Tumwater City Council & School Board Joint Equity Meeting: Session 3

001i see six council seven okay we're good i have four of mine let me text the fifth casey is uh promoting the panelists right now look at that you ready to go melissa let's go ahead this is uh let's go ahead and call uh the uh thursday december 2nd joint tomwater city council and tomorrow school board meeting to order i'm mayor peter me just take a moment and have uh counsel our counsel introduce themselves so i'll call out a name and then you introduce yourself and then call on the next person i'll start with the person who's in my upper left and my zoom uh matrix uh council member schneider hi i'm charlie ryder i'm council member for the city of tom water position number seven and who i see next would be angela i

002am angela jefferson position number two city of time water also retired military and i'm happy to be here next is i see lietta thank you angela hi everyone leanna dollhop as you can see from our wonderful backgrounds city of tom water position number one and that means we still represent the whole entire city and uh i see joan cassie hi i'm joan cathy council member uh city of tumwater i've been here a few years and i've i feel like when i look at my the councils i've been on i really feel grateful to have been able to serve with the people and to serve the city of town water gives me a good feeling i'm glad i'm here tonight oh i'm supposed to say somebody i see i see eileen thank you joan i'm eileen

003swarthout councilmember city of tumwater doing this for seven years been a resident of town water for thirty well right now thirty years over thirty years and my kiddos all went through tom water school so um go black hills wolves anyway so um i see michael athauser hi michael towser tomorrow city council member position five i i did not have the privilege of going to tell motor schools i went through uh north thurston school district but when we played black hills in soccer i did get a hat trick so i apologize for for breaking a lot of hearts on the soccer field back in the day very happy to be here oh i think that's all from from from the city did we get debbie gabby oh sorry uh i'm debbie sullivan and tomorrow city council

004position six and i've been on the council for eight years and i am also mayor elect so i will take office on january 1. thank you everyone i'll turn it over to you melissa all right i like how you guys did that so uh maybe we can try to do that there's only five of us um i'm melissa beard i'm the school board president for like only one more week i'm not counting the days at all um and i uh went through tom water schools proud to be a t-bird and a parent of a wolf and i'm really really proud to serve on the school board with my fellow board members so next i see scott scott killough i represent district three i've been in public education for 28 years i think that's right i

005started when i was 23 oh i taught at tomorrow high school for 17 and a half years okay i spy with my little eye laurie sale thank you scott hello everybody good evening as scott just said my name is laurie sale and i was appointed to the tomorrow school board on may 13th of this year and just recently won election to my position um i represent district one and i am grateful and feel very privileged and honored to be a part of such an amazing group of people and i will oh one more thing i'm a parent of three children and one recently graduated from black hills this past june and i have a son who also attends black hills and a daughter who attends tomorrow middle school so as they say we are all

006in um i would happily pass this off to i see darby hello everyone i'm derby kaikenen a school board director for district five i also have two children in the tumwater school district one in seventh grade and one in tenth grade we'll pass over to casey thank you darby very much hi i'm casey taylor and i'm the vice president i also have a kid in the school district as well at peter g a first grader and then recently just had a daughter graduate from tumblr as well and she attends sbu logo falcons thank you all right that's all of us and then we also have our superintendent sean dotson who has turned his screen off but he's here and john donner city administrators here as well hi sean hi john and ann cook our communications

007manager is here as well and i will turn it over to eileen and matthew to lead us through this evening hello everyone good to see you all again thanks for being back here for another round of engagement with some pretty um pretty meaty topics so we thank you for having us and thank you for taking on this challenge together as a leadership group i think it just speaks volumes about um your leadership and your commitment to this community that you've been willing to engage in this process together um okay let's see matthew do you want you want to say hi first of all hi good to be with you all again good to see your faces all right should i share my screen go for it we'll see how i do with this i've it's

008not been good lately i don't know what's going on with me are you seeing the powerpoint okay yes yeah we're good great thank you okay all right it's going well so far um okay so we're back um and these are just a reminder just a refresher um of what we've talked about many times in the past so um i'm just not going to spend a ton of time on them but i am going to ask you um to think about which ones of these you've been using as you've read through and experience some of the 21 day challenge and which ones of these do you think you're going to really try to push yourself to lean into this evening as we have our conversation together okay so um number one to stay engaged don't let

009your heart and mind check out and um usually that's not a problem with this group at all um that there's lots of engagement um and just to just to reiterate that um engagement is both how we are and um in the moment in the conversation and engagement is also what happens after this right so when the 21 day challenge is over and it's back to sort of business as usual how do you continue to be engaged for the long term in doing this work when it's not right here in front of you um and you're not setting aside like these specific times to have these conversations how will you bring it back in to the work that you do on a regular basis um experience discomfort i am sure that you must have had some

010moments of discomfort um in our time together and as well as in your own experience of reading through the um 21 day challenge so just to remind ourselves that discomfort is part of the process and um it's all signs that we are changing and growing and expanding our knowledge and our understanding and our experiences um and i'll just share with you a quick story real brief um i'll try to be brief um but um i had i've had two recent experiences with having a like a a critical conversation with with colleagues of mine um that i was not actually really looking forward to but i knew it was better for all of us to actually say something rather than talk about them instead of to them and so i um i made it a goal

011for myself to actually have these conversations um and i i had both the conversations and i think they both went um well in one case i felt the liberation of saying things that had been on my heart for a long time and that i just needed to be said and sort of freeing myself from the need for a response but just to say i just need the space to say that to you um and you can do with it what you want but i have no attachment to how you're going to react to it um and then the other conversation that i had it was with someone i didn't know all that well but my experience with this person in a meeting that we were both in um was not not great and i wanted

012to share that experience with this person in the hopes that um it wouldn't just sit with me and stay with me but in the hopes that we could actually move forward differently because i was like if it continues like this i am not going to want to be in meetings with this person and i'm not going to have a high degree of trust for this person um and i would rather talk to them about it so not a comfortable situation right i don't love doing things like that um and i did it and we actually talked it all the way through and i just shared with this person all of those things i said listen this is hard um this is an inter impact conversation i have i am positive your intention in um in

013this meeting was not what the impact was on me um and i i just wanted us to have the opportunity to talk about it and they were great and we had an actually like really positive conversation um and processed it all the way through and i think ended up stronger and better on the other side so i think it's important to share stories like that because i think we have so much dread about doing that um and to share those stories when we can about like when we do those things it does actually improve our relationships there is an opportunity to improve our relationships and the way that we do work together in an anti-racist way and that was my experience with that conversation um okay so that was experience discomfort um speaking your truth

014i think my stories also illustrated speaking my truth um again not always the most comfortable thing and um so liberating when we do it right um to accept and expect non-closure you know we've practiced that plenty of times over the course of this challenge together they there are as matthew and i have said many times there are many meaty topics in this challenge and there's no way that we could do sort of like the in-depth deep dive um do justice to to the real complexities of all these topics so i am sure that you must be experiencing non-closure um and so i think just for us all to reframe this 21 day challenge as that opening opportunity and invitation to be more learning on our own and learning together um and then intent and impact

015so um a lot of times our conflict rises from those instances where our intentions don't match our impact and i think it's just so much you know just again my story of um my experience of this person was that they they wanted to be accountable accountable to impact and they did not go to the defense of their intention and because of that i think our conversation went really well and i think we both ended up with increased trust for one another um so again just wanted to share how if when we use these practices they can actually help us um and and that we do have to practice them and that we do have to practice using them um so matthew do you want to add anything to any of that okay um i think

016you got it good all right so i just invite all of you to think about which ones of these have been coming up for you recently which ones of these did you experience as you were going through the 21 day challenge um and which ones of these would you like to lean into tonight as we have our conversation together um and actually i'll just pause here and see if anyone has um any reflections on that anyone want to reflect on or comment on which ones of these have sort of been popping up for you recently yes debbie so i think in a way a couple of them have been and especially um you know when you start getting into the nuances especially the white supremacy portion of that um it is so deep and so

017uh it's almost like pulling back layers of an onion on a lot of this stuff and so um that one was very deep for me and i really want ice i mark that information so that i can go back because i think that's something that i i'm experiencing and seeing around me so much and especially right now in our society it just seemed to just burst open and i think it it's good to uh to revisit that section a couple of times because i got some really good information from that and your list of uh agreements and practices is that something that you could share that we could like i would like to put that i get my desk so that absolutely yeah you know because that fits in a lot of other areas of

018our life too and i would i think that would just be one of those little nice things to have posted on the wall and and just kind of one of those reminders yeah absolutely we're absolutely happy to share with you and just um we should always say this and some i often forget to um those are not agreements that we created they come from um the work of glenn singleton and it's called from a book called courageous conversations about race um and we did add the one about intent and impact but the rest of those are all from glenn singleton's work um courageous conversations and the other thing i'll say about that is that they work best when you do them collectively right so when you work together if we're all agreeing to use those

019and we're all agreeing to practice those together that's when they actually do work the best right so imagine if i'd gone into that conversation with my co-worker um and said can we have an intent impact conversation and that person been like i have no idea what you're talking about and no right but but because we had had that we have this this practice in my agency around intended impact we were able to lean on those and to to really be intentional about um trying to lean into that dynamic so um that's just another kind of tip for for using this but yes happy to share all of those things with you all any other reflections or thoughts about the agreements yes councilmember jefferson yes um mine was experiencing discomfort and speaking the truth um when

020i was reading about the white culture norms dominating the workplace and professionalism standards it brought back memories for me of my military days where um i had to wear my hair straight because that was professionalism in the military straight hair um so it was such a challenge for me just to have a maintain straight hair because you know with with black hair it's it's curly so it takes a lot of heat and straightening calms so i lived far from post so i had to drag this huge duffel bag into work my uniform my boots blow dryer curling iron and you know we have to use oil so i had to have my oils basically i had to set up a beauty salon in the gym just to maintain this professional straight hair after doing pt

021in the mornings so it just brought back memories for me and i'm just so glad that things are changing because when i go on base now i see women with braids in their hair i see women with natural curly afro hair and it's it's just good to see that those professional standards are changing so yeah that that's that was a little triggering or painful part to read so yeah thank you yeah thank you thank you for sharing that story and i just think about like the pairing of professionalism with straight hair aka whiteness right and the the meaning of that if you think about the profound way that we've aligned um what it means to be professional with with an aspect of your body right that that you were born with and to say that

022the way you came into this world is not it's not professional it's not good enough and what that means to people so yes we can we can be thankful when um if the military has has changed its standards around that um and i think too that gives us an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which what what are other ways in which we've aligned professionalism around whiteness right that's a conversation we're going to be digging into tonight actually um so we'll be spending a lot more time with that topic tonight that's something i hear when i work with educators of color that's often one of their most painful experiences is being told you're not professional because of something related to their appearance the way they talk like a cultural norm that they might have

023their hair any of those things is to say like the way you are in this world is is not considered good enough um for you to be working with our kids right and we absolutely know that that is not the case and our kids need people who can come to work as their authentic selves right and not trying to ascribe to and fit into some box that is not meant for them thank you for sharing that okay other thoughts any other thoughts or reflections on the agreements yes michael um the the piece that um was sort of sticking out to me is is um expecting and accepting non-closure because as you know people who comprise a legislative branch of government or in in pete's or debbie's case i suppose an executive branch um you know

024like like it's we are sort of ingrained to see issues and to try to um solve them as quickly as possible and to try to come up with a solution that benefits the most people as quickly and as efficiently as possible like there's a whole variety of matrices that we could apply to that but my point is that it it's very difficult to look at a deep deeply rooted um historical challenge and to not just say all right all right all right let's just go let's go fix it right now because there's so much more interpersonal work like first speaking personally there's so much more interpersonal work and coming to terms with my own white privilege and understanding my role in that solution so that i'm not stepping over things so that i'm being an

025accomplice rather than trying to control a conversation or take up space or select uh what one of those fallacies in there was thinking that you know the perfect solution to things and that's a challenge too because we we've tried to tell through being elected officials we've had robust conversations with the community about how we we think we have the ability to make the right decisions um so so i i think like personally for me that that's triggering a lot of important um interpersonal kind of like take a step back and look at things to make sure that i'm not acting or thinking too quickly or jumping to conclusions or entering conversations with preconceived notions or prejudice to make sure that i'm having fully thought out analyses of things and listening to the right people um

026and not having any conclusions drawn in advance and also accepting that um you know that the solution is that there is no solution in a box that you can just grab and cling on to and say okay we did it that it's a lifelong journey of being an accomplice um so that that's sort of what i think the readings for for 10 to 13 sort of impressed upon me is that sort of notion thank you so appreciate that and then charlie thank you so i want to kind of play off what angela said and i didn't realize this until she spoke about her hairdo so when i first started working at the post office i i was 145 pounds and i had a natural afro believe it or not i know you look at my

027hair now and you think it's pretty straight but i did have a natural afro and i i they used to call me q-tip because that's pretty much what i look like and so i wanted to be one of the youngest supervisors that the post office ever promoted and my supervisor was a person of color and he mentioned me charlie if you want to move up the professionalism and and succeed as a supervisor you need to change your hairstyle so here was here was a person of color telling me that i need to change my afro into something that was more professional presentable so it just brought up a flashback so thank you for mentioning your aspect on that angela i appreciate that that's a that's a great illustration of how all of us are impacted

028by white supremacy right and if the way that you've learned to succeed and survive in this world whether you're a person of color or a white person is by assimilating or by learning the rules of whiteness and and if you can if you can bring yourself up to those standards and you can do it um you do it right that's how that's how we've managed to survive in this world and that's that's how we keep replicating these systems too um and taking a pause to examine what that does to a person i mean the other part of um angela's story that stood out to me was like all the time and effort and labor and money that she had to put into doing that that her white counterparts did not have to did not have

029to right like that sounds like like a huge investment of additional time and labor on her part so that she could have the same job that somebody else had as well so um just thinking about the impacts of of what we have why we do the things that we do and and the cost of doing them as well okay um let's see i think we're going to continue with the reflection mode so i'm going to toss it over to matthew i'll put the slide back up all right so we're going to continue on this reflection piece and i really um michael you spoke to one of these already in terms of what came up about the content from these last few days of the challenge um but just wanted you to pick one of these

