Thank you for staying with us you so watching the breakfast on plus see the Africa right now It's time to take global stories making headlines in our daily Newspapers and joining me to review this is Chris K. D. Wando is a member of the Chatterd Institute of arbitrators in the UK Good morning, Mr. Chris. Thank you for joining us Good morning, thanks for having me this morning Okay, welcome.  Well, yes, you're here today Thank you for gracing our screen anyways We're going to go straight into the papers and today we're starting with the daily trust the major headline on this one says protests in Lagos Oshun a door over hardship and the riders here at federal government labor meeting deadlocked IG puts officers on red alert once trouble makers begin food importation and now Tc tells the federal government and So I see a lot of this protest springing up. There was the other one in Mina About some weeks ago And people are coming out to protest over the hardship in Nigeria In fact yesterday, I went to a local market and people were just lamenting how, you know Everything is super expensive right now. People can barely feed people can barely afford, you know, the basic amenities People can there's no health care. There's no transportation. There is no power People are just lamenting on the situation of the country So there's the economy side and then there's even the social side as well But I want to get your thoughts on all of this the fact that this protests are happening in Lagos Lagos that you would have thought would be, you know, the calmest place But it's happening Lagos is happening in a those states is happening in Oshun It's happening in Ninja. I want to get your thoughts on all of this Besides today is the day that NLC said the world will start their strike or something like that As I meant every night and the right to protest is a fundamental Take away from anyone in fact that case has been settled by the Supreme Court So you don't need police permission. You don't need TSS permission You don't need anybody's permission to protest in as much as it is peaceful. That is the world So it's peaceful you have the right to protest and protest is a is a right enshrined In Oshun as I said, so if there are any policy of government, anything that I increase As I need the people I can pick up a placard and start walking around the hood of the streets of Lagos Raising my placard that I'm not satisfied with certain policies of government Why would I need the people that I know that must have been trained on my right And that is it you cannot beat each other You remember those days when your mother beat you and said, if I hear, if I hear I don't know. Yeah, if I don't say, baby, baby. They'll say, make sure, make sure. You know, you remember those days now. But we beat you. I say I see you to close your mouth with your hands. And because, you know, because the parents did to us when we were growing up, we were smutting. You know, smutting. So everywhere you come, you cannot do that. You cannot, people are suffering. They are telling them not to protest over her sheep. Why? You see people dying of hunger. Seven people died in Lagos, struggling to just collect a 10 kg or 1 kg of 10,000 mera rice from the customs. And that has been happening across the land. The last time I saw anything like this was in 1984. And it was in this, we used to call it the same food. That was the first time I had that same essential commodity. But there's not across the land. As Riley mentioned, you don't need to go to market. People didn't need to sell on your street. Well, I'm trying to price some. Yesterday I was told that one apple, one apple is not 500 mera. I couldn't believe it. I'm sure you must have heard of that. Oh yes, I got some over the weekend. Exactly. The noodles, the big part is about 18,000 mera egg. Who is the big one for the children? And young ladies, like my sister, who is the big one? Wow! Wow! That's all what I'm talking about. You're taking a shade of me this morning, okay? Let's go. This is the easiest meal to make. Actually, it becomes a problem. A bag of rice is hitting 85,000 mera per pack. I am talking of rice. If not of the condiments, the makings too. The meat, the fish, the tomatoes and all the rest. They are preparing soup. So we are saying people should go protest. No, people must protest. And that is only right there. Not allowing them to protest. We live to something more serious than that. And that to be right. And you have seen that there are some countries that governments have brought that. Just over the price of bread. Bread, just bread. Where are we going? So our government must be very careful. When Nigerians are sitting there, they are dying of hunger. So permit me to button here. Permit me to button here. The president is looking at giving 15 million Nigerians 25,000 mera every month for the next three months. That is about 75,000 mera. When I went to the market yesterday, bag of rice now goes for about 85,000 to 90,000 mera in fact. So do you think maybe this is them doing something that might just help? But 25,000 mera a month for the next three months that is less than the amount of a bag of rice. So what is that even supposed to do? Let me assume that is true. After three months, what happened? Is that the end of fountain? After three months. Then the second one is that we never let. We saw what happened in the ministry of Ministerial Affairs. We are still proving. I will not finish proving. We saw how money was reckless. I am tired of talking about this issue of sharing and political whatever they are talking about. When they want to give people 15,000, want to give them 20,000. People are not documented. There is no register. I remember the days of COVID. I was in the United States during that period. What the United States of America did was that they give that $5,000 to every American it hits their account.  Why? Because they have the data of every single American up to the child that is being born today. But in Nigeria, what data do you have? Do you know that many people are carrying Nigerian passports? As you said, most of the people that are using COVID are non-Nigerians. And you said that the phone must be linked to your phone.  How come so many people that are non-Nigerians are also using COVID? It is just money for the poor. Some people just want to share money. That is not the solution. It is like living what they say in the U.S. It is like living a headache. That down drop for them. Yes, no. You have a headache. No, no, it will not work. It will not work. Well, the 12 million people by 25, I was just trying to calculate $25,000 for 1 million people for 25 billion now times that by 12 15 million times that by 15 million and see the amount of money that could have been put into something that would be of general good to the people And then I want you to say this how many people are in Nigeria? We have over 200 million people. So how can you say you are all targeting 15 million? It was even the percentage of that. Someone came out to say was it commercial or somebody came out to say that the amount of people in Nigeria who have above 500,000 in their account is less than 1%. Less than 5%. That was only about 10 million people in Nigeria. So the rest of the 200 people are 90 or 200 million because we are more than 200. So the rest of the 200 million people do not have up to 500,000 and that's being generous because a lot of people don't have up to 300,000 in their bank account and then you are saying that 15 million. The poverty line is in place. Did I hear you say 300? This is 500,000. You are rich man. Just call my name. Just call my name Chris. 500,000 You are rich man. You are rich man. This is a serious case. If you don't have a policy that can be of general, because if you go to let's say an institution and the people are not being paid in a company for instance, the cleaners will suffer. The people themselves will suffer. But when there is money in the hands of everybody at the same time, you know everybody thinks this will flow. But there are 15 million that we will not even know. In the words of Yamgo. We will not see that 15 million. So we are moving to the point newspaper. 12 years after Tilibu adopts the Oro Sanye report Merges Agencies. The riders are Tilibu others SGF panel to implement changes in 12 weeks. Minister rules are job losses. MDP, HC, diaspora commission, two others move to ministry of PTAD abolished. This report was done in, was it 2010 or 2012 in the Jonathan era. There was a white paper that came out. We don't know how that implementation was done. It was not implemented. The Buhari administration also looked at the white paper, brought out their own white paper and we didn't see much. Now Tilibu has come and everybody is applauding him that he has the boldness to say at least some aspects of it should be implemented. But 12 weeks, that's what time they have to implement this to make sure all the relevant laws and everything is out of the way. And then in 12 weeks time these things are going to be done. What do you think about adopting this report finally? And the method and time frame that we have? Yes, I will tell you for free that there are two things that I personally would never call this implementation and I think I would never call it. You may see which are those of those things in the past. As it were, some of these issues were having to be dealt with done and dusted before it was the report of the National Conference that was held under his watch and so many recommendations were made. And who do you know that they don't have the will to be able to sign up on that report and send it to National Assembly for adoption that would have become by now most of the issue we are talking about Nigeria is blah blah blah or the interventions as well as the restructuring that would have been done then you would have taken about 70-70% of those policies that are taking these policies. We don't know where we are today. As those as he was you see that he didn't do that. He felt that probably he felt that he was coming in the second time. He didn't do it. He didn't get elected. The second one is the answer he was the one that set up the committee to look at implementation and look at possibilities of looking at MDAs, MDGs and the ministries and power centres as it were and see where we can be because when you look at ministries how many were about ministries and power centres and MDAs close to about 560 so we are going to be getting the same job and I ask myself what is the job of EFCC what is the job of what is the other one now I forgot to name them what is the job of ICPC what is the job of SFIU they are doing the same job why don't they bring them together but Chris just a moment Chris let me ask you simply how is this going to actually cut cost because nobody is losing their job so every the wage bill that was going into ICPC and EFCC will still go there so how is it actually going to cut cost because another report in the Guardian said after bloated cabinet, Tilibu Okes or Rational Report, major of MDAs so we are still having a bloated cabinet that really takes the bulk of the money that we are talking about and then now we are applauding the major of our status or agencies that we still carry the same cost we still carry the same salary number of people and everything so how is it going to cut cost my brother first in force he was just students of these agencies heads will roll and I'll tell you that for free whether you like it or not I think that government is just trying to pay us to change that's why this issue is consigned heads will roll because most of those agencies are doing particularly nothing so we are going to make it effort then something must give Tilibu will yield the system let's also start to issue a party but for anybody who tells that nobody will be able to stop this people are going to lose their jobs because when you go to most of these ministries and power stations or even in Lagos most of the federal power stations people just sit and read notes they come to work at night but 11 o'clock they are left doing about their businesses so