Bring anyone in who needs to be and then I'll. I'll say the magic words. And the recording has started. Nope, we have an audience member, but it's not a committee member. All right. Then I will call the meeting of the Community Preservation Act committee to order at 6 o'clock 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 4th, 2021 pursuant to Governor Baker's order suspending some parts of the open meeting law. We are meeting remotely by zoom. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted to the town's YouTube channel. Will you rename Diana there? Sorry, I was looking for the agenda. So we might see Dave Williams, but that's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. That's the only one person who might show up soon. Because Anna will be late. Okay. All right. Well, then let's proceed. Robin very kindly volunteered to take minutes last time. Do you remember that Robin? Robin. Oh dear. I'm here. I'm here. Yeah. No, I did not remember that, but I'm ready. She will. Well, we can see what you're doing. So. Yeah. I can always just watch the tape. Just yeah, let me get my last time I did. I did this at work. There was no tape. So actually funny story. And ended up being much easier to make the minutes from when you don't have the tape and you just kind of have to summarize from the little chicken stretch that you have. Sometimes taking minutes is a little. Well, it keeps it, it keeps it shorter. That's for sure. Okay. All right, but I need to take roll call. And so you answer out loud so we know we can all hear each other. All right, Sam McLeod. Here. Katie Allen's Obell here. Andrew McDougal. Was it. Sarah Isinger. Awesome. Diana Stein. Here. Robin Fordham. Here. And Sarah Marshall. That's me. I am here. So we are missing Dave Williams. And Anna Devlin got here at the moment. All right. So our first order of business is to review minutes. We have two sets, one from. November 19th. Gosh, so such a long time ago. Is everybody who's ready to, to speak about those. I did receive email edits from Katie, Diana, and I think Sarah Isinger. So I will incorporate those. I think I emailed comments long time ago, like back in January. So before our January meeting, so you might look. Yeah. All right. Does anyone have anything? Oh, hello, Dave. Can you, good renamed week. Good. All right. So we are just turning to them draft minutes of November 19th, 2020. Does anyone have any. Substantive comment. That we might need to discuss. Robin, you'll have to speak up if you do. I'm good. Yeah. All right. Then hearing none. I will move that we accept the minutes as amended with the small edits that people have. Email to Anthony. Is there a second. Sam McLeod seconds. All in favor, please raise your hands. Robin says, I, okay. Robin says, I, so that is unanimous. Eight votes. We have one member absent. All right. Thank you. Next are the minutes of. Our previous meeting, our prior meeting of January 21st, 2021. I think I don't think I emailed any comments. Andrew was late to the meeting, I believe. I even look back at the tape. I, I noticed because the number of votes didn't match the number of people. So it looks like others. Also. So perhaps under members present. Just note that. Andrew McGoogle was late. I think Sarah Eisinger was also a little bit. Late, but I don't think you missed any of the votes. So maybe it doesn't. It's not material. Sam. I'm not sure if that needed to be addressed or not. So I thought to indicate simply that. Andrew was present because he was at a later point in time. If the standard protocol going, you know, is to reference the time of arrival, then that should be done. I wasn't certain. So I submitted it as is. Yeah. I don't know the time of arrival. I think Anthony, if we just put in late after, you know, or arrived late or something you said. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Adequate. Okay. I am. No, no. Diana. I was going to say sometimes people put in. The time when someone arrives and then it's clear why the votes are different. And I did have a question about something in the minutes. Go ahead. I just want to find the line so you can explain it to me because it's something you said, Sarah. Sarah Marshall added that these projects also pay a reduced tax rate and the town will benefit from that revenue stream. So I had trouble in my head. Figuring out why a reduced tax. It's going to be a benefit. It's going to be a benefit. Yeah. Could you explain that to me? Because it will be affordable housing, not market rate housing. It's taxed at a lower rate. Right. It's more than now. I mean, we don't, we don't even have to put in reduced. I think we could just. Strike that word. I think what's confusing me is why a reduced tax rate would benefit from a reduced tax rate. I mean, I don't think it's going to benefit from a reduced tax rate. Well, the housing, the housing does certainly. But, but it also will generate more tax revenue than it does now. Because it'll be. Okay. But I think that would help to modify it by saying. We will get. New tax revenue. Then we're getting now. Or more tax revenue than we're getting now. The way that was linked. I found puzzling. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Just point me to wear in the minutes. This is. I was going to say this. Diana's comment is actually about the November minutes. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we. Okay. Well, we just voted on those. All right. Wait a second. Is that correct? Let me just look here. Yeah. It's a, it's the November minutes. The end of section five. All right. Well, then I. I'm sorry. Even though I think the minutes basically are fine, I still think it would be helpful. To include that. Okay. Well, since we passed a ship, can we make a note of it now in today's minutes? So, so the line, the line reads. Sarah Marshall added that these projects also pay reduced tax rate and the town will benefit from that revenue stream. There. One doesn't follow from the other. Right. They could be two separate sentences. I guess. Yeah. Revenue from that property. All right. Is everyone okay? Letting Andrew just. Yeah. All right. So now with the January minutes. It was also a point. I'm sorry. Robin talked about notifying the people, people about. Saying that there is a CPA exemption. And I think it would be good to include. In the minutes, what that exemption is. Can we attach. There was. Can we attach the document that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what that means to us in which we spoke about. Spoke to. I mean, it's the assessors.  In the meeting. So I think a reference. Yeah. I mean, there's probably a lot of detail that. I don't know. I don't want to misrep. Misrepresent what the abatement is. We point people to the assessor's office and they can find out what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't it have yet to be created. That the assessor was going to create something. Yeah, we've done, we've done all that we need to do. And, and I think the motion is correct. We had viewed this language and that's, that's what. No. Okay. I just found it. I think that outside reader talking about this tax exemption. I mean, Robin, I know mentioned in the meeting. That she would qualify because. Of her income or something like that. I. I don't know. I think that it's, it's, I mean, it is the purpose of the, of the meeting was to direct people to the assessor's office or have this and have the assessor's office change their webpage. It wasn't to. Explain what the exemption is and it changes every year. I mean, it's not something that's static. So there's no point in, you know, and it depends on how many people in your household.   So I don't sense any groundswell for altering. Desire to alter that. Language. Okay. Okay. All right. But. Always appreciate a close reading. Anybody else. Comment. All right. I had one. I'm going to go back to my own. Writing. This is in section five. CPAC fall schedule planning. Oh, I think it's, I would propose adding a. Sentence or a clause to. The short paragraph ending. A week on October 8th, 2021. I'm going to go back to the short paragraph. But publicize and then add, but or, and publicize the proposal window ahead of time. Because, because we want people to know several months in advance. When the proposal period will open. So they have time to develop their proposal. And vet it through the proper channels. And not, not for a long time. Okay. Is everybody all right with that? Sure. Okay. Anything else? What's the phrase theology again? Can you confirm it? The edit. And pub and publicize the proposal window. Ahead of time. All right. Okay. Then. I would move that. We accept these minutes as amended. Is there a second? Yes. Diana. Thank you. All right. All in favor, raise your hand. Robin speak. Hi. Hi. All right. Thank you. It's unanimous. Eight in favor. Okay. I'm in stain. Sorry, sir. I, since I missed like half of that meeting. I was going to abstain. Okay. So that'll be seven in favor. One extension. Okay. And one absence. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to be caught up. Hot up with that. All right. So we now have. If any members of the public are in the audience and want to say something. This is the. That moment. The gauge. And your mandolin. Or maybe it's a ukulele. A ukulele. Oh dear. I don't see anything. So. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. Sorry about. This, my name is big gauge. I live in North Amherst and I'm appreciate all the hard work you're doing. I'm here just to listen. Particularly. Sarah, let me know that the history trail is on the agenda. And we're a Jane Wald. Also the historical commission also. Let me know about a meeting they have next week. When that, when our project is on the agenda. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. But we're trying to just modestly listen and make sure we. Understand. What the status of the project is in particular. First of all, I really appreciate everybody's. Efforts to make the process work better. And it's a whole new timing and everything, which I fully understand. And I know how hard this kind of thing can be. And I really appreciate everybody's effort. And that's what we're trying to do. To comply. Consistent with the criteria. That's what we'd like to do. And we did start with a historical commission last, the last. And they were enthusiastic, I think, but I think we were naive about. The specifics of the criteria. So we're paying super attention now and touch with some people at the state level and. You know, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. That we think will enhance North Amherst. An appreciation of some history that we're really concerned not to lose. So thank you. Sorry about the picture. I can't make my camera works. There seem to be zoom gremlins today. Thank you. The picture I have on crutches was when I was recovering from the flu. I took up the ukulele. I didn't even notice. Well, that's cool. That's a good use. Yeah, forced immobility. I have to say, I'm sorry there was a miscommunication. This, your project is not on our agenda. I think initially the meeting was posted with an old agenda. And then it was corrected. I think it's not going to be on the agenda. I don't know. You may be interested in, but it's not going to be specifically about. Oh, okay. Well, I, I don't know if I'm still on audio. I've read the old agenda. That's what I was responding. But we are talking about, um, we are discussing, uh, allowability around historic preservation projects. So. Well, that's great. Matt. The frustrating thing. I think for everybody was we. You know, I think it would have taken, you know, we just wanted to know, do we qualify? And it's, you know, Right. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Sam, can you mute yourself if that's banging. In the background. I'm not making. Okay. Pots and pans. I'm here alone. Okay. Maybe it was it next. All right. No one out. No one else from the public wishing to speak. Yeah. All right. Do not see any other hands. Okay. All right.  Um, as you know, in early, early February, I presented our fiscal year 2022 recommendations to town council. Anthony and Holly and Sonia were all there. Um, I think that was well, well received and then turfed to the finance committee, which, which, which always does and always will. Um, that, uh, CPA recommendations, CPAC recommendations from their point of view. And that meeting just happened. This past Tuesday, Tuesday, Monday, just this week, a couple of days ago. I think that was, uh, Anthony was there again to help, to help me and Sonia. Um, and there was, uh, there was a good discussion, but, um, and I'll get just some of the. Kind of things that are on their mind for that we can address. Going forward. All right. But they did the, the finance committee did, uh, uh, they did a lot of the special collections thing, which is totally separate and council is not yet ready to, um, think about that project. So all the, all the cash kind of cash awards, um, that whole set has been recommended back to town council. I don't know when they will vote on it. But. Uh, it's next, it's next on their agenda for March 22nd. I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry. Council. Council. Okay. Yeah. The last step now is for town council to. Vote and they can vote them as a package or they can vote that up or down. You know, as they like. And as we know. They can decrease awards. They cannot increase awards or obviously make any new. Any new awards. Anthony, what was the date again? March 22nd. Thank you. Okay. Oh, I also wanted to tell just to let you know, because you will be interested. I think that the Belcher town road purchase for affordable housing. Uh, that, that it was bought. Just a couple of weeks ago, I think it's all, it's all done. The town owns it affordable. The municipal affordable housing trust hopes to issue an RFP. That, um, uh, at the end of April or by the end of April. Um, that will ask for affordable housing. Proposals for affordable housing projects at both the Belcher town. Road site that is purchased with C CPA funds and the East street school site that we have heard about in the past, that was surplus. Um, I don't know if you've heard about that. Um, town property, which is now being made available for such a purpose. So, you know, we'll see, we'll see what happens, but. Yeah, it's great. We were able, we were able, and they were able to move and counsel to move fast and, uh, make that happen. Okay. Lastly, I wanted to let you know that Sam and I had a meeting. Um, with the city council. So not a quorum of any committee. Some of the members of the. Participatory budgeting commission, which is something that the charter, um, Said will exist. I don't remember if it's a kind of a limited term thing, but, but their task is to. Um, decide what that would mean for Amherst to have a, um, a meeting with the city council. So they are talking to any, any kind of group or part of the town that, um, has, has money. So they had some questions about CPA. And our work. And, uh, so we had a, like an hour, just an hour long discussion with them. So. We'll see they, they shared their draft notes. I assume at some point. I, I, I could certainly share those with you if you want to see, but I, I expect that. In the next couple of weeks, we'll get their final, the final version of their notes of our meeting, which they will then present to the rest of their own. Uh, committee. So if you'd like to see them, I'm sure I can make those available. All right. Any questions about those? Okay. All right. Then I'd like to turn to the schedule for fiscal year 23. I think Anthony hopefully has a new. So as I was saying in the pre-meeting, I have been locked out of my office computer this evening. Um, and that is not a document. I thought to email to myself before the meeting started. I was hoping to send it to the committee. But perhaps I should just send it to the email tomorrow. And I'm not a member. So if there's feedback, you can send it to me. And. Does that make sense? Yeah. Gosh, I was hoping, I don't know. Do we have to. Do we have to vote on it?  Up until now, Sonya has just set. She said, here's your schedule. Okay. I'm not sure. I think it's more collaborative than it. Yeah. So if I can just send that to everyone in the morning. As I was saying before the meeting started, this has been happening all week. And I'm not sure why, but I cannot access my files right now. Well, that sure makes working from home hard. And I seem to have an unstable. Connection. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's not me. So just thought I'd say that ahead of time. Right. Like I said, zoom is, I don't know. Collapsing. All right. Okay. So there is a schedule. We just don't really know exactly what it is right now, but. That's good because then. That's something we can. We can share it with other people. We can start sharing it. Okay. That just, that reminds me, I don't know why. So I guess throw this into back into chairs updates. I know that several of us have appointments to see pack that expire at the end of June. I'm one of those, but. It's quite possible I will be reappointed. And I would say that. If you're sending committee, unless you're an at-large member, you know, you should, I hope you'll be in touch with your committee or board. To get reappointed or if you don't want to be. Get someone else reappointed or get appointed. Because I don't think we'll really meet. In the summer. I hope not. Which means, you know, any new people coming on board, they might have, we might have one quick meeting in August, right, or something before the proposal window opens. So be good to make sure that the committee is fully, fully seated, so to speak. All right, so next is continued discussion of evaluation frameworks. We looked at Robbins and we looked at Andy's spreadsheet. I don't think we had time to say everything that we might say about those, but I do want to throw out there. Now, what are we looking for? You know, are we, do we want to make something formal that we expect future committees will use? Are we just sharing options for methodical ways each of us could evaluate proposals in the future? Do we just want to make sure that our CPA plan and any description of the application process adequately conveys what's expected? I mean, we can't, I put it back on the agenda, but I, I want to clarify what it is we want to do with these. Anyone? Sarah Isinger. Oh, she was first. Then Katie. Katie, do you want to go first or? Okay. So I think of this in a couple of different ways, and it's very similar to what you just discussed, but I think it's helpful to give the applicants a sense of what they, how they will be evaluated, like what are the core areas. And then we have a rubric that. Meers those, um, evaluate those points of evaluation. My vote would be to do it simpler rather than a very complex spreadsheet. Um, and I think kind of similar to what Robin has done. Um, I think we could rate things. It could be, um, we could then have averages. I think what it does, and we could submit them. I'd be happy to do that. I think similar to the straw poll exercise, it, um, it gives a little bit more transparency to our process. We have, um, some standardization and consistency across what we are all evaluating. So I think it's helpful for both the applicants and us, but my vote would be to be simple and it's non binding. You know, it just ends up being a way for us to organize the conversation and see where we've landed on our, um, on our evaluations. And I think it helps, um, wait our conversation and guides our, our agendas. So that you, so you would, um, it would see a recommendation that whatever, whatever the simple framework is, we all use it. Yeah. The way it was just a rating sheet and some of them before the one meeting. Um, the one piece that I would add, and if this isn't the right time to talk about it, it's fine is I would love for us to wait. Projects slightly differently. Like sometimes, I feel like we've sometimes had lengthy conversations with very smooth for like the amount of time that we talk about projects to me should be a slightly representative of how much they've requested. Um, we've tended to be go down very long conversations about projects that are smaller in nature and, and then not really give enough time or give even the same amount of time to the very large, uh, requests. And I think it'd be great if there could be some leveling of that. Like I don't know how we do that in a rubric, but I don't think all of our applications. Um, should be treated, get the same floor time because I think the resources are really different and we have limited. So I want to figure out some way to do that, but that's maybe a different point. So I'll, I'll stop talking and let others. Okay. I would say that to the issue of time, I would think that's just a matter for the agenda that we say. Yeah, I don't know. You know, we'll, if it's under 10,000 we'll spend no more than 10 minutes on it. You know, if it's, if it's, I don't know if others agree with that, but that's, oh, okay. But I, but all I mean is what, if, if we were going to go that way, it doesn't have to be it somehow in like something that everybody, because we all know what the request, what the amount of the request is. So we could just build the timing into the agenda. Katie, did you want to, yeah. I love that I let Sarah go first because she said all of my points. So I could just say ditto. I don't know. But I do want to just underscore, I think transparency is really important for applicants, especially those who aren't used to doing this kind of thing, just to sort of know what we're aiming for. And consistency amongst sort of. The inter-rater reliability, you know, sort of in, in all of us. But the thing that I really want to make sure. Is that it is not a decision making tool. It's a prioritization tool. It helps just helps kind of prioritize. That we can make this, you know, have discussion and make decisions about those things that are. Where we might have differences of opinions, you know, it identifies where there's really big gaps or. It's sometimes it identifies ones that we're all in line. So we don't have to have as long a conversation. So that I just wanted to. Build on what Sarah was saying.  Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That I think Robin's kind of checklist. Would be an easy one. For people have never. Done this before to see. Who have applied before to see the kinds of thinking we have. We're not going to a fixed point values to. To it. They're just simply guiding questions. That's the way I would see it. And I can tell you the instability in my connection is due to the wind. We have. Oh, really? Yeah. Excuse me. If you turn off your video, sometimes that helps. We can hear you. Okay. You can hear you pretty well. Sure. I wanted to ask Anthony, can you, do you have Robin's chart? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if this is among the things. Is that something you could put on your screen. And you're muted. So. Yeah, that was, that was emailed way back for the last meeting, right? And I think I read. You re emailed it on Tuesday. Okay. Yes. I think it's called evaluation criteria. I. Have it. If you, if you want me to give it to you Anthony. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. While he's looking, does anyone else. Yeah, Sam. Yeah, I've got it. So I see two things I see one is a delineation of the. Evaluation criteria, which is derived from the plan. And then separate from that is a discussion as to how we, as a committee. Would choose to vote. It's desirable for any applicants to be directed to a central location specifically the plan. Maybe there can be some individual criteria listings based on categories such as historic, but the criteria is listed in the plan. It's, I think it would be beneficial to highlight what that is from a voting standpoint. I think that what we've done. I think that's something that would be worth. I think that the criteria would be worth. To date in terms of a single numeric. Rating. For each project from the individual. Members. Is desirable, but that. The criteria or spreadsheet or another listing similar to what Andrew generated. Is something that would be worthwhile for the committee members to look at. When they are arriving at a single. Number, whether it be one to five or whether we choose to go one to five. So I'm of the mindset that the. Spreadsheet or the items listed on that spreadsheet are. Worth while. It could be a printed document or otherwise for internal. Member decision making. But I think the. Craig. The categorization of a one through five that we've used the last two years has worked. Well, from my perspective. I think that's a good point. But in terms of identifying which ones are. Going to be the easiest and which ones are not. And for, for applicants. I think the website, webpage and or plan is desirable. One other comment regarding Sarah's reference to. Sarah ease reference to evening the timeframe based on dollar amount. I'm of the mindset that every. Unless we're overwhelmed with applications that. We're overwhelmed with applications. Regardless of dollar amount. To the applicant. That, you know, the good one church may ask for, I forget, was it $20, 20,000, 18, but for them, it's of extreme importance. Similarly to the Jones, which was a million dollar application to them. It's of extreme importance. I say that in the context of indicating. I'm an advocate for thoroughly discussing every item. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that the meetings in the calendar. Down the road. I'd be in favor of it to make sure we don't short change any conversation on. Very important discussions for the applicants. I would say, thank you, Sam. I would say to one of your earlier points. I wanted to take this up before we turn to the plan. Because we get to revise the plan. We need to revise it. So, I think that's a good point. We would like to you if this is it, you know, adequate if this is complete. Then we can put this into the plan. I agree. We know we, you know, we should, we shouldn't be driven by what's in the plan. It's ours to revise and we need to revise it. So. And this is one, one of the. Aspects of that plan. So if we can just. We need the plan to reflect. The thinking of this committee about how we're going to. Assess proposals. Oh, I see Robin has her hand. I've lost my thread.  All right. Diana. Yeah. Okay. So can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. I. I think this sort of a valuation. Or criteria to look at could be put in the plan. And the reason I like the idea of doing that is. Oh, we lost you. Oh dear. Robin, your hand is up still. Have you. I haven't, I'm typing. I would not say where it came from. Oh, hold on. Diana's back. Diana, your audio is cutting in and out. We don't. I wonder if she called. And if it would be better. You want to try that, then it would definitely be audio only, but. Okay. Oh, she, you're back Diana. Well, you were saying you like the idea of including this in the plan. Right. Because I think that it gives. Aspects that the individual proposer might not think about like getting multiple bids. That's why I think this is a good idea. I think it's a good idea. For instead of just presenting us $10,000. Without any understanding of where that figure came from. So I, that's why I think this is good. And could very easily. Be put in the plan. I actually have one question about. One of the elements here, and that is urgency. Is it urgent to get started? Is it urgent to finish it? Some projects. You could leave it more open. Open ended with, you know, what is the urgency of the project? I just wanted to give weight to, you know, if somebody. So, you know, because I come from the historic state. You know, I just wanted to give weight to, you know, if somebody, so you know, because I come from the historic state. You know, I just wanted to give weight to, you know, if somebody, so, you know, because I come from the historic preservation side, if somebody has a leaking roof. That gets more weight than someone who's, you know, roof replacement can wait three years. That's all I wanted that. And maybe it could say, does the project address an urgent need? Yep. That's it. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I think that's good. Sarah. This is Katie. I just wanted to. Respond to Sam's point earlier about the rating that you've been using that we use that I was able to participate in this year, the one to five. And I, I think that speaks to the simplicity idea, you know, and I think it, it, what I was interested in is how do we, how do each of us come up with that rating? You know, and this, I think helps us figure out, you know, Is it a three, is it a four, is it a five in a way that we understand where Sam is coming from or Diana or, you know, we each committee member because we're all sort of looking at the same things to get to that. Rating. So that's what I was thinking. Sam, in terms of how this would be helpful to. Inform or create that rating in a more consistent way. Or more one that's more understood and less. More transparent in terms of its subjectivity. Andrew. Thanks. I, I agree with. I think Sarah's first comments about. I think it does make sense to. Just spend some time. On the larger projects, but I would, I would just say that a lot of time the discussion is just around whether like the, I guess the quality of the application. So, you know, that extra time may be because it wasn't prepared well and we just have a lot of clarification. I think something like, like the document we have up now. Is it seems like it's a useful, it seems like it's a useful, it seems like it's a useful, it seems like it's a useful, it seems like it's a useful, it seems like it's a useful checklist for applicants to go through before they submit. And it might also be a useful framework for us to guide our discussions. I like the way that the questions are phrased. I think they're very open and some of them may be open ended as well, right? And we may not necessarily know the answer to that. So I would be reluctant to use this as a framework for scoring per se. But I do think that there's lots of really useful applications for this. I would say like in terms of the overall rating and, you know, I know the form I submitted looked complicated. That, like all of the language there was directly from the towns, from the goals, like from the CPAC document, I didn't put anything new in there. So like when it, when it's measuring the goals for, you know, like open space, I'm, I'm again pulling the language directly from the document. So there's like, there's no Andrew interpretation into that. It's, is it achieving what the goals are intended? And then also the way I'd set that up is I actually don't put any numbers in, right? Like I think the notion of like giving the number, I think that that can sometimes be a, there may be like a false sense of precision. There may just be some bias that's introduced. So I'd set mine up to provide like qualitative assessments. Did it accomplish this? You know, likely unlikely certain possible like used language that's kind of descriptive that I would apply to those goals and then it would generate a number. And then also like the purpose of that number, I think it's as many have stated, it's not to, to, to, to say one is necessarily better than the other or like five is the best. It's really to help rephrase it's really to help sort of understand how they relate to each other. And allows you to kind of compare projects within their particular need. I think the most important thing if you're doing scoring is just that, you know, you, you account for what we're supposed to be measuring. And you do it consistently. So like one through five may work for some folks, some people may want to do one through 10 or one through 100, like as long as you're doing it consistently. And that, that framework would allow us to say, this one is scores higher than the one below it than the one below that. So, yeah, just my thoughts. Thanks. Sam. So I see value in both. The document that's on the screen. And in Andes or Andrews, excuse me, delineation of the quote unquote goals or purpose. And I see a distinction between both. The, what's on the screen is very close, or if not consistent with the criteria on an application. I'm looking at one of our applications from last year. It happens to be the town steps and it lists the criteria one through nine and it's feasibility document of estimated costs, funding available, multiple sources, urgency, et cetera. So what's on the screen here is a nice way. If I were an applicant, or even if I were just going through a checklist as a committee member to say, yeah, okay. So particularly as an applicant, have I done this? Yes, no, yes, no. It kind of guides them. It's essentially part of the existing application at present right under the criteria section, but it's a nice visual way of focusing on it. And regarding Andrews comment of the goals and the listings. Again, I think that the delineation in some easily located form, whether it be just a PDF saying here are the listed. You know, purposes for each qualifying criteria basically it indicates does it qualify is something good to have ready readily available to look at when considering a project. That's what I've done each of the last few rounds. I've basically looked at each project in line with. Andrews delineation. And during the discussion, we also talked about what's got Robbins here. So I see them both as worthwhile job aids. I still believe that the committee members will benefit by taking the information, digesting it and coming up with a simple rating for the purpose of prioritizing our discussions. So I see value in both. I want to note that on is here. Welcome. Oh, sorry, I was late. That's, that's fine. Glad you could join us. So I, I would say this. One, we need to get the plan done. Two, we can always, and I will want the plan to say this. We need to get the plan done in many, in many places. Something like for the latest details of our process, please see the website. You know, so I want. So maybe we're talking about two different things. We need what's in the plan to be at least. I don't know. Not leaving out something important. Right. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Perhaps. I mean, again, it may be, it'll be a new committee, probably some new people. Who are going to be evaluating the next round. Maybe at one of their early meetings, it's well, here are some tools. Which would folks like to use. I mean, as, as long as. The, the rubric that we use. To judge proposals on things they knew nothing about. It's, it seems to me it would be fair. It would be a fair tool. Right. So. So maybe we can step, maybe we don't have to have, because the plan, remember the plan is a document that's only going to be updated. I mean, it seems to take forever. I mean, it seems to me it's going to be a fair tool. I mean, it seems to me it's going to be updated every few years. So we, it has, it has to allow the committee. Some room for. Modifying its process. Right. So would people be okay with. Making sure that the plan. Replicates this list that we see. And Anthony, could you just scroll to the top? Just. Just in case. All right. So I would propose that we make sure the plan has. Basically a chart like this. All right. Right. And, and again, we get, and maybe it's on the website, but there'll be language in the plan that says. For the latest information, blah, blah, blah, go to the website. The website should refer. People to the plan. Yes, but I mean, for what they, what this, this year's proposal. You know what the proposal form looks like, or the proposal instructions for this year, like, you know, you can submit it between September 1st and whenever. You know, November 30th of 2021. And here's the link to the form and. You know, like that. So any Andrew. Yes. Yeah, thanks. And I, I may. Apologies if I missed this before, but so the. On the website, the community preservation plan final December, 2017. Are we talking about revising the language in that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I sent out, yeah, because the committee. A year ago had been working on a revision for months. And then COVID happened. And then the committee turned over. And we didn't ever finish. So I'm trying to really hoping we could just finish it. And. But, but the end of the document in particular, two pieces, kind of the criteria. And I'm trying to, you know, kind of the instructions for applicants. Those were the things that didn't quite get resolved. So that's. So I'm, so my focus right now. Is. And I know people raised the concern about how are we going to evaluate in a transparent way. And, and that's fine. And, but maybe that doesn't get completely nailed down. As far as the plan is concerned. So is it acceptable to, I've heard somebody maybe. That was Robin Robin. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was going to say, I mean, I think it's a great idea to include it in the plan. I'm a little biased, but, but I also wanted to say that. I mean, I created it because when I came on this committee, I really didn't have any sense of the kind of questions I was supposed to be asking. And I think that's a great idea. And so I think that's a great idea. And over time between this and my job, I got more of a sense of how grants are evaluated. And so I think this, you know, all of these things are kind of a useful step forward. And they can always be revised in the future. But yeah, I would be in favor of both using it as a guiding tool and including it in the plan so that applicants understand what criteria they are going to be evaluated on. And so you're, you're a spreadsheet, which again was a thing, a thing of beauty. You said it takes all the language out of the plan. And, and applicants will have been directed to consult the plan. So it would not seem to me to be again, tricking anybody if this is in the plan, and then we do something even more fleshed out along the lines of your spreadsheet. When it comes time for evaluating, is that. Yeah, I didn't, I thought that the evaluation criteria were, were pretty good in the existing documents. And I thought also like what the proposal should include was also pretty clear. You know, obviously I didn't fill an application so I couldn't say how hard that was to complete. But I, I, I don't know if I like would say that there's a compelling need to change the criteria. And that's what I guess I'm trying to discern from this conversation now. So we feel like the, the criteria that were, that are already in the plan are not appropriate. I think we wanted to. I wanted to revisit that in light of the concerns. That had been raised in this. In this committee. Okay. So I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'll just real quick. I thought that they were pretty clear. They're very useful for me to use. That in conjunction with what the overall goals were for the, for the four components. So I would, I mean, if we can make it more transparent, great. But I don't feel compelled to like modify it. Okay. Sarah. Yes, Katie. I wonder if this. It might be helpful when I look at page 14, 15 of the plan, there's proposal requirements listed and then there's evaluation criteria separated out. And so some things like urgency is in the requirements, but it's not saying that you're getting. Evaluated or. You know, prioritize based on that. So I'm just wondering if maybe there's some. A way to clarify there. That might help. To Andrew's point, you know, this, this to me seems like great evaluation criteria, but there are some other things that we talked about. And that each of us might be looking at, you know, like say urgency or feasibility that isn't in that criteria, in the evaluation. Section. Well, I wondered about this proposal requirements. Again, this is, but to me, part of the problem of having a document versus a process that can change every happens on the website. I wonder if. If this so on begins on page 14 proposal requirements. So, you know, you can, can basically list what was in our last form. But say. That, you know, that the application is submitted on the website, you know, through the website. And that form and requirements may change year to year. So goes, go to the website. You know, to see exactly what they might be. You know, what they might be looking for the year in which you're applying. We'll include the requirements because that's what we ask people to complete. Right. And we'll, on the application, it's really helpful to say, and this is how you'll be evaluated. And so you could include that as well there and update it as opposed to updating this piece, but you could update the application each year. Sarah. Yes. Sorry. I just joined on. So we're having a little bit of an issue. And Anthony will probably know what I'm talking about. We have a JCPC meeting scheduled at seven. Oh, is that why, is that, was that that call? Yeah. You got to take Anthony away. No, I don't have to take Anthony away. And I'm looking to Anthony to see if he has any recommendations. We can only have one zoom meeting going at a time with the JCPC meeting. So we can't start the JCPC meeting. Ending your meeting. And I want to be respectful of your meeting too. So I'm looking to Anthony to see if he has any suggestions. As to what we could do for, if there's another account that we have access to. And no, they took my account away. Yeah. I T they, they consolidated us down to one account. Oh no. Yeah. And I scheduled, and I scheduled this like. Three weeks ago. All right. I will try to figure out if we can get another zoom setup. If you have any suggestions, Anthony, give me a ring. I can't use one of our own zoom accounts because that's not a public. It would have to be public, right? It has to work. Well, I don't know. Recording and all. Yeah. Yeah, I would have to be announced two days before the meeting too. Could we, can I take a quick poll? Could we reconvene next Thursday? People able to do that. I got a look at my own. I'm pretty sure I could do that. I can do it. How many people think they could meet? You know, Or could we split the difference timeframe was. Instead of ending at eight expedite here. And then Sean's group started. Well, no, that's a bigger group. No, that's. Yeah. I got a lot more money than we do. My only issue is we have some departments that are coming to present tonight. So. You know, I, again, I feel really bad about this. If there is a way that you could reschedule the rest of the meeting, that would be really helpful. I'll, I'll write you all a very personal thank you. I would be really happy to, to have this meeting and early because the wind is meaning I'm missing about a quarter of the conversation anyway. So. Okay. Sarah, did it look like most of us could do just cause I know he said they were starting at seven. I didn't see everyone's hands. Please raise. One, two, three. What are we raising our hands for? Can you meet next Thursday. At six. And I'm a yes. Robin. I'm an unknown. Actually, let me go get my. I don't want to. I'll be right back. If it's the 11th, I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. Could we do it the following one? So until Sarah gets your calendar. Can we just also just do this via email? Yeah. Yeah. Why don't we do a. A doodle. Yeah. I have to get off. I think so. All right. Again, I thank you all so much. I really apologize. That's crazy. You have so many. Thank you everyone. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.


Israel lets some aid into Gaza so the U.S. will keep giving it weapons to kill people in Gaza, notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. Israel has generously and compassionately reopened the Erez crossing to allow aid into Gaza, as it is the only way to ensure that the U.S. will keep sending them weapons to kill people in Gaza. Biden sent Netanyahu one warning about a failure to protect civilians, possibly costing Israel its U.S. support, and the crossing opened immediately, which proves, A, that Israel has been intentionally starving Gazans by closing entrances off from aid, and B, that Biden could have ordered this to stop at any time. The Biden administration approved another weapons package for Israel on the same day Israel killed a bunch of international aid workers in Gaza and bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria. But please, tell me more about how frustrated and angry and outraged and upset Biden's feelings are feeling toward Israel. The huge amount of Western outrage and sympathy we're seeing over the IDF assassination of an international aid convoy, compared to the systematic extermination of Palestinians we've seen over the last six months, confirms the West only regards white people as full human beings, which is a point we'd already seen driven home by the disproportionate amount of outrage and sympathy we saw over Ukraine. But you know what, we'll take it. Things are that desperate that if you can only support an end to the Gaza genocide if you see six Westerners get killed, I say welcome aboard anyway. Hopefully this is the beginning of the formation of an actual conscience that's worth a damn. The mass media are reporting that the preliminary IDF debrief into the killing of several World Central Kitchen employees in Gaza has found that the multiple strikes were not carried out with the intention of killing those workers. A report which, if you ask me, has big CIA says it has found no link between itself and crack trade energy. Haritz has a new article out titled At Singapore Air Show, the Gaza War was a selling point for Israeli weapon manufacturers, which is exactly what it sounds like. One of the ugliest things about this dystopia is that acts of mass military slaughter are always immensely profitable for a specific industry. They're profitable in and of themselves, even before you add in things like land and resource grabs, just by helping to market and sell more weapons.  A war doesn't involve conversations about whether or not a walled-in population should be allowed to have food, medicine, and electricity. If you have that much control over a population, you can't be at war with it.  Tweet by someone named Carol Markowitz.  Comment from Caitlin.  Biden and his cohorts aren't mad at Netanyahu for committing a genocide. They're mad at Netanyahu for not hiding a genocide.   The thing that's so pathetic about the push to blame this whole mass atrocity on Netanyahu is that the people doing this aren't even really going after Netanyahu. They're not pushing to send him to the Hague and have him imprisoned for war crimes or bring about any meaningful consequences at all. They're just saying we should feel negative feelings toward him for a bit, like we did with Bush. It's always about feelings with the imperial spin campaign over Gaza. Biden's feelings toward Netanyahu. Israeli feelings about October 7th. The feelings of western Jews about pro-Palestine protests. The whole thing's been one non-stop appeal to emotion fallacy. Maga Republicans claim to be a bold anti-war, anti-establishment faction which is squarely refuted by their support for the Gaza genocide. Democrats claim to support human rights and to oppose tyranny and racism which is squarely refuted by their support for the Gaza genocide.