030that that feels the most significant you know what's still coming up from from the last session um i think i think debbie talked about that a little bit um how is this challenge showing up in your mind in your heart and yourself and your body um and then what were some things that came up about these last few days um in the challenge for you um was there something that felt really you know significant pokey um one of those oh no kind of moments um so wanted to give you these few questions and would love to just hear from everybody um you know which which one of these feels the the most weighty for you holds the most weight and if you've already answered you know you don't you don't have to do it again

031but because we've had a few folks answer these questions already i wanted to give time print space for everybody to put their voice in the room matthew do you mean which one of these three questions are weighing most heavily with us is that was that the question you're asking yeah like i want you to pick the question that maybe it feels the most uncomfortable if we're leading into our our practices you know not not not pick the one that's like the easiest to answer you know what i mean okay like what's what's come up for you that really feels like oh this is this is hard if you're able to lean into that you think i see eileen's hand up this is pete i'll i'll just say i i think this whole concept of white

032privilege i'm frankly struggling with i didn't like us i i read the article on um the guy who talked about poverty him living in poverty and and how i really identified with that guy because you know i i won't say that i lived in poverty but we were not a wealthy family and um i certainly didn't feel privileged in that sense and so i i yeah reading that and then trying to understand he he talked about a number of other analogies that are not necessarily race based that are that are um uh examples of of uh privilege and i i thought i i found that very uh very insightful and and helpful for me to kind of understand that issue um so um anyway that's something i i'm i'm struggling with them and uh that

033you know the the other um the other thing and it's more perspective than looking back and that is um i i know uh uh like there's a regional planning council they're starting to ask the question well how does this policy affect people of color or how is it in some way biased and i'm having a lot of difficulty thinking in terms of it's like the the structural racism lesson in here and talk i thought there was some really interesting examples on the medical system and and how that has become uh racially biased and uh uh i i think our i i'm i'm it's not like we have uh area areas of tumwater that are you know a particular race separate race or whatever i think people are integrated pretty much in our community so i'm

034having a little i'm having a little difficulty trying to figure out how how do we do things at that hurt people of color frankly how do we what are we doing uh that we don't know we're doing that um so i'm interested in that anyway trying to learn more about that yeah yeah thank you so much for for saying those things i think one of the things for me the one of the easiest ways for me to think about the white privilege conversation especially when it's um you know you like you said like somebody experiencing poverty there's a lot of a lot of times when um you know folks get defensive around that it's because it it's the either or thinking right it's like it's like either like you're saying that i didn't have a

035hard time right like you like you're saying that like i didn't experience a hardship and like that's not what it's saying right it's it's both and it's like i i experienced hardship and i didn't have to navigate that as a person of color right so there's there it's being able to kind of see those layers and how they play together so it's not it's like not taking anything away it's just saying that you didn't have to you don't have to experience that with with those other layers on top yeah i relate more more closely to women in the professional world in the sense that i know that they've had frankly difficult breaking into a man's world in the professional environment i i've seen it with my wife you know she's a professional engineer i'm a

036professional engineer but uh she was not promoted you know as much as i was and i'm convinced it's because of of her gender more than her performance and uh you know i think that those sorts of things um anyway i i've seen that yeah play so i sort of get it but obviously i haven't you know yep yep the intersectionality is is all the layers all together it's all it's all woven together yeah thank you um eileen i see your hand up next well i i get identified with the second question and then um and then i was looking back at um what does internalized superiority look like that topic and so um my daughter and i went for a walk today and i was sharing a conversation about a person that i feel like

037i i should talk to and then i and i had this um i had to like call myself short because i was having this you know expectation that they should act you know in a certain way and and that you know um and i realized that i i need to think in a different way you know i wasn't because i'm thinking that they're they need to meet my standards rather than um you know looking at them as a whole person and so i suddenly just i said to my daughters like huh i need to uh to see this in a different way and i appreciate what we have been you know because it's like you don't know when you're doing this you know and you don't and so to finally be like to be aware

038that this is helping me be more aware of how um you know i need to take more things into account and i appreciate what pete said too is that in our jobs that how do we you know because we just because we don't see it doesn't mean it's not there you know how do we bring you know how do we look at our laws and different things that we're creating um you know because we don't see it you know but it's there and so we need help with that and uh you know how to direct us in that way that we're we're being fair and equitable so thank you yeah great thank you eileen darby so my uh reflection is kind of along the lines of what are the things it might be all of

039them um carrying this for quite some time and then sort of what i was struggling with and thinking about the most you know recently um i think the place where i continue to struggle and i'm talking years now at this point because i've been i've been involved in work that has been focused on diversity equity and inclusion for quite some time anti-racism is relatively new in that um in that whole experience and i think that's the piece that i i continue to struggle with that's very similar um to what pete had shared in terms of i hear a lot that you know leading with racial equity and if we lead with racial equity and we always put that at the forefront then that is going to benefit everyone you know we if we come from

040that space but the challenge for me is i am not a person of color and so i while i read all of our readings and everything in here about institutional racism structural all of it it makes complete and total sense to me and i completely understand where all that's coming from but what i'm struggling with was is how does that how does that actually translate to a difference in a policy um and i had an opportunity to really recognize where i can where my perspective comes from and where i continue to have that gap when it comes to anti-racist thinking during the election season so many of you are aware that one of the hot topics that was coming towards school board candidates is around critical race theory um got a couple of emails from

041potential voters that were asking what is your philosophy on critical race theory um and my response was well i can't speak to critical race theory i'm not a legal scholar it's not that simple it's a very complicated topic so i'm not necessarily going to speak to that but what i will speak to is what i think of when i think of educational equity and what i find myself reflecting on always comes back to the concept of resources and you know people who have attended schools and places where they didn't have resources whether it be the school itself or whether it be their family didn't have the you know the impact and the influence and those are the kinds of things that i think about in terms of um i can see where policy can be

042framed in a way um you know that is meant to benefit the the wealthy and the dominant culture basically um and so that that is something that i will continue to really need to to to need some help with in terms of i can see where we can you know make changes to policy that will benefit people of color and that we keep that anti-racist lens in mind that as far as something very specific that can be done to change a policy that will directly make things better for people of color i'm sure i'm still struggling with that great thank you derby yeah i think the resource question is huge i the one thing that immediately came up for me when you were talking about that is to think about resources um through different frames

043that it's not just it's not just money you know time like emotional resource social resources like that um familial resource like thinking about those those ways of being in connectivity that are in our world and that are really important for us as humans that humanize the space to humanize education that like that the relational um relational resources so there's a lot of different ways to think about how that shows up in our system and our policy and how we implement that like so much of our policy work at the esd is is centering relationships and so many times in these in these spaces we will do work that that does that and then people will say well when are we really going to get to work it's like we have been working like building relationships

044with people like what we're doing in this space and and talking you know from our hearts and like what's going on with us as humans like that that humanizes the work and that is to me to me that's anti-racist because racism uh it dehumanizes you you know you dehumanizes other people and and humanizes ourselves um so that disconnection that disease of disconnection is huge um and so the the more we can connect the more we can think about resources from from different ways other than monetary is very important i'm not it's not the either or it's the and and and and right but i but i hear you thank you and thank you for for speaking that into the space yes melissa so since the last meeting i was reflecting on something michael had said

