Excellent. We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. So welcome back to the next episode, episode 131 of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with myself Jackie Jones and the wonderful Mr Bob Cook. And what we're going to be talking about this week is are some feelings more acceptable than others in the therapy room? Oh, what a wonderful topic. And when you said 131, it was like counting down to Christmas. Yes. Yeah. We're nearly the Christmas. We're going to get there and we used to count down at Christmas. So when you said 131, that's what even mind me off. My grandson does that. How many more sleeps is it? He asks, he works it out by how many sleeps are left? I don't know how many sleeps are to the podcast we're doing, but 131 is a good topic. Good, sorry, good number as is this topic. Yes. Are some feelings more acceptable than others in the therapy room? What do you think? I'd like to say no. Okay. Well, that's it. That's the end of the podcast. That's it. Until next time. Yeah, I think it's no and yes. Yeah, me too. That's why there was a long pause after it because I'm saying I'd like to think no, but I'm sure that there are ones where I'm thinking yes. Okay. So I'm a developmental psychotherapist as you all know. So I always think, always think about how the past informs the present. Yeah. How our script gets paid out in the present. And it's the same here. Yes. So when you were brought up Jackie, were the feelings which were more acceptable than others? Yes. A display to express. There was pretty much one that was okay to show and that was happy. Anything else wasn't that good. Yes. So in your household, so well in my house, I certainly what could not be shown his anger at all. And fear was another one that I wasn't okay to show. So, so you would have got recognition for so if this is right, I don't make assumption, but recognition for showing or expressing certain feelings, but not others. Absolutely. Yeah. And that was the same for me as well. Yeah. I think it's the same for most people. Yeah. And therefore, I think therapist themselves have their own scripts.  But still, I think if you've been programmed a certain way, then unconsciously, you may promote certain feelings and not others. Yeah. According to the script and the same for clients who come in. An interesting thing I always thought about as a therapist, is what emotions were missing from the clients repertoire if you like. Yeah. So if they were always happy, I'd always think, oh, other emotions have gone. Now, very, very rarely was that the case. But if it was, it nearly also, of course, was a defense systems. If somebody was angry all the time, they know what's happened to sadness and fear and XXX. So, and I'd usually pointed out to clients, by the way, whereas I understand the way you're expressing some of these feelings. And I've been thinking about maybe some are missing emotions here. Yeah. I sometimes get the feeling with clients, not all clients, but some clients. I get a sense that they're angry or frustrated, but I'm not seeing it. So I will quite often ask a client in the early days, if you get angry at me, how will I know? Good question. Because I think it's a situation where I'm not sure if they would authentically show me anger or regression. So, yeah. And let's take that as an example. And it's a very common one that you're talking about that. The clients have usually programmed themselves through their own script to not express the anger or aggression that you're talking about because it's not being the way, you know, it's being how the family or origin or significant people have scripted them. So then when they come to see you, they're following that script. Yeah. That's very common, what you're talking about. And of course, you know, a really important question to ask clients is, what was the common feeling that you could express when you're uncharted? And they'll say X. So then you know that B was not only not allowed, but you probably wouldn't see it in the therapy room. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, again, what I do is to let them know that, you know, all emotions are okay. All feelings are okay. It's what we do with them that can sometimes cause problems. For me, anger is a really good emotion because it motivates me to make a change. You know, so again, talking about different emotions and how we can express them and what they can do, I think helps clients. You're absolutely right. Full stop. Oh, I was waiting for a but then. And I think most, most clients project onto their therapist. Some sort of important caretaker figure. So their permissions or what they think and feel so important to the client. So they often project onto the therapist. Well, this is not acceptable. Yeah. So if you ask most clients, well, you can experiment with it and say, oh, we could even talk about now probably better. How many clients actually express anger towards you or express frustration, anger, irritability with the therapist? I probably will say not many at the beginning. Yeah. Maybe as they feel safer, they dare to. And then you talk to many clients have been out there in their therapy journey saying, well, I never did. Yeah. So when you talk about what's acceptable, it's too positive. One is what the clients projects onto the therapist as what is acceptable or not is often X. And then therapist's own history, which unconsciously plays out around what's acceptable or not acceptable. Yeah. Two sides to it. Yeah.  You take Christmas, for example. So different therapists take Christmas different ways. So not many therapists work on Christmas Day. Yeah. And many therapists work up to Christmas Eve and may even come back in between Christmas and New Year. But you might get some therapist to expect their clients or get unhappy actually, if the clients are not joyful over Christmas. Interesting. I'll tell you why that is. And it's often modelled that way. In other words, when the client goes into that type of therapist's room, they'll be 10 to one. There'll be Christmas decorations up. There'll be, I won't say far as a Christmas tree, but there'll be certainly a lot of jewellery. And they will probably, if you explore further into the therapist's history, they probably have had Christmases where jewellery and decorations and everything else was the norm. In fact, dictated that way. Yeah. So they don't expect their clients. Then you get some therapists who have the opposite types of Christmases. So they don't have any decorations up. They don't expect their clients at all to be happy. And they are then exploring what Christmas meant for them because they expect and project onto the clients that they had a miserable time of Christmas. Again, it just never ceases to amaze me how the different layers that there are with all of us, you know what I mean, that you don't even pay attention to. My personal history around Christmas, my mum, she's in her 80s bless her and she doesn't like Christmas. There we are. Yeah. Her favourite saying is something bad always happens at Christmas. And I once asked her, how many Christmases have you had that have been bad? And her answer was, I can remember this one. And it's like one out of 80 of Christmases was a bad one. And yet it's overshadowed every other Christmas that she's ever had. So our history. Yeah. Script that takes how we are around Christmas. Yeah. And often it's the same with feelings. Our scripted takes as therapists and as clients as what we see acceptable in terms of expression of feelings in our history. Yeah. Now, I hope, you know... Because they're all so sorry, Rob, for butting it. That when a certain feeling is expressed that we feel compelled or the urge to respond in a certain way as well. Because of our past. Yes. That if somebody's upset or scared or angry, whatever it is, that again, because of our own scripted stuff, that we feel compelled to respond or react in a certain way. Yeah. I think most therapists are people who come to be therapists, social workers, probation workers. They come from often a compulsive rescuing place and they need to have their own therapy to reflect on that and at least understand that. So they don't spontaneously be driven by their own history. Yeah. Which again is something that I check in with clients. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Otherwise the sorts of feelings, the sorts of feelings that they would see compulsive caretakers or what I've just talked about here, would almost, how can I put this, be looking for what is acceptable is the real angst, you know, what's hidden behind the sort of happiness or facade or whatever it is. It could be really after feelings, which perhaps sadness, fear, anger, et cetera. But they may in that search, by the way, and not consciously, not consciously, and this isn't always happy the case anyway, doesn't give permission for the client to actually be joyful or happy because those things are not what the person that they're searching or, you know, encourage the client to get to. Yeah. Which again is really interesting, Bob, because the emotions that we all have, but you wouldn't maybe expect a therapy session to be joyful and humorous and enjoyable. There's a certain, you know, thought that it needs to be deep and dark and meaningful and every conversation has to take us to somewhere. That's right. And that's, you're perfectly correct. I don't know the percentage of people who came through my doors had traumatic histories, but probably most difficult times. And so I can understand that. Oh, picture you've just painted. And at the same time, to not give permissions for the client to come out of the toilet bowl for a year once. I love that phrase. See the light and spread, you know, to feel the sun on their backs. Yeah. The great shame. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Again, it's a really interesting topic that, you know, would they feel like they've got the money's worth if they haven't gone to those toilet bowl places? I don't know. I think it's okay going there. I'm not saying don't go there because most clients have had difficult histories. So I understand that. However, if the therapist, you know, unconditioned, I'm sorry, unconsciously or whatever it is, keeps the client too long in those places. Yeah. I don't think there's much, there's not much space for relief. And for, there may not be a permission for the client to take a break or to see the daylight. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that would be a shame because it would mean there'd be no lightness. The clients wouldn't feel the sun on their backs either. Yeah. There will always be that sort of intensity to the therapy sessions, which in one way I understand, and another way I always like to bring some lightness or idea to the therapy sessions I have with clients. So it would start, if it was a group, always start the group with good news. Yeah. Something good, individually the same actually. Yeah. So even though we go to intense places, I'd always be thinking around, well, let's make sure there's some lightness here somewhere. And sometimes there may not be the space for that, and that's all right. And we still need to promote, I think, the exploration of joy somewhere in this. Yeah. Yeah, because to be a well-rounded human being, we've got to be able to express the whole rafter of emotions. Like you touched on it earlier on about giving our clients permission to explore them all. And for some clients, it potentially is a safe space for them to explore and to try out emotions that maybe they've not been able to show in other places. I can remember in our training, and when we were doing role-play or whatever it is, that people, I've done it with clients myself, but they've thrown a cushion up the corridor and, you know, I've fired them up even to let go of whatever it is that they're holding on to. No. Yeah, look, what you've just said I totally agree with. I mean, that's why a successful focus has to provide that safe harbor. Yeah. Otherwise, there's no way for a person to experiment or to feel safe with expressing some of these feelings that they were perhaps never allowed to express and to have a weak corrective experience is so important. No. Which again kind of links into the importance of therapists having their own therapy to work through whatever it is that they, because we've all got a past, you know, and if somebody's showing anger or frustration brings up something for us as therapists, then we need to be able to work through that. I agree with you, definitely. Emotions are complicated and deep-rooted and what we feel is acceptable to show and not, you know, and then it goes into, for me, that whole realm of guilt and shame when we do show certain emotions that are out of our script or comfort zone. Yeah, you're right. And my wife would, I don't know what you say for the next sentence I'm going to say. I know my daughter would say, but I watch a lot of reality TV programs and people say, why do you watch these, Bob? I mean, the most, let's say, they're the most facile things and you're supporting this and you're supporting that. That's all true at one level. Maybe equally important to guilty pleasure by mind. But what I like about watching all these things is exactly what we're talking about here. And that is how the scripts are played out and enacted out with a collection of, you know, people. Now, there might be elected collection of people and it's interesting. Now, that makes sense because that's why I'm a therapist. The problem with it is some of the political stuff I don't really agree with at all, so I shouldn't really support watching of these things. A therapeutic point of view and curiosity and why I became a therapist, it all makes sense. But you will see on those programs exactly what you just talked about here. And that is what they feel they're allowed to express and what they feel they aren't allowed to express and what feelings are in inverted commas okay and what feelings aren't inverted commas okay. So they're fascinating programs to watch from that point of view. I should, I was a politics lecturer at one time in my life so really I shouldn't watch half of them. So people who are listening to this podcast please just forgive me on that sense. I think it's good. I can remember when I was going through my training looking at particularly the soaps and you know looking at like a drama triangle and who was the rescuer and who was the persecutor and the really good, you know as a people watching experiment to work out different ego states and everything. I was before a chemotherapist anyway I was always a people watcher. Yeah. And I really, from a point of view for lots of reasons by the way but not just perhaps our psychotropic ones but I always you know got very curious I think. I've always been very curious which is I think a very good quality for therapists to have. Yeah. I think for me as well with feelings you know one of my personality types is that I'm a bit paranoid so it's really important for me to be able to work out what people are feeling to know whether it's safe or not safe in certain situations. So I've got a bit of a radar sometimes with you know if a person's not being congruent with what they're feeling and what they're showing body language wise. So I think sometimes I can challenge my clients on I'm getting a sense that you're feeling X, Y or Z but I'm not seeing that what's going on. Yeah. Yeah well that's a good, that's a good gift to have. Sometimes. Well I was always a bit but I think it's useful for you to be able to call on that. Yeah. Yeah. It just opens up another topic of conversation in the therapy room I think around feelings and what's acceptable and what's not. I think they're marvellous discussions to have and if you don't have them it's a shame so that's great. Yeah. Well Bob thank you for that. What we're going to be looking at next time is working with parental interjects in the therapy room. So we've worked at Pound, we've done a podcast on the Pound interview, we've done a podcast on, we've done a podcast in this probably not, even if we haven't it's a really good one to talk about. Yes. Well you know as a... Well we might change our minds before then Bob knowing you. Thank you for all these titles and this that the other. You know and I probably say it's a hundred times so there we go but I think a lot of this, a lot of all the things we talk about may, does or may go back to scripts and how they're enacted out in the present. So I am a great believer in script theory which is again what we're talking about here and we will be talking about the next one. We are stepping back from that. It is a really, really important podcast so I do I do hope people come and listen to us. As we head to Christmas. Yes. Talking about parental interjects, what about Father Christmas? Well there you go. You always say that that's part of therapy indeed. What sort of parental interject do we have around Father Christmas? Interesting. That's in my big white beard. Yes, yes, definitely. We might need to wear hats on the run up to Christmas Bob. Until next time. Yeah, bye bye. Bye. With another episode.


My name is David Bode and I'll be the facilitator of this evening. It's a 6.30 and to respect the time our guests have given us and to ensure we have opportunity to address everything that we have prepared, we'll begin now. Others will likely enter and perhaps our fifth candidate. Please note that we're recording this event. It will be posted for public viewing on the YouTube channel of Vermont Interfaith Action. So we have most all our candidates here. Let's get started. Okay we've got the recording. Welcome everyone to the Vermont Interfaith Action Candidate Forum for Democrats for the Chittenden Central State Senate District. My name is David Bode. I'm a member of the Burlington Presbyterian Church and of the Economic Opportunities Wing of Vermont Interfaith Action. I'll be your emcee for tonight. This is a forum of opportunity for candidates to address their perspectives, priorities, and plans regarding issues that people of faith and congregations involved in Vermont Interfaith Action value. The state legislature sets policy. It creates regulation and guidelines and allocates funding on a host of issues. State senators from every district have considerable impact on the lives of all the moderates. We hope this evening provides our candidates a satisfactory opportunity to share their views with their constituents and that it provides voters with good insight into who each of these candidates is and how they might be a state senator. So candidates, thank you for joining us and offering your thoughts tonight. I would like to first introduce Pam Lasser to give our credential. Pam. Thank you David. Good evening everyone. My name is Pam Lasser. I'm a member of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, their racial justice team and also a member of Vermont Interfaith Action's Racial Justice Economic Opportunities Committee. Vermont Interfaith Action is a coalition of more than 70 congregations and individual persons of faith who work together to affect systemic change around social justice issues facing our communities and our state. Altogether we represent about 16,000 people in Vermont. Our goal in Vermont Interfaith Action via across all our issues is to improve the quality of life for all Vermonters. Bringing the values of justice and compassion to the public square as our faith traditions guide us. Thank you for joining us. I'd now like to introduce Lucy Samaro to recognize who is here tonight by conducting our roll call. Lucy. Hi, my name is Lucy Samara and I am a member of First Congregational Church of Burlington, United Church of Christ, and I serve on DIA's local organizing group focused on public safety. Now this is a really fun part of tonight. So when you hear your community of faith or your town listed, we want you to celebrate. Make some noise and bring some joy into our gathering. So first Christ's Presbyterian in Burlington, Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Christ Episcopal Church in Montpelier, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, All Souls Interfaith Gathering, College Street Congregational Church, First Congregational Church of Burlington, and interested voters from organizations or other towns throughout the county. That's all of us. We're ready to go. All right. I'd now like to introduce Karen Chatfield to discuss the format and expectations of tonight's forum. Karen. Good evening. My name is Karen Chatfield and I'm a member of All Souls Interfaith Gathering in Shelburne. I serve in DIA's groups on affordable housing and homelessness and racial justice and the economic opportunities. We have structured this forum to be as straightforward as possible. Each candidate will have one minute to make an opening statement. Following that, they'll each be asked the same six questions by our presenters. We sent them the questions ahead of time so that there are no surprises and to give them their best opportunity to provide a thorough thoughtful and concise response. Each candidate will have 90 seconds to answer each question. Lucy is our timekeeper and she will help remind each speaker when they are approaching time and again when they have reached it. If the answer goes on beyond 90 seconds, Lucy will announce time out loud. We promise to keep our allotted time for this forum. This means there will probably not be time for any questions from the floor. If you have questions and we do not have time to ask them tonight, we encourage you to write them down and we will provide ways to contact the candidates following the call. Please note too that if you write anything in the chat, it will only go to the administrators of this Zoom call. The general chat has been disabled so that everyone can stay focused on the presenters. We ask it possible that all candidates remain unmuted for the duration so as to avoid any unexpected technical delays. We also ask that aside from the person asking each question, everyone else stays muted throughout. After all the prepared questions have been answered, each candidate will then have one minute to make any closing remarks. Again, Lucy will serve as timekeeper. Thank you. So it's now time to hear from our candidates. We've asked them each to make brief opening remarks. We ask that these be kept to one minute and we will introduce our candidates in alphabetical order starting this time. So Phillip Baruth, please offer opening remarks. Thank you and thank you for having me, everyone. I have been working with Vermont Interfaith Action for some years now, originally through Debbie who was in the state senate, but over the last couple of years because I've been on the Judiciary Committee, I have found myself working actually very closely with some of you on issues like life without parole among other things. So from those encounters, I know what some of your concerns are and I hope to get into them tonight. The other place that I am familiar working with you is from the Appropriations Committee angle because your group I think is laudable in its efforts to move money to needy recipients. So in those two ways I've come to know you, I hope you come to know me and we can get into the specifics when we go further. Thank you. Thank you, Phil. When do we have candidate Don Ellis? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Some opening remarks up to a minute from you, Don. Oh, unfortunately, we can't hear you. Your Jack may be interfering with the sound. Play with that and then we'll come back. Why don't we do that? We'll circle back to you, Don. Experiment, if you will, with unplugging your Jack, perhaps. That has sometimes blocked audio. Then let's go to Martine Gulick. Opening remarks, please. Thank you so much, David. And thank you all for making this evening possible. I so appreciate being here and I apologize that I have to leave a little bit early. I love the word interfaith. I love what it means. I love what it holds, dear. I personally come from a large French-Canadian family, born into a French-Canadian family. My mom and both my parents left the Catholic Church as part of a quiet revolution in the 60s and 70s. And so I was without a spiritual home for quite some time. And then when we had our young children, I was welcomed into the first Unitarian Universalist Society, which was fantastic. My kids attended preschool at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue and as part of the Burlington School Board, we do work to assure that our students in the district went Ramadan every year. When we have Ramadan, they have a safe space to go and practice their fasting. So those are the kinds of things that I find important and I hold dear. And now I don't really attend church, but I do. Okay, that's that. I will stop. All right. Thank you. I recognize Earhart-Nanke for a minute of opening comments. Thanks, David, and thanks, everyone, for giving us this opportunity to talk to you. I have also worked for many years with Debbie and Melissa, both when Debbie was in the Senate and with many of your members. Housing has been commendably one of the priorities for minor faith action for many years. And I, as some of you know, have worked for years as an affordable housing advocate for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and worked on homelessness issues as well. For those who don't know me, I've lived and worked in Chittany County for over 40 years now. In addition to my work with the Affordable Housing Coalition, I also represented the city of Burlington as its legislative liaison for a number of years. And most recently, for last year and a half, I've worked for Senator Bernie Sanders as an outreach representative and housing policy advisor. And I'll note sadly that Reverend Sengus just passed away. My wife, Sydney, and I were married by Reverend Sengus over 40 years ago. Thank you. Thank you. Turning now to our last candidate before we circle back to Dawn, if we can, Tanya Vohovsky. Thank you so much. Thank you for hosting the forum. I really appreciate the Vermont Interfaith Actions focused on examining and taking action on systemic issues without addressing the root causes of everything we're facing. We're never going to do anything more than prop up exclusionary and convoluted systems that we rely on now. This is one of the core reasons I'm running for Senate. We need to expand the voices represented at all levels of government. Change doesn't happen without new ideas that will move things forward. I'm dedicated to building a stronger, more just, more sustainable, and resilient Vermont community. Serving as a state representative has affirmed to me that we've got a lot more work to do. I grew up in a single parent working class home, and I didn't see anyone like me or anyone fighting for the things that were important to my family. And working as a school social worker, I continue to see that the daily impacts of this lack of representation and how that has led to systems that simply don't work for a large part of our state. As a senator, I'm going to continue to be a strong, outspoken voice for Vermonters struggling with the status quo, and we'll continue to fight for intersectional, economic, social, racial, and climate justice. I've spent years as an advocate, as a social worker, and now as a state representative, helping people navigate these systems, and I look forward to continuing to do so as your next senator. Thank you. Dawn Ellis, we're coming back to you. I'm wondering, aha, all right. So opening comments up to a minute, Dawn. Thank you so much.  I'm on the road and taking advantage of our infrastructure through our libraries right now to join you from afar. And I think it's really important to understand that as a Vermont Human Rights Commissioner, I see this not as a problem, but an opportunity to understand what are the hurdles that regular Vermonters face when the world has gone digital and left so many behind from a moment of getting lost in a chat room to not having the technology.  I believe you invest early and often upstream in the people, in the places we connect, the families we build, and the planet. And I stand strong running for Senate as someone who brings both national and local expertise. Thanks for having me. Thank you. It's time now to get into the questions prepared by our local organizing committees. As a reminder, you'll each be asked the same question by one of our presenters and given up to 90 seconds to answer. And our timekeeper will remind you when your time is up, as she has been so efficiently doing up to now. So I'll turn this over to Virginia for our first question. My name is Virginia Monkowitz, and I'm a member of Christchurch Presbyterian. One of our organizing committees focuses on affordable housing and homelessness. Currently, there are over 2,000 Vermonters who are being sheltered by the state in motels using federal dollars. What are your ideas on how to house these adults and children when the money runs out in the spring? And we'll start with Phil. Thanks. I want to first say these are not my ideas. In the Senate, you work in many different policy areas. You can only be the policy leader in a few of them. I'm not a policy leader in housing. And I want to just give a hat tip to Earhart who is. But Champlain Housing has been doing great work buying motels, rehabbing them, and creating more space for formerly homeless people. They're also doing something interesting in Shelburne where they're moving from Harbor Place, which had been housing people in the temporary motel program to turning those into permanent living arrangements with kitchens, etc. And so in that way, they've used the government COVID money to its best effect. In other words, keeping people off the street during the pandemic, but then not stopping there and kicking them out of the program, but turning those places into permanent housing on a kind of sequential basis. So one hotel becomes permanent. The other becomes temporary. Hopefully that then becomes permanent. So funding organizations like Champlain Housing and keeping that money flowing rather than throwing up our hands when the federal money runs out, that's what I recommend to begin with. Thank you very much, Phil. Dawn. Thank you. I've been talking to a number of people who are experiencing housing insecurity on the campaign trail. I think it's really important to hear from them directly about what works and what doesn't work. So I've spent a lot of time late nights in the communities that gather in parks and on commons and really listening. And I hear the many reasons that you experience housing instability. It can be anything from a painful eviction because your apartment has been bought, which was the case of the person today, to a family turning their back on you at a time you're needed and having no place to go. And so we actually need to be thoughtful that different solutions are needed for different people. Families have been very clear in this community of people who are experiencing instability that they need kitchens. They need continuity to be found in order to get that job that is stable to be found and consistently in a place is one of the most important things. And so I am talking with people about how housing is really healthcare. And we are okay spending a lot of money on healthcare. So if we just go upstream from this idea that housing is a if you like and maybe you can have it thing to this is the kind of thing that makes everything else work better for families, for individuals, for people who have addiction. So I think we reprioritize completely where it is in our governmental support. Thank you very much Dawn. Martine. Thank you for the question. Yes. So I think we all can speak to the fact that houselessness, homelessness is a very complex issue. We've heard that over and over again. It comes with a variety of causes. And there are so many individual stories to every person who is experiencing houselessness. But mental illness and drug addiction are certainly two aspects that keep showing up over and over again. So whatever we decide to do for permanent housing, the motels have been an adequate temporary fix. But in terms of permanent housing, we have to make sure that we have a continuum of care and wraparound services that come with the housing. We've had some great success in this country, for example, in places like Houston with providing, simply providing homes for folks and paying rents. And because these folks are in safe and secure dwellings, it is much easier to target the wraparound services to these folks on an individual basis. In terms of affordable housing, we need to look at increasing density in towns and in urban areas. This is proven to work. I really think in a way as Americans, we also really have to start looking hard at this idea of not being, you know, I don't want to see my neighbor.  That causes problems, as well as the idea of NIMBYism, not wanting construction and housing developments in our backyard. These are things that I think we need to look hard at during this crisis. And I will stop there. Thank you very much, Martin. Erard. Thanks for the question. And thanks to VIA and its members, all of you for your tireless advocacy for affordable housing over the years. So as, you know, we've partnered on the struggles at the State House to get more affordable housing for Vermonters. I was one of the folks that worked for years to preserve the emergency housing program that allowed the thousands of folks that have been sheltering safely during COVID in motels to actually exist. If we didn't have that as a basis, then we would have probably seen significant numbers of unhoused Vermonters contracting COVID and possibly dying. Vermont is one of the few states that has done really well in terms of its homeless population, saving folks from the tragedy of COVID-19. We have chronically underfunded housing for decades. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is our primary vehicle for creating new affordable housing. We need to fund it fully. We have lost the opportunity for literally over a thousand units of housing as a result of that underfunding. We need to continue to fund housing first so that when folks do run out of money in the federal dollars in the motels, that we have housing first available for them to provide the supportive services that folks need in order to live independently in affordable housing, as well as rental assistance. I'll stop there. Thanks. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Antonia. Thank you so much. When the federal money runs out to fund the emergency housing, we have no other ethical option than to continue to house people. And I've been an outspoken advocate for extending emergency housing throughout the pandemic. Going forward, we can and must make this a budget priority. However, it's not a long-term solution and the living conditions in many instances are not acceptable. We don't have enough shelter space and we need to make investments in permanent affordable rental housing as well as permanent affordable home ownership opportunities and move away from a transitional model that is both more expensive and less stable for those living in transitional housing and motels. However, we're not simply going to build our way out of this issue. Statistically, over 50 percent of people experiencing homelessness are working full-time, which says we also need to invest in an economy that actually works for everyday Vermonters by raising the minimum wage to a livable wage, taxing out of state vacant homes to help ensure that all Vermonters have the ability to have a first home and a roof over their head. We also need to look at innovative solutions that use publicly owned land to put in small, affordable, or even free rental units to anyone who needs it. And we need to invest in affordable home ownership that not end to allow the conversion of affordable rentals into affordable home ownership opportunities. Shutting people out of being able to buy a home that is affordable keeps people trapped out of the wealth market and they are thus more likely to experience generational poverty. Thank you very much. Marty, are you ready for question two? Are you talking to me or no? Oh, because Marty's my nickname. That's why I got confused. Good to know. Can you unmute Marty? Okay, there we go. My name is Marty Roberts. I'm a member of Christ's Episcopal Church in Montpelier and also part of the Organizing Committee on Homelessness and Affordable Housing. So I have a question here. What measures will you champion to ensure that those who need the affordable housing that is being built now with federal funds get access to it? And how will you ensure that those who need supports to stay in this housing receive the help that they need? And we'll start with Dawn. Thank you. Well, I think it's the opportunity to put into place infrastructure that's communication and listening infrastructure because these are not all the housing that is needed. And it's really about relationship building to be able to connect with the people who are at their moment of need and actually be trusted to serve them well. So what I'm finding is the kind of people who are willing to be out after 10 p.m. and spending time where people who have housing and stability gather if they have no roof over their head that is a home for that evening. We kind of need to privilege the off-hour person. So in the same way that we thought about healthcare connects needing people to be a conduit. So too we could use conduits to the opportunities that are available who aren't just nine to five workers but who might be the night shift workers who are out and really making relationships and listening and getting to know the people who are in their neighborhood of service. And so understanding both the opportunities are but what the needs are so that they can begin to address the long term relationship and the government trust needs to be taken care of too because there have been uses of power. As a Reminding Rights Commissioner I see it behind the scenes all the time. So we're going to have to shine light on places that have otherwise been pretty much closed. Say look, we will clean up our act. We will hold us accountable to provide a new service to the trust. Thank you, Don. And next is Martine. Thank you. Yes, as I said earlier and I'll repeat, you know, this is a question that is extremely complex. We do have fair housing laws and income eligibility thresholds in our state. They need to be in place and they need to be followed. And I would say revisited frequently as we know in this current economic environment with inflation, I think that threshold may change over time and it's important that we revisit it. Again, wrap around services are crucial and the Champaign Housing Trust has done a great job of hiring social workers and having them on staff. That's a great way to again provide services to folks who need it and really target the services on an individual basis. The incredible lack of labor right now is exacerbating this situation. But I do believe that providing housing will ultimately be an investment that will pay off in terms of welcoming more folks into the labor force. So it's incredibly important that we look at that. I do just want to say that as someone mentioned earlier, we know that home ownership is a very tried and true conduit to wealth building. So, you know, just given that it does boggle my mind that we allow folks to make fortunes off the backs of renters and I do think we need to look at more stringent rights for renters, especially during this crisis. We know that folks are building wealth not in just in a home ownership but also on the backs of renters. Thank you. Thanks, Martine. And next, we have Erin Hart. Thanks, yes. As a founding board member of the Champaign Housing Trust, I'm incredibly proud of the work that they're doing and the mission that they've taken on over the last years to really provide permanent supportive housing for moderates experiencing homelessness. And as Philip mentioned earlier, purchasing motels and turning them into micro units for permanent supportive housing is really one of the longer term solutions. And hopefully folks will move from micro units to permanent rental and onto home ownership eventually. So providing housing is not rocket science. As I mentioned before, what we need to do is provide the political will to provide the resources to create more housing first opportunities that include rental assistance for folks coming out of the motels as well as housing first supportive services to help folks successfully maintain the housing that they receive. Again, we have a number of programs, existing programs that have been underfunded for many years. Family supportive housing is one of them that provides supportive services to families experiencing homelessness. And with challenges, I also have fought for a number of years to preserve the SASH program, Support and Services at Home, which is expanding into family supportive services in the southern part of the state and will hopefully provide expanded family support, excuse me, supportive services statewide soon. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Tanya. We do need to invest in housing first models that recognize that housing is a basic human right. The very first priority we need to make is getting people housed and then working directly with them to determine what if any supports are needed to make that housing successful. In Vermont, we have an organization doing housing first and it provides supportive services and housing for Vermonters across much of the state in a way that's person-centered and allows people to be the driver of their own lives. And we need to expand this to the rest of the state. When I worked for Pathways Vermont, I saw firsthand how we allowed participants to choose where and how they lived and supported their success in a way that is less expensive than the alternatives as well as more successful. We need to ensure that every Vermonter experiencing homelessness has access to programs like this and we need to invest in specialized services agencies like this so that their workers are paid livable wages. And we really need to center the needs of housing and supports around the people who have the most expertise in this area and that's those who are experiencing that crisis. I'm a renter because I can't afford to buy here. The housing first model has been incredibly successful in housing people across the country and in Vermont with over an 80% success rate with their participants staying housed at the one year mark is how they measure that. And we need to really make sure that we're working with people to build out these models so that everyone has access to the housing that they need as well as the supports that they may need but that they get to be the driver of where they live and what it is that they need. We also need to look at our means testing. It creates barriers and administrative cost drivers and really makes it and we don't update it enough and so we need to make those investments and look at whether means testing makes sense. Well, thank you, Tanya. And we have Phil. Thanks. I thought this was a really interesting question because if you think about it in part at least it's saying how do we make sure that the policy that we've put in place ultimately serves the people that was designed to serve rather than getting diverted in some way. And on the appropriations committee we do a lot of thinking about that trying to make sure that the money that has been put in the budget the numbers go where they're supposed to go. As people who have worked in the state house know the budget has two pieces. There's the long spreadsheet of numbers very long and then there's the addendum the language and the language is the how to in terms of the money what the recipients are allowed to do with that money. And so in the case of this question how to make sure that the people who need affordable housing are the recipients at the end point what once it's built that's something that can be laid out in the very foundation of the funding itself. So in that case in areas where I'm not the policy expert I do go to people like Champlain Housing Trust and people in the Senate who know this area Vermont Interfaith Action among other groups and ask for suggestions about language to make sure that that money is targeted properly. And in this case as in a number of others that's what I would do. Thank you Phil and thank you to all of you who answered this question. My name is Fran Carlson and I'm from the Cathedral Church of St. Paul. Another important issue focus for VIA is reform of our correction system. We have found that there are varying perspectives on the concept of incarceration. What do you believe to be the purpose of incarceration? What needs to be done regarding the culture, the physical facilities and the programming to achieve this purpose? We'll start with Martin. Thank you. So I'm a big fan of Brian Stevenson. I like the work that he's done and I've read a lot of his work. What I like about what Brian Stevenson has to say is that he really looks at each individual and he sees and he shares with us that each individual has his or her own story. Typically folks who are houseless or who are incarcerated have suffered some kind of abuse or some kind of neglect in their lifetime. So I do look to one of the large parts of my platform which is supporting education, early education, child care, paid family leave as one way to alleviate some of the suffering that we have in our society. Incarceration to me is a temporary situation and a temporary solution where folks go to receive the care that they need, whether it is reading instruction or mental health services or addiction treatment. Ultimately in the hope that folks who have been offenders can reform and come back into society and join the workforce and be contributing and healthy members of our society.  I think we need to end the privatization of prisons. They should not be a for-profit institution. This is just simply wrong. We really need to take a close look at that. We need funding and coordination to support folks who have been incarcerated and thank you, I will stop. Thank you very much. Earhart? Thanks for the question. I would start by saying that for me the purpose of incarceration really is rehabilitation and ultimately reintegration into society. I think one of the first things we need to do is to set up and strengthen our restorative and alternative justice system so that we avoid incarceration wherever possible to begin with. And as Martine said, we really need to avoid privatization of corrections. We should not be sending Vermont offenders out of state where they receive very little in the way of supportive services and in the way of rehabilitation while they're incarcerated by private for-profit companies. We also need to look at some of the administrative provisions that have led to a very high rate of folks going back into prison once they've been released as a result of minor administrative fractions. This level of recidivism is part of what's driving cost and unnecessarily brings people back into prison. So while folks are incarcerated, I want to see more substance use disorder treatment, more job training, mental health counseling. We have a very large percentage of folks incarcerated in Vermont who have mental health disabilities that need counseling and of course, education and training. So that when they are released, they can find jobs and also afford housing. And obviously, lots of supports are needed when folks come out of prison. The supports that we're providing currently are inadequate. Thank you, Erika. Tanya? Thank you so much. What we currently have is a system grounded in punishment and retribution. And what we need is a system of restoration and rehabilitation. Our current system is both inhumane, expensive, and it isn't working. We have the highest per capita prison population of any country in the world. Shifting from our current model will take time, resources, investments, and a fundamental culture shift. We need to fully invest in restorative justice that is full scale and begins with community building and community investment that meets everyone's basic needs, not the shortcuts that we currently have that are often only triggered when someone has already done harm or been harmed. When I was a graduate student, I had the privilege to study abroad in Finland where they have a beautiful restorative system. The vast majority of the prisons in Finland are open prisons where people can come and go as they please, but they are offered job training, mental health supports, substance use supports, and the ability to fully build out everything that they need to feel like they can function and be welcomed into their society. There is one locked facility in the Finnish system. And in that locked facility, people have apartments where they're treated like human beings and can graduate into the open facility if it is deemed that they can be safe. We need to move towards systems like this one. Even in my work in schools where we talk a lot about restorative justice, that restorative justice is often only triggered when someone has been harmed or has done harm.  So I think this is a really deep systemic issue and that is going to take investments from community all the way into restorative justice. Thank you, Tanya. Phil? I definitely believe that the correction system should be rehabilitative in nature. And at its best, that's what it's accomplishing. I also do want to say though that public safety is a very real issue. You don't want people on the street that are an immediate danger to themselves or others. And so there is a function for a locked facility. The question is, how do you balance those things? And let's just take life without parole as an issue. So in my mind, it is the definition of control-based corrections to say, we're going to put you in prison and we're going to tell you upfront, we're never going to let you out and we're going to do everything we can to make sure you live as long as possible without the hope ever of leaving this facility. That just seems to me insane. So I would like to end life without parole across the board with no exceptions because all it means, it doesn't mean that someone gets out after 25 years or 30 years. What it means is that you have a chance to make your case to the parole board, that you have changed, that you have genuinely seen a different path. And the parole board does its work and they determine, are you a threat to public safety? So that seems to me a way to balance things. Our current system where people commit certain crimes, 50 years later they're still in prison when all the statistics say they're no longer a threat to public safety, that has to end. Thank you, Phil. Dawn? Thanks for this question. We don't have enough time to lay out a vision of the kind of open system we truly, truly need. But what we have right now is cool. It's punishing. It's whimsical. It targets people who are black and brown. Disabilities. That very little money that harms them. That's not caring. That's not rehabilitative. And that's not effective. And it costs $50,000 a year. So I'm going to give you with that $50,000 and use that to address the systemic problems that brought people to a point that entered into the system. Until we get to the point where justice really works, are actually held accountable, used, you know, they cannot use it to harm people. They cannot forget the law and apply it unevenly to some people and not to others. When government itself is held to the same standard that these vulnerable people have been held to will begin to get to something. I think we need an alternate system completely because the people in jail may not need to be in jail at all. And the people who have harmed them to put them in jail may need more rehabilitation than the people we're talking about. Thank you, Dylan. I have another question on the criminal justice system. There's been a great deal recently about the shortage of correction officers in Vermont. How would you suggest we handle this shortage and their working conditions? How will you ensure adequate funding for your ideas? Earhart? Thanks for the question. So, not surprisingly, we have a shortage in the correction system. This is a workforce shortage that we're seeing across the board in all sectors in the state of Vermont right now, whether it's a nursing shortage, whether it's teachers that are taking early retirement or leaving the profession, whether it's for construction of affordable housing. It is a statewide problem that is not unique to corrections. That said, I don't think the answer to that is by instituting a 60-hour work week, which the commissioner of corrections has recently proposed. I think that's a recipe for more corrections officers leaving the system and leaving employment. I think we need to have decent pay for corrections officers. We need to have hiring incentives. We need to provide housing supports. One of the things that has been successful because of our extreme housing shortage is providing either first and last month's rent or down payment assistance or other forms of housing assistance that can bring folks into the state that may take one look at our housing costs and our shortage and say, I'm sorry, I can't move to Vermont based on the housing shortage that you're seeing and the housing prices that you're seeing. We also need to provide family and medical leave and other positive workforce policies to help incentivize folks for taking those jobs. Thank you. Thank you. Tanya? Thank you. We took many days of testimony and joint hearings with my committee and House corrections on this issue, this past session. We heard from corrections officers, supervisors, probation and parole. And the stories we heard were gut-wrenching. I cannot believe that anyone continues to go back to a system that is instituting mandatory over time in the way that it is, that is asking people to sleep in their cars because they're so tired, they are afraid to drive home because they're worried they may get in an accident. We have to change the system as it is and we cannot keep asking for more and more from our corrections officers. We are asking them to be in hot, un-air conditioned buildings where you cannot even have your own water bottle. And we heard from our officers that largely through the pandemic, violence has gone down. And most people are there with substance use issues that could be treated in the community if we invested in harm reduction. We need to invest in good wages, training, job growth and humane work environments for our corrections officers, of course. And likely it still won't be enough. The corrections system is brutal and inhumane to all involve, including the corrections officers who experienced, who reported vicarious trauma and so many other challenges like an astronomically high rate of contemplating suicide. We have to invest in the restorative system that I previously discussed. It will help our corrections officers as well as those who are incarcerated and we need to learn from COVID that we can get people out of prison and provide them community supports if they're nonviolent offenders. We can look towards providing home confinement and community supports there. So there's simply less people in the system and using that model will make the system better and less expensive. Thank you. Phil? Yeah, I spent a good half an hour, I would say, the other day on the phone with Steve Howard, who's head of the VSEA, talking about corrections and the change to a 60-hour work week that Erhard mentioned, it's not a change that the correction officers have agreed to. They're being moved to it willy-nilly and it would be, I think, okay with them if it was limited to 12 hours, but what they often experience is whatever the agreed upon shift is, then there's a mandatory overtime added on top. So under the new system, they're going to work a 12-hour shift and quite often be told they have to work an additional four hours. So that's 16 hours in an un-air conditioned facility. Now, I don't know anybody who can do any job for 16 hours, especially under those conditions, you know, given the stress that a corrections officer experiences, not to mention what that experience is like for the inmates themselves. So it does come down to money. In New Hampshire, they start at 22 plus an hour in Vermont, it's 19. So if people have the option, like in southern Vermont, where the border is pretty close, they always choose to work in New Hampshire. Same if you go to the border with New York, people will go across the line to work in New York. So as with housing, as with harm reduction, as with a million other things, the state has to invest more and where do you find that money? I think, as some people have mentioned, taxing people who have the means and second homes is not a bad place to start. Thank you. Dawn? I feel for the people who are asked to be overseers in a place where slavery is still legal. Slavery is legal in Vermont and in the U.S. in a number of ways. Slavery is legal for children. Slavery will be incarcerated and it cries. So, as quickly as possible so that officers are not being overseers. They are not just going to have into and rather moving to the kind of system that rehabilitates everyone. And that you can get to the place in question and it's so non-binary and more sex-acquired because it basically means I get to decide. Hi, if I think I'm going to hold you back for a while is that I think you get off spot three as long as people are there. Off spot three. Summer Greendale and stuff like that. Unbalanced system, that's what's going on. So I think first people out non-violent offenders and in terms of going case by case we can take a look. We're hungry. Did you see because you were hungry? That $2,000 meant to lock you up. Can sure and help your family be not hungry anymore. Problem solved. The whole idea that the people who have committed non-violent crimes need to be kept away from society is backwards and mixed families in the fabric that they find. Thank you. More team. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with everything that's been said by my colleagues this evening. So I'm not going to repeat everything but I would like to suggest that we shift the scenario from increasing the number of corrections officers to reducing the prison population and again focusing on shrinking that population by alternatives to prison and wraparound services. The demand for correction officers also diminishes. These are investments that ultimately pay dividends in our society. They're not simple financial outlays. I will share a very brief story. I know folks on this call, some of you know this, but I did lose my father to violence, to gun violence in 1994. He was a victim of a carjacking and there were six young men who were involved in that particular crime. One of them was an adult and the other five were minors. Because it was a federal crime, my family was given the opportunity to weigh in on what to do after their time was served. And we voted as a family and especially my mother to release the five minors because they had shown a willingness to learn, to educate themselves to want to get back out into society. The adult in this scenario had not done any of the work at all and he remained in jail. But looking at, again, each individual scenario giving them the opportunity to rehabilitate and allowing them to enter society, it's what we have to do. I mean it's just we don't have an option as Tanya said earlier what we're doing now is not working. I just want to end with a quick quote by Peter Drucker that I find so valuable to everything we're talking about tonight. Tell me what you value and I might believe you. But show me your calendar and your bank statement and I'll show you what you really value. What do we really value? We have to put our investments there. Thank you. Thank you everyone. My name is Frank Sidowski and I'm from Christchurch Presbyterian in Burlington and I have the the next two questions for you. Many members of our congregations are highly motivated to take action to dismantle systemic racism in its various forms in our state and nation. One primary example of an institution where racial disparities need to be addressed is in public safety. What do you think the best approach is to create new organizational cultures in our municipal police departments and what measures need to be taken to make all Vermonters and visitors feel safe? We'll start with Tanya. Thank you so much. I think we first need to recognize as you did that racism the racism within our police departments our public safety system and our corrections system is directly tied to the racism in our larger society and frankly to a culture of punishment. I think the first thing we need to do is start having conversations about public safety that span beyond policing and corrections and really start to look at ensuring that we've made the investments in our communities that everyone has what they need. There are some obvious immediate issues that would include training changes ending pretextual policing stops demilitarizing our police force and instead investing in community policing. I also think a key first step is building out civilian oversight of the police with carefully selected members of a community who historically have been harmed or unheard by these systems of power to really provide insight both to the community and the police force. I introduced H660 in the house which would establish municipal citizen oversight of our police that would have training disciplinary and oversight power. This bill was based on legislation from Nebraska extensive research and I worked with the ACLU and community members to build it and have continued to work with local police who are interested in this kind of change as well as communities of color mental health professionals and others to strengthen the bill that I hope to reintroduce in the Senate next year. Thank you. Phil? After the George Floyd killing there was a lot of ferment about how do we deal with the use of force as we saw it in that incident specifically the choke hold. And so I authored a bill to ban the choke hold in the state of Vermont that ultimately became law but along the way we did something else. So we not only made it a crime for a police officer to use that move in a situation where lethal force wasn't required but we prohibited the training at the academy and we did that after talking with a lot of professionals on the public safety side and a lot of advocates on the reform side because what you're trying to do is not just put a penalty out there but make it clear to those officers that their own culture forbids that activity. And so the academy is one way to do that. The other thing we did in that bill was to create professional punishments so things that are purely within the culture and the society of public safety and law enforcement. So professionally you suffer if you do that as well as legally. And that's the sort of thing we need to be doing more of is changing the culture as much as you can with a statute. Thank you. Dawn. I just want to agree that this question it infects our government it infects our justice system. It infects law enforcement which whimsifies ideas about the punishment piece that we were talking about for corrections to a moral aspect of people. Can you all please if you've been abused by a judge making of it. I'm using it against you. You can call me but your business has robbed you of your pension over time.  It's a great variety of harms. And so it really is a system as you know that grew out of how do you capture people who are property and bring them back to their slave owners. It grew out of that and it has many of the trappings of catch and hold and punish. It's been interesting to see additions to that that are very community policing but it is built on a design of fairly targeted people based vulnerable people based punishment. And so I think in overhauling the system and really we have all the alternatives in the meantime for both the community whole and for the considered offender to make it up and make it better are critical as we transition into a different kind of system not being built on slavery. Thank you. Martine? So this is a question that has a few facets and it is fairly complex as well but I do want to give an example that hit very close to home for many of us who live here in Burlington. Last week a recent VHS graduate was shot and killed in Burlington. He was member of the new American community and the first person in his family to graduate from high school. He went on to college where he struggled. He wasn't given the support and the structure that he needed to be successful beyond school, beyond high school. And this is something that I've talked a lot about. We do a fairly good job with wraparound services from K to 12 and when students graduate from high school they are sort of left to their own devices. We don't have a systemized approach to how to help young people. That's something that we really need to look at and I know a lot of folks on this call tonight have talked about that but really a centralized collaborative approach to helping folks who are in our most vulnerable communities. In terms of policing we need massive police reform, bias training, de-escalation training. I believe that we need more women on police forces. They've been proven to be better at de-escalation than men. That's just a known fact. So, yeah, and again just making sure that we provide social services as well. Police have asked for social services as part of their work. They know that they need help so we need to provide that to them. And I'm going to have to leave after this question. I thank everyone so much for their time tonight and I look forward to seeing you all soon. Thank you very much. Earhard? Thanks for the question. My wife and I are the proud parents of two adult children, one of whom is a young African-American man who we have raised from infancy. And as a result of raising someone, raising our son as a white father of a young Black man, I think I bring a unique perspective for white folks to this conversation. I have seen racism directed at my son. I've seen microaggressions and I've seen that through his eyes and felt it felt it for someone whom I love unconditionally. My son is living out of state because Vermont is not as welcoming a state as we all might like. And one of the things that he's told me is that he feels much safer out of state than he does when he comes home to Burlington. And some of that has to do with the systemic racism that we must acknowledge that's spread throughout our society but also is in our police departments statewide. So all that said, I think I would agree with what others have said. We need anti-racism training at the academy and ongoing once officers are hired. We need to continue to look at our use of force policies. I want to continue to look at qualified immunity even though that the bill that was drafted this past year was rejected by the governor. We need to have more mental health workers that are working fine with police. Sorry. I missed the queue. Thank you. Thank you. Our last question for you all. It's been well documented that another area in which systemic racism exists is in the area of economic opportunities. Particularly the large racial wealth gap that exists because of past and present inequities in housing and land ownership. What steps to the steps excuse me. What steps should the state take to create more opportunities for BIPOC owned businesses and to create housing opportunities for BIPOC Vermonters. Phil. I'll give just a an example of what we have done although there's as everyone agrees I think there's a great deal that we haven't done. So the cannabis market the retail cannabis market is due to open in Vermont any time. So it may be a couple of more months before a store opens in the Burlington area but there are areas around the state that will see retail cannabis operations quite soon. In setting up that operation one of the things that we did was to make sure that BIPOC owned businesses had a couple of different legs up on that potentially extremely lucrative market. So in terms of getting a license that can be a barrier that the that the legislature can take down but to go further in terms of BIPOC land ownership and how little land ownership that group has we've tried to also encourage small growers to again those licenses favor BIPOC owned businesses. We also created a revolving loan fund for people who need the capital to start up one of these operations. So what makes that such an interesting market is that it's starting from scratch now. So hopefully we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. We put in place some opportunities for BIPOC owned businesses and in that way we don't just level the playing field but we go a little bit further and that I think is a model outside the cannabis industry for other industries in the state. Thank you. Dawn. As a verbal language practitioner I a pretty ugly slide of our state and it is targeted at people both of color and people who have disabilities as well as people who may be more vulnerable and that we need some light we need some light on that this this stuff so it needs to be named it needs to be shown up it needs to be held accountable what if we three time a river program ready to reach someone in front of the project again worried in an awful way they had a consequence that was big enough that it could be growing three time some group of people decided to realize about this business this is a moment of light of please actually show up and again again some sort of resource could be extracted from those who were not reaching people with dignity and to come listen to what happened for all of us like this system is not not has a side that is dealing with me systemically racist and you don't brand that way we will risk most to face that it is present it is in our community it is daily to me because it is not the way we want to be and so each of our leaders has a role in lifting this up to say we must be better we've got to be better and here is how I like in my career time thank you Eric thanks as you pointed out in the question there have been systemic systemic racism has basically created housing policies over decades that have discriminated against black indigenous and people of color I would again point to affordable housing as a way to help level the playing field and help BIPOC families and new Americans create wealth through home ownership the Shemplain housing trust and other nonprofits around the state are leading the way in helping folks who are both new Americans and African Americans and indigenous and other people of color get into home ownership I fought hard while I was working at the state house for many years to increase the state's affordable housing tax credit which has done a lot to increase home ownership throughout throughout Vermont and also especially mobile home ownership which is one of the opportunities that many lower income folks and folks on fixed incomes have used as a way to get into their own their own homes and away from rent out of rental housing I think we need to look at our fair housing law to make it make our fair housing laws more stringent and make it less difficult to prove discrimination discrimination in housing is still rampant in our state and that's another way that I think we can help folks BIPOC folks to have stable and affordable housing thank you thank you Tanya thank you so much we need to continue to make investments and grounds grants and revolving opportunities that are explicitly earmarked for BIPOC owned local businesses with the necessary technical supports to be able to access these funds we often don't talk about the soft skills that are often passed from generation to generation when you have access to wealth that simply are not given to people who are first time entering into these fields so we need to make sure that we provide that we need to take all the aspects of H414 the cannabis social equity bill that were left out of the cannabis legislation we passed and fully invest in these social equity programs and we need an equity screener for every piece of legislation that we work on we need to make deeper investments in BIPOC in first generation home ownership grants and revolving loans as housing equity is the place where Americans hold the vast majority of their wealth and policies like redlining have prevented BIPOC home ownership are a huge part of the reason that the average black family has the last time I checked one 13th the wealth of the average white family and the statistic has gotten worse in the last five years not better and we need to look at every one of our systems to make sure that we're bringing historically shut out voices into the conversation and listening to them when they tell us what they need one bill that I passed in the house this year H661 Act 117 sets up a task force comprised of people from that are underrepresented in the mental health field to tell us what would make the field more accessible and we need to listen to those voices that have been silenced and take the information they give us to strengthen and diversify all of our systems while working in partnership to break down barriers name and call out discriminatory behavior to make Vermont a more welcoming and safe place for all individuals. Thank you, Tanya and thank you all. Thank you so much for your preparation for your answers. We would like to offer each of you 30 seconds and 30 seconds only to make any closing remarks. We'll use the same a time card as before. Let's start with Dawn. And the best of us the best of Vermont and I write tirelessly to put us in the place of a culture that includes thank you all so that from birth to the end of our journey we are invested in so that we can run with it not in programs that take a job just to get the help we need when we need help not to allow harm to stand for so long and not for others. Thank you so much for your time and your attention and your life and your experiences and your hopes and dreams of Vermont for the rest of the day. Thank you. Earhart Thanks for the opportunity. I would ask for members that live in our district for your vote and your support on August 9th in the Democratic primary. I'm someone who has spent his entire career in public service. My experience is broad. It is deep. Housing is foundational and it touches on so many different areas so that I have touched many many policy areas besides in addition to housing. My experience at the state house so that I can hit the ground running when I get there in a time when we have so much turnover experience voices will be needed at the state house. Thank you. Tonya Thank you. I want us all to leave here tonight knowing that this is not a hopeless situation. There's incredible grass roots work happening all across the world and Vermont. Models that center people who are being harmed in a truly transformative way and it is now is the time to bravely fight for them. We've passed the point of sitting back and allowing the status quo to continue. I've shown in my time in the house that I will bravely stand up for systemic for systemic transformative change and I will do exactly the same as a senator for Chittenden Central. I will bring the kind of change that I know firsthand from my own experience and the work that I do that we simply must have right now. Thank you. Phil bring us on. Thanks everyone. I'm I'm very passionate about an issue we didn't get to talk about tonight and that is gun safety. I've been working on that for the last 10 years we've had a good deal of success but our gun laws are still unconscionably weak and we are seeing massacre after massacre around the country. We need to change our gun laws nationally but if Congress won't act we have to and if you send me back I recommit to making that happen. So thank you to Vermont Interfaith Action. I I respect and and I'm grateful for your work. Thank you. Thank you all. So hopefully this was a valuable forum both for our candidates and our attendees and if this has sparked more questions for you and you would like to reach out to the candidates we have asked each of them to provide ways in which they can be contacted and we will share that with you and put that in the video description of the recording of this event which we will post on our YouTube channel. You can find the link directly to the video on our website via vt.org Voting in this primary election will happen on or by Tuesday, August 9th. You can vote by requesting a ballot by mail by visiting your town clerk's office or you can show up at the polls on Tuesday, August 9th. All the information you need to find out whether you are registered where your polling place is and to request a mail-in ballot can be found on the Vermont Secretary of State's website. There you can set up your very own My Voter page at mvp.vermont.gov Candidates, thank you so much for your time this evening and thanks to you all for attending this forum sponsored by Vermont Interfaith Action. Make it a good rest of the evening.


In this module, we are going to look at the relationship between this dominant strategy implementability and dominant strategy incentive compatibility. So remember that we were discussing the indirect mechanisms and direct mechanisms. So if you can implement a social choice function using an indirect mechanism, we call that social choice function dominant strategy implementable. And if the direct mechanism is itself implementable, then we call it dominant strategy incentive compatible. Now, we have hinted at a result which actually shows some sort of a similarity or equivalence between these two things. And that result is known as the revelation principle. And here we are going to define the revelation principle for dominant strategy implementable social choice functions. And later we will see that we can actually look at a different version of this revelation principle for some other implementability as well. So what does this mean? It says that if there exists an indirect mechanism, remember those indirect mechanism where all those message spaces m1 to mn, g, so this message space and the corresponding decision rule that implements f in dominant strategies, then f is dsic. So you can as well find a direct mechanism to implement that social choice function. So the implication of this result is that we can without loss of generality focus only on dsic mechanisms. So the proof is fairly simple. You just have to do a very careful substitution. So it is just saying that if you have an indirect mechanism, so we start from that, we just write down the definition of dominant strategy implementability.  Then there must exist, according to the definition itself, there must exist some strategies Si which maps this theta is to Mi such that for all players in n and for all m minus i tilde's and Mi prime and theta i, this inequality should get satisfied. This is by the definition of implementability. This is by definition of dominant strategy implementability. Now, so this was the condition 1 and the second condition was that if everybody is picking their Si's accordingly because there exists such kind of strategies for all these players in that strategy profile, the outcome will be the same as the social choice outcome. So this is the second condition. Now we will be using this carefully. Now we know, so this equation 1 is going to hold for all Mi prime and M minus i tilde. So we are going to pick a very specific kind of messages. So the first message Mi prime is nothing but Si theta i prime. So you pick an arbitrary theta i prime for player i and apply the same strategy Si. The Si function is already given, you apply that, you get some message Mi prime. Similarly, you apply the same thing for all the other players for their corresponding theta i tilde's. So and theta minus i tilde is also arbitrary and for so this is essentially a couple, I mean a vector of all the strategies for all these players at their respective theta i tilde's, theta j tilde's and we are just using the shorthand to say that this is the message space chosen by the messages chosen by the other players. Of course, because this is going to get satisfