. And do you have preferred ways in which you'd like to kind of deal with disagreements that you might have? And if so, can you share any of those with us? Yes. Ways of dealing with disagreement. Some of the ways that I deal with disagreement, you know, yesterday in the debate, you asked about civility. And I thought a lot about that question. And, you know, civility has to do a lot with, or when people disagree with it, when there's an abrasive personality, like going at you about a particular issue. Instead, one of the things strategies I use instead of defending myself and trying to tell the other person that they're wrong, or tell them that they're not seeing the picture entirely accurate that they're missing information. Any sort of defensive posture is not what I try to do. Like I, I try to lean back and ask questions so that I can understand first what, like, how important that is, you know, how important that is, and really try to understand through questions. So that's that's outside the boardroom. And you can have those particular conversations out there. Unfortunately, I think the frustration I've got to tell you, we don't have much time. Okay, okay, sorry. I think one of the frustrations is that the boardroom is not a place to deliberate necessarily. It's not a place to have discussion or dialogue. So, so my interest is having discussions outside of the boardroom, like creating structures so that people can actually talk to people or all right. Thank you very much. We are out of time just like that. I have been talking to Makaya Healy, who is a candidate for Select Board this year. Makaya, thanks for joining us. And to you and our audience, thank you for joining us. I'm James Milan. We'll see you next time.