045when he was talking about the sidewalks like i don't know how many times i've retold that story when people ask you know what is this work and it's it's just it was mind-blowing to think about that and i was trying to figure out what does that look like in the school district um again that's mind-blowing um to me like because i am one of those who this is the guilt part where i learned i learned how the system worked and i'm working it people i'm totally working it so i'm a part of it and i know i'm from i'm i know that i keep promoting it because i know how it works and so um trying to fight that part of me that says okay this is how i can help people of color you

046know i can help them learn the system but the system sucks you know the system sucks the fact that i don't know i don't know things about my history and that it wasn't valued that's bad i don't want kids to grow up thinking that um that you have to learn other people's history and not your own or teachers thinking that if if someone isn't complaining about something that they must be okay you know and and and promoting the idea that if you assimilate you're going to be you're going to do okay um i don't want our kids going through a system like that and i don't know my struggle is i don't know how to how to fix that because i i did this my own way i i navigated this tom water system in

047a way that has really benefited me but i don't want other kids to have to do that and i don't know how to kind of and going back to what michael said like is upending how we think about things and i don't know how to do that so that's my struggle has been to stay engaged because then i just give up so great thank you melissa who's next i'll go next thank you laurie um so yeah i um i i think what's staying with me from last session is just it's just a gratitude and it's just it's it's thankful that uh folks are willing to have the discussion i think that many people feel better after they have these discussions they're able to kind of release those emotions and feelings that have been building up

048over the years and finally maybe have an outlet now to put those feelings out into the world and feel that they're doing something productive um being an ally in some way i i think that's kind of my reflection tonight is just gratitude for the willingness for folks to want to actually stay there their piece and and find a safe space to do it in um i did want to kind of circle back to mayor pete's point about the discussion on white privilege um and that's a that's a sticky wicket and i and it's and it's funny and i'll i'll share my uh story real quickly um you know growing up where i did in ohio i'm an only child came from a fluid means i didn't want for anything um so some would say i

049was privileged i was the only girl of color you know i don't really care for that term i think we all have color i don't see white folks who are transparent everybody has color and i think sometimes the language there is not so great but it's another discussion um so some wouldn't say i did have privilege in that way i didn't grow up poor not by any stretch of the imagination but i did go to a school where i was the only girl of color person of color from the day i started third grade to the day i graduated from my high school so i dealt with challenges and things that most kids probably never would have to deal with and the fact that i didn't want for anything also made me a target because

050there was resentment that this girl had more than i did and she was privileged in that way but even living in that privileged existence financially i still dealt with racial animosity and i think the best way to describe white privilege is you're not having to deal with any you don't have to worry about your race affecting your life in ways that you take for granted you can run around the block and not worry you're going to get shot down you can go shopping and not be followed around the mall you can walk in a restaurant and get a table and not be served attitude at the same time those are the types of little microaggressions first and macro aggressions that you deal with when you are a person of brown with you darker skin my

051husband's a white man as many of you know um there's a definite difference sometimes when we go into a situation together um i think i think the easiest way to say it is that um the white male existence in our country is the most freeing lived experience you can have and i think in that way they're very lucky but i also think in another way that gives them a position to be teachers and and helpful as well and i have always just felt throughout my whole life no matter what i've had to go through no matter what i've had to deal with that you always will find helpful people and even though i went through the school i did and there were times it was tough i had many white teachers that were um incredible

052people and wanted to do nothing but make sure my road uh was as smooth as possible and so kind of tapping onto melissa's point about the system is made up of people and the people who are teaching our kids and our leaders we are as good as our people so if we all do our job and be the leaders that we know we can be then i think we're ahead of the game and i see all these faces in front of me that want to do just that so i i think in that reflect and that was my reflection um it's just again gratitude and thankfulness for folks willing to step up to the plate and be the leaders that our constituents have trusted us to be great thank you uh that makes my heart

053all warm and fuzzy honestly like that that's that's like human that's the humanizing part that's the connection that's like that's what happens when we do our work around the internalization of white supremacy right like it's like it's huge it it's that's where that's where like personal change um transforms systems and that i agree and i and i truly believe you know uh there are so many amazing white men in this world that want to do the work and want to be there for people and women of course as well um but i just think it's so important that we really recognize that and we make sure that we know i mean i'm so appreciative of that and the gentleman and the women step up to this work and really want to you know help out

054and and be there and not just even help just just be there because sometimes just the presence alone is so powerful and we need to remember that great thank you lori thank you so much anybody else feeling called i can go this is leather um matthew i appreciate you saying choose a hard one um because at this time of day i was like oh snap i can do this one i was like well no i can't thank you matthew so thinking about it what comes to my mind is what i've been struggling with is hierarchy um and access to power and ego um so i've been in situations when i see something which now is like looking at a different lens what do i say what i don't say if i say something now i'm

055aggressive now i'm intimidating right which is i'm a leo i'm an only child and i have germanic culture that's been my emma my whole entire life right but it's different this time right it's different and i'm like huh okay and so at the point where like okay so now you're talking about my tone instead of my message right and so putting a lens of like i'm just scratching the surface of feeling that myself imagine what every other demographic in our community deals with right so not even grasping that but feeling that right and going okay so if i don't have the energy because i'm centering myself because of my responsibilities and my duties in my life and that was my timer for my dinner for my mother i just went off but now i'm talking

056right so then i'm centering myself so i don't say anything now i'm using my white silence now i'm a bystander right so that's been my struggle of access to power taking that risk saying something but now i'm aggressive and i have a growing list of yes white men telling me i am pushy i'm a i'm aggressive i'm intimidated at the end of the day i want to say my question still stands my question still stands so that's what i've been struggling with is when i say something but how i say something how i present myself how i don't present myself if i say it when i say it i'm struggling with that because it's deflecting and i'm really tired of being called intimidating and aggressive and a and a witch right and i feel like

057i'm getting even more now because i'm asking uncomfortable questions i can take that risk but it's taking a toll and so if i feel this way just asking a few questions about some policies or things we're doing or not doing imagine what everyone else i haven't even met or i have met what they deal with on a daily basis overwhelming yep yes yes yes yes yes yes all the things so thank you matthew for making me do the difficult one i appreciate you i appreciate you bringing that into the space because that's just i think that goes back to to angela's point about professionalism right like like when people show up and they're angry like they have a right to be angry that's okay like sometimes we just need to sit with that and listen

058and say i hear you and i'm sorry you know and so like i just i i just so appreciate you bringing that in there is that like that's that's our ability to be our full human self like and and it's okay like i want to tell people you should have met my father like i feel like i'm doing pretty well like you should have met my father right but that's awkward i can't just go but it's just like i try so hard but then i was like but i'm just feeding the system then by trying to watch how i say and when i say it right with a smile that's another thing people telling me to smile anyway i'm gonna go get my mother's dinner i'm gonna be back in a second thank you thank

059you so much i do i if i can say one thing um hopefully miata can hear me um i can hear you oily okay okay um one thing that's coming up for me about that is that this idea and i think lori was speaking to us as well that white supremacy is a disease that impacts all of us we talked about that a little bit before with charlie's story as well right it's like it impacts all of us it impacts us all differently like people of color are going to have very direct personal impacts that limit their opportunities that limit their life choices that can inflict bodily harm on them right so that's a different impact the way it impacts white people um is going to be more subtle and there's a way in which