What does not being abusive to people with disabilities, gender equality, and the changing demographics of North America and Europe all have in common? Well, for a certain substrate of the internet and increasingly the British Conservative Party, the answer is very simple. It's cultural Marxism. I want to know who my enemy is. Our enemy is cultural Marxism. Because post-modernism, in many ways, especially as it's played out politically, is the new skin that the old Marxism now inhabits. Now, while the concept of cultural Marxism has gone on to see has been in circulation for decades and has become increasingly cited and pointed towards in the last couple of years, particularly as a result of the internet, the term cultural Marxism was of real relevance to a British audience in particular after it was used by a Tory MP last week, Suella Brevement, in a speech when she said, We are engaging in many battles right now. As Conservatives, we are engaged in a battle against cultural Marxism, where banning things is becoming de rigueur, where freedom of speech is becoming a taboo, where our universities, quintessential institutions of liberalism are being shrouded in censorship and a culture of no platforming. After the speech, during a question and answer session, Brevement was asked whether she stood by the term, given its far right connections. She replied, Yes, I do believe we are in a battle against cultural Marxism, as I said. She added, I'm very aware of the ongoing creep of cultural Marxism, which has come from Jeremy Corbyn. Now, as I've already said, the term cultural Marxism has been in circulation for decades. Here's American Conservative thinker William Lind talking about cultural Marxism and its relationship to political correctness as far back as 1998. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious. And if we look at it analytically, and if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms in an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War One. So the term has real pedigree and it gained increasing traction in the years following the end of the Cold War as the American Conservative right looked for a new bogeyman. William Lind himself has written a novel called Victoria, a novel of fourth generation warfare in which a group of American Christians take on cultural Marxism in what is a civil war in the context of the end of American federal government. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1999, Lind wrote, the real damage to race relations in the South came not from slavery, but reconstruction, which would not have occurred if the South had won. So we've got William Lind talking about cultural Marxism 21 years ago in 1998. As I've said, it was used by editorial MP. Let's go back to that initial clip you saw of a gentleman talking about cultural Marxism and its historical trajectory on Fox News. PC just kind of appeared. Well, it didn't. It was the Frankfurt School. That's where it appeared. And the Frankfurt School, it's a real interesting little piece. Frankfurt School was in Germany obviously, brought on PC. Marx picked it up, thought it was a great idea for his government. So a few details here. The Frankfurt School, otherwise known as the Institute for Social Research founded in 1923. It was an institute based at the University of Frankfurt, hence the Frankfurt School. This will perennially crop up as the base of cultural Marxism was an elite driven project overseen by an intellectual and intelligentsia. And they moved to the US. We'll come back to that in a second. He said something which is quite strange here, which is that Marx picked it up. Well, Karl Marx died in 1883, which is 40 years before the Frankfurt School was even founded. So I'm not quite clear if this gentleman really is in receipt of all the facts. By the Second World War, Hitler was such an anti-communist that the Franklin School had to move. So probably the Frankfurt School. So they moved here to the Columbia University campus. You will find the Frankfurt School on Columbia's property. That's where political correctness came from. I like the history of all of this stuff so that I understand what's happening today. I want to know who my enemy is. Our enemy is cultural Marxism. Okay. So from the videos we've seen already, you can begin to grasp what is meant by cultural Marxism, although it's a very nebulous term. It's seen as being coterminous with political correctness, the modern left, a turn away from an economically Marxist agenda, and something which has really grown from a base in the universities and the academy. What's more, it's seen as being at odds with traditional western values, as we're going to see that includes the family, the church, and majority white countries. If you want to see an explainer on YouTube in regards to how these people, I say these people, I mean the strange alliance we see increasingly with internet politics of classical liberals and conservatives, this guy's video is a great place to start. The label cultural Marxist is an act to define a group of Marxists that emerged after World War I in the West. The Marxists that formed the USSR achieved their objectives through revolution, while cultural Marxists were concerned with breaking down the culture that seemed to make the West impervious to the allure of what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat. Now there's some basis in fact in this, in so much as in the years immediately following the end of the First World War, there was a conversation on the European left asking why revolution had not swept across from Russia into Germany into Italy. The key thinker behind this was a gentleman called Antonio Gramsci, he talked about this in his prison diaries, and he said that the reason that revolution hadn't taken off, particularly in native Italy, was because, as that chap just kind of pointed to, there wasn't a consciousness that was ready for socialism, and he said that as well as coercion capitalism builds legitimacy through consent, and that it builds it through forms of false consciousness amongst the population. They themselves, even though they're exploited and oppressed by the system, actually seek to often defend it despite it not being in their own interest. Now Gramsci said all of that, but as we go on to see from this tiny kernel of truth, we see some very strange conclusions being drawn. Marx believed that all societies progressed through the dialectic of class struggle. He adamantly believed that eventually capitalism would cause internal tensions, resulting in its failure, and the conclusion being the implementation of socialism. Now what's interesting here is actually that Karl Marx wasn't unique amongst 19th century political economists since seeing capitalism as a socially contingent system, a system with a beginning and an end. We see something very similar with Thomas Malthus, a late 18th century political economist, one of the sort of early forefathers of political economy, with his predictions of overpopulation, the Malthusian problem. That turned out not to be the case, but people thought it was true until really the 1970s, elsewhere there was David Ricardo. He said there was a fundamental contradiction between using land and using energy. Some land obviously had to be used for agriculture, for industry, but at the same time you needed to get peak to create energy and early fossil fuel. He said there was a contradiction here. What he was pointing towards was ultimately a scarcity of inputs for capitalist production, that there would be a hard limit to capitalist growth. Elsewhere Adam Smith had something of an understanding of conflicts between classes. He understood very well there were combating classes, there were people with different interests in capitalist society. Marx wrote capital or a critique of political economy. He was seeking to engage in all of these arguments, taking on Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and James Mill, among others. The idea that somehow he was an outlier, he was pointing towards unique phenomena that only he saw at the midpoint of the 19th century is simply wrong. And it can only be said by somebody who is clearly unfamiliar with his work. This philosophy is integral to cultural Marxism. Its ideologues attaching themselves to anything that fans the flame's attention and accelerating this goal. Marx is cited as one of the major founders of the social sciences. And anyone that knows anything about modern academia is aware that this field of study is the bedrock for the theories presented by the modern left. Now this is actually something of an issue in regard to what classical liberals on YouTube and that's what I can only presume this gentleman's values, this belief system is, how they view the left in the academy. Often it's the humanities which are castigated by the likes of Jordan Peterson, the rise of gender studies, LGBT studies, race studies, etc. Here what's being attacked instead is the social sciences. And I have to take task with this allegation because quite frankly it's the complete opposite of what is true. Since the 1960s it's been economics, the mother of all social sciences, which has found its way into every other discipline. If you're familiar with sociology or politics you might know the applications of rational choice theory in your field. One example is the logic of collective action by Mancor Olsen written in 1965. That represented very much a transposing of ideas of rational choice into the social sciences like political science for instance. What's more, Karl Marx was absolutely not the progenitor, the forefather of the social sciences. Auguste Comte is commonly viewed as being the first person, the inaugurator of sociology. He precedes Karl Marx in terms of history as a science, something which seeks to apply the historic method. People often point to Giambattista Vico, an Italian who lived in the 17th century. Some even claim that in regards to political science, Niccolò Machiavelli was taking steps before anybody else in applying the scientific method to that field. That was the early 16th century. Now to be clear, these aren't conclusive points. Nobody says for sure that Vico definitively started historical science or that Machiavelli started political science. In fact, these are claims ultimately which can't be falsified or verified either way. They're simply opinions, they're points of view. But the idea that it's Marx who's viewed as starting the social sciences is patently inaccurate. In fact, as I've already said, he viewed himself as responding to a preceding work of classical political economy. Often we look at Adam Smith as being the forefather of that discipline. He was writing at the second half of the 18th century. He was preceded by other thinkers though, including one William Petty who was a cartographer as well as an early political economist. We could take it even further back and look at Cartesian rationalism and Hobbes and his application of Cartesian rationality to what could be viewed as an early modern form of liberal politics because he applies what's called an individualist methodology, the idea of the social contract. So this idea that Marx is the first person to apply standards of analytical rigor to what we now view as the social sciences is clearly inaccurate. Very few people would think it holds real water. Cultural Marxism operates under the radar. This is because there are still people out there that believe in Western values and the entire aim of cultural Marxism is to soften this up enough to transform the culture from the inside. So it's essential that the opposition is either ridiculed or discredited. This occurs through accusations like being a conspiracist or by flat out denying and ignoring irrefutable historical evidence, much like attempts by Nazis to rewrite history. Well that's an interesting point of view because the Institute for Social Research left Nazi Germany precisely because of fascism. In fact, two of the most influential figures within what's now called the Frankfurt School, Hawkeimer and Walter Benjamin were Jews. Walter Benjamin in fact died trying to leave Europe and go to North America. To the cultural Marxist, you are always a conspiracist, no matter how much evidence you present and in spite of the fact that it's extremely easy to link the likes of Hawkeimer, Marcuse and of course the Frankfurt School to the origins of modern Western leftist philosophy. Well hold on a second, we're talking here about cultural Marx, so presumably even you would admit the origins here aren't Marcuse or Rodorno or Hawkeimer but Marx himself. And I don't quite understand how this is a smoking gun, yes these are all central figures in 20th century European thought left or right, but what does that have to do with the idea more generally that there is an elite driven project to undermine the values of Western civilization? All of which are part of how cultural Marxism began after World War One. Cultural Marxists will often attempt to call themselves liberals, but they are nothing of the sort. The similarities between liberalism and Marxism are based around the ideas of equality and affirmative action, though cultural Marxists use affirmative action to stifle free market economics. The difference between liberalism and Marxism is very clear given that cultural Marxists are against free speech and anti-free market, both of which liberalism is opposed to. Now what this gentleman's getting mixed up is the idea of social and economic liberalism, which is kind of strange given that he's so happy to draw a distinction between cultural and economic Marxists. Social liberals are people who are comfortable with LGBT rights, gender equality, racial equality, they are part of more broadly a revolution of social values you could argue since the 1960s where those kinds of beliefs have now become more or less the common sense, although of course that is constantly being contested. Meanwhile economic liberals as he rightly says are people who want a small stay, low rates of tax, minimal intervention in terms of the otherwise healthy functioning of free markets. Now some people can be both social and economic liberals, in the UK you'd have liberal democrats or in Germany the FDP, but often you get economically liberal policies alongside socially conservative ones, think Margaret Thatcher, or you get socialism allied to social conservatism, as was the case for many socialist and social democratic parties in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Cultural Marxism and social liberalism are not the same thing, although there has been significant overlap between the two in the last 60 years, that is to say the radical left and the centre left, as we see alliances between both sides around issues of gay marriage, gender equality, the right to abortion divorce, etc. But that's a coalition between two fundamentally distinct forms of politics, rather than cultural Marxism somehow undermining western civilisation. We talked about the difference between economic and social liberals, what's the difference between a social democrat and a socialist? Well social democrats actually also believe in the free market, but they want to subordinate some of it to more social ends, so they would say the free market is the best way to create things, create jobs, it's very productive, but we want some taxation, some forms of redistribution to socially just ends. A social democrat is different to a socialist in so much as the latter would say well actually we think the means of production themselves, not just their fruits, should be put in public ownership. Now we need to understand as a spectrum here, you would go from a free marketeer and our co-capitalist all the way through to a state communist, and on that path, on that continuum, you do get social democrats, you do get a marbethatcher, you do get a state socialist and you get a communist, but these shouldn't be viewed as opposing but rather like I say on a continuum, but perhaps this is too sophisticated a view of looking at the world for somebody looking for easy explanations. At this point I feel it would be beneficial to give a breakdown of how one can recognise a cultural Marxist since no one is ever going to admit to being one. I'll do this by combining all of the information that I've gathered through research from my videos as well as my experiences through encounters on YouTube. So, a cultural Marxist is economically left-wing. They are therefore typically call themselves a social democrat, endorsing economic policies like progressivism and canteanism. They're also anti-free market no matter how much information you present to refute their typically uninformed and poor arguments. Cultural Marxists are atheists, agnostics, or endorse some sort of trendy mysticism like Buddhism or Wiccan. They are never Christian. At this point I'm giving up on this guy, but let's just get something straight here. Like I said, Walter Benjamin, Holkheimer, two central figures of the Frankfurt School, they were Jewish, of course that doesn't get mentioned. And it seems to me like he's talking about just left-wing people because often what you see in explanations of cultural Marxism from classical liberals or people on the right is that there is a binary between economic Marxism and this cultural Marxism. It's a different beast. But what this guy is saying is that cultural Marxist often have left-wing views on the economy. Maybe you're just talking about left-wing people. There's a thought. Philosophically, a cultural Marxist will adhere to the types of philosophies that this channel has repeatedly addressed like postmodernism and feminist theory. Existentialism is also extremely popular with the type of cultural Marxist identifying as an agnostic or weak atheist. Cultural Marxists will always claim to stand for individuality, but will relentlessly reject the evidence that anything that makes human beings diverse like gender and racial differences. Now at this point it seems that everybody is a cultural Marxist. Atheists, agnostics, feminists, social liberals, anybody who thinks that actually race and gender aren't the major categories by which we should organize society apparently is a cultural Marxist. And another thing that I find really interesting here is that for classical liberals they're so keen to talk about how the individuals should be at the forefront of how we organize society and yet they immediately want to defer to prior forms of collective solidarity.  This to me seems to be fundamentally at odds with how classical liberalism conceptualizes both the individual and happiness which is unique to the subject themselves regardless of race or gender. So the cultural Marxist anyone who believes that human beings are different or that these differences are not always associated with social construct is a bigot and so will very quickly be vindictively labeled a racist, sexist, break-apologist or any other team that aligns with PC-shaming language. Now before we go on I just want to recap a little bit here. This guy talks about political correctness, he talks about post-modernism and he talks about cultural Marxism. It's almost like they're interchangeable. As we'll go on to see my explanation for that is that fundamentally this nebulous mobilization of cultural Marxism masks a fundamental inability to explain modern society because they don't have a materialist account of history. If they did they would have to be far more left-wing than they are. In any case we've seen the smaller players, the division one of the thinking on this from classical liberals, from right-wingers on YouTube or from a gentleman on Fox. Let's play with the big boys in the Premier League, Jordan Peterson. I don't think that you can understand the current situation properly without considering the role that post-modernism plays in this because post-modernism in many ways especially as it's played out politically is the new skin that the old Marxism now inhabits. So you could think that there's a post-modern philosophy which we'll talk about a bit that really came into its vogue in the 1970s after classic Marxism especially of the economic type had been so thoroughly discredited that no one but an absolute reprobate could support it publicly anymore. Even the French intellectuals had to admit that communism was a bad deal by the end of the 1960s. Quick factual correction here that's not true in the 1981 French election the Communist Party won 4.4 million votes. There were a number of French intellectuals leading French intellectuals who remain committed economic Marxists throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s. Louis Alterser, Jacques Rancier, Alain Badiou. Badiou in fact was a Maoist. Now I don't agree with a lot of stuff he writes, I actually think some of it's really good. I don't agree with a lot of stuff Althusser writes but the assertion that there were no people in the French intellectual scene amongst the French intelligentsia who were talking about economic Marxism after the 1960s is patently incorrect. Student radicals for example are not 100% committed post-modernist they're probably only like 10% committed post-modernist when they're not being foolish with their mob they're out being normal people but you get a mob together that's animated by that post-modern ethos then the collective spirit that animates the mob has that power-seeking proclivity and that antipathy towards Western ideals that we've been discussing. I think it's what makes that different let's say from from what was happening in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Russian Revolution is that there was a organized group of conspirators, Lenin at the head, whose goal was to overthrow the monarchy and to seize power and that isn't what's happening here there isn't an organized group of people who are getting together and saying well you're going to lead the assault on Western civilization and we're going to produce a new government out of the runes it's it's nothing that explicit and articulated but the end result is much the same. So interestingly here Peterson deviates from actual outright conspiracy theories on this stuff he's not saying it's a conspiracy but more a style of politics which is in keeping with what we saw with the previous chap he's saying that cultural Marxism manifests itself yes in a in a number of values and ideas but also simply a style of doing politics forms of rhetoric forms of being together and he's used it fundamentally as an outgrowth of the mob and a herd mentality a classical criticism of any form of radical politics by conservatism. Now he doesn't talk explicitly here about cultural Marxism but post-modernism and I would submit these are fundamentally interchangeable time after time when you hear the rhetoric of the alt-right or classical liberals online and they talk about cultural Marxism they also talk about political correctness or post-modernism fundamentally they're talking about the same thing and as I've said this masks a fundamental vacuity in terms of their world view. Social science talks about conceptual stretching it's when you take a concept you stretch it so far it no longer really has the capacity to explain a real social phenomenon that's precisely what's happening here with words like post-modernism and cultural Marxism.  Okay so I've talked about how I think cultural Marxism amongst classical liberals the alt-right is really a meaningless figurehead and I think fundamentally it's an outgrowth of their inability to explain history confronted with massive social economic transformation since the 1960s Jordan Peterson's best explanations to say we were asleep at the wheel and other people took over surely if we want to better understand changes around sexuality social relations between men and women a good place to start might be the pill and often when Marxists seek to explain the historical process taking from what Marx himself called historical materialism they try to start with a materialistic account for why things are the way they are and of course human beings play a role Marx himself said men make history but not under conditions of their own making but fundamentally the superstructure culture social relations mental conceptions are an outgrowth of the base economic relations and technologies as his work developed Marx really viewed technology economics social relations forms of daily life in the class struggle as all being in constant dynamic tension with one another each pushing and pulling Jordan Peterson on the other hand just says history just happens because some people do some stuff and some other people let them do it but now we're going to take it up a gear because while I've viewed Jordan Peterson's being on that continuum of conservative thought which can end up in some quite dark places ultimately he is more about pointing to a malaise at the heart of western culture and I don't view him as being as dangerous as some of the people will now go on to look at so about to a video including Stefan Molyneux and Faith Goldie she was a right-wing politician who ran for city mayor role I believe in Canada Stefan Molyneux is part of a group of YouTubers he talks about things like race realism now I'm not going to make assertions as to what kinds of people they are or their beliefs I'm not going to call them fascists but given that Anders Brevik talked about cultural Marx more than a hundred times in his manifesto I would submit that the way the term is mobilized in the video you're about to see really does resemble Anders Brevik to a considerable extent and that begs deep questions around the politics of Faith Goldie and Stefan Molyneux and how they view democratic societies we as a culture benefit enormously as does the world I would argue from a smaller government and there's something that happened around the 1960s you know with the welfare state and with the change in immigration policies that started in England and then in the United States and a little bit later in Canada there's something where the people on the left said I think we're going to run out of demand for government if this European thing keeps going the way it's going so let's try and find a way that we can maintain the demand for the supply called the state now what Molyneux doing here is trying to dress up a fundamentally ridiculous argument in the garb of economics using language like supply and demand but if we look at the historical data percentage of GDP spent on social spending in Europe North America was rising steadily for the first half of the 20th century the first country to have for instance public pensions was Bismarck in Germany in the 1930s America saw the New Deal which all of a sudden created a central role for the state like never before in Britain France elsewhere across Europe particularly Scandinavia we see a dramatic shift in the role of the state in the creation of social welfare states after 1945 this is all in our gable it's all there to see the total of it all perhaps is Britain's NHS the idea that there was less and less state over time for the 20th century is patently absurd Lyndon Johnson a republican declared war on poverty in 1964 again Molyneux really isn't using any facts here rather like Jordan Peterson but as we go on to see things only get worse if the need for government is diminishing how can we maintain the demand for it well let's bring in a whole bunch of people who are going to depend on government who are from cultures that are used to big government who are going to vote for big government it was like a way of sustaining the beast we've tried to tame for the past five thousand years so here's where we go into outright conspiracy theory what Molyneux is saying is that because the need for government was getting smaller as the 20th century progressed there was effectively a plot by the left to bring over immigrants who by virtue of their race ethnic background would want more states the world's largest democracy today is India their head of state is Narendra Modi a conservative if you go to sub-Saharan Africa you won't see the public ownership of the means of production or socialism equally if you go to Scandinavia you see very successful social democratic countries so nonsense in regards to the historical point that by the mid 60s we were solving issues of race and equality agenda the civil rights act is 1964 so it wasn't being solved it was only beginning to be addressed in the mid 1960s all americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race and they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race in terms of gender women in italy couldn't get divorced until 1970 i believe in ireland it was the 1990s so the right to abortion the right to divorce wasn't there until well after the mid 1960s again it was the beginning of a revolution uh rather than the culmination of of something else we need to look at all these things in historical context i tried to be charitable with some of these people but repeatedly here you hear assertion after assertion which has absolutely no basis in fact absolutely and it's not just done through their immigration policies to fawn um of course you're you're referring to the cultural marxists and i really do you think that they are are so much that the heart of what has led to the crumbling of the west right now the decline of the west these guys from the fabian the frankfort school is sololinsky et cetera um well actually it was antonio grand she before him uh who who come to america come to the west and just to be clear antonio grand she never went to america but what we're seeing here is the kind of spilling over now we've got sololinsky he wasn't actually that radical he was a community organizer you've got antonio grand she you've got fabian socialism and you've got the frankfort school these are all very different people who all believe in and view the world in very different ways fabian socialism was again like the frankfort school something of a an intellectually led project uh it was in britain it was led by the webs but fabian socialism its politics is fundamentally different to adorno and hawkheimer it was concerned primarily with the economic sphere if you want to understand what inspired the genre of socialism which britain adopted in the immediate aftermath of the second world war the fabian is a good place to start again this nebulous way of mobilizing terms uh almost makes them meaningless and what it reveals is that fundamentally these people have an antipathy to modernity and they want a simple explanation problem is it makes no sense the 1950s and 60s and say we want to grow government and so we have to indeed manufacture a crisis in which um the state can grow and so what they did automatically was um target the two biggest obstacles to state expansion and that is family and the church um because of course both those things are above or nearer to you than the state and once they did that they found certain movements that would manufacture crisis and allow for the state to grow uh whether that be environmentalism you know demonizing the cheapest forms of energy and then nationalizing the much more expensive stuff including all this green energy mojemo feminism what a better way to break down the family uh outside of slavery and say um the criminal conveyor belt judicial system that we have is is attacking women the feminism uh women's lib don't have kids go out there get a career sleep around here's the pill by the way so now we're beginning to formulate a more sophisticated picture about why the world is the way it is molyneuse talked about immigration as a means of creating more demand for a big state this being done by people of a left wing persuasion but in addition to that faith gold is talking about how the same left wing tried to undermine the central pillars of authority in more traditional societies church and the family attacking the family was done through introduction of contraception well it's not clear if she thinks contraception is a left wing plot this i think returns us the fundamental point about an account of why history works the way it does and marxist would look at women's liberation in the 1960s and say well this is part in outgrowth of new gadgets which meant less time could be spent on reproductive labor in the household as well as that contraception meant there wasn't such a major downside to women being promiscuous and having lots of sex that is a materialist account of why things happened the way that they did of course for these people that can't happen because if they did adopt a materialist account of history they would have to have conclusions which are far to the left of where they presently are no it's sad and you know what our education system is part of it is part to blame to be honest you know they teach you about things like um contraceptives but not abstinence right they teach you about um all sorts of cultural marxism and don't tell you about how to be a good wife or mother my sister right now she's 26 she's about to deliver baby number two our mom has since passed and you know she says i was never taught these sorts of things in school we're taught about all this rubbish about you know the global community etc how about you teach kids in this country white or otherwise how to be good parents and just family values no of course not because again it would be an obstacle to the state i know it sounds simple and commonsensical but our education system is part of part to blame for all of this and so that's why frankly the government's allowed to get away with what they do so what's kind of ironic here is that i think faith goldie should read some feminist marxism some sylvia federichu some kathy weeks even some rosa luxembourg in fact the reason why we're not taught about how to raise a family in schools it's not really mentioned as a skill per se is because capitalism views the social reproduction of the family and therefore future workers as being a cost it doesn't need to internalize it's a cycle of reproduction it doesn't really want to be concerned with that's been in circulation amongst marxist feminist circles for a century uh so i agree with you your sister should have been taught about those things in school i would go one step further we need the socialization of child care because it shouldn't just fall on your sister and her husband her partner or our presumer as a husband you're very socially conservative to do all these things without any guidance i think we should have socialized child care although by the sounds of it i don't think that's where you're going with this is it you can say well faith like what's race got to do with it because that is such a canadian standpoint well what does race have to do with it and you're 100 right and saying there there are differences uh even if it is something as fundamental as desire for government something as fundamental i would i would forget about everything else it just understand that in this reality the idea of having a conservative or a a libertarian my goodness reform sort of party government ever come in is not going to happen 100 years from now we're going to be choosing between the new democrats and the liberals who will probably be more left of them now look i watched a lot of classical liberal it's not um i'm right weighing alt right youtube to talk about this video but this is just unbelievably dumb voter preference is racially delimited and it's genetically inheritable really really there are conservative political figures across asia across africa um one of the most conservative political cultures in the world is japan as i've said narendra moody the leader of the world's largest democracy is a conservative at the same time some of the whitest countries in the world historically scandinavia have left wing uh welfare states i don't really get it all you have to do is look at the left's insistence on where immigrants come from you know there as i've mentioned in a show recently there are hundreds of thousands of highly oppressed stuck in shanty towns living on very little food white south africans now they are an oppressed minority who would i'm sure be desperate to come to canada is there any movement to say oh well look there's an oppressed minority they already speak english there's a similar cultural background they would fit in very well no because they're likely to vote for smaller government they've seen the end result of diversity and and so the fact that the the people on the left are so keen to bring in people from the third world to the west tells you all you need to know about their voting patterns if it was if there was complete indifference then why would it be so focused on third world immigration because they know they're going to vote for larger government and that's something that is statistically borne out let's start by addressing the south african point i'm pretty sure white south africans enjoy per capita higher levels of wealth than the average median south african i'm sure they own more assets i'm sure they have higher incomes i'm sure i'm not not i'm sure i know they have higher educational qualifications they're less likely to end up in prison they're less likely to be arrested they have a longer life expectancy you need to understand what oppression is if you're going to start using these terms and then you say they know what diversity looks like presumably you mean the end of apartheid and ultimately this is where a lot of this thinking ends up i mean it ends up in neo-fascist reactionary batshit craziness that's where it ends up okay so now we're moving into the more hard stuff with regards to right-wing youtube on cultural Marxism let's leave modern new and goldy behind and move to a young woman called blonde in the belly of the beast now this is really frightening stuff parental guidance is advised for those of you that think that our work is done because trump has been elected i would like to remind you that the left has unequivocally won the culture war and trump is merely our first step in cutting out the malignant marxist cancer that has infiltrated every level of our society legacy media still reaches millions hollywood is reaching even more and on a deeper level subconsciously and american colleges are still turning out useful idiots on a daily basis i was born in 1987 so i've only really experienced in america deeply entrenched in marxism and when you grow up in this environment and it's all you've ever known there's a tremendous incentive to stay the course that you don't have to admit your own responsibility in adopting a destructive worldview or destructive behavior but after unraveling the marxist education that i received at mizu i really wanted to know how this happened to our country um i wanted to know who was responsible for eroding our values and forcing upon us this malaise and cultural pessimism that is so palpable particularly amongst millennials and baby boomers how is america marxist you had macartheism in the 1950s you had the destruction of the american communist party you've never had a a major socialist party in the country you had the demise of organized labor and trade unions from the late 1960s how how the last election saw donald trump versus hillary clinton and where's the marxism here i don't see the idea about cultural malaise cultural pessimism all societies have cultural pessimism at some point if you want to read la fleur de mal by bordelaire mid 19th century uh french poet if you read nature at the end of the 19th century or max nordow who literally wrote a book called degeneration you see it there in the novel of hoismans you see it time after time ideas of degeneracy in literature or in philosophy and this is probably cyclical low that's just my opinion the idea that this is unique to america today is frankly ridiculous but let's return to that point of america being marxist and you're receiving a marxist education what you mean is fundamentally you've been subject to socially liberal values and yes that is quite new but that's not marxism so the frankfort school developed critical theory which is the principle that states that all aspects of life should be viewed and re-evaluated through the lens of marxism its core tenet is that morality is a social construct entirely and there really are no absolute truths it was meant to encourage the young to view the west with a critical eye questioning all traditional teachings and our shared sense of morality if there's no absolute truth then why should one accept the teachings of their culture or the long-standing traditions now this is kind of ironic because what some view is the quintessentially western values of the enlightenment scepticism secularism etc are viewed by this person as marxism immanuel cant talked about the motto of the enlightenment being saperre alde dare to know that was born of a fundamental scepticism in regard to the world around him deca the person of course begins the whole western idea of cartesian rationality says cogito ergo sum the only thing he knows for certain is i think therefore i am the idea of doubt or knowledge through doubt and healthy scepticism are very much at the heart of the western intellectual tradition they are nothing new this points to a form of cultural relativism or rather the absence of totemic cultural absolutes and a toleration of people who may have different values to you because of cultural or social contingency that's not marxism and it's not that new in fact fundamentally i think your criticism is with the enlightenment i've already talked about immanuel cant and the idea of saperre alde but it's also there in the writings of voltair didiro didiro once said borrowing from a french poet mesia man would only be happy when the last priest was hanged with the guts of the last king or maybe it was the other way around doesn't matter because what he wanted to assert was that the twin sources of authority with the clergy and the king were fundamentally at odds with ideas of human rights liberty and equality didiro was not a marxist this was being claimed in the 18th century 100 years before car marx was born this strand of enlightenment thinking is also discernible in the american constitution humans are endowed with certain features given to them by their creator and they have rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that third part the pursuit of happiness would indicate that there are no moral absolutes in terms of what make us happy we are all different and it's that diversity and toleration of that difference which is the basis for great societies the marxist influence and film literature art and academia quickly eroded the wholesome mentality of previous generations in favor of pessimism towards marriage um towards men and more generally towards western culture in prior generations your average person just wanted to get a stable job be with a nice lady and have a quiet life with a happy family this was the breath of the middle class marxist knew that if they destroyed the traditional family the middle class would come undone completely they knew that with sexual liberation and the death of marriage there would be children out of wedlock that needed support and in the absence of fathers the state would have to step in although there were many tactics employed this particular objective was largely achieved through no fault divorce laws now i've got capital volume one here i've got two and three as well i think i've got companions i've got biographies i've got as early works as later works and nowhere are no fault divorce laws talked about i can really assure you it may be an oversight on my behalf but i'm pretty certain that's the case and this idea that before the 1960s for the entire span of human history all we want to do was settle down have a family enjoy quiet private existence simply isn't true if you look at europe 19th century in france you have revolutions every 10 minutes the 1830s the 1840s the 1870s in britain you have the charters movement you have irish republicanism you have in the united states of course the civil war by the end of the 19th century you have an upswing in labour organizing trade union militancy big bill hayward and the i w w societies have been very volatile and turbulent for a very long time and the explanation is that societies because they are composed of different people with different interests and different ideas are by nature volatile that is politics if i was to talk to the people who made these videos jordan peterson and blonde and the belly of the beast and stefan molyneux i would implore them to read some marks if for nothing else than to appreciate the historical process with a bit more sophistication because they haven't got a materialist understanding of history they've had to concoct this strange conspiracy we were asleep at the wheel says jordan peterson these cultural marks is came over from germany they came to america and then this happened and that's how they view history some people don't do something but some people do something and then history changes no history is composed of setters of an ensemble of variables technology social relations economics mental conceptions ideas and interests they're all in fundamental tension with one another so if you could read some marks particularly perhaps the german ideology you might get a more rounded view of the historical process but i'd also say in addition to that that they are right about one thing which is that society has transformed over the last 50 years but also the last 150 years and they'll be surprised to hear that one Karl Marx agrees with them as he wrote in the communist manifesto the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production and thereby the relations of production and with them the whole relations of society conservation of the old modes of production in an altered form was on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes constant revolutionizing of production uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeoisie epoch from all earlier ones all fixed fast-frozen relations with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify all that is solid melts into air all that is wholly is profaned and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind so what does that mean what Marx is fundamentally saying here is that capitalism is a revolutionizing force it constantly has to make and remake society social relations identities in the search of new profits so if you were watching this and you thought those videos made any sense whatsoever because they are in part describing a rapid transformation of society in the last half century in particular well yes that's true but it's because of capitalism capitalism is the most revolutionary process humanity has yet devised the downside being it's destroying our planet making us hate one another and ourselves and gives us jobs which ultimately mean we find little meaning in our lives i think cultural Marxism is a ridiculous way of understanding the world but it reflects a fundamental inability to have a materialist conception of history i'm proud to be a marxist because i view myself as being in that tradition of enlightenment thinking knowledge through doubts skepticism sapere aude dare to know and i think if you dare to know you'll also arrive at similar conclusions men make history but not under conditions of their own making