as I said I totally support this now the time that we set up also some committees made up of the SGF and the head of service and rest of them the country set up also and nothing came out of it I think it's time time for us to take it yes, you're talking about overcrowded government, I totally agree with you but we have to start somewhere we are dealing with the first status and agencies of government we also look at the overcrowded federal structure as it were executive the legislative and even the judiciary so but it's a gradual approach this as far as I'm concerned this issue is I don't even know what to say about it because if you take your time to read that the 800 page report it addresses most of this issue there are some agencies that have never heard of it my entire life and you are asking yourself what are these ones doing this big crop and this this one a cassava and this this one a miss and this what are we talking about so I totally agree with this if they can be able to make it we can give it 12 weeks but we can make this together I hope that this will not be mentioned in the bottlenecks that we know government policies and pronouncements that after one week now nothing will be heard about it let's I totally support that this should be fully implemented to the latter we are waiting alright let's stay on the Guardian there seems to be some noise from your fan or something now it has stopped so let's stay on the Guardian let's stay on the Guardian there's a small headline here that says constitution amendments rest prioritizes state police women in governance so the speaker of the House of Representatives talk about prioritizing some bills that had been put before now and some of them are creating more legislative seats for women gender bills, state police the autonomy of the local governments as well what do you think about the reps having to bring this to bear again and see how it goes yes that's not wrong in constitution amendments every constitution gets amended once in a while but even the constitution of the United States it's over 200 years they're still getting amended so there's nothing wrong in amended constitution so there are areas that that is their primary assignment their primary responsibility is making laws for the land but I'll tell you that it is not as easy as we thought making laws based on the 1999 constitution it is not I mean amended I mean amended the constitution it is not easy the process through which this amendment has to go through there you know that is a very very tough you remember the last assembly how much they tried to amend some sessions of the constitution but when it got to this because after the good house the good senate and house of representative must agree on what needs to be amended it has to be sent to 36,000 of assembly for their input for them to conquer at least you thought of those state houses of assembly must agree to that amendment if they don't then it will not get so after that they bring it back to the national assembly for good chambers to also now tidy each other so it is always very very difficult part of the problem that we had in the amendment of the local government bill or laws it was that most states especially state governors who are feeding fat on their locations of local government refuse for their state houses of assembly not to endorse that amendment and that is part of the problem we are having so anything that can be done I personally at the point that I said that the present constitution as we have we should totally do with it and get another constitution because this constitution was not by Nigeria although that picture of that constitution we Nigerians no it wasn't we Nigerians it was the military the military in 1999 led by that imposed this 1999 constitution on Nigerians so you cannot say that that is why we are not having the total benefit of it but if I go to a man in this middle all well and good but I still believe that most of the huddles are going to have especially is it going to be in the state where the governors will hold on to the state houses of assembly as if it is a department in their governor's office they determine who becomes the speaker of the house who will go to the house of assembly state as it were even though they go to the senate they are mostly determined by the governors they want to have a picture except for one or two that have so much strong value or have so much strength within their constitution but the governor determines so an ability to amend this will also depend on the governors which is not what is supposed to be the national assembly as it is it is supposed to be independent of the executive team and it is supposed to be independent of the judicial but what we have here is that certain people they will try to rule themselves over under both you saw the debate that has been raised about the parliamentary system have you had anything about it again? we have been given 24 months by Benjamin Kalu deputy speaker of the house of representatives he said you will take 24 months and the constitution the new constitution will be ready I don't know when he made that statement I don't know how much engagement they will have with the people who really are going to be we the people that will have input into that constitution I don't know how comfortable you are but we have been given 24 months do you think it is tenable? do you think we can realize that ambition of having a new constitution a little is possible if you want the police to do it that is me in my language there is something that is called impossible I don't believe anything is impossible the possibility is you are pleading to admit yourself in order to achieve certain goals so if they believe that they can be able to do it in 24 months or when I go it can be very fatal as I told you it is not as easy as you think there are processes that have to be passed and the constitution has laid down rules on how it can be amended its own that constitution has laid down on how it can be interpreted that part of that is that despite whatever the national assembly it goes with your national assembly whatever recommendations they have they still have to take it to 36 states of the federation they must make their own input and they must approve and it must be too third you know what third of 36 is so it is not that let me ask you one simple question how is it that since 1996 the exit of the military we have not been able to preach one single state I agree that all the states were created in 1990 were the military maybe you have not taken that into consideration from 1960 to date all the states that have been created by the military because the executive I came and I said I am creating nine states I came and I am creating six states and that is what they take it to the federal and the state but I have been named one single civilian government that has been created a state never because the process of creating is so cumbersome that it is almost impossible for any civilian government and that has been an issue okay well alright well we just I am hopeful that I am really passionate about women and having a seat for women at the table this is not a feminism calm down but I am hoping that all of this gender builds the autonomy for the local government because we have seen cases whereby people say the state governors are the ones ruling the affairs of even the local government and when we even talk about the state police you have heard things of people saying the state governors might just abuse power so I am hoping that it can create a constitution whereby it is favorable to everyone so not just some sex of people who have their own political ambition it is for the masses it is for Nigerians it is for everyone let me come in for women I am also gender sensitive I have two lovely guests I am not a joke with my girls so when it comes to when it comes to issues sometimes it is very passionate they want to ask yourself the 33% affirmation action how well has it been implemented I think we should start from there there was this affirmation action by women that in the national cabinet we have 33% at the state level how many women are commissioners how many women are independent counsel I think that is where it is and most of you already said the women should not be given power they should go for it we have a situation where women wanted to contest as president how many of you women voted for them Sarah Jubril was a classical example she wanted to become whatever she only got one vote there were women how many women voted I always believe and I say this in the sense of the problem of women and women themselves women themselves come together and we are able to see when you look at the voting numbers women constitute a very very high almost about 50% about 49% even more than men that even men determine who becomes president because they are able to make sure they vote for their own so I don't just sit down and just get the women to be ropa stamp and ropa fair the prime minister of UK was a woman the vice president was a woman I agree I agree most times it's on paper but then we are not putting in the work we are not seeing the actions at least we have women crush ones I am hoping that I am hoping that we start to see the changes in the actions I am hoping that we start to see the changes in the actions but this is what we want to thank you thank you for coming in and having a great conversation as usual thank you thank you thank you thank you all right thank you so much we have been speaking to Chris Cain de Wander he is a member of the Chatted Institutes of Abritrators we will go on a short break when we return we will be taking our first hot topic please stay with us


So I have a really interesting construction update for you guys today The term construction used very loosely a lot of you are probably here too because of the title It is not clickbait. So Just to go a little further into explanation for those of you that watched my video yesterday footage from January 14th You'll notice that there were no cranes on site We were discussing some potential like just delay and by delay we were using that term loosely as well So there were no construction equipment or cranes on site that we could see there was some weird things going on with track pieces And today is no different. So except for the crane is back So I can definitely make out a crane the construction equipment is working on the queue line for you con striker That's very evident There's lots of lots of signage or theming being built around you con strikers station and entrance ways you enter the pathway towards you con strikers helix But what's very weird and very interesting is what's going on with the vertical loop So there should be four pieces that are sitting and waiting to be installed now We are really far away. So anything that I'm reporting on in this video I cannot confirm with a hundred percent certainty What I can tell you is track pieces or for sure being removed from you con strikers vertical loop So that is some sad news, but I'll get further into that But I can also kind of make out and again I can't confirm because track pieces can be hidden in between things behind things It looks like two pieces of track are not on site that I can see from this angle They're not in storage. So we have one in storage and we have two disassembled sitting near the Imelman loop and the vertical loop and we're missing the two track pieces that I had accounted for so there were four that still needed to be installed one was removed and As you can see there's the photo on the right from January 8th and the photo on the left from January 15th So I can only make out three track pieces on site two are unaccounted for I have no idea what that is for As you can see there's a cement truck pulling in and it is heading towards the vertical loop on Construction projects things can go wrong things can may need to be report or refitted So it could just be that as well But it is definitely very interesting and very weird. I will give it that and the timing can be worse We are getting down to the last little bit all I'll say is construction projects always run into Little bumps here and there and stuff like this isn't out of the ordinary Yukon striker is very well On schedule to opening. There isn't any signs of it opening late The park hasn't said otherwise either so don't go panicking. This is normal construction projects. Don't worry Yukon strikers fine But I will definitely be keeping a very close eye on what's going on with the vertical loop. This is very interesting Haven't seen anything like this in recent years during a construction project But we have seen coasters needing to remodel stuff or redo things and yeah The vertical loop is the first for a dive coaster. So who knows maybe there's something they just need to refit Maybe the concrete didn't cure properly. It could be a number of things and I can't even begin to speculate for you guys But anyways, we'll be keeping a close eye. I had to update you guys. This is extremely weird And hopefully you enjoyed this Deconstruction update on Yukon striker. We'll be keeping a close eye as I just said Hopefully you enjoyed the video give the video like subscribe You haven't and share this video for others to enjoy. Thanks for watching guys. Have a good one. Bye


My Volga German ancestry comes from my great grandparents who were married in Russia in 1903 and came to this country in 1907. They first settled in Green Lake County where my great-grandfather worked on the Lausonia golf course doing groundskeeping. And then they went for a season out to the Great Plains and worked in the wheat harvest out there. My great-grandmother didn't really like that, so they came back to Wisconsin and settled in Oshkosh, where my great-grandfather worked at the paint lumber company. And that is where quite a few of their children worked. One of his daughters actually came to Sheboygan for a brief time. It was a bookkeeper at the Phoenix Chair Company. So that's my one connection of the Volga German community here in Sheboygan. Through this presentation, I'm going to give an overview of the history of the Volga Germans and how they came to end up in Russia and then eventually how they came to America. So there was a royal marriage in 1745, and this is really the event that led to our ancestors going to Russia. Princess Sophia von Anhaltzerst married Grand Duke Peter of Russia. Peter's aunt at the time was the, Elizabeth was the Empress of Russia. Princess Sophia was a German princess and went to Russia. She quickly learned Russian and converted to the Russian Orthodox faith and took the name Catherine. In 1762, the Empress Elizabeth died, and her nephew Peter III was crowned the emperor. And he was not very popular with the aristocracy in Russia. So he became Lazar on the 5th of January and the 9th of July. He was overgrown, and eight days later was murdered. Catherine and Peter did not have the greatest marriage, and she had taken up as a lover Count Gregory Orloff who masterminded the coup that overthrew Peter. Catherine became the Empress of Russia at age 33, and she was to rule Russia for the next 34 years. For those who are interested in knowing more about Catherine, I recommend either of these books. The first one is Catherine the Great by Robert Massey, who has written quite a bit on the Romanov dynasty. And then the book Catherine by Segrit Wiedenweber is more from a Volga German point of view. It's historical fiction. But she really tries to stay true to the historical facts. And so that would be another book. The Massey book I know is at the Meade Library here, so that's where I checked it out when I read it. Very shortly after coming to the throne, Catherine turned her attention to the settlement of the Eastern Frontier in Russia. This was land that was sparsely populated, and she wanted to bring settlers there to essentially tame the frontier. So in 1762, the Russian government issued a manifesto that was distributed throughout Europe. And it was supposed to attract settlers, but it didn't have much for detail as to the conditions that they would immigrate under. And very few people responded. So in 1763, they revisited it and made a lot of promises to the potential colonists. They promised freedom of religion for Christians who do not proselytize, exemption from taxation for 30 years, 0% loans for a period of 10 years, exemption from being conscripted into the military, rations and free transport to their destinations, rights were to extend to their descendants, and they had the freedom or were promised the freedom to settle anywhere in the Russian Empire. So the reason that so many people responded to this were the conditions in Central Europe, especially in the Western part of Germany. We had just generations of destructive warfare, the 30 years war and the seven years war, but the seven years war just ending at the time the proclamation was issued. And their rights that they were promised were really attractive because these people didn't have freedom of religion. There was the places they lived had state religion, so you were either supposed to be Catholic or some form of Protestant according to the ruler of your area. They were subject to compulsory military service and they had no realistic chance of owning their own land but worked for the land and nobility in what was basically a feudal system. This map shows where they came from. So largely from this part of Germany and some from Switzerland and the Alsace-Lorraine area of France, the red on the map indicates places they settled. So the large or more umbrella term Germans from Russia applies to all these German settlements. The people who came to Sheboygan and settled were the group known as the Volga Germans who settled in this area. The first settlements were in the Volga up here by St. Petersburg, which attracted largely professionals and trades people. And then a small settlement in the Ukraine here. These settlements all occurred in the early 1800s and down here in the Caucasus. These people are known as the Black Sea Germans. And a lot of those people went out to the Great Plains, especially in the Dakotas. Some resources on finding German origins of different families are a book by Trent May and Donna Reeves-Marcourt, German migration to the Russian Volga. And then the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia has a German origins project on their website. And you can find a surname you're interested in. And they keep that up to date with the latest research as to where in Germany or where else in Europe the family name came from. And then also there's a Volga German Institute and the Center for Volga German Studies. Also have websites on that subject. The colonists came in a short period of 1763 through 1766. This graph here shows the number of colonists coming in each of those years. So it's 1766, it just boomed. And actually overwhelmed the Russian government's ability to transport people. And so they had to contract with a lot of private shippers to bring people to Russia. So the people coming from Europe made their way to the German port of Lubeck for the most part. And there they took passage on ships and were transported through the Baltic up to Oranienbaum, which is a small town outside of St. Petersburg where Catherine had a palace. And that was kind of like their Ellis Island. The people were received there. Their names were taken along with some information about where they came from, what their occupations were. And from there it would then be decided where they would be settled. Two books document this part of their migration. Igor Pleve has a book called Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766, which is translations of passenger lists. The cover is a little scary because it's all in Russian, but the inside is in English. And then Georg Rauschenbach's book Aus Wanderung, Deutscher Colonisten, Nack Russel, Demiara, Siebzein Hundrit, Sex and Sexy. That is in Russian and German. It makes some corrections to Mr. Pleve's book and has some additional information about the ships that took the colonists to Russia. The migration was organized by what was known as the contour, which comes from an acronym for the organization, which is called the Office of Guardianship of Foreign Settlers. Count Gregory Orloff, who masterminded the coup that brought Catherine to power, was in charge of this, which really shows how much of a priority this was to her government that she put her favorite in charge and that this was initiated so soon after she came to power. The contour had an office in Saratov, which is a large town on the Volga. And that was kind of where the center of all the settlement activities took place. And that office helped them settle. It arranged for the shipment of lumber to build houses. It also controlled if they wanted to move from one place to another. And what they found is the first right they were promised, the freedom to settle anywhere in the Russian Empire, was the first one to go. As soon as they were in Russia, the Russian government knew where they wanted them. And they wanted them as farmers on the Volga. And that's where they put the vast majority of them. So you had people who maybe were craftsmen that immigrated and maybe thought they were going to settle in a city and pursue their trade. And they ended up down on the Volga River as farmers. The contour made changes to their rights. They had their status changed from colonists to settler landowners. And it was a legal definition that really took away that right to settle wherever they wanted to. The contour office controlled Volga German life until 1876 when it was disbanded. The process of going from Iranian bound to the Volga took a year. They generally, they boarded river boats and came down this river and then crossed overland to this one and then took this over to the Volga and down. And then there was a more northerly route that went kind of off the map and connected with Volga here. This overland route that it shows here was really used only in the first couple of years that settlers came. So if your settlers came to Russia in the 1766 to 67 period, which most, you know, the vast majority did, then they took this combination river and land route. During the winter, they were actually, when the Volga froze up, they were quartered with Russian peasants. And the Russian peasants were then reimbursed for any food that they, the food and lodging they supplied to the colonists. This phase of their journey is documented in a couple works. Brent Mai has a book called Transport of the Volga Germans from Iranian bound to the colonies on the Volga. It's really just a list of the, in the archives, they found lists of the colonists that were transported under the charge of different military officers. And Brent translated these. And they have some notes about people who died along the way. And then Georg Rauschenbach as Deutsche Colonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratov. And he provides a lot more context to the story of this part of their migration. Again, his books in German and Russian, so you need to know one or the other to get that part of the story out of it. But it's quite an interesting tale of how they managed to transport people into the heart of Russia. The geography of the region is distinguished by the sides of the Volga that people lived on. On the west side, this was called the Bear Saita, which means the hillside. So here's the Volga River. And this is the hillside. There's bluffs that go down to the river. And when you go inland, it's more of an upland that has had rivers and streams cut into the valleys into the landscape. The east side is called the Bezen Saita, which is the meadow side. And it's flat. So that's this side. There's very, any elevation here is very slight. This side is also much more dry. Some of the rivers on this side would dry up in the summer. The majority of the people who ended up in Sheboygan came from a group of villages along here, which this river is called the Karaman. Reinwald, Schaefer, being the two biggest contributors to Sheboygan's population of Volga Germans. This is Mappo, Wisconsin, with what in the 1920s was called the Volga German