060you can continue to benefit from the system right um the other piece that's coming up for me though is that as you become accomplices you start seeing that splash over so you see when you when you become an accomplice and you um you align yourself with the goals of anti-racism we just saw this happen you know if i can bring up a probably maybe in some circles considered controversial topic of the kyle rittenhouse decision um the victims in that case were white people right the crime though they were white people who were there in defense of communities of color who were there to protest what they perceived as injustice toward a community of color and they were the ones who were victims in that situation so um so that that's one piece that's coming up

061for me is that you know that's how white supremacy works when you align yourself with anti-racism then um you're you start receiving those impacts the other thing that's coming up for me though is that this can't be individual work right so as you're talking leader i'm like feeling myself nodding i saw people other people's heads nodding like no i think there's no woman on earth and no person of color on earth that didn't res that didn't resonate with um and so now we are looking at this screen full of people who heard your story some of us who have direct empathy with your story um we've all heard it and we are all called to be there with you because we all know eliata right we all know uh councilmember jefferson we all know somebody

062who had to bear this burden alone and who felt alone when bearing this burden of doing your hair after pt so that you could go do the job that everyone else is doing right um who spoke up and questioned the policy and got all this pushback on them so let's commit to not letting those people be alone let's commit to amplifying those voices and being there in solidarity with one another there's a whole screen full of people here who will do this together you've all done this 21 day challenge together right so let's commit to being there for one another when we see those things happening that's how we're going to be that's how we're going to that's how we're going to be those people that transform this as we transform our gracely boggs what

063you were saying earlier um like weird people are the system grace lee boggs was a civil rights activist and that's one of the things that she said you transform yourself to transform the world right so that's the change we want to see starts with within us and then the people the way we interact with other people and pretty soon that ripple effect spreads so thank you for bringing that up we had i got all fired up i know me too i was like too early for a gin and tonic so make sure we end on time tonight [Laughter] anybody else joan yeah i've um i've listened more tonight than i actually want to talk because uh this is a big big trigger point for me uh i mean it's huge i started in professional life

064so to speak in the 60s and before the civil rights act i've marched for many things i've been told to sit down and shut up i've been told that i'm you know acting arrogant and you know we don't need any more tall people around kind of an attitude and so i've been through many of these things in the midst of which i um sounds weird to say a lot of you know i've been very successful and i i've been the first woman to um break some barriers and stand up for black brown jewish whatever people have lost jobs for doing that and so i am but i really really feel is that white men are a problem not not all of them pete's not a problem uh michael's fine um but um overall and i

065and it makes me even shaky to think about what has happened in the last couple days that groups of white men over these last 50 years can tell me what to do with my body that is beyond awful degrading every possible thing and i am i am very angry i am um beyond disappointed and i'm emotional about it and some of my very good friends through these issues of female power and whiteness and and black power also have have been people of color because we identified we identified with each other and um i've gone to school all my life with people of color and um i've lived in neighborhoods and some of the people who've cared for me and rescued me and and kept me on my feet were were not white men for sure

066and uh as many or more people of color than than white women because of the whole jealousy thing so there's a there's a lot in this not just this one question or this one a night but um all of these things are for me woven together and how many times i step to say um do the best you can be be kind be be strong tell the truth always tell the truth your own truth um and uh and try to love one another you know i mean and for me 40 years pastoring churches i've always come up against and i think it has not against come up with you know you we have to practice what we preach and and what we what we say as a city or in our policies or whatever are

067we practicing that is that is that how we're living and presenting ourselves the last thing i'll say is i was reading in the newspaper a week ago and they were talking about about racism and about history and um they said that really we can change in this work we're doing or where we are in our lives we can change the words so they so we're not offensive or they sound better or they're more inclusive but unless we change how we act it uh we can have all the seminars that that we want so i just wanted to share a bit of that some of its confession and some of it is boy i'm moving on going i'm going after this stuff i'm not going to let you know i don't know what makes me just

068want to get out on the streets again thanks for that yeah okay i think james baldwin had it right when he says i don't i don't trust what you say because i see what you do yeah we can say all the things and it's not it doesn't mean much i also think too like when we when we have um that moment where we go like um oh but charlie you're you're one of the good ones or michael you're one of the good ones i think that's an important there's like the subtext there right which is that it's not white men per se that we that we have that we have a problem with it's whiteness and it's patriarchy right it's sexism it's patriarchy it's racism that we have a problem with um and so i

069just you know just to to to affirm what joan what i what i think i heard you saying right um and i know for myself when i find myself going well yeah but except for matthew right it's like that's a reminder to myself like it's not the people in this room it is the the system that we've all been socialized into but i'm still i'm still in rooms in tumwater i'm still in rooms in thurston county i'm i'm i'm still places where i i don't i don't like all of the white men in the room because i know what they've done and i know how they've treated women and i know how they're they're not um always kind and respectful and so that's why i want to want to call out my colleagues to say

070you know what i've experienced in a hurtful or a negative way from white men um they're not represented here thank god so that was thanks for clarifying that yeah i think the danger and that like not not for you but like for like for me like hearing something like that is then that i go to that to that good or bad like i'm one of the good ones and that way that i can easily go to like well i'm off the hook then which isn't true i'm always on the hook like i am always complicit in upholding white supremacy and patriarchy and doing the things like that's the status quo so i literally have to do nothing to uphold the status quo right so being it's that it's that active that active pushing against that

071active swimming against the current that is that that gets that gets me there that gets me closer to who i am and my and my my my most you know um whole self um so you know we we can all be good people and we can all be complicit and so it's it's and that's part of the that's part of the ways that we especially as white people um internalize white supremacy is distancing ourselves from the bad from the bad ones um which uh you know no matter where we're at on that spectrum we can still we can still be complicit so i just wanted to put that in there too um because i think that's what we're all here to do and it's easy and it's easy to uphold the status quo we get

072rewarded for it it's super easy um debbie i see your hand yeah i just wanted to um share something because i think things become more raw now that you know i mean we've always been doing this but i think lately a lot of this has even become more raw um i was on my way to go to a hanukkah celebration and pete was there also and as i'm driving to the hanukkah celebration i'm listening to christmas carols and i'm thinking how come we don't hear hot uh jewish music hanukkah music all the different things it's only christmas music this is the first day of hanukkah why are they not playing something like that and and it just really impacted me so by the time i got to the event i really wanted to make sure

073that i was very present and aware and um and it just instead of it being an event i went to i was more embracing what i was participating in and it just felt different um being more present and i try to do that more often now and it's those things that you that just don't come to your awareness until something like that just kind of hits you so it's like why wasn't it hearing hanukkah you know music for hanukkah because i mean this is the first day of hanukkah for goodness sake so yeah yeah i heard something the other day of like why we say happy holidays is because there's like i forget what the number was but the number of holidays between like mid-november and like and and into into january it was like

074it was like a hundred like it was it was a lot and i was like oh my gosh i didn't even know that i mean i knew that there was a lot but not that many but just thinking i'm like like i'm loving what people are bringing up in terms of that intersectionality because that one around dominant culture and religion is often such a hot topic that as soon as it's like a live wire like as soon as you touch that um it's uh that's that gets hot but yes you're absolutely right this is a great example of how this conversation does not have to be either or right it's like we started by talking about race and you can see how that that critical self-reflection about race also lends itself to critical self-reflection about

075all these other aspects of our life that are all really important right um so i'm just thinking of a quote um that that's uh jeff duncan andrade who's an educational activist um and scholar um he pairs these two things together where he puts like i think it's like socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living then the second part of that pairing is the examines life is painful that's malcolm x so um it's both it's that complexity right it's that balance it's like the unexamined life is not worth living when we were walking around without our without our lens um things could seem pretty pleasant but we were missing out on all of this richness and complexity and when you start to notice it you do start to notice all the pain in the

076world right so you maybe have seen that bumper stickers like if you're not pissed off you're not paying attention so i feel like that's that's where that's where you know there's part that's part of the journey right it's not that we're going to be angry all the time but it does it does when you start coming into that awareness and you start noticing all those things more um you do start to see how how prevalent the inequity is well i just want to follow up on debbie's thing because i you know as i was dr a little bit different perspective as i was driving to that to the hanukkah event i'm thinking is it safe to go here i you know should i even be going here um they changed the location to a much

077more controlled access location i'm not sure if that's why but given the environment and the way the way uh stupid things are being done out there it just it and then and then sort of halfway through that thought i'm going well now that that shouldn't even come why is this even coming to my mind why why should i even be thinking about this but the reality is it's in the back of your mind you're thinking about it right and uh and that that's a sad state of our society frankly where you have to even think about that stuff so so anyway i just um uh unfortunate that we're at that stage where we are in our society dude so agree with you on that because i felt a lot calmer as soon as the police

078officers showed up yeah i wanted to share something that um as council that we had something that had come up recently and they dedicated a plaque on the butternut tree on the campus grounds to george bush and one of the things that i hadn't shared with them but i knew about before had heard about was that one of the reasons that they hadn't done something that they really considered doing something was because they were afraid with this climate that we're in right now that someone would do something to the tree and you know to cut it down or do something to it and so you know it's taken time you know to work through those feelings and you know um you know it was the group of you know the from the historical society and

079then there's a group of black legislators and people across the state that um that joined that committee and that were part of that making that happen but it's just a whole aha that just like yikes you know that you know we want to do something that we think is great and but yet they were afraid that something might happen to the tree so i just wanted to share that i just think we can all use more models and um more examples of showing folks in our communities including our kids that it is possible for us to be different and have different points of view and to talk to one another and to work it out and to maybe not agree at the end of the day but to still treat each other as human beings

080you know i just don't think we have enough examples of that and i worry that people are losing faith in that right so i'd like that's why i shared that story with you at the beginning it's like hey i had two good experiences in the last week of of having a hard conversation with people and having it turn out well right just to just to remind ourselves and reaffirm that we can do this right we have always done this we can do this all right i wonder if we should transition yeah yeah let's do it it should transition okay let's do it which means the conversation doesn't end it's just we're focusing in do you got eileen oh hold on i'm like doing something weird with the sharing hold on okay i think i got

081it cool okay so this is going to be um this is pulling the strands from our last conversation into this one in order for us to go a little bit deeper if you'll remember um our definition of white supremacy as a level of racism um this is what this is what we've been talking about this whole time is this right here um so we're going to continue to kind of peel this back as like the status quo and and really dig into what some examples of that actually look sound and feel like uh let's go to the next one um we've also had this conversation right like this this iceberg model is a model for uh systems thinking and systems change and the deepest level the the most leveraged part of the iceberg is ourselves

082is us as people as our mental models it's our mindsets our values our beliefs our ways of being our ways of thinking our ways of feeling um because like we said like this is all the people institutions are made up of people systems are made up of people so that that is that is our deepest point of leverage um and it's that difference between like if we're thinking of ourselves as trees um it's doing our deepest root work as people and how we're shaped and how we show up um and how we perpetuate or or change the system and the status quo and then the next picture i believe is the grove which is this is our collective work we've also talked about this today is um what happens when we are holding each other

083in place what does collective care look like what does this look like as a as collective work um especially when we're showing up in our in our full humanity and recognizing that in each other and calling that in um that is that's that's that's healing work to do that i just picture liatta as one tree and angela is one train here you've got those interconnected roots right is what keeps us what keeps us growing yep yep that's one of the things i've been learning a lot about this this last year year and a half is is collective care and what that looks like because i'm not good at it because all i've been taught my entire life this is part of that patriarchy that internalization if i have work to do on myself i need

084to go away in a cave and do it all by myself and then come back magically changed and healed it's like it doesn't work like [Laughter] so that's been a hard one for me that's been part of my learning journey and it's our way of being right it's it's it's how we show up it's what's in our hearts it's what it's like how is this in our whole bodies and our whole self um and not just our way of knowing not just knowing the words like we just said we can know the words we can read the books we can say the things that it's not going to get us to where we need to go it has to be how we walk in the world 24 7. so what we're going to do is

085since we can't do breakouts which is what we normally do in a situation like this we're going to ask each of you to take an aspect of white supremacy culture so um you can put the link in the in the chat um we want you to find one of these characteristics and and and think of a couple different examples of what this looks like what do you notice um what does that look sound and feel like to you and it might be you as a personally uh it might be something that you've noticed in the world i think the deeper reflection is as you as a person and how you've maybe internalized that um that's that's that's like the deepest part of the work to do um or we can or we can you can

086also say like this is how i see this happen in the in the system like as a part of a policy as a part of an institution as a part of like um different things like that so we're gonna give you some time to pick one of those characteristics to think about it and talk about a couple different ways of what that look sounds and feels like and then we'll come back and and do a little sharing matthew you keep mentioning pick one of those characteristics is is there a list we should be looking at or is that yeah i put the link in the chat so i'll see i'm sorry i'm sorry i see it now okay and then scroll all the way down to the bottom i'm there i'm just being concrete is

087good all right so we'll come back in like maybe seven minutes check in feel free if you want to turn your camera off while you do this reflection you can be back in a few minutes how's everybody doing do you have a couple yet if you do why don't you pop back on the screen so we know you're good and if you don't that's okay you don't have it's not about perfectionism [Laughter] it's like it's like when renee brown talks about your shitty first draft like it's just about doing it down all right for the sake of time because we have one more activity that we want to get to before we let before 8 o'clock um we'd love to hear just what people have like which one did you choose um and what was

088and what's one example of that you that you were able to identify of that characteristic i'll go thanks larry um i'm not sure if i have read it correctly but i think i have two but they kind of go together um one is other ore thinking and individualism and this has been something that's been ongoing in my life but i will at the end of it i will it's positive um because i default positive that's just who i am um it's filling out forms from the very first time i was expected to fill out a form for anything i guess maybe the first recollection is in school doing standardized testing being asked to fill out what your race is and there was never a category for me ever it was white black other so you

089know what i did i checked all three white black other that's me um and i think that also kind of ties into individualism i was not going to be defined by one circle on that form i am who i am and i'm super proud of being a biracial person in this in this life i think it gives me a unique viewpoint of the world growing up the way i did and i wouldn't trade it for anything for all the bumps and bruises that could come along with it and that for me because it was my most earliest recollection of um the system i guess we could also call it um was being forced to put myself being forced to label myself right out of the gate so that is my example but i said i

090would am positive and i mean that sincerely because those things are changing i've been i've had the privilege of being at those tables to those changes on those forums and putting those categories for children to say no you have many things to choose from you can pick everything that you are and that's okay so i think that's a good thing and i think that's where we're headed and i know again as i said earlier that this group of people wants those things to happen and i think as we all keep working together and we work with love and support and are mindful of folks feelings and i think we're going to do really great work for our not only our school systems but for our great city of tomwater awesome thank you lori i love

091that michael thanks um the one that i i talked a little bit about the perfection thing so choose a different one um the one that i really jumped out to me is worship of the written word like when you in in law school they beat it into you that this maxism that justice is blind right that when you have a law that it is equally applicable that everything will be applied in a neutral fashion that the law itself is cannot be problematic the enforcement of it is what can be problematic and i think that that sort of mindset is so fundamentally [Music] flawed and wrong on just like a multitude of levels like if you think about the construction of all these different laws and systems the example in one of the articles was work

092requirements for receiving medicaid we do that in washington for food benefits as well for all sorts of benefits where you have to work in order to access them but it's really the the counties that have low unemployment numbers like king county and pierce county and snohomish county are the counties that have disproportionately higher numbers of people of color compared to the counties where the work requirements do not apply because they're more rural and more white and i i think like a lot of times we sort of look at the law and it becomes sort of this excuse for applying things inequitably where we blame it on the person instead of on the system it's like well if you would have just complied with the law or if you had just applied for these couple of

093jobs and gotten one then you could continue these food benefits or whatever without taking into account the fact that these things were created in order to discriminate so that there would be exacerbated poverty intergenerational poverty amongst populations to further suppress progression and ascendancy and social progress um so i i think i think it's important to keep that in mind so that we don't think that business as usual is fine because it's not right we could always say well that's the way it's always been that's a different one of these but i i think white supremacy wants us to think that justice is blind as opposed to having a critical lens about how these things will actually impact people and what the design truly is great yes thank you thank you for that eileen i too

094picked the the written word um and for me um it goes back to my faith into um what's in you know what the bible in my my association with people like-minded people um i had a group of friends and i promised to speak in the past tense but i've been part of a group of friends for many many years and we would get together and read the bible and do these things together and all and and so with kobe we weren't able to get together and then and then it wasn't until you know and we've been we're very different you know but this group of people you know they're you know we're very different and so i was told that once that god didn't want me to be a democrat so i mean that was

095kind of where where it was and so anyway um one of the members sent out an email that described how there's a pastor in the white house during the past administration who was um teaching that coven was um was the reason for cobit was because uh it was his gods was angry at homosexuals and homosexual marriages and i couldn't i couldn't do this anymore and so i have been silent and and that's not i should have this hard conversation because i've been in other memes too that have this hard conversation so at least tell them why i'm not going any longer and have to be honest with them and have that hard conversation because it has been i mean this is a friendship that's gone back for like 20 years and uh it's just it

096is just really difficult so i wanted to share that thank you eileen i really appreciate that i really appreciate that reflection and that like call to action you know for yourself because that sounds hard darby so i'm going to share my theme for tonight seems to be places where i'm struggling with maybe the material or the concepts so it's a struggle that i have and it's similar to the the written word and just you know a lot of these characteristics that that are presented is maybe it's because our culture is so deep but even when you're trying to move in places that are designed to help people and to overcome these things it all falls back to these kinds of characteristics that seem to be required in order to implement those sorts of changes and

097the best example i can think of is in um i used to work for the state board for community and technical colleges in the last session there were two bills that were all about diversity equity inclusion and anti-racism they were huge complex they included a tremendous amount of requirements um for training for students training for faculty all of the colleges had to put together um dei strategic plans and they had to do campus climate assessments and they had to do that once a year and they had to do listening tours and they had to have all you know the whole group of people involved in all of this stuff there was money attached to it there's a big desire to transition more part-time to full-time faculty so tremendous amount of information in these bills all

098designed to support students of color and historically marginalized students so at the end of the session you have this and you have the funding and then it turns to well who's going to do all this work how is this work going to get organized how is this going to get implemented and you turn to your diversity equity and inclusion officers and say let's go and it's that that isn't the experience that folks in those positions have they don't have experience with organizing surveys and implementing surveys and putting strategic plans together those are the sort of things that that live in this list of white supremacy dominant culture characteristics written word doing reports documentation so somebody has to do all of that work that has to be done otherwise you could be in danger of breaking

099the law if you don't do what the new legislation says and you could lose the funding for it so it is a um it is a fascinating evolution that i am struggling to understand how does all of this work it's it feels very ironic that this is all designed to help people but as long as we still have the system um you know these characteristics can't just be thrown out unless the entire system is completely thrown out and i don't know what it looks like beyond that yeah i think one of the things that i that we often say about these characteristics is that we don't want to use the characteristics to to to do the work of the characteristics right like like these are like a continuum like the worship of the written word

100doesn't mean it's all going to go away right we're still going to email we're still going to have like written policies we're still going to have those things it's just that what it's the both and and and and like what like if we're thinking about getting data like there's a great book out there called street data that talks about what are these different kinds of data that we can actually use you know to to document these things that that don't have to be surveys that don't have to be the ways that we've usually done it which tend to be a little bit more transactional but like what are what are these different ways that we can um that we can move into doing and being these things that necessarily don't reinforce the status quo but

101we don't have to go we don't have to throw we're not throwing everything out right these things are always going to be here because it's like it's like a continuum it's like a polarity um but if all we focus on is that like that's that's been our problem if that makes sense you just like like spoke to so many levels of my experience but um just to reiterate the idea that you can take the most wonderful idea in the world and if you implement it in a in a status quo way you're gonna perpetuate the same thing right so i've had this conversation in many many school districts where it's like well we have a racial equity policy right but um but then it's like we put we had no input from the community on

102it we put no resources behind it no one has any kind of training on it and there's no one's given any kind of time or thought into how it's going to be um evaluated and there's no resources to do it but if you don't do it you'll be in trouble right so i mean that happens all the time all the time and then people are like well we tried that so um so to think that we have to do it differently right and we have to share power and we have to actually ask the people most impacted like what would actually make sense here and then we have to be willing to give up some of the power institutional power that we have and say what if we trusted the people who have the experience

103to actually drive this this forward and and trust them with the power to make decisions and trust them you know trust that they that they know what will be most beneficial to them it's it is it's a big flipping of the power dynamic um and it's something that a lot of institutions are unwilling to engage in um so i often say when i go into spaces like that like a school district or you know whatever we'll we'll say oh we want to set up like an advisory committee right to talk to us about uh comprised of community members and students and matthew and i will often say don't do it unless you're actually prepared to act on what people say right so you can we've all seen advisory committees come and go where you gather

104people together and get their input and don't do a thing with it that actually just creates more harm right that just creates this self-perpetuating cycle so anyway all of that to say yes yes to all of that um and it's it is hard and it's not anything that any one single one of us can do alone or any one school district can do that's actually like really a really um powerful opportunity that you have here because you have your school district and your city council starting to work together and starting to talk to each other and starting to to share some of these common goals and values and i think you're going to start to see some ripple effects here um and to say that it can happen um and it the whole system won't

105transform overnight and and we'll start with what we where we can where we can impact it eileen i'm looking at the time and i follow activity yeah we have time to at least dip our toes into that yeah let's dip our tongues let's keep on a hopeful move all right let's do some dipping let me let me find the powerpoint now sorry it's late got it i got it cool okay so what we're gonna do um now that you've that you've chosen um can you make that big like do the presenting mode yeah um now that you've picked one of the the aspects of white supremacy in the status quo we want you to kind of think about what the other side of that continuum is going to be so what we're doing is we're

106like thinking about what are those ways of thinking and being and doing that by showing up that way um we can we can do that unraveling of of of the status quo like we can practice like what we talked about earlier like we can practice what that would look sound and feel like to show up in a way that's going to get us to something a different possibility right it's what it's what transformation looks like um it's what our own healing actually looks like from white supremacy um so we just kind of wanted to dip our toes into that a little bit so thinking about which one you chose um think about what the other side of that continuum would look like what would that look sound and feel like and try to think up

107of a of a couple examples of what that would would look sound or feel like and i'll just say that like this can be a little bit challenging because it's a little bit easier to identify the status quos because it's what we like it's the water that we swim in it's the air that we breathe um but thinking about living in a world that doesn't that that that isn't the status quo is hard because it's not what our experience has been but we want to just practice leaning into that space so we can i start to identify what that what that would feel like what that would look like so we'll give you um what maybe seven minutes to think about that and then come back and we'll just do a quick share out of

108a few folks and kind of check in before we leave and we can leave this up right darlene yeah okay should we give them is there a link to it's we don't really have a link to the whole thing okay i can't find it okay one more minute okay um eileen can you um stop the share so we can see everybody cool thank you um all right we'd love to hear from a few folks um this is part of a transformational relationship and partnership framework um that that i've helped i've like birthed in the last six seven eight years at the esd so it's hard to give a link because um the google doc link doesn't like show all the formatting and stuff doesn't show up but um we'd be happy to share this with

109you like via email or something so um but it's just this idea of of of what we've all been talking about today so um if you want to share out just what was that experience like was there something that you put your finger on that you would love to practice um what was it like trying to name the other side of that continuum matthew i'd like to go first sure um because it makes me uncomfortable so i'm to do it i'm going to welcome discomfort like a big comfort cozy because they're amazing that's what i'm going to do so anytime i want to be centering myself and being quiet being silent being a bystander i'm going to go i'm going to put my cozy on i'm gonna put my cozy on that's what i'm gonna

110do love it i love it thank you debbie so i had the head urgency in it and i just feel like urgency has just been kind of my mantra for a while especially this last year and it was funny because when that thing came up and i finally found urgency and it and it just said um uh hold on knowing when to go slow and it was like well that's simple why didn't i think of that you know i mean it's it was like i was struggling with what is the opposite of that and and that was just um it kind of like almost let you breathe for a second and i think that's the part of rushing and urgency is you have difficulty taking a breath and so that was i think very helpful

111and that's something i'll keep in mind that's great thank you so much i'm with debbie i also chose um urgency and transformation because i have a sense of urgency today because as a black woman i feel like the system has been so unfair to people of color for so long since 1619 when my ancestors came to the us and they were traded as commodity um to today where where angry parents don't want to teach the kids the real history of slavery in america um we need to come to a healing place so i have a sense of urgency to educate you know i have a sense of urgency to just bring so many people in my circle to just to get to know them to to try and share and to to change what's going

112on in society because it's just so unfair um to my people and just slowing down i don't know when to slow down because there's just so much work to do in society to just lead and to love people and to share because we're gonna transform with love not hate and i honestly don't know how to slow down i don't know thank you angela i would just love to um respond or to um to say what's resonating with me and that one comes up a lot because of course we know that oppression injustice racism is happening every day to somebody right now right and so i think it's that it's that idea of how do we um how do we respond to that in a way that's going to be sustaining and long-lasting and healing and

113loving as you said um and when i think when i think about the urgency that's harmful it's like that the kind of urgency that's like oh this happens so we're going to react with sort of a a symbolic action that's not going to have long lasting impact that's not going to get into the kind of change we really need to last so um i appreciate what you're saying i think it's important for us to to honor the the reality that we have to we can't we can't not act right it's like taking taking that time knowing when to go slow cannot be an excuse for inaction right it cannot be that it an excuse for us to not do anything um and to and to think about it more in the way that i think

114you just so beautifully expressed which is how do we make that action into something that's meaningful and long-lasting and that has impact how do we show up differently tomorrow than we did today so that we can affect the kind of change that we need so thank you for bringing that up i think it's really important to to really honor what what you said because racism has been going on far too long i think you actually said it angela is like how do we slow down to love how do we slow down to respond like that's that's the slowing down that's like knowing when to go slow is like we need to be here together and we need to have this conversation and that means slowing down a lot of times so i think i think

115you i think you were right on it thank you all right how about one one more we talking about sense of urgency within three minutes may repeat so um i had a i had a lot of trouble trying to trying to figure out what you guys were getting at as i looked at those various categories and things but i i guess i i ended up uh thinking about this one about right to comfort uh uh and i i guess i would start by just saying we all chose to be discomf uh experience discomfort by running for office it's a totally different experience and it really puts you in a place where you're uncomfortable for the most part and as elected officials we deal with a lot of uncomfortable stuff um my challenge is going to

116be i'm soon to become no longer an elected official and i i have to be careful that i don't slip back to just becoming comfortable right to really continue to think about these issues in my own personal life and and think about how i can further the conversation not being an elected official so um anyway i just i just uh it sort of resonated with me thank you thank you so much um i wish we could go around and hear what everybody is sitting is sitting with right now and um i know we can't um so i guess the invitation would be after this after this um like find somebody to connect with find somebody to share with find somebody to um have a conversation about um leaning in to uh to disrupt the status

117quo and what that looks like for you and i don't know if y'all just want to say like a word to close it out put in the chat i just really appreciate you all in this conversation and you all leaning in and showing up with your hearts and speaking your truth i feel that and i see that and i just i am really grateful for that i agree i echo what matthew says i really so appreciate the courage and the vulnerability of this conversation and just really the heartfelt commitment to having a different community so so much appreciation to all of you yeah this is pete and again this is my last session as your mayor and and so i just wanted to first of all just thank uh eileen and matthew for leading us

118through these sessions i know you your work continues here you've got i think a couple more uh next year uh and and uh but i i just want to say that i thought i thought this whole process of the 21 day challenge and looking at the various materials really really opened my mind to some perspectives i had not really thought about and so i think i think this is a a very useful exercise and uh i really really enjoyed these conversations i've learned a lot about probably learn more about my fellow uh some of my fellow office holders that i didn't know before so uh um i hope i hope everybody here can build off of this and uh you know really lead our both our organizations to the next level so anyway thank you

119all for letting me participate may i teach you all some hawaiian in hawaii um when we you know i bet you all know how to say thank you right mahalo um and you know when you don't want to say goodbye goodbye to somebody like first of all you say aloha right which means like farewell but it also means hello it's a greeting it's a farewell and it comes with a conveyance of love and appreciation um and um the other thing that we say is a hui hou which means see you later see you soon in the future and one of the last things we always say is malama pono which means take good care of yourself so you all want to try some hawaiian you can say malama pono and a huiho may repeat or

120mahalo aloha all right ahuyo everyone