Where is Namashina? Let's now see her. Okay, let's get started. Good evening. Welcome to the first meeting of the community safety. Where is Namashina? Yeah, where is she? I don't see her. She is not in the attendee list either. She was sent an email. So there she is. She just joined. She just popped in. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. So again, good evening. Welcome to the first meeting of the community safety. Where is Task Force? I'm Xavier Kason. I'm sharing the co-chair duties with Marsha Owen, who you'll hear from momentarily. Our mission and the reason that we are gathered here is actually spelled out in our bylaws to examine, to educate, to recommend, that is examine the public safety and wellness needs of Durham's residents and communities. Educate our residents on existing resources. Recommend additional programs that would enhance public safety and wellness that rely on community-based prevention, intervention, and reentry services as alternatives to policing and the criminal legal system. So if I were asked to frame the charge to examine, educate, and recommend, and nobody asked me, I'd use the terms resonance, coherence, and experience. That is, in the midst of our examination, it's important that the community voices resonate down in our very being. Coherence, because we need to really make sure we break down the complexity of the ecosystems that affect our overall safety and wellness. And experience, we want to make sure we lift not only the institutional experience that's here in our community, but also lifting lived experience in a way that our recommendations actually find their way into the right hand. We're certainly grateful for the elected bodies that selected this amazing group, and for the careful ways that the members of the city council, board of education, and county commissioners crafted our bylaw. Marsha and I would also like to acknowledge the mentorship of Amber Wade and Ryan Smiths from the city, and data researcher Ajane Clemens for helping us prepare for the task. So as we begin, I would like to ask you to consider a moment of silence with me, and I ask you to consider in that moment of silence, anyone in our community who's sense of safety and wellness has been affected by harm, including those who were harmed, and those who have caused harm. And then for what we hope will be a positive ripple effect flooring from the work of this task force and into our community. So please join me for a moment of silence. Thank you. I'd now like to acknowledge co-chair Marsha Owens. Thanks, savior. We thought it would be really beautiful to begin every all of our meetings with affirming our values and then closing our meetings with a reflection as well. And to kind of talk about values, I'd love to tell a little story. It's when my son was in second grade at the fabulous school, Aaron Harris Elementary School, and he was in this class that was so peaceful and energetic that it was bizarre. And it was, and there was such peace and belonging in that classroom that I felt compelled to ask the teacher what was happening, like what was going on here, that this could happen. And she said, well, Marsha, every year, the beginning of the school year, I write the names of the students down on this piece of paper, and I put my hand on that paper and I say a prayer. And I didn't ask her what she prayed, but I'll tell you what happened. There was respect, courage, patience, kindness, gratitude, understanding, listening. When things got broke, they were fixed. And when people felt kicked out, they were invited back in. There was this cohesive belonging. And so if y'all will join me, we have a list of everybody here. And if you would just, we can't pass the piece, because it's all virtual, but I guess instead of using a talking piece, PIECE, we'll do P-E-A-C-E and pass the piece. So if you would just give us, say your name, and offer us a value that you will bring to this gathering with us tonight. And then if you would just pass the piece to the next person on the list, that would be perfect. And since, and I'll start, my name is Marsha. And the value I bring to this gathering tonight is gratitude. And I pass to Jesse. Hi, everyone. Jesse Huddleston here, pronouns are he, she, we. The value that I'm bringing here is authenticity. If I add briefly to that, it's one grounded in ancestral and historical grounding, and one that is also mindful of the future we hope to create in order to heal, we have to face the truth. So authenticity. Um, I will pass. It's in the chat. Oh, it's in the chat. Oh, we're just going to forward it. Okay. Yeah, I thought we were all going to pass. I'm, you know, Zoom culture. So I'm guessing Isaac is next. Yes. Sorry about that. My bad. Hey, everybody. Good to see your faces. I've been looking forward to this for a long time now. My name is Isaac Orisak. He can pronounce and value I bring this this evening is patience. And then you would pass to Shanice. Hi, everyone. My name is Shanice. I use she her pronouns. And the value that I'm bringing into the space and I will pass it to yes, it's very hot to Jennifer. Hi, everyone. My name is Jennifer. I am deeply honored to be a part of this group. And the value that I will bring to this type of work is tenacity, for better or for worse, tenacity. And I will pass to Cynthia. Cynthia is not on yet. Okay, okay. I couldn't find her. I have to screw. So then I will pass to Tyler. Are you with us right now? Yes, yes. And the value I think is intentionality. It's being very intentional about what we're here for, about what I'm here for. And if you want to see who's next, Mike. Hi, Mike. He, him, I would say collaboration and compromise and perhaps a unique, I like bureaucracy. I like bureaucratic detail and burrowing down into it. Jatoya. Hi, I'm Jatoya. She and her pronouns and the value that I'm bringing is community. And I will pass to Manju. Thanks so much, Jatoya. Such an honor to be in this circle with you all. And thanks to everyone who's listening from all over Durham now and later. The word I'd like to embody in this journey with you is love. And I will pass to Tanya. Good evening, Tanya Williams-Lathers. The value I will bring to the team is compassion. And I will pass it on to Samuel. Thank you. I'm very grateful to be here with everybody today to share this space and to provide some safety and wellness for our community. I'm Samuel Scarborough, my pronouns are he, him, his, and I guess my value would be solidarity. I will pass the piece to Nori. Hi, my name is Nori McDuffie. My pronouns are he and his. And the value I'm bringing today is holding space for everyone in here and also everyone who's watching. It's important that folks feel like they can share what they need to share without being judged or just truly listened to. So yeah, and I'm going to pass it to Dr. Wanda Boone. Hi, I'm Wanda. And what I hope to bring is resilience, recovering broken pieces. And I pass to Alec. Hey, y'all. I'm really excited to be here. A smidge nervous at the public, the public nature of the forum and the responsibility that we have to dig into this. I think the the value I bring is inquiry. I'm really, really excited and interested in learning about folks and their stories and experiences. And that comes back to you, Xavier. It looks like to me, is that right? Sure. Sure. Again, I'm Xavier. No. No. I'm going to say what about muffin? Muffin. Oh, absolutely. Which would you say, dear? How dare y'all treat me this way? Muffin, I'm not going to let you treat treat. I'm not going to let us treat you this way. We like be happy you here. My name is Muffin. And just call me Muffin. And I bring into this space incarcerated, formerly incarcerated individuals, the folks that I forgot about about the most in our communities in our society, because once they're kidnapped off the streets they're kidnapped off the streets and people forget because they're gone. Thank you, Muffin. I'm Xavier again. And much like Alec, I bring curiosity into this space. Back to you, Marcia. Okay. Thank you. Would y'all, can we all, we can just raise our hand if it's or thumbs up. Can we all agree that these are going to be the values that hold us together tonight? Good. I love it. Our first act of consensus. Yay. Such a pleasure to be with y'all. And I'll pass it back to Xavier. Actually, Marcia, I believe that's you with the- Oh, it sure is, honey. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm happy to just please just punch to welcome and introduce people you already know to our elected leaders to say a few words to us. And so may I invite our county commissioner chair, Brenda Howerton, to begin. Thank you, Marcia. Or should I say Ms. Owens, which would you prefer, Marcia? Thank you. And case in, it is, it is my steam honor to be here with all of you.  I just now I'm wishing I was on the committee. But, you know, I just want to say to all of the citizens that have are taking their time. And it's important that we say this, we had, we did a resolution the other night about volunteers and about how much time individuals put in to being volunteers and they give it themselves.  And we so appreciate that. So for this committee, I know that it will be hard work. And the community is looking for you to do that work. And I know that you'll turn out something that's going to be safe and healthy for everyone in this community. And that's what I know that you're all committed to. And that your work will be done from a racial equity lens. And that you will be out ears and eyes for the elected official. I so appreciate you taking this on and non machine burns will be from the commissioner burns from the commissioners to represent us to be out eyes and ears to record to be there for you and get back with us. So I just say thank you again for taking this on and and we appreciate you. Thank you. But our great chair of the school board, Patina, I don't see you on my screen, but I know you're there. Will you say a few words? I am here. Good evening, everyone. I'm so glad to virtually be in this room with you and meet new faces as well. I see a lot of familiar faces. I want to again echo a lot of the things that have been said. Thank you for your time and energy and the heart that you're going to put into this work. Listening to the values. I know we have some of the right people around the table to have these conversations to listen to learn to inquire and to collaborate to give us some solutions. This community, this task force is needed. And I know what you recommend will be helpful for all of us from this public school system. We are excited about how the community impacts will impact what's happening in our schools because we know there's a reflection, but also recommendations that will come our way for our school system. We have a school board member, Javanya Lewis will be your liaison for us. She's on the call tonight. And so please let me know if there are any ways that I can be supportive of your work. I am thrilled that this is getting started. So thank you. Thank you. It's so wonderful to have the schools. Just fantastic. And now last but not least our beloved Mayor Steve Schull. Speak to us Mayor. Good evening everybody. It's great to be here and with this truly amazing group of people. I loved hearing the values and I really appreciated Xavier setting the table for us as well with his statement. This is a momentous occasion and it's been a long time coming. And I hope that you will set your sights really high. High enough so that Durham's response, Durham's non-police responses for our community safety needs are the best in the nation. I think that's how high we should aim. That we'll do it as well as anybody and better than anybody. And I know that this group can do that. And I want to share Brenda's and Bettina's expression of gratitude to you all. You've taken on a really big and important task for our community. It's a really serious task and one that will have a lot of visibility. People are looking to you to do something great. And you know that doesn't come along all that often in life. And so I know you will rise to the occasion. And I'm so excited about what you will produce on all of our behalf. So the City Council representative to this group is Council Member Caballero and our alternate. We also have an alternate who's Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. And I know that they will be doing a great job contributing as well. So again I just want to express my gratitude to you. My admonition that you aim like super high. And listen broadly, listen widely to all voices. And try to build a consensus around all these wonderful things that we know our community needs. Thank you so much for having me tonight. Thank you. Thank you for making this all possible. All of you. We're so grateful for elected officials and all the support and guidance you give us. And now, is it time now, Xavier? Yes and no, you know, we're doing so good on time so far. I did want to give space for delays on. I want to have a word. Council Members Caballero, Johnson, do you have anything you want to say? Good evening, everyone. It's wonderful to see everyone in this chat. I'm looking forward to all the work you all are going to do. Eager to be your liaison and to provide any support that you need from Council and from city staff. Hey all, just want to say I am so incredibly excited to see you all here and to have arrived at this day that I know so many of us have been looking forward to now for years for us to all be together and start doing this work. So I appreciate all of you for jumping into this pretty gigantic task. And I'm really excited to work with you and really make a change in our community. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Burns? I too am excited to be here. I'm happy to liaison with you all as well. I know that I was not asked, but much like Marcia, I plan on praying for everything that everybody asked for tonight. And one of the things that I hope that I lift up is something that Jesse brought up in the beginning, that's authenticity. And I'd also like to lift up clarity because I think that's something that we all need and we all need understanding, especially now. So I plan to sit back and to listen because a lot of times some of my colleagues do a little bit too much talking in these very authentic, open and sacred spaces. And I don't want to be that person. So I'm hopeful that I can be supportive. I can embrace your work and I just look forward to the work ahead. Thank you. Board Member Lewis? Good evening, everyone. It is so exciting to be here. It is good to be of service and thank you for your service. This is such an important task force. And as I see you all gathering for the first time and setting norms and values, I'm reminded to when I was surveying your same role for the racial equity task force, so I'm super excited to be here and see what comes out of this work that you will do. As you all are looking at values, I would share that I am here to listen to understand and for more needed and find the answer when I don't know. I am so looking forward to just what's going to come out of this and how we're going to make our better for all of our citizens. So thank you so much and thank you for again, especially including our youth as we look at Durham community as a whole. Thank you all. And again, thank you for the work you've put in to set this up. I mentioned earlier about the bylaws and so forth, but the the origin of this work goes even deeper than that. Many conversations in the community. And we want to bring on representatives from Durham beyond policing. Yasha Diddy Jackson, she's here, Manju. If you could, you got about 30 minutes here to present about kind of how we got here as a task force. Thank you so much. I'm Manju Rajendran. I have lived in Durham for the grade of part since 1997. And I live in Rockwood neighborhood. I'm a member and a leader and an organizer in Durham beyond policing coalition. And I'm grateful to be in conversation with y'all for the next half hour with my beloved friend, Diddy. Good evening, everybody. I'm feeling everybody's excitement. So I'm also excited and nervous. My name is Diddy. I most people call me Diddy. Diddy is great. I use she, her pronouns. I live in East Durham, right near Colton Career Resource Center. And I am from I lived in Durham for seven years. And my family is here, my grandmother's here, my aunties and cousins are all here. So Durham is a home for me. So I'm very excited to talk about this work that we've been doing over the past five years. Um, that has brought us brought us here to this point. Manju, you want me to start just get into it? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll be sharing my screen as we talk. But also, if at any point y'all have questions, please pop them in the chat. If if folks have some texture they want to add, please, please do. Um, we are in a room full of wise people who bring so much experience to the table. Yeah. Um, and this is this is history. So we should we should be really grateful for this this moment that we're in. You know, we're in a long line of resistance and black resistance in this city. And, you know, we're at this point, we're just among that timeline, right where we need to be. So I'm just going to start the presentation. Okay, great. So Durham Beyond Policing, how do we come together? Can folks hear me good? Okay. Yeah, you sound great. Okay, great. Because I'm in a bar. So it's kind of loud. But it's great. So Durham Beyond Policing is a campaign that myself and other mostly women of color organizers here in the city started. We were a part of different organizations at the time, including Southerners on New Ground. Shout out to the Durham Song chapter here, along with the BYP 100 chapter. And just other organizers that weren't even a part of either of those organizations that care very deeply about what was happening in our city and particularly as it related to policing. And we caught when early 2016, we got the news that the city was going to approve the construction of a $81 million police headquarters, which was then reduced to $71.3 million. And we immediately came together and made a call for other organizations, including UE 150, which is the city workers union, to push back against this construction of the Durham Police Department, of a new Durham Police Department. There was a lot of a lot of the conversations that were happening around this was particularly on city council and with elected officials. And when we went to the neighborhoods where the police department was being built, folks did not know about it. Folks did not had not heard about this much money being spent on the police headquarters. And so we created this coalitioning campaign called Durham Beyond Policing, which is not only not only the title of our campaign and our coalition, but also the vision that we see. We do see a vision of a Durham that is beyond policing and implements real safety for and wellness that helps to prevent things happening in our community that makes it seem like the police are the answers and police are just the responders. And so we were pushing around that and we lost that campaign. The police headquarters was built in 2018, I want to say, maybe 2019. And we pushed for other things. We kept going as a campaign. We stayed together. We surveyed hundreds of residents in the city of Durham to see if you had $71 million to spend on your city, what would you spend it on? And of those surveys, nobody named police. Nobody named the police headquarters. The things that folks named were the things that are on this picture right now. People named affordable and low income housing, people named more jobs, people named access to healthy food, people named more access to education, childcare, mental health resources, more opportunities for different types of health resources were the things that we were getting back from the surveys that we were collecting from the work that we were doing. And so we pushed on those things and built demands around them. But also in collaboration with UE150, which is the city workers union, we really pushed around raising the minimum wage for city workers and supported and were in deep, deep collaboration with the work that they had already been doing long before our coalition was built. And so although we lost that fight, we really built some deep connections with not only the community that was around, that is around where the new police headquarters is, but also with other organizations that really were that we were able to combine forces with. So some other things that we've since between 2016 and 2019, we did a number of things. We held all kinds of candidate forums that was around policing, you know, asking elected officials, what is your vision for a germ beyond policing? And I think we're now at the point where there is no election that goes by where someone isn't in terms of forums or even the surveys that get asked for people that are running for office. There isn't a question that doesn't include what is your vision of a germ beyond policing. And so again, this is more than a coalition and a campaign, but an actual vision. And also a question for the people that are making decisions around how they how safety, how safety is funded in our city, right? So we've done those things, pushed around participatory budgeting. A big push from coming from us was in 2018, there was from our police department, there was a proposal for their police budget to be increased to $2.5 million. And we pushed and was like, instead of spending that money, why don't we put all of that funding into participatory budgeting as a way of really democratizing the money that we spend in the city, a way for residents to take ownership and take commitment into their own hands around how money on a, oh, sorry. Wow. So sorry about that. How money can be spent on a large scale in our city. And so really pushed on participatory budgeting and ended up winning the $2.4 million for participatory budgeting thanks to our elected officials and to the work that was happening on the ground at the same time. So in 2019, let's fast forward to 2019, back when we were still all meeting in person and together, we caught wind of this proposal to add additional costs to the force, to the Durham police department. And what's really important about this is that we were, what we were seeing was an increase in the budget and the spending on the police and the increase in their percentage as it pertains to totality of public safety in our city. And what we were also working with is the families of folks that were facing police violence and police murders in our city at the hands of police, but also in our local county jail. And so working with those families and trying to develop what was the real solutions that we needed that didn't involve more cops. And there have been 11 deaths in the Durham county jail since 2011. We sit with that great fact with a lot of heaviness in our hearts. Yeah. And so we hold those, we hold those families when we do this work, hold those families in our vision of a Durham beyond policing, because we do believe that police are not the answer. We wholeheartedly believe that we believe that there are ways that our communities have kept each other safe and have kept each other well that do not involve the police. And so how do we get closer to our community to be able to make those solutions actualize? Not only actualize, but at scale. And dealing with so much of the trauma that we've seen through video and through pictures of other places and stories of police shooting and injuring people, not being held accountable, and also not only being able to get away with it, but also being able to keep their jobs. There is no other job that I know of where you can murder someone and still get to keep your job. Even though we're in this place now, and just last week was the trial for the murder of George Floyd, and all of those, the verdicts were all guilty, right? And there's an opportunity for relief there. And the reality is that that person, Chauvin was only the eighth officer in the past 15 years that has actually been convicted, right? So just compare, I mean, 15 years is a long time. That's a lot of police murders, deaths, all kinds of misconduct that has happened. And this was only the eighth case that we've seen a guilty verdict, right? And so we know that there's more there, and the more actually comes from our communities. And so when the proposal came to us to add 72 new cops to the Durham Police Department, we were like, why doesn't this exist for folks that are not going to be armed, for folks that are deeply, deeply rooted in the community, for folks that care very deeply about the families beyond just being stationed at those particular places and being placed there. So we wanted to push for an alternative. And we created a proposal and work day and night to write this thing. And a lot of folks that are on this call helped to help to be the authors of this of our dream proposal for what we saw for for our city. And what we saw is the potential of our city. So I'm really glad that Mayor Schultz told us to dream big, because that's what we did. And we won big, right? We won the city council vote for not only to not add those 72 cops to the force, we also won that city workers wage increase that we had been fighting for again, since 2016. We also won funding for an eviction diversion program. We know that the eviction rates are really high in the city, but especially for black women in the city of Durham. And so we wanted to make sure we pushed on that. And that's what we did in 2019. And I know I'm talking fast. I'm from up north, so don't mind me. But I have, you know, y'all can ask questions and I can answer them. And so here we are, fast forward to this dream proposal that we made for a community-led safety and wellness task force. And for it to exist at all of the levels, right, at the city level, at the county level and in our schools, we wanted to make sure that all of those components were included. Number one, so that if any hurdles came about, we knew we had a sense of where we could tackle them, right? So it was a strategic opportunity. But also because we know that the things that we are asking for actually are held in different entities based on what it is. You know, the social services is held in the county, the schools, you know, all of those things. So we wanted to make sure we dreamed big of getting these task force to exist at every level to actually carry on the components and the real conditions, the real conditions of the structures that we already have in place in the city. And I want a name like we could have just kept coming back every year to challenge the asks from the police department, the sheriff's department, the SROs. But we realized what's happening here is actually like a severe imbalance in our annual budget that is disproportionately giving to the militarized punishment, caging side of our society, and not fully funding all of our human needs, the things that you see lifted in this picture. We need health care. We need an end to poverty. We need budgeting processes that are equitable and accessible for all Durham residents. We need an end to evictions. We need real safety.  And we fought for this safety and wellness task force because we wanted to create a vehicle that could be a space for community to say, here's what we want. Here's what we want instead. Here's where we want to see a sea change level investment in the things that keep us thriving. So, Dee Dee, why do we need better than police reform? Like there's a lot of great things that are already happening in Durham County and Durham City as a result of organizing that's happened over many, many years. We've seen magnificent things happen through existing police reform bodies. Why is police reform and other solutions that are embedded inside policing or inside the jail system? Why is that not enough? I mean, for us, we take a look at the history of policing in the city and its foundations being in slave patrol. And that's a history that we stay grounded in because we also know that as long as the police have existed, they have been also trying to reform themselves since they've existed. We also know that as long as the police have existed, there has been police resistance too. And so we're trying to move beyond what sometimes feels like just not enough. Body cameras is just not enough. You know, when we live in especially in a state that has all kinds of preemptions, you know, police can wear body cameras, but do we get access to the footage? Is there a way of us gaining access to how do we know? And there's other entities that make decisions around that kind of thing. And so it's just not enough. And there are reforms that can be intentional and inclusive. And I do think that defunding the police is a reform in a way of the police. But it is also saying what are the ways that we can actually invite the community to being in more dialogue around what safety is? I think for me, I grew up in low income poor hood neighborhood of Philadelphia. And I grew up with police being in all of my schools, elementary, middle, high school, you know, the metal detectors and the wands, all of that being a part of the process for me to get in school. And there was a time where police weren't in schools. I could assume that some of you all attended school and didn't have police in home. But there's a way that safety is being articulated as control. And it's a way that safety is being performed. But it is a way of controlling people. It's a way of controlling what we think about what the police actually do. You know, statistically, majority of the folks that are in the Durham County Jail are there for poverty crimes. And so those are things that the police cannot solve. And that's true about the youth jail too. Like a report just came out through NC Policy Watch mapping directly who's in the youth detention center and the root causes of poverty. So we're trying to create a new kind of vehicle that addresses root causes of violence that partners with not just city, not just county and not just the board of education, but community members to figure out how are we going to intervene on these cycles of harm and figure out ways that we can call somebody in a moment of crisis that is actually safe to receive compassionate unarmed care. I think the other thing too is a lot of the questions that we get just in this. And folks on the test scores, you all can just anticipate this. It's just like, well, what do I do if someone breaks into my home? What do we do if this thing happens? And the idea, again, around the, and our goal for a vision for the Durham Beyond policing is that it won't come to that point. But actually, the reality is that your house still may be robbed and the police will come after. And so the police don't actually prevent crimes. They respond to it. So we're trying to actually move the narrative around what we even think the police actually do into real time into reality and how when people call the police, it actually adds to the problem in a lot of ways, just based on statistically. And on that tip, we want to actually raise some words from our own Durham Mayor Pro Tem from an article from a while back. You said, Jillian Johnson, the safest communities don't have the most cops. They have the most resources. And we see this consistently all across the country, the places where municipalities are deeply investing in thriving schools, clean water, clean air, the strong library, strong parks and rec, strong youth programming, affordable housing, the things that stabilize our lives, access to healthy food. Those are those are the communities where you see the least violence. And sometimes when when we come to petition to the various elected bodies, we are told we don't need a Durham beyond policing because Durham is a special place. We have a sort of magical policing and magical jail structure that is peaceful and different. And we would actually like to push back on that notion and say, there's other things that are special about Durham. But that's not what's special about Durham. What's special about Durham is that we have a long history here of fighting for racial justice and winning through hard work and unity building, even when it's really fraught and painful. And we wanted to just open up that question for y'all. What's special about Durham for you that makes you believe that this task force could be really successful? On that tip, I could begin with my own personal experience, like for me, my stake in this the first time I ever called 911 was was in a really terrifying moment in our home. My father was strangling my mother likely to kill her. I was outside the kitchen door and I could see through the glass what was happening. She was calling out for help and I punched through the glass.  I tried to separate them. I couldn't physically make it happen. And I dialed 911. I didn't even know what I was doing. It was just I was I think 12. And two white police officers showed up and my father put on his shoes and he walked away with them in handcuffs. My mother was asked, do you want him to come home from the jail? And she said yes. There was no solution offered there that would bring healing for our family. And it wasn't until years later, in Durham, being a part of Black feminism led transformative justice movements that I learned so much together in community about how we could heal and keep each other safe and build relationships that prevent violence at its root, resolve our conflicts differently. Yeah. And so for me, there's this entry point that is deeply personal and my guess is that for each of us, there's some personal stake for us. And something really special about Durham that makes us want to give tons of our time over the next 18 months to two years to do our part in listening deeply to Durham residents and and being part of the transformation we need. So what makes Durham special for you? Well, I'll go. I think what is that there are so many people who care that there's that when things that that there's I'm just constantly learning about people of goodwill that for all with all the violence and all the mistakes and all the isolation and all the punishment and all the domination. There are also all these people who are like come to me, you know, I care. So I hold that in my heart every day that there are people who are not indifferent to the suffering. And so I think that's what makes Durham really special. There are so many people who are not indifferent to the suffering. I think we've got we've got a special moment of momentum now that we don't want to waste a progressive city council, progressive county commission, progressive school board, going to have a new police chief coming into the middle of this, have a, you know, first term elected sheriff and a partner and a DA and, you know, potentially new public defender. So, you know, a good moment now to really try to transform and not just have, you know, piecemeal reform, a real transformation. But the moments, you know, the moment's not going to last. And unfortunately, as you say, Durham is not special because there are the elements of systemic racism that it better not just the Durham PD or the sheriff's office, but those county agencies and schools and everything else that we now is our time to really get at them. We elected them into decision making power on some amazing promises about transformation and we're going to hold them to it. Do y'all electeds who are in this room want to be held to it? I see big smiles and thumbs up. Thank you so much. And thank you for all of the conversations we've been in over these years. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Mike. What makes Durham special? Why are we invested here? I'll say a couple of things. I think one thing that really felt clear to me when we celebrated our sesquicentennial is that Durham is a historically Black place, period. And regardless of the changing dynamics where we have people coming from all over, we have organizations and companies coming from all over willing to spend, you know, millions, if not billions of dollars in our area, the history will still be what it is, that this is a place where Black people have offered their lives, their bodies, their energies, and that needs to be taken seriously and honored, whether you have been here for a day, a year, or this is all you've ever known. And I think being a historically Black city in the South of the United States, being a post-Civil War city in the South, in the United States matters. That there are things that we have inherited as residents of this community that I think make us special. And the way we narrate that is really important. The way that we invite and orient people into that is really important. I echo what Mike said. We're special and we're not that special. And so I want to make sure that even in this moment of acknowledging what makes us special, it isn't a chance to pat ourselves on the back for being so much better than some other place because we have a lot of work to do and a lot of people are suffering. And I think that's really, really important that we keep a humble posture in the honoring of what makes us special. That's what I'm sitting with in this moment about Durham being special. Thank you for naming the importance of that humble posture and honoring the deep histories that come before us. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I would like to say that my husband and I have been residents of Durham for 5050 years. And we've had a community coalition for over 20 years. And what I love most about Durham are the grassroots people that I work with, communicate with every single day who have found solutions to the challenges that are faced on every single level that we can talk about. My hope is that voices are heard more. And hearing what I hear implementing some of the solutions in the area that I work in has been the most rewarding thing for me. And I always hold that close to my heart. Thanks so much. Didi, do you want to say any words to take us home? Yeah, just want to say, yeah, I'm just really proud of the city.  And neither have we. But we do feel very centered and grounded in this being the right way forward. That we don't want to move backwards. And that we do want to disarm the police. And we do want to defund the police. And we do want to demilitarize and delegitimize the police and really uplift the community, really uplift our folks, the people that we know and love and care about and develop some real solutions, some alternatives of what the city can be. What is the potential of our city if more of our funding, more of our work, more of our energy, more of our love went into things that are outside of trying to control, trying to watch, surveil, and trying to police our folks. What is really possible? And we believe in that vision. And I hope that we can remain in relationship throughout this process so that we can both be learning together. You know, my goal is not to be, not to, y'all are not my targets, right? Like y'all are not. And so that's very clear to me. And so I want to hold a commitment of continuing to be in relationship with you all for the sake of building a better city, for the sake of building a more well city. And to not be, and to not be too in the clouds about what is possible. Like I don't believe that it'll be a utopia at all. And I also believe that even when people do have the things that they need, people still do terrible things to each other. So that's not lost on me at all. And I don't think that this task force will be a magic bullet either. It'll take work, it'll take time, and it'll, it'll take really transforming who we are, who we are as community members to really build our communities to be organized. And so I want to thank y'all for this opportunity. I'm so excited for this work. Yeah, let's get it. That's all I got. Thank you so much, Dee Dee. And passing it back to you, to our esteemed chairs. Madra, thank you so much, Dee Dee. Thank you so much. I appreciate the presentation, the great question, and the conversation that it led to. Also, thank you, Dee Dee, for giving me that great segue. When you talk about relationships, as Marcia and I planned this, what we think of as an orientation meeting, this work will be done better with strong relationships. And so one thing we wanted to make sure that we did, first of all, also, thank you, Dee Dee, for lifting the fact that this work is hopeful yet sobering. And it would be done in a more meaningful way. More effective way with the relationship. So we did want to make sure that as we close out this orientation session, that we get some statements from our task force members one more time. We talked about the values you heard, who they were. We want to give you a little greater sense of who we have at the table, as far as the task force members that were selected by the bodies. So we have them to prepare about 150 words for more, about one minute, on the question, what is the most important thing Durham needs to be safe and well? So hopefully you all got that message when you saw the agenda, the camera have your thoughts together about that. And we also wanted to just, you know, tell them, Marcia, that some of the things that we are doing here, and giving the task force members a chance to really speak while they're here, those are the kind of things you normally hear when someone's leaving a board or retiring from something. We wanted to start off that way. So I want to start off first with Alex Greenwall. He was selected at large from the school system. He's a father and he's an educator. Alex, we welcome you and your desire for trust and imagination. We invite you to guide us to systems and institutions that are safe and complementary. And so we ask you, sir, what's the most important thing Durham needs to be safe and well? I see what y'all did. You flipped the order on me. I wrote a thing and hopefully it doesn't sound too jargony, right? That's why I want to go last so I could bite ideas, but I'm going to do my best here. So in order for Durham to be safe and well, I think we need to really reimagine the public institutions, groups, hold on, first of all, shout out to Durham Beyond Policing for the incredible work that y'all did on the ground to bring us here. I'm excited to build on that work. I'm excited to build on those relationships. And so, yeah, first and foremost, shout out to the tremendous work y'all did. So now for the jargon. In order for Durham to be safe and well, I think we need to radically reimagine the public institutions, groups and organizations that serve our people. We all know or should know that every angle and contour of our society is informed and impacted by race and racism. How do we reimagine these institutions that provide so many of us, myself included, generations and generations of safety and wellness? How do we build collective power across race and identity while capturing and centering the voices of those who feel least safe and well? And also ensure that Durham residents share similar language context and history for how and why many of these institutions were created in the first place. My personal context for this work is predominantly my experiences as a public school teacher and parent. I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the incredibly fertile ground that exists within K-12 public schools to build relationships and model the behaviors that we want to inform every aspect of our society moving forward. Thank you. Thank you, Alex. I would like to welcome, once again, Manchu, and thank you, and Dee Dee again for that beautiful orientation. That was fabulous. And Manchu, as a facilitator and a community organizer, I just want to welcome you and your abilities to mobilize and train people. And I invite you to prepare us with the skills and knowledge we need to create an equitable, prosperous city together. Welcome. So good to serve with you. Thanks so much. Such an honor to serve with all of you, and thank you so much to the Board of County Commissioners, our powerful, wise, historic, all women, majority women of color, Board of County Commissioners who have appointed me in the seat of community leader, and I bring with me so many folks. I want to, in this short time, share some words that are actually from many of us, the 50-something people who helped co-author from across 10 organizations the Durham Beyond Policing Proposal for us, Safety and Wellness Task Force. We said, safety conjures vivid imagery for us, an abundance of resources, an end to vast inequality and power imbalances, freedom to live our lives, demilitarization, our communities participating in collective decision-making, how we are with each other when the music stops, children growing into adults without harm, an ability to express joy without fear of being hindered, building relationships, communities resolving our own problems with all the support we need, assessing our needs, and meeting each other where we're at, sharing resources, nourishment, feeling at ease, celebrating each other. We next want to welcome Jennifer Carroll, appointed by the City. She's a researcher and a scholar. So Jennifer, we welcome you and your ability to help us understand how health and law enforcement systems work. And we invite your guidance and the evaluations of existing and proposed responses. Welcome again. Thank you. So I don't have such poetic words prepared for today as our previous two speakers, but I am really, really excited to be part of this group. I'm very, very excited to learn from everyone who's here. As was mentioned, I was appointed to the position that was titled Policy Expert. That's always kind of a weird title, but okay, yeah, I'll do that if that's what you need. I come to Durham by way of Atlanta, where I worked at the CDC before I was here. Just I think one thing that's important to note is that my area of expertise, the thing that I study is substance use and overdose. And in that regard, I have had a lot of contact with law enforcement. I have done a lot of research with law enforcement. I've got friends in law enforcement. I got enemies in law enforcement and have an awful lot of thoughts that I hope will be useful and insightful. And so far as they might be needed by this group, I'm really looking forward to supporting. And in so far as I was asked to answer the question, what's the most important thing that Durham needs to be safe? I think that we need to center individual autonomy and value safety more than we do the systems that we have set up with the intention of keeping us safe. We shouldn't lose goal of the purpose in order to protect the structures that might have been built for that purpose at one time. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to welcome Norrie McDuffie Williams with our youth seat and from the schools, Jordan Grad and a great organizer and communicator. We welcome you Norrie and your experience engaging young people and families and addressing what's keeping us from being safe. And we invite you to share with us the Durham Youth Listening Project and your wisdom of the city. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Excuse me. I'm so happy to be in the space with you all. And so I wrote up a little something. And so I'll share briefly just about what I think the most important thing Durham needs to be safe and well. And that's really a culture and a system that is transformative. One that really addresses the people's needs, like in that adequate sort of sense, that every action that Durham and its people make, that every policy that's put into place is truly transformative and truly that like really has a love-informed sort of weight, like a love-informed perspective. And so I'm going to read this off just a little bit. A culture and a system that practices the act of abundance thinking said about the wonderful poet and healer, Grindelwald Brooks, we are each other's harvest. We are each other's business. We are each other's magnitude and bond. And when we think and care for each other in such a transformative way is when harm can become an anomaly. Even when harm is done, we know that loving accountability will be offered and that everyone involved will be healed. And I know it to be true that when we really like live in such a way that like everyone can truly feel safe, that everyone in Durham can truly feel safe and well. And they actually will be in actuality. And so what I'm really hoping to do is to be able to carry out that thought and that thought process, like that whole thought process and that action with you all. And I'm hoping everyone else can be in alignment with that. Thank you, Nori. Appreciate that. We now want to welcome Tyler Whittenberg appointed by the county in a policy experience seat. Tyler is an attorney and a reformer. Tyler, we welcome you and your knowledge of the legal system and invite your guidance on how to protect youth and all vulnerable people from criminalization and its lifelong effects. Thanks for the introduction. Really excited to be with you all inspired by what I've heard so far on the work that's been done. As a former teacher and someone who works at the intersection of education and criminalization, I think for me, one of the most important things can be to take the lead side of schools to be frank and to invest in things that we know prevent on. As a good friend of mine said, by the time a student brings a gun to school, you know, out of a sense of retaliation or anything, you're already too late. We have, I believe, the resources, the will and hopefully we can have the vulnerability and creativity to invest in classrooms and school buildings that have mental health counselors, family support, even teacher support access to things that not only support the whole students but the whole family and the whole community as a center. I think this group can help us all work toward that. Thank you. Here, here. It is my pleasure to welcome Samuel Scarborough, another youth seat and a current student at Hillside High School. Is that right? All right. As a former Hornet, I totally, I totally welcome you. And your experience in evaluating and advising public and private organizations. We invite you to promote strategies that ensure students' well-being. Welcome. It's an honor. Thank you so much. I've actually prepared a little statement. And although this is very extremely, you know, basic and broad, I believe that one of the most important ways we can ensure safety and wellness throughout Durham is by distributing and managing resources in an equitable fashion. Areas across the both cities that were systemically redlined roughly 60 to 70 years ago, particularly low income BIPOC communities are still suffering. And these locations tend to be food deserts, meaning that people residing in these areas have insufficient access to nutritious and expensive foods, thus causing increased likelihood of health issues in these areas compared to others. More often than not, these places are also food insecure, meaning that factors such as unlivable wages and higher rent costs may lead to an inaccessibility to food in general. According to data from the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, it's estimated that 18% of all people living in Durham County faced food insecurity during 2020. It's also estimated that 25% that's one in four children in Durham County faced food insecurity in 2020. I believe inequitable resource distribution has also played a major role in other conflicts concerning education, housing, water quality, healthcare, and childcare, to say the least. And I believe all of these issues jeopardize well the safety and wellness of Durhamites. So I think that's the perspective I'm coming from. Thank you, Samuel. We also want to welcome Reverend Isaac Velayev, city appointee at large, he's a pastor of peace and prisoners. We welcome you and your dedication to our neighbors who are in prison. And we invite you to mobilize us to address harm with healing. Thank you for those kind words of introduction. I'm grateful to be on this task force, so many wise people on my screen here. So grateful to work with all of you as we imagine what we need for our community. I think the most important thing for me as I think about our work together is what it means to build meaningful relationships where we can build community together, where we can learn to trust one another, where we can commit to keep each other safe, to offer our neighbors, to offer what each of us needs to live, and not just to live, but to experience this life together as joy, as joyful to be a part of each other's lives. That's what I've experienced in Durham as I've made friends here, as this place has become my home. That's why I love the community we've built together. And that's what I want for the city and this county that is our home, that we can continue to make a home together for all of us. And when I think about what this means for our work as a task force here, I just want to make sure that we provide what our public institutions need to continue to care for our community, for us to guide them on what we need, on what all of us need to flourish together as a people. So yeah, thank you very much. So glad to be working with you all during this time. Thank you, Pastor. It is my pleasure to welcome Joya, Toya, Pots. She's with the county. Hey, hey girl. And as it is, with us as a justice involved person.  And we welcome you and your care for those unable to defend themselves and invite you to guide us with the wisdom of your experience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to touch on similar to Isaac, but just I would say building community in relationship, honoring, honoring each other as true neighbors, understanding what the community really means and the root of those needs, being able to have access to proper resources as well as healing resources. I'm not from Durham, but I'm now rooted here. My children are here. And this is where I had my first ever encounter with the criminal system or the social service system. And it's also despite what I sometimes say, like this city or the system has taken away from me, like I found my purpose here.  So I am thankful for you all inviting me into this community. Thank you, Toya. And welcome again. Thank you. We'd next like to welcome Jesse Huddleston, appointed by the city at large. He's a minister of music at City Well. He brings justice, music, and he's a joy maker. Jesse, we welcome you and your commitment to love us and invite you to help us learn from each other so that we can bring bring forth healing and joy. Jesse? Hmm. I wasn't expecting you to talk about joy. Thank you. The prompt. I'm pulling in front of me. This is going to help me. I did not prepare remarks. So and I'm a pastor's kid and I work at a church. So I, you know what that can mean, but I will do my best to keep things moving. I think in this moment, the most important thing that Durham needs to be safe and well is creative energy and revolutionary love. I bring Paulie Murray into this Zoom room, a quote that I often reference that says, and while I could not always suppress the violent thoughts that raged inside me, I would nevertheless dedicate my life to seeking alternatives to physical violence and would wrestle continually with the problem of transforming psychic violence into creative energy. A source of joy for me is the arts is every form of creative practice. And whether you realize it or not, you were singing before you could talk and you were dancing before you could walk and we are created with this kind of energy and potential. And I think when we are grounded in revolutionary love, we can be so generative and actually meet the needs that people have. I hope that we not only create structures that are grounded in revolutionary love, right? That like when you call 911, you trust that there will be an actual agent of help to meet the need of your situation, right? That if your house is on fire, they come with ladders and water, right? So if you have any other kind of crisis, you can call for help and actually access that. And that structure can be undergirded surrounded by a culture that is one of revolutionary love. I uplift much of what has been said. Isaac talked about trust. Several people have mentioned community. These I think are consequences of revolutionary love. And I'm so happy to be here and so excited to see what we do together to make this place safer and more well. Oh, thank you. Beautiful. I'm offered some revolutionary love. It is my pleasure to introduce y'all to Shanice Hamilton. She comes from the city as an large member and she's an organizer, a survivor and a teacher. And she's got someone real special with her. And we welcome you too. And we welcome you and your insight about what's hurting us. And we invite you to lead us to change the things we cannot accept. I hope you heard the words of Angela Davis in there. Welcome Shanice. Thank you. Thank you all so much for sharing space. I was born and raised in the whole city and I carry the culture of Durham that I grew up with me everywhere I go. In order for me to really ground in this question, I had to like make it personal and thought about what I do as a mother to keep my little black son safe and well. And I think what Durham needs can be examined from that lens as well. I feel like Durham needs to be nurtured with resources that feed our souls. We need structures in place to keep us safe and feel supported at all times. We need to proactively work to implement the policies, structures and resources that exceed the needs of our people and not just meet some of the basic needs. Uplifting what, okay one second, what Jesse and Mandru said, we need that revolutionary love and the freedom to fully live in the fullness of all of who we, the fullness of like who we are. And I feel like that's one of the many reasons that we're here today. And I'm excited about the revolutionary work that we're going to do for our city and that my son and so many others coming up under us will actually experience. Thank you all for having me. Thank you and welcome again, Shanice. I'd like to welcome Tanya Williams, who's in the education seat appointed by the school.  We invite you to share your knowledge of our schools, students and systems into discerned opportunities before. Welcome, Tanya. Thank you. Very excited to be a part of you all. All of what you said is all of what I'm thinking, but I know that can't necessarily be my answer, although that is a good answer. Because you all are so articulate and passionate about this work as am I as a graduate of Hillside High School, Samuel, and my husband graduated from Hillside High School and my daughter graduated from Hillside High School. And I graduated from North Carolina Century University. My roots are deep in Durham, North Carolina. And I was a principal in elementary, middle, and high school, and I've been in our communities. And I see that we do need everything that we said we need to collaborate. We need to be unified. We need to have all the structures in place. We need to really think that this in order to be safe and well, everyone needs to be in an environment that's not just affordable housing, right, but safe living conditions that there's no roaches, there's no leaks, there's no mold. And so really thinking about as a system how we can make sure our families are safe and that they have a voice for far too long, too many of our families have been invisible. And how can we make them visible in this space with this task force. So those are some of the things that I hope that we can bring about in this task force. And I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you. It's an honor.  Is Cynthia, did she make it? Is she with us yet? What do we know? I don't think she's with us tonight. I do not see her. You do not. Okay, thank you. So I'll pass it to you, Xavier. Okay. Mike Systrom, appointed by the county at large, a history professor and activist. Mike, we welcome you and your understanding of systems and rules and we invite you to teach us how we may best utilize our resources to create just and repetitive responses to harm in these. Mike? Thanks, no pressure. I've actually I resumed to be retired. America, North Carolina and American history professor. So I've got even more time to devote to this. I also come at this having helped run the Durham County Jail Ministry since the early 2000s. And I'm currently also serve on the Sheriff's Community Advisory Board. So bring that effective to it. I think the key to creating a safe and well community for us now in this task force is to focus on specific detailed data driven solutions to these fundamental problems that we all and I think all includes the recently departed leadership of the Durham Police Department and the Sheriff's Office already know exist thanks to the years of work by Durham Beyond Policing, BYP 100, Durham Can, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Song, The People's Alliance, Durham for All and so many others to illuminate all those. It looks like we're not going to or should we start from the false premise that we have to prove yet again there are deep problems but also there are plenty of good alternatives and that those should be holistic community based locally focused approaches that involve the Police Department, the Sheriff's Office, Public Schools, the DA, the Public Defender's Office, the various relevant city, county and county social service health and other agencies and especially most particularly those grassroots community organizations have been highlighted so far. I think we can build around spirit houses, harm-free zone tenants that the Beyond Policing report highlighted prevention, intervention, reparation, and transformation and including especially reentry resources for either former detainees of the Durham County Jail or other ex felons returning home to Durham from prison and whatever in whatever form these government entities involved in community wellness and safety not just the Police Department and the Sheriff's Office need to be transparent and accountable to the community and all of them can be transformed not just the DPD and the Sheriff's Department but all the other ones listed. Fortunately all of those city and county agencies along with others are members of our community resource panel and some of them have representation on the task that I'm looking forward to working with them and all of us hearing from in our listening sessions from the community so we can focus on those detailed transformative solutions. Thank you that's that's a lot and appreciate it. Muffin are you there? Yes I'm here. Oh good okay super well we welcome you from the county and you know you're a survivor and you're a liberator and we welcome you and your courage to confront injustice and your kindness to comfort others and we invite you to lead us with your honesty and your unwavering resolve welcome Muffin. Tell us what we need what Durham needs to be safe and well. What Durham needs to be safe and well first I'm gonna talk about language please do not call us anything other than informally incarcerated or currently incarcerated folks anything else is disrespectful and if I don't disrespect you you're not going to disrespect me my sisters all my brothers so let's get that very clear that I'm not going to play those type of games with folks because I'm really frustrated and tired and I do apologize but what Durham needs Durham needs um people to have everything that they need what do people need people need real affordable housing and like the sister said that you want to live in so you know you know very affordable housing people need mental health services that they don't have to pay for people need to make sure that they don't have food insecurities they have the food they need for them and their families and they need to have the money not to just um live but they need to be able to have money they need to have money to be able to leave um something to their kids other than death and people need to be free they need to be free mentally physically that's what Durham needs and what I can see to be a better dirt is that instead of funding you know the police and the sheriffs that we fund organizations that have been doing the work for so many years to make sure that our communities have the things that they need on a shoestring budget are coming out of their pocket they may not be big 501c3s but they're just individual folks have come together with an idea to do something for their neighborhood and their community to make it happen we need to fund those grass I ain't even gonna say grass rooty I'm gonna say you know the folks that are doing it on the ground every day thank you so much Muffin for your vision oh we also want to welcome Dr. Wanda Boone appointed by the schools at large position she's a lifelong protector of children Dr. Boone we welcome you and your care for Durham's children and we invite you to guide us in addressing trauma and hurt with the best most appropriate care so thank you so much I appreciate more than you will ever know being here in this space with you I hope I will continue to be seen as someone that does too much because that is what I will continue to do handle with care is a program that um takes children that have seen violence and invites the entire community to handle that child with care from the time that they see a violent act when they're on their way to school everybody surrounds that child knowing that what they've seen is a trauma that will stay with them for the rest of their lives strive is a youth prevention program I don't know how many times the city and county has heard me bring that to to the attention of folks but that's okay because here in this space if it's not those two programs then it'll be something else that really inspires us together to bring the best solutions so hurt people hurt people one of the things that I want to see probably more than anything else is to figure out what it is that caused or causes the hurt that keeps us from hearing each other seeing each other listening to each other and possibly separates us when this is a time in a space that we really really have to be together and then I'll have to question my own lens through what lens am I looking at this with and if it's anything other than a blank sheet then I'm going to correct myself I bring that to you and look forward to that lastly I want to mention one of my most favorite stories that I hope will inspire us and it has to do with Ubuntu which you probably have heard but there was an archaeologist who worked in a small area in Africa and he was about to leave and as his parting gift he decided that he was going to place a basket of fruit way down yonder by a tree and there were some children gathered and he said to the children when I tell you to run I want you when I say run I want you to run to the tree and whoever gets there first gets the basket of fruit so he's to the tree and he said well why did you all together here at the end of the meeting and you know with my two screens and my papers everywhere this format is strange to me it's just not very comfortable it's not my style you know we are in a webinar format where the panelists are in view and of course attendees are offscreen many of them have been active in the chat I appreciate those things that I've had a chance to actually kind of scan to see I'm glad that this is recorded and I'm glad I hope Amber that we're going to get this chat at least that we can kind of go back and look over everything that's been addressed I do want to say a couple things about just some things I've seen in the chat which goes with along with our next steps as we're having the agenda one person asked if what was really the scope of what we're looking at I mean and Marcia and I talked about where are the edges of this work and it really does it's not a decision of Marcia and I will make we will make it as a task force but as a starting point as a grounding point the bylaws do have a couple of areas that they specify that we look at and Marcia and I are suggesting making round tables from some from these areas and others that rise up as being connected to what we want drug court criminal justice issues violence interruption mental health first aid de-escalation tactics a new on-call response center but these round tables that we want to eventually have if you notice the people here actually dispersed out into the community to bring people around them so even though who you see is who you see at the table this is not all we we want to invite our citizens to come in and join us in those round table discussions as we go forth we're going to spend the first few months really listening to having listening sessions with with the city county and school resources with other community groups such as what we're here today and so with that being said we want to really front load this these this two-year period with gathering information as we were asked to waiting for this for a while so Marcia and I really wanted to try to get a consensus tonight on a proposal for at least these first two months here in um um in May and June that we have two weeks second and fourth Wednesdays that would be May 12th and 26th June 13th and 27th that would give us time to fulfill the bylaws um that are asking us to get at least three listening sessions in in the first 90 days but also help us fulfill the what we don't have today which is really a good sense of question and answer from our citizens and even from members of the task force um I'm so thankful that we want to we want to have groups come in because there's a lot of work that's already out there being done it has been done with recommendations we want to hear about those things that that fit our goals and we want to have a chance to kind of ask questions of those groups not just those of us here in the task force but citizens who are in attendance with us virtually or it's in some day soon we hope in person so to make that happen uh Marcia and I really feel like we need to um have space for both at the same time and that requires to meet twice a month in May and June and then in July we will go back to our monthly task force meetings with um the roundtable meetings happening on with the other times in the month so with that we've already had one since one consensus vote just wanted to see if I can get a consensus on those and if I can get a thumbs up if we get a consensus that's wonderful so you'll be getting you'll be hearing from us um from Amber do it I just had to do it um at least once right yeah I had come on you know it's just their meeting I've got to talk while I'm muted um the only thing to be most involved in and potentially lead um so that's all yeah no you're great savior yeah and so to help you make those decisions we are going to kind of again give you and writing an email what we just talked about about with the bylaw so you you've got the bylaw but some other thoughts we have in mind is potential roundtable discussions too just to kind of get your brains working also so we're going to go back and look over this uh recording and and listen to what you said and try to twist your arm in certain directions that seem to really resonate with what you want but it'll be your it'll be your choice for clarification I did a quick question and check we're talking about meeting May 12th May 26th and in June the two meetings will be um the 13th and 27th the second and fourth Wednesdays in May second and fourth Wednesdays in June and then again and I'm not muted it's a millennial miracle um so as we end um we can go back to that chat list if we claim all of you um everybody on the screen and everybody who's listening and everybody have this be part of our practice of if you could just say one word um that I'm leaving with is support Isaac um and values and thoughts and I want to hold them close uh to inspire me to bring me to our next meeting and it looks like I pass it to Shanice um um taking with me unity um for all of us doing this together and joining forces um and and then I will pass it to Johanna yes you um so I think the the thought that I'm leaving with is representation um our need for the importance of it um the fact that we can always be doing better no matter how well we're doing um and I will pass um to Tyler that I again pass to someone who's no longer with us um and then I will pass to Mike humility I'll pass it to Victoria my piece is and I will pass to you and you I'm taking with me vision and I will pass it to Atanya eagerness and I will pass it to Samuel I'm taking with me healing and uh I'll pass it to Nori I'm taking with me hopefulness and I am passing it to Dr. Wanda uh I'm taking enthusiasm and I pass it to Alan hey I'm taking um the collective always the collective uh this meeting I'm excited to work with y'all and join forces because we all come from lots of different different spaces I'm gonna pass it to Muffin I think Muffin hopped off as well so I'll close it out then um um Marsha started with respect I thought about Aretha so I'm gonna give you a say I'm quickly change is gonna come that's what I'm feeling beautiful and we thank you for tonight for being with us for agreeing to kind of start off running we're gonna make this run as smooth as possible it's again there's a lot of systems to think about but we're gonna think about it together and that's the main point thank you again to all the task force members to all the layers on for with us to see you again very soon very good thank you thanks everybody it was awesome thank you great every blessing bye see you all bye thank you


Ever the Imperium's most disciplined of warriors, the organizational structure of the 13th Legion was a thing of beauty to appreciators of military organization. A peerless machine of uncompromising efficiency, these estartes were the epitome of a model army, the creation of a superlative tactical mind, and a product of the human realm that was Ultramar. As well as the uncompromising regime that their Primarch maintained there. Know then that this is a record of the tactics and operational dogma of the 13th Legion Ultramarines during the pre-heresy period and immediate aftermath of the drop-side massacre. From their inception, the 13th Legion were quintessentialists of the strictures laid down by that famous work of Terran military organization, the Principia Bellicosa. Standardizing themselves along the patterns prescribed therein, the Legion made little to no effort in revising it, seeing it as an exceptionally rational system of logistical administration in little need of reform. This was not exactly uncommon within the Legion as a starty, as one's acolytes will no doubt recall from similar records in the past, the early legions were all modeled upon the precepts of the Principia, newborn and shorn of the characters they would later come to possess. The 13th, however, was notable in just how little battlefield experience led them to modify the tenants of the great work. If anything, their commitment to its structures only became more resolute the more campaigns they engaged in. Companies were formed of roughly a thousand warriors, give or take situational combat losses, and from there ten companies composed the chapters of the Legion. Decimalization was a system later favored by the Primarch himself, who simply expanded the Principia's remit when enacting what few reforms he made upon assuming command of the Legion. It is owing to the retention of early crusade-era structures and indeed the Legion's eventual size that it counted amongst its number more chapters than any of its fellows, at over 250. The Legion was one to ever favor tactical flexibility. As such, it possessed few specialized companies in the manner their cousins did. A starty's who, by experience or talent, were adept in one form of warfare or another, were spread as evenly as possible throughout the Legion. It was an expectation placed upon each ultramarine company that it could defeat any foe that they faced with minimal losses. As a common 13th Legion aphorism went, to take a town, send a legionary. To take a city, send a squad. To take a world, send a company. To take a culture, send a chapter. While this is not strictly speaking Legion dogma, the truth it contained nevertheless formed a core around which the Ultramarines organized and comported themselves. In this, they were augmented by Gilliman's tactical and logistical support, which ensured that the Legion's specialized companies were well equipped with whatever non-standard weaponry, equipment, or ammunition they needed to operate at peak efficiency. This extended beyond the company to the chapter level. Each Legion chapter was equipped with a perfectly balanced mix of tactical, assault, artillery, armor, and aerial forces. That a Legion which counted at its peak a quarter of a million a starty's could be maintained at such operational levels across the entire galaxy is a sterling testament to Gilliman's logistical genius. When or if required, the Ultramarines would work with locally sourced weaponry, armor, and vehicle variants into their doctrines, should part of their armory become difficult to maintain owing to operational exigencies, such as distance, supply chain issues, or anything similar. Owing to the demands of the Great Crusade, this would, for example, lead to one chapter possessing a markedly higher number of say, Volkite Beam weaponry than another, if such arms could be obtained with ease from a forge world in the local volume.  Squads armed with such weapons were to use them in fulfillment of the precise tactical role they were defined in Under Legion Doctrine. Inevitably, and despite the best efforts of the Ultramarines, battlefield experience did lead to some deviations from the norm, as by some quirk of recruitment ground, campaign experience, or supply availability, or a combination of these and more, chapters found themselves forming specialized tactics against the express wishes of Legion Doctrine. The fourth chapter, for instance, colloquially known as the Aurorans, operated five times as many armored vehicles as their fellow chapters, while the 22nd or Nemesis chapter was one of the few Ultramarine formations to operate destroyer units for extermination operations. The Primarch made his distaste for destroyer squads known widely, seeing the employment of a radiation, chemical, and phosphax weaponry as uncivilized. But ever the pragmatist, he did not follow the path his brother Vulcan had, and outright banned their use. Gilliman's mind knew that depriving his warriors of such arms would harm the potential tactical efficiency, and potentially place his astartes at risk if their employment was necessary. Never mind that this required his public position to be opposed to their use, such hypocrisies were ever the Primarch's stock in trade. A cost benefit, shall we say, weighed by his personal acumen. In typical Ultramarine's fashion, especially affectatious formations developed in one theater or another in response to specific on-the-ground situations, eventually would find themselves folded into broader Legion doctrine, but only after scrupulous tactical reviews and reports had been compiled, researched, and debated at the highest levels. One such example were the Legion's Full Mentarii Terminator squads, formed shortly after the Primarch observed the Tyrant Siege Terminators of the 4th Legion Iron Warriors. Equipped with similar loadouts to the Tyrants, Full Mentarii Astartes were clad in Cataphractii Terminator armor plate, and equipped with the heaviest weapons portable upon those suits, typically Cyclone missile launchers or Reaper autocannons. Distinct from the Tyrants, however, was a suite of awe-specs arrays and targeting systems, designed to allow squads to operate with a peerless level of fire cohesion, bringing the devastating weapons to bear with terrifying accuracy. The creation of these squads was said to have been a point of distinct bitterness for the 4th Legion's Primarch Pertorabo, who is rumored to have stated to Gilliman in a missive that such behavior was precisely what distanced the Ultramarine's Primarch from so many of his brothers. The 500 worlds of Ultramar, serving as a base of operations far larger than any other Legion counted under their direct control, allowed the Ultramarines, in combination with their extensive supply chains, to maintain a higher than average number of all armored vehicle patterns available to the Legion as Astartes. In typical 13th Legion fashion, these numbers were sustained in a well-balanced spread of vehicle classes and roles, and while the Legion would never, even with its size, possess the armored core of the 4th Legion iron warriors or 10th Legion iron hands, they could always call upon the precisely required number of vehicles for any given operation. Should a mechanized push be called for, all chapters possessed enough Rhino-armored carriers to transport every Astartes capable of riding in those machines. Similarly, the requisite amount of land raider and Spartan main battle tanks were available to process doctrinally armored spearhead assaults, under rapid-moving covering fire supplied by Sikharan support tanks, or perhaps in the wake of a bombardment by Legion whirlwinds or basilisks. Where the Legion chapters would differ is in the expertise level. The aforementioned 4th chapter, the Aurorans, proved exceptional at prosecuting armored warfare with super-heavy Dlave and Falkion destroyer tanks. Where the 13th notably lagged behind others was in the numbers of Starships at their direct disposal. Never one to claim mastery over areas he admittedly knew little. The Primarch, known to favour close operational coordination with other Imperial forces, deferred to what he saw as the experience and calling of the Imperialis Armada, the Fleet Arm of the Exertus Imperialis Human Auxiliary. Gilliman routinely seconded himself to Navy wings, if heavy-capital ship actions were required for a space-based conflict, preferring instead to outfit the Legion's own ships for invasion operations, and if needed, near-avoid engagements. As such, the Legion could even at its height only count 30 to 35 heavy-capital ships under its direct control, the vast majority of which had been with the 13th since they had left Terra at the beginning of the Great Crusade. Even of these, many had been heavily repaired and retrofitted over these two centuries, notably in the aftermath of the pre-Reunion conflict in the Osiron cluster. While the Legion did, by the outbreak of the heresy, possess two Gloriana-class battleships, including the McCraggs Honor, the 26-kilometre-long behemoth that sat amongst the largest of her class, the bulk of its fleet were cruisers, and battle barges of medium tonnage, as well as a large number of purpose-built strike cruisers, outfitted for speed and carrying capacity. The preference for these latter ships allowed the Legion its desired range of deployment and flexibility in operations, but would see them vastly outclassed by other Legion fleets, notably the capital ship-heavy 7th Legion Imperial Fists, 14th Legion Death Guard, and, to disastrous ends, 17th Legion word-bearers. Command structure was, as with all things, concerning the Ultramarines, rigid and hierarchical. Naturally, Gilliman held Supreme Overall Command, delegating the use and direction of all Legion assets, as well as enacting direct command over any theater he himself was present in. Below him were the 250 chapter masters, each responsible for 10,000 Astartes, as well as their attached fleet elements. Every 1,000 Astartes was led by a company captain, and below them served the attendant sergeants and lower officers. A company captain who distinguished himself would often be elevated to the ranks of Legatii, senior officers who served directly under the chapter master in a support command role, operating outside the formal command structure with the Tetrox and their own Legatii, who assumed command of both military and civilian government in the various spheres of Ultramar. The Tetrox were responsible for these spheres' defense, and every aspect of its manufacturing and supply efforts pertaining to the Legion. The four Tetrox were mighty champions of the Ultramarines. Their elevation to the office deemed a supreme honor amongst their fellows. They were guarded by the Legion's elite warrior Khadra, the Suzerain in Victoriai squads, veterans who would take to the battlefield clad in Artifacer crafted power armor and bearing arms as the warriors of old did, a power axe and a boarding shield. However, these elites were not simply elevated to their positions on martial merit alone. The Thirteenth did not put stock in mere skillet arms, as some of their fellow legions did, so an Invictarius was expected to demonstrate an equally impressive aptitude for the skills of governance, organization, administration, judicial insight, and so on. The Invictarii were expected to aid the Tetrox in governing their respective spheres of control in Ultramar, and could themselves be expected to one day rise to the ranks of Legatus or even further. Squads of Suzerain's raid for warfare could also be found seconded to Legion chapters when their skills at war-making were most needed, or when the Invictarii themselves requested frontline duty to gain further battlefield or command experience in the ever-fluxuating frontlines of the Great Crusade. Lastly, one final organization, ill-understood but known to have existed, conducted its affairs in the shadows of the Legion's most prominent members. The Vigil Operatiii, founded by Gilliman himself as he crafted the structure of his domain, was a clandestine arm of Ultramar's authoritarian regime, operating to silence internal threats deemed too dangerous to simply be processed by the just cause of the Primarch's iron-clad legal system. The Operatiii were in effect a secret police, and coordinated heavily with both the Legion and Exertus' intelligence operations, bending their considerable talents to the uncovering of and silencing of dissent and ideological impurity that may have sought to question Gilliman's regime. Additionally, and more publicly, they coordinated recruitment, training and deployment of human auxiliary regiments and planetary defense militias, although naturally deferring to Legion command should the latter acquire the use of these forces. The Vigil Operatiii were however not baseline humans themselves, rather augmented individuals who had, owing to a late discovery of some genetic defect or discrepancy, been unable to complete their Astartii's implantation and conditioning procedures. Disbarred from Legion membership but not active service, their employment in this manner was something that typified the type of man Gilliman was. Why should qualified and highly trained men simply be discarded when their skills could be utilized for the good of the regime? Other legions, by nature or recruitment policy, tended to either abandon washout recruits into military prisons or the general population, or in most cases, kill them to protect gene-seed codes. Gilliman was perhaps understandably of a different vein, and doubtless the presence of Ultramar as a military regime allowed such men to find a place more readily. No other Legion operated the same stellar government that the 13th did. Regardless of however tangentially related to Legion command they were, the Operatiii were a supremely useful arm of Ultramarian internal affairs, especially during the dark days of the Shadow Crusade and the spread of cultist operations conducted by Lorgar and his word-bearers. Even more direct Legion recruitment was undertaken by a specialized formation within the 13th known as the Evocatiii. Originally introduced by the Legion's first master, Gren Vesotho, it was later reorganized and renamed into its modern incarnation. Composed of two double strength chapters, the Evocatiii ranks were filled with Legion neophytes at various stages of their Astartes conditioning and implantation processes, while Legion veterans rotated out of regular duties, forming what passed for a dual officer and teacher corps. The late commander Vesotho was fond of flooding these neophytes on the front lines of 13th Legion campaigns. Gilliman's approach was far more restrained, assigning them to defensive positions on border planets in Ultramar's volume, where they could operate both as a primary line of defense and undergo a strict regime of training exercises and memetic habituation. Depredations of Orc raiders and other Xenos incursions meant these neophytes were rarely a need of opportunities for combat experience, but were never overwhelmed to the same degree that they would have been under Vesotho's command. That is, of course, until the events of the Shadow Crusade. In the strategic sphere, the Ultramarines were renowned for their inbuilt tactical flexibility, extending from the squad level to the chapter and indeed Legion command. This tractability was rooted in the Legion's paramount maxim of the interplay between the practical and theoretical, a creed developed by the Primarch himself. Already psychologically inclined towards its practice, Gilliman elevated it to doctrinal levels. Under its strictures, the Ultramarine is expected to consistently apply the tenets of logic, analysis, and reason in his best efforts to eliminate the deficiencies within any military situation. This could apply, again, on the level of a squad engaging a Xenos mob on the desert of an unknown world, or to the chapter captain's planning theater-wide stratagems. The courage, skillet arms, and self-control of Anastartes was present in the practical, while in the theoretical lay his planning, scrutiny, and judgment. A common exercise amongst Ultramarines in downtime between engagements was to debate hypothetical scenarios with each other, applying the rigors of practical and theoretical to better understand both themselves and those they served alongside. While such strategic deliberations are of course not unique to the Thirteenth Legion, and the spirit of animated discussion regarding the arts of war was alive and well in other legions, the Ultramarines were unique in how their philosophy was deliberately fashioned to improve not only the individual's tactical knowledge, but that of the Legion as a whole. As the sands of Istvan V were being soaked with the blood of betrayed legions, the Ultramarines represented a staggering 250,000 legionaries present in the Imperium itself. Primarily they were spread over expeditionary fleets in the Galactic South and East. Of this number, Gilliman recalled 20 whole chapters, four-fifths of the Legion's strength, to a muster at Calth, ostensibly on the orders of Warmaster Horus. There, the Legion was expected to move onward and commit the bulk of its forces to the prosecution of the Greenskin Empire of the Warlord Gashlach, alongside the recently swelled 17th Legion word-bearers. That there in the closing days of the Great Crusade existed a foe that required the almost total commitment of two of the largest Astartes legions was patently absurd, but it was understood that in the higher echelons of the Imperium there existed a diplomatic effort by Horus to forge a bond between the Primarchs, Lorgar and Gilliman, neither of whom countered the other in high esteem or friendship. Gilliman, ever the trustful and obedient brother, welcomed Lorgar with open arms. It was a mistake for the ages, and shall no doubt be committed to a record very soon. Ave Imperator Gloria in Excelsis Terra Please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.