Autonomous Republic. And talk about that a little bit more. So that is this yellowish part. The red outline is what is shown on this big map here. Some of the Volga German settlements weren't in the Autonomous Republic. There's up here is Yagadaina, Pollyanna, which had a lot of people go to Oshkosh. And it was kind of an outlier of the Volga German villages. When they first came, the west side was mostly inhabited by nomadic Kyrgyz tribesmen. And in the first years of the settlement, they actually raided and destroyed some villages and carried people away as captives. And they either were killed or sold into slavery. And a few of the villages that they had done this to just were abandoned and never rebuilt. Another thing that happened in the early history was a man named Kugachev emerged out of nowhere claiming to be Catherine's husband, saying he didn't really die. And he raised a peasant army and tried to take the Russian crown. And during the final campaign of when he was pursued by the Russian army, he came and he burned the contour office in Saratov. And then he swept down this road and basically looted villages as he went down. And several months later, he was actually captured and executed and that ended his revolt. The impact on our people was just this memory combined with that of the Kyrgyz of these early days being turmoil and hardships that they thought they were getting away from when they left Germany and central Europe. And that also a lot of records were lost when they burned and looted the contour office. When I first thought of even trying to find anything about my family in Russia, it just seemed like a mysterious black hole. And I had no idea what records they even created there. But it turns out they actually created a lot of interesting records that enable you if you can trace back maybe just even one or two generations into Russia that you could end up going all the way back to the original colonists. They created what was called revision lists. These were based on a census that was taken during Peter the Great's rule to essentially divide land up. And for the Volga German villages, this was very important to you. The land was held communally in the villages. And it got apportioned to each family based on how many males were in the family. Which kind of when I learned about this, it made me realize why my great-grandma always preferred boys to the girls in the family. Economically, they were more important because that's how you got your proportion of the farmland assigned to the village. So there's actually lists of these from 1775. That's only kind of a partial list. There's the 1798 list, which is complete or mostly complete. We actually have these books in the back. And so this is essentially a census, like we're used to where it lists all the head of the household and all the people in the household. It tells their relationships and their ages. This one else, the 1798 one in the translation has information on the crops grown in the villages. It has a little report that the Russian official did on the conditions in the village. One of the things, you can learn things like some of them had infestations of gophers after destroying the crops that happened in my ancestral village. And just different conditions of life in the villages. These revisions were done up to 1857. And there's two big gaps in the records. The third one, which is done in 1767, it's called the first settlers list usually because that was when all the settlers should have been on the Volga. And so that would list the first families in the villages. There's a 31-year gap between that and the complete 1798 revision. And so you could have people who came here and they died before this time. And you don't, and any children they had in between here, you don't really have connected to the parents by any records. This also occurs between 1798 and 1834. So you generally hope, like in 1834, if your ancestor is married and has children, that they were a child born before 1798. Otherwise, you would be hard pressed to connect them back. The 1834, the 1850, and 57 censuses are pretty easy to get also. Brent Mai and the AHSGR have translated a lot of them. Some of them are available. Actually, some of them are online now through the LDS Family History Library. Those are actually copies of the original, so you have to be able to read Hand Written Russian. So the translations are much more convenient. And Brent Mai has a document that lists the ones he's translated and that are for sale. And the AHSGR website also lists the ones that they have. The original colonies were allocated just so much land. And they tended to be hemmed in by each other and by Russian villages that were in the area. Each village was a fairly compact settlement. And it was surrounded by farmland. And that's a big difference.  And that's because of how the public land was distributed in the United States, according to what was called the town range system. But in Europe, that didn't exist. So if some families, if you got farmland allocated that was quite a bit away from the village, you might spend half a day going out to the fields to work it. And then they'd usually just camp out in the fields to work it rather than losing the valuable time going back and forth. So part of the thing is, as the population grew, the land allotment shrank. And so essentially, the people would become land poor. And so they appealed to the Russian government because on the Abyssin site here, there was a lot of land that was vacant. And so they received permission to create what were called daughter colonies. So often, if you're reading about the Volga Germans, you'll read about mother colonies. Those were the original ones, which there was 102 of them. And then daughter colonies, which were formed usually in the 1850s when people moved more over into the Abyssin site to form these new villages and acquire new land. Also in the mid-1800s, there was Mennonite group that came. They settled in this area on the Abyssin site. They came from East Prussia. They came to be able to have religious freedom. And so between 1855 and 1875, they settled on the Abyssin site. At a later point, they started to be persecuted in Russia also. And they were one of the first German-Russian groups to decide to come to the United States. These two czars really presided over our ancestors' loss of their rights under the original manifesto. Alexander II, who ruled from 1855 to 81, was known as the czar liberator because he freed the Russian serfs from bondage to their aristocratic masters. These people were essentially slaves. And when he freed them, this created more pressure for them to acquire land because they could now. And some of them moved to the Abyssin site and founded villages. The contour was closed. So in the past, while it was a very controlling organization, it also advocated for the settlers. And so when they closed it, they didn't have this governmental body to essentially appeal to. Alexander also ended the military service exemption in 1871. And in 1874, the first full of German men were drafted. Alexander was assassinated in 1881. And his son Alexander III became czar. And he had a policy known as Russification. And this policy was aiming at making all the people that lived in Russia Russians. Russia has a vast amount of minority groups that largely retain their own culture, language. And so this affected many people, not just the Germans in Russia. But some of it was very much directed at Germans. So there was a promotion of anti-German sentiment by what were known as pan-Slavic intellectuals. These were people who were trying to promote Slavic culture and say, this is our culture. This is what people that live here need to be following. There was an interference with local school curriculum. Before the German churches were able to run the schools and their villages and decide their own curriculum. And the Russian government at this time said, well, you've got to start teaching these children Russian and then make other changes to the curriculum. And this was all aimed at assimilating the people into the Russian population. Having been there for over 100 years now, they never assimilated. And they had really no intention to. Also in this era, because of the land allotments shrinking, and the land was depleted of organic properties because they didn't really practice crop rotation. There were major, there was crop failure in 1879 to 81, and then droughts in 1885, 1889, 1892, and 1898. So they were really hit hard at the end of the 19th century. This period, as far as genealogy is concerned, is usually documented in what were called personal lists or family lists. And those were essentially a village-level census. And it was supposed to originally created in Lutheran villages to track who had taken communion. These are usually, if these exist for your villages, that's usually where you will find the people that actually came to the United States. The difference between these in a census is they added information over time. So you have births of children added in over time, deaths and other events. And the American Historical Society of Germans for Russia have been acquiring and translating these lists. You can also get extracts from them from the Russian archives also. These are going to be some papers that your ancestors might have brought from Russia. This is a military discharge paper. And it has just the details of the military service, where they were drafted from, and other notations on their service. It's interesting, too, this particular document is my great-grandfathers. And while his name was Johann Georg, they actually called him Johann Davidovich. And Davidovich, meaning the son of David. So because they used that Russian patronomic middle name, then we knew that his dad's name was David. In 1874 to 1880, about one third of the Mennonites that had settled in the Volga area emigrated, they largely went to Kansas and the Great Plains. In 1874, this group of men were part of a delegation that the Volga colonists sent to take a look at the United States and identify places they might want to relocate to. And they came back with a very positive report. Brazil and Argentina were also locations. And even some of the people that settled in Wisconsin first went to Brazil or Argentina and maybe went back to Russia and then came here or just went directly to the United States from South America. Those governments were looking for hardworking settlers and they subsidized the immigration and settlement. Argentina was much more to the liking of the Volga Germans, so that settlement really thrived. So there is still a lot of Volga German descendants in Argentina. The first immigrants went to Brazil in 1877. Others went to Argentina. And after 1889, then Argentina was preferred destination. This is a document that a lot of families would bring with them. This is a parish certificate when they were leaving. The minister or priest would write up this document, which lists everybody in the household. Their dates of birth and the place of birth, when they were confirmed, when they were married. This one over here has a note as to why they're leaving the parish. It says they're leaving for America. This one is written in Russian. We have one on display from Anne Lautenschlager's family that was written in German. So it just depends on which language the pastor felt like using. Another thing that they would have brought would be a passport. The passport will indicate where it was issued. We'll have stamps for when they left Russia. A lot of people left from the port of Levow. So that's a common notation to find in a Volga German passport. This section here indicates the head of the household the passport was issued to, and then his family has his wife and children. The pages in here are written in Russian, in German, and in French. So the names will actually have their forms in Russian, in French. For those who remain, life was very hard. The 1904 to 1905 Russo-Japanese War involved many Volga German men who were drafted into the army or had gone into the reserves and were called back into service. And then World War I was a disaster for Russia. They were very badly defeated and essentially that caused the government to fall, leading to the Russian Revolution. And then Civil War until 1922. Some of the people in the Volga German colonies were executed during the Civil War time for resisting the communists. In the village that my great grandma came from, there exists a list of men who were arrested and executed.  And that really doesn't surprise me since that family is very opinionated and spoke their minds. During the end of the Civil War, a famine broke out in Russia. And the Volga Relief Society was formed by Volga Germans in the United States to assist. The American Relief Administration was a government agency that would ship supplies and food to Russia. And so the Volga Relief Society worked through that agency to try to help their family members that stayed in Russia. In 1932 and 1933, there was another famine that was largely brought on by the communists' collectivization of farms. And the communists were largely from an industrial, the industrial workers. They didn't really understand agriculture. And so their government policies were quite disastrous for the farmers in Russia. And from 1918 to 1941, they had their own state under the Soviet government called the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. And so this is a map of that area. It contained almost all the Volga colonies. In 1941, with the invasion of Russia by Germany, Joseph Stalin decided that these Germans that were in the path of the invasion needed to be removed, suspecting that they might help the German army. There's really no indication that that even would have been the case. But he had them deported to Siberia. And it was essentially one day they just show up the village and you've given a small amount of time together some belongings and put on boxcars and shipped out to Siberia and have to start all over again. And that's, even now, there are very few Germans in the Volga German area. There are a lot of them in Siberia, that's where they remained. And it was only in recent years that they even had the freedom to move back to the Volga. But they just really didn't have a connection anymore to that region. And this is my final slide on Volga Germans in Sheboygan. So the first Volga Germans came in 1892. By 1930, there were 550 Volga German families here. 230 from Reinwald and 170 from Schaefer. So those two villages make up the majority of the Volga Germans that came to Sheboygan. Kohler Company became the largest employer, but others worked at the chair factories, Volrath, a garden toy, and what's called the hand-knit closurey company. In the summer of the first several years that they were in the United States, they would sometimes go down to Racine County or out to Michigan and work in the sugar beet fields. And the whole family would work in the fields. The little shaded areas are Volga German households. And this is a pattern that shows up in other Wisconsin cities, where they really cluster in a small area. So this is Erie between 8th and the bend in the river, which became known as Russian Boulevard, informally. And to me, this was a way of their recreating their village life. When they were on the Great Plains with the farmsteads spread out, they didn't have that village life or it was very hard to create. But in the cities, they could settle in a small part of the city, essentially preserve that village life and go to the same church and have other social activities and hang on to their culture. Once their children started intermarrying with a population outside the Volga German community, then you're going to see that disappearing. My grandpa was born in the United States. He didn't want to be German. He wanted to be American. We would get scolded if we said, yeah. And so he was one of that. And then he married a lady who was from English and Dutch ancestry and her ancestors have been in this country since the 1600s. And you see that. And you see the recent immigrants marrying into families that had been in the United States for a longer period of time and then just assimilating. And so the importance, to me, of gathering like this to learn about this history is to kind of reclaim some of what's been lost, to be able to talk to the people who still remember their older relatives who passed on stories of the old country and their experience coming to the United States. And to me, it's a heritage that is full of drama and adventure. And they led very hard lives, but they were also hardworking and faithful people that really did what Catherine wanted them to do. They created a viable agricultural area on the World Cup where the wilderness had been before they were suffering.


My name's Laura. I'm with the Community Voices for Immigrant Rights. We're a grassroots organization here in Burlington, about a year old now. We formed in the wake of Trump's increasingly horrendous treatment of immigrants and the realization that we have concentration camps in our country. And we have been organizing since then, and are really just honored to be here today, to stand in solidarity with people's movements all across the country and across the world. Gotta love the tuba. Gotta love for the tuba.  It's going to be great. And I just want to give some context for why we're here today. And we'll have a couple speakers here, speak to us all. And then we will be marching down Church Street. And we will be educating people as we go with our chants and our flyers and a couple of little speeches in between. And then we're going to end up down at Main Street by the Democracy Sculpture, here from a couple more folks down there.  The roots of American aggression and fascism are really deep. And we need to remember that this moment is not new. This moment is a continuation of so much other harm that has happened in the name of America. The reason we are here today in particular is because President Trump has unleashed federal agents from Customs Border Patrol and ICE in Portland, Oregon.  And as we see, though, the tactics of these federal agents are not that different from tactics of local police in handling the protests and the rebellions that have been erupting all across the country. So we cannot deny the connection between local policing and the greater militarization of the US. And this is especially important to remember when we have mayors, like the mayor of Chicago, Mayor Lightfoot, welcoming federal agents into her city to quote unquote help with real crime. And that is atrocious. And so let us not get into the habit of saying there's good cops and bad cops, whatever. Policing is problematic. We know that. And we need to stand up against it in all its forms. And just another note on this. Like I said, Lori Lightfoot, if you're not familiar with Mayor Lightfoot, she's a Democrat. So we cannot assume that Democrats alone will save us. We can't assume that voting Trump out alone will save us. We will need to be in the streets to solve this problem as long as it takes. And we owe a great debt to indigenous black immigrant and anti-war activists who have been warning us of the problem of militarization and increased surveillance of people here in this country for decades, if not longer. So to kick things off, I've got to have everything written. To kick things off, migrant justice, who we have partnered with very closely as community voices for immigrant rights on campaigns such as NoMox Polymigra and other initiatives, they are sad that they couldn't be here today, but they sent a statement to be read out. So I'm going to start with that. And then we're going to have a couple more speakers. And we're going to take the streets. All right, so this is migrant justice speaking. Thank you very much for being here tonight. And thank you to community voices for immigrant rights for planning this protest and for reading this statement. Migrant justice is a human rights organization founded and led by immigrant farm workers in Vermont. Unfortunately, we can't be with you today on the streets in Burlington, but we are with you in spirit. At this moment, organizers and leaders in migrant justice are on dairy farms around the state, distributing money from our COVID solidarity fund. We created this fund to support farm workers excluded from the government's response to this crisis. Even when they call us essential, they don't care about us. It's a lie. This country has told us time and again, that it wants our labor, but not our lives. We know from experience that when the government doesn't care about your community, you have to take matters into your own hands. That's what we are doing right now with our solidarity fund. And that's what communities are doing around the country when they hit the streets to denounce racist police violence and lift up the call to defund the police. When the systems that supposedly exist to protect us are used against us, it is time to create our own systems and protect ourselves. But we have seen that when we demand what's ours, the government is always there to try to put us down. This has happened here in Vermont. It's happening today on the streets of Portland. And unless we act, it will keep spreading. When immigrant farm workers in Vermont have spoken out to demand respect for human rights, ICE has tried to shut us up. These federal agents surveilled and infiltrated our organization. They spread lies about us to try to divide the community and they arrested dozens of our leaders, kidnapping them off farms, county roads, and from right here in Burlington. ICE tried to shut us up, but we didn't let them. When we walked down, we brought them to court and we are still fighting for our rights. Now federal immigration agents are being sent to Portland and other cities to try to shut down the national movement against police violence. They are assaulting protesters and kidnapping them off the streets. They think that they can shut us up, but we won't let them. We can't back down. We will fight back. And together we will continue to speak up and demand our rights. Cece Puede! We are going to speak up on behalf of their organization. So welcome them. Testing, is this good? I'm here on behalf of BTV Cop Watch.  The cops would rather not have anyone watching them. They would rather not have accountability to those who they pretend to protect and serve. If you don't believe me, come on a cop watch shift and listen to how they react to our presence. The pigs at One North Avenue have more in common with the federal agents disappearing our comrades in Portland than they do with you and me. Just like the feds arresting people for knocking on the door of federal property, someone got arrested for knocking on the courthouse door. DPD values private property over the lives of most citizens of Burlington. How can you explain the continued presence of abusive pigs, Joseph Corral, Jason Belvance, and Corey Campbell on the BPD roster? They value private property over the lives of black men. How can you explain their outright resistance to implement migrant justice's policy, no-moss polymigra, barring BPD from collaborating with ICE and Border Patrol? They'd rather be able to call ICE to deport our comrades, consequence for even protect anyone who isn't white. All of this takes place in a nation founded on stolen land built by stolen people. How can cops claim to be arbiters of peace and justice while defending the institutions that sprang from native genocide and slavery? Because to acknowledge the hypocrisy inherent in their position would undermine the authority they so desperately cling to. BPD, you protect property and serve the wealthy. When those who claim to protect and serve the people unite with Donald Trump's government to shoot rubber bullets into tear gas clouds, they must find a new job or admit where their loyalties truly lie. The one and only thing the thin blue line separates from is our shared humanity. Just like ICE, the Border Patrol, cops exist to divide and conquer, quote, dangerous classes, end quote, as has been the case since their inception. Their jobs are unnecessary for anything other than the continued maintenance of capitalism. They defend the system that is sacrificing countless lives to keep the wheels of commerce spinning greased with our blood. While the majority of us struggle to get through this pandemic alive, they defend the Jeff Bezos' of this world, those who aspire for trillions of dollars. Truly, pigs protect the wealthy and serve the rest of humanity as if we were objects to be bought and sold. From here on occupied Endocana, home of the Avanaki on Turtle Island, we stand in solidarity with all of us fighting for justice. We ask that you stand with us tomorrow in Montpelier. At 11 a.m. at the State House lawn, we will be staging a counter protest of a quote, blue lives matter, end quote, military, solidarity. Thank you so much. All right, next. Next and last speaker for now is Keena from Peace and Justice Center, also a amazing member of Community Voices for Immigrant Rights. Thank you for being here today. Well, thank you everybody for being here today. To speak out against injustice is a fundamental right that we are all supposed to have. The fact that it's being, the fact that it's being encroached on is horrific, but it is not anything that is new. During the civil rights era cops hosed black people and stuck dogs on them when they demanded equality. Protesters at Standing Rock are arrested and detained for trying to protect their land. The attack on people of color who dare to advocate for ourselves is nothing new. The fact that this is happening now when, yes, people of all races, but primarily people of color is being led by people of color are advocating for simply just our right to live, our right to not die. It's nothing new. And I think that for a lot of people of color in this town and across the country, we know this and we know this to be true. The only reason that people are waking up to it now is because, thankfully, what's happening now has been a very multi-racial effort. And so now that white people are on the lines and white people are experiencing it and white people can say, oh yeah, this is real, now people care and now people wanna do something about it. And it's great because change is happening and change is important, but whether it's today or whatever actions you're doing in the future, remember that it's important to listen to people of color because it is true. When you didn't stand up for us then, they are now coming for you. And they will continue to come for you if you don't help protect and advocate for all people before it reaches your front door. Thank you, Kena. That was really powerful. All right, y'all. We're gonna march. Woo! So just a little bit about this march. We'd love it for this lovely banner to lead us down the street. We will be marching down Church Street. We have, you know, we're really hoping to reach the people who are there. This is an issue that we all need to be caring about and concerned about and fighting back against. Like Kena said, if we don't fight back now, they're coming for us all. So this banner's gonna lead the way. We'll be stopping at the intersections to hear some more powerful words from people along the way. So just be heads up about that. Maybe try and circle around. We've got marshals who'll be helping to block the streets. So we're gonna keep it safe. And then, yeah, let's do it. Ashley, a chant. Let's go.     Hey, hey, these racist men have got to go. Hey, hey, these racist men have got to go.   Hey, hey. I would like to have a better visual. If you're crowded up there, feel free to filter in. Filter in. Woo! I'm just going to say one thing about where we are. Okay. Um, because Leahy's office is in this building, Senator Leahy. And I think it's important to point out, um, with this protest and, um, that Leahy, Senator Leahy is largely responsible for bringing the ICE data center to Williston, Vermont. Whoa! And the F30. I don't like that. Later. But for now, I also want to introduce Marguerite from People for Peace and Security to come up and talk to us. And I am a member of People for Peace and Security, the Women's International Leads for Peace and Freedom, and the Champlain Valley Chapter of Amnesty International. You know, the harrowing scenes of paramilitary-style units in the streets of American cities like Portland has shocked so many of us in America. But that's kind of ironic, because while we're shocked, those who work and report on border security and immigration and human rights here and internationally will tell you that this is actually how the U.S. has and is operating around the world. A recent international poll listed the U.S. as the most feared nation in the world. And we need to own up to our own rights-violating, war-based foreign policy and its connections to militarized policing and racism here at home. We need to remember Martin Luther King Jr.'s radical call to action against what he called the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism. Since the beginning of the Trump administration, U.S. military spending has increased by more than 100 billion, almost 20 percent. And there is no other part of the federal budget that even has increased anywhere near that amount, not education, not housing, not public health. So the images in the news of police and federal agents wearing helmets and masks, toting assault rifles and riding in mine-resistant armored vehicles are not isolated incidents. They represent a long-time national trend toward militarization. Federal programs provide surplus military equipment to police departments, and they've outfitted officers with firepower that is far beyond what is necessary for their jobs to protect our community. The change in equipment actually parallels a corresponding change in attitude. Police and federal agents conceive of themselves at war with communities, rather than as public servants who are concerned about keeping communities safe. We need to advocate for a return to a less dangerous, more collective style of policing, and we should not be mistaking our police officers for soldiers. For many of us locally in Vermont, the F-35 stands for what is wrong in the U.S. in terms of militarization and capitalism. The community surrounding the Burlington International Airport boated against placing the F-35 in exorbitantly expensive, dangerous, health-damaging, environment-damaging instrument of war, and they placed it in our densely populated communities where, if there is a crash or accident, it is sure to result in death and toxicity to the environment. Our voices and our votes have not been heard or acknowledged. Instead, the military-industrial complex has won out, taking more than half of our tax dollars, dollars that we cannot spend on mental health, education, health care, environmental programs, economic justice programs, and more. Follow the money, folks. It's going to the military-industrial complex. And many individuals have told us that we should just give up the fight against the F-35. It's a done deal. But you see, that's the good thing about being an American. We don't have to give up fighting for what we believe is right. That's right. And on this 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, it's good to remember that we must fight for what we believe in and value, and of course, we must vote. In fact, we must vote out those who would support policies that deploy Gestapo-like tactics on the streets of American cities. We must vote out those who support the tear-gassing of mothers and fathers who are protecting the protesters. We must vote out those who send federal agents where local and state authorities don't want them. And we must vote out those who continue to give more and more money to the military-industrial complex. What we must vote for instead is to give money to peace and to policies that benefit people and our planet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, comrades. That was an education. Okay, so next up, we're going to have Wafiq Fawor representing the Monters for Peace in Palestine. Give him a hand. If you ask why somebody like me here, because if you think of the indigenous people, you have to think about the Palestinian, the indigenous people of Palestine. If you believe of the rights of our black and brown sisters, you have to think about the black and brown of Palestine. If you believe on the right of the migrants, our sisters and brothers on the farm, you have to think of the checkpoints the Palestinians are standing every day on their own land. My sister here reminded us of the FTA 5. It has been used for the first time on Gaza Strip. What is Gaza? It's the black and brown people of the Palestinians who are in a prison, 2 million people on the largest open air prison. I will never be free as long as our black people, our black sisters and brothers are not free. I will never be free as long as our migrants getting shot and jail on this country. I will never be free as long as our indigenous people not recognized as the people of this land. Most of your police department and the federal forces we're talking and demonstrating against today, every department had been trained on Israel. Every department including in your school, the chief of police in UVM visited Israel and studied security over there. And they have contract with Israel for their software security. If you think your tax money 3.8 billion dollars can come back and help our people over here. Instead of coming over there and killing us, for all of you, for my sisters and brothers of white people, please listen to us for a change. Listen to us. The white supremacy here is no different than the white supremacy over there. That's right. Until you recognize this, nothing will happen. Thank you. Give him a hand. Brothers, sisters and siblings, Trump is desperate. The pandemic, the recession and the uprising for black lives have undermined Trump's popularity and wrecked his credibility. Trump's polls are plummeting across the country, even in red states. To salvage his failing regime and hopes for reelection, he has turned to law and order racism and repression. He tried to send the military first, but the general said no. So now he's deployed federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security to try and crush the protests in Portland, Oregon. Now he wants to send them to Chicago, to New York, to Oakland and over a dozen more cities across the country. These thugs evoke the memories of the Gestapo. Their uniforms do not have identification. They patrol in unmarked vans. They pack military-grade weaponry. They have tear gas protesters beating them and detain them without any charge in undisclosed locations. Trump hoped this state repression would intimidate the people of Portland, but a strategy backfired. The movement has grown bigger and broader.  To protect activists from Trump's stormtroopers, dads in an incredible, eventful and creative idea showed up with leaf blowers to disperse the tear gas. And the protests have become so large and so militant that they have forced the feds to retreat to their headquarters. We must rise up against the deployment of Trump's stormtroopers everywhere. In the words of the anti-fascist movement in Spain against Franco in the 1930s, we must say, no pasaran, you shall not pass. But who are these stormtroopers? What do they usually do? They all come from the Department of Homeland Security. It was formed as part of the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. But we know that was all based on lies. It has nothing to do with terrorism and it's everything to do with empire and oil. The U.S. set up the DHS to be the domestic arm of its war abroad. It houses customs and border protection, ICE, and ICE's border tactical unit called BORTECH, which is exactly what they've deployed in Portland, Oregon. They usually police the borders, surveil, arrest, and deport undocumented immigrants, Arabs, and Muslims. Trump has turned this giant apparatus of repression against the Black Lives Matter uprising and against all of us. As Martin Luther King said during the war in Vietnam, the bombs dropped abroad, explode at home. Thankfully, the Democratic Party has protested the deployment of these paramilitary forces in Portland. But let's be honest about the Democrats. They supported the establishment of DHS. Obama used ICE to deport more immigrants than any president in U.S. history. The good Senator Leahy secured the contracts for the DHS offices and the ICE offices out in Williston. We should know those ICE offices in Williston centralize information nationally on undocumented workers and turn them over to ICE agents all across the country. Leahy has that responsibility. He is guilty of aiding and abetting Trump. And even worse, Democrats like the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, have now announced that they're going to collaborate with the deployment of the troops in Chicago. She claims she supports it for policing violent crime in her city. In other words, she will aid and abet federal police brutality carried out by Trump's stormtroopers. Luckily, other Democratic governors and mayors oppose the deployment of them. But they don't do so on anti-racist grounds. They say that their state troopers and local police can control protests and fight crime. That is no alternative. We don't want state troopers and local cops repressing our protests and policing our cities. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution. But we should know Trump won't listen to the Democrats anyway. He will deploy his stormtroopers if we do not rise up and resist. We have no choice but to follow the example of Portland and protest in bigger numbers against the federal and local police. We have a responsibility in particular in Vermont. We must protest at the ICE and DHS offices in Williston. They help Trump carry out the repression in our state and across the country. We all have a stake in this fight. That's why Community Voices for Immigrant Rights is calling for an open planning meeting to organize a demonstration out at the ICE and DHS offices in Williston.  Trump is threatening immigrants, black people, Muslims and Arabs. He is equally threatening everyone's right to assemble and protest for justice, equality and freedom. Think about it. All the money wasted on racist repression and policing at the border and across the country could go to jobs programs, could go to healthcare, could go to a grand new deal and could go to social services. That's what we all need amidst this pandemic and recession. That's why we have to unite to fight to defund and abolish DSA, DHS. We have to unite to defund and abolish ICE. We have to unite to defund and abolish the police departments in the United States. We have to build our money and pay reparations to black people and other groups oppressed in this country and internationally. And let's spend that money to put people's needs in the environment first. Jane has to protest ICE and DHS. No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA. No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA. No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA. No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA. No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA. No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA. No Trump. You're here tonight, but like Ashley said, this is just the beginning. This is not an end. And so please take the energy you're feeling right now, the things that you've learned, the new just experiences you're having today and know that we are gonna come back bigger and stronger and better next time. So please join us Monday, August 3rd, 6 p.m. There'll be a Zoom link. Check the Facebook page, it'll be there. And just wanna say that, see a lot of cool folks taking photos. So if you could drop those photos in a Facebook event or Community Voices for Urgent writes Facebook page or if you're not on Facebook, Keena at Peace and Justice Center is happy to have them in her inbox, which is program at PJCVT.org. So thank you. So thank you. And actually to get us moving.


All right, Snapchat wants to create your next AI selfie with a new feature called Dreams. Dreams, the new feature, asks you to upload a series of real life selfies. Then Dreams displays a series of eight photo packs to choose from, so Dreams is free to make once. Each additional pack is $1 per pack of eight. The Verges Alex Heath tried it out and noted that most of the images did not seem to capture his likeness, at least to compare to other apps like Lensa, for example. This is actually kind of important. Even if you only use photos of yourself, you have to opt into the fact that a person on Snapchat that you are friends with, you're giving the thumbs up that they might put you in a Dreams in the future.


We will present you today's work done by a group of us and a gender unit, Life Second Fish, across the different value chain countries. The title goes Gender Capacity Assessment and Development in 4 Life Second Fish value chain countries. These are Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nicaragua and Uganda. In this presentation, we shall be going through the importance or advantages of conducting a gender capacity assessment. We shall walk through the framework that we use to assess gender capacities of our partners. At the level of analysis, the tools we use and then I'll share with you our experience from using this methodology, some of the key findings, conclusions and what we plan to do after that. So why gender capacity assessment? As we all know, it's one of the components under the capacity development unit, but also under Life Second Fish gender strategy, capacity development is one of our key outputs. And we endeavor so much to develop the capacities of the partners we work with, but also our staff, I should say, to ensure that we all work towards the gender equality goal, one of our mandates as illeread. So we do this gender capacity assessment of our partners to ensure that we identify the gaps and these are gender capacity gaps in our programs, in our organizations. And through this gender capacity assessment, you're able to capture information that provides a starting point for working on a gender capacity development strategy. And this strategy, of course, is informed by the gaps that you have identified. And through conducting gender capacity assessment, you're able to identify opportunities to invest your resources. And when you talk about resources, it's not only financial resources. To be able to develop the capacities of an organization, we need the human resource. People who are implementing the gender related activities in an organization to help you implement the interventions that will lead to gender equity. In addition to that, we also argue that conducting a gender capacity assessment helps you identify some of the partners that you can work with to strengthen the gender initiative in the organization. And this assessment also establishes the baseline and indicators that you can use to monitor progress towards gender capacity development of your staff. And these pictures basically show some of the activities that we've done so far using our methodology. So for us to be able to identify the gender gaps in organizations, come up with some of the indicators to monitor, to be able to identify who to work with to deliver on the gender equality goal. We need a more systematic and comprehensive tool to capture that information that we can use. Last year we had a tool, but it was a very basic tool to help us assist the capacity of our partners. And early this year, we noted that actually that tool did not capture so much in the information help us come up with a more rigorous intervention. So early this year, literally commissioned a team of consultants from Transition International to work closely with the gender team in the Life Second Fish Research Program. And we work closely to develop a more comprehensive and systematic tool and methodology to help us assist in the capacities of our partners. And what this tool basically does, it helps you identify the current levels of capacities which you measure against the desired levels. And it's a three-dimensional framework that we basically drill on. And this framework, first of all, it assesses the core gender capacities. And these are the capacities that we thought were very key for an organization or an individual to be able to deliver on the gender mandate. And there are three levels of analysis which I'll walk through later on. And we have key partners whose capacities we mostly assess, including development partners and those are the partners who adopt our technologies and bring them to scale. And we also have national research partners with whom we collaborate in coming up with appropriate technologies. So going back to the core gender capacities, what we need to do as other staff or partners to be able to integrate gender in our work to close the gender gap in agriculture. One of the core capacities is gender analysis and strategic planning. So what do we assess here? Here we look at the capacity of our partners to conduct gender analysis. And when we talk about gender analysis, we are looking at the capacities to look or analyze the relationships between men and women, the power differences between men and women. And here you can ask questions such as who does what, who makes decisions on what, who owns what, but based on a systematic definition of the gender relations they're trying to tease out. And it's not all about analyzing the gender relations or the relations between men and women, but it's about the capacity to also use this information to inform your next interventions. You don't keep the results on your shelves, but you're supposed to use these results to inform our next interventions that will directly benefit both men and women that you work with. The next core gender capacities is effective partnerships and advocacy on promoting gender equity. And what do we mean by this? We don't work alone, we work with partners and if at all we are to maximize impact we need different partners who can help us deliver on this mandate. So here we assess the capacity to identify partners and not any partner, but partners with the skills or the resources to deliver on the gender mandate. That is the capacity to analyze gender but also the capacity to ensure that the interventions will increase men and women's access to and control resources. Then advocacy, do these partners have the capacity or the materials that help them advocate for gender equity or influence government to integrate gender in the policies to ensure that both men and women benefit directly from the interventions in place. Then the other core gender capacities is gender responsive programming, budgeting and implementing. And here we look at the gender responsiveness of the different interventions that different organizations have in place. To what extent are they gender responsive and when we talk about gender responsiveness are they addressing the interests for the needs of men and women. And are there resources, for example, budgets specifically allocated to gender related interventions. Then the other core capacity is knowledge management and gender responsive M and E. And here we look at the capacity to collect sex disaggregated data, use this data, analyze it and use it to inform interventions but also monitor the impact of your interventions on both men and women. They could be possible negative impacts but you have the capacity to do that to collect this data and monitor your interventions and report on the gender impacts. And gender leadership, here we look at the capacity for example of the leadership or the leaders in the organization to guide the team, guide the staff to deliver on your vision and this is the gender equality vision and the leaders have the capacity to do that. How about the commitment to gender equity the commitment to hire women to ensure that there is equity within the organization your gender balance within the organization and the last core gender capacity that we look at is innovation in gender responsive approaches and these are basically approaches that we use to increase women's access to and control resources and these are approaches that also help us transform some of the constraining norms that hinder women's access to and control resources. So those are the key core capacities that we assess and these are capacities that we think that an organization or at least an individual should be able to have or should have to be able to deliver on the gender equity goal. So we do this assessment on this is the next slide. And this next slide basically presents the different levels of analysis. We do not look at individuals alone but look at the organization as a whole and also the environment around us. When you're looking at the individuals who assess the skills, the knowledge and their motivation to integrate gender in their work and individuals work for organizations of course but within the organization how do the internal policies, procedures or arrangements enable individuals or hinder them to deliver on their mandate. How about the enabling environment which is kind of beyond us at national level? How do the policies in place or regulations enable us or enable an institution to deliver on the gender equality goal? So those are the levels of analysis that we normally do analysis on. Now using the methodology that we developed together with Transition International we're able to carry out assessments in four value chain countries. Ethiopia being one of them, Tanzania, Nicaragua and Uganda as mentioned before. And in total we assessed 24 development partners and research partners and these are partners that were strategically selected based on their commitment to gender within the value chain but also the active involvement in the value chain. And the details of these can be found in our reports who we really assist in the different countries. Now how is this methodology structured? We use the framework that I mentioned to you before but for us to capture detailed information that will enhance analysis at the different levels we use three tools. One of them I would call them tools or methodology one of them is a focus group discussion and this is basically the starting point when trying to understand the capacities within an organization. And here to be able to conduct a focus group discussion that will give you rich information that will give information that will help you clearly understand the capacities within an organization and the opportunities or constraints within the organization who invite staff and this could be at different levels middle or high level staff but to select them strategically to ensure that all the members present can hear all their views freely. So it's normally a maximum of about let's say eight people and it's a guided focus group discussion using a checklist which has systematic questions and normally it's facilitated by a gender expert truly has a clear understanding of gender issues in an organization and as you walk through this tool partners normally assess their capacities and give themselves scores based on how they think their capacities are developed at organizational level. Now after the focus group discussion we select individuals normally it depends on how big the focus group discussion is but individuals further assess their capacities and these are the capacities that we talked about before in the framework the key core capacities and we have forms to do that we have the Google Forms this can be done online but the forms can also be printed out and have partners fill out the hard copies but researchers need to fill out this information online to be able to analyze the data then we have the key format interviews and basically these key formats give us information from broader perspective at national level and these key formats also have to be strategically selected because you want who will give you thorough information about the enabling environment the policies in place and how these are helping different organizations or staff to integrate gender in their work and as I said before addressing the capacities there is a scale 1 to 5 1 being the least and 5 being the highest and when you score a 5 it means your gender capacity is fully developed and normal capacity development is actually needed you are good to go this next slide gives you kind of a snapshot of what we use to key in this course each core gender capacity has different parameters that partners normally discuss and gauge themselves so on my extreme is it extreme left we have the parameters as you see A2.1 that's a parameter that will help us assess the organization's capacity to conduct gender analysis and plan strategically the middle column is where we record our scores and the last column is where we document the discussion it's very important to capture the qualitative data and these are the discussions that go on as partners assess their capacities you can't rely on the scores alone because they may not tell you much but what is behind that score is what you really need to be able to come up with good indicators but also areas where you're interviewing so what are some of the key results from conducting gender capacity assessments of our partners in the four value chain countries as I said we did the assessment of the environmental level in video and organizational level so from that assessment we noticed that the governments of Nicaragua and Ethiopia have relatively well developed in the policies and these are policies that basically guide the nation as a whole but also the institutions to implement interventions that increase men and women's access to resources but also ensure that women who are disempowered are empowered to improve their livelihoods by accessing better opportunities available at national level and we also noticed that with this good enabling environment with good policies the partners in Nicaragua scored kind of better developed capacities compared to the partners in the three countries Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia and of all the four countries we noticed that partners in Ethiopia had kind of the least developed capacities we also noticed that development partners scored relatively higher on all the core capacities compared to the research partners it was kind of a striking finding which we didn't expect but actually it is development partners we thought had better developed capacities because they are more exposed to other organizations to work with other organizations that deliver the gender mandate so in one or another their skills are enhanced then we also noticed that there was kind of interest, high interest and commitment to support gender and leadership and this kind of scored higher and this is not the actual capacity of the leadership team to guide staff to deliver on the gender mandate but it was just having the commitment to ensure that there is maybe gender equity within an organization but not the actual capacity to lead and guide staff to deliver on that vision and then what scored least was the capacity to apply or implement gender innovative innovative approaches and these are approaches that matter transforming the norms or attitudes that constrain women from accessing and controlling resources so this graph basically highlights the overall kind of level of capacities that we have among us all the partners that we assist in the four value change countries and here of course you see Ethiopia with the gray bar scoring a bit lower and Uganda but Nicaragua really stands out clearly that the capacities were more developed and from the case of Ethiopia to just give you kind of a more detailed analysis of how we how partners scored again is all the other capacities we noticed that at organizational level of course the involvement partners score slightly higher compared to the national research partners and at individual level we also noticed that the individual capacities were slightly higher compared to organizational capacities and I will not go without saying that if at all you dig deeper into the analysis you notice that different organizations scored differently on all these capacities these are kind of generalized but in look at how different organizations scored in the different countries you come up with different results some are strong in one area others are weak in another area and that helps you target your interventions so in conclusion within and between partners in the four countries we noticed that there are differences in their capacities in that you can't really come up with the one size fits all intervention you need to understand where the weaknesses are for a particular partner and then develop tailor made intervention to suit the needs of that partner and because the conditions also vary across all the countries we argue that actually there should be partner specific recommendations and overall development partners of course go slightly higher and we need supportive institutions to help us really deliver on this mandate to be able to narrow the gender inequalities in agriculture and these are basically we will talk about institutions we are looking at the policies in place the regulation plus also the procedures within organizations and the commitment of our leaders to gender equity and what's our way forward after conducting this assessment we plan to share our results with our partners particularly those who participated in this assessment Tanzania has already shared the results with the partners they went ahead to further prioritize their intervention areas the capacity that they thought was really very important to them to develop at the critical moment and we are yet to do that in Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Uganda and after that we will design and implement country specific interventions but as I said before we have to look at which partner is strong in what area and we look in what area and they will drill on that to enhance their capacities and after that we will be measuring the outcomes of the impact of these interventions and that's where our research component will come in and we have materials in place that you can refer to if I told you interested in this methodology and I had more members on this slide but of course we acknowledge partners that we work with we have staff from Mikada, Siat who helped us implement its assessment but we also have colleagues who left Ileri who had actively engaged in this entire process right from the beginning people like Diana I think she started this we had our research technicians who left Millicent and Violet and this really helped us a lot Thank you


What's up, everyone? It's your girl, Kenzie here from Layton Sports Guards and I am ripping a personal box here for Kennis W. We've got one 21-22 Panini Obsidian Soccer Hobby. All right, best of luck. Here we go. These boxes are $3.99 like a great value there for Obsidian. For the hits coming out of these boxes too, not a bad deal at all. $3.99 and that is your ship price. This shipping is free internationally. This one feels thick. Up first, we have Rookie of Respidori from Italy out of 105. Giacomo Respidori. And we've got Purple from Watford of Tuccio Hernandez. On the purple edge to 30. Equinox die cut of Neil Moppe from Brighton Hope. 12 out of 60. Nice Equinox die cut there. Then we've got out of 149. Cutting edge patch of Dendokner. Dendokker. Dendonker. Out of Belgium. We've got from Real Madrid out of 149. Rodrigo on the triple pink patch there. Trifecta materials. Nice. That's sick. Um, there was a bunch crumb. There was a lot. 98 out of 149. I'm not sure of the exact top card. Caleb, are you in here? What was the top chaser for all neck? Caleb did an awesome job. He ripped all of those last night. Him and Sam. And we've got to 20 Volcanic Catch Auto from Man City. Ruben Diaz. Ruben Diaz. Oh, yeah, though. I mean, I feel like top is usually pretty good with expired redemptions more than Canini. So I don't know. I don't want a 2019 Bowman Sterling. And nice one here. Out of 149. Another Volcanic Catch Auto this time from Spain. A Pedri. Wow, these obsidian boxes have been super nice today. Congrats on these. Wow, another great box. Two patch autos. There you go, Kinesis W. Thanks again for hopping in and we'll get these right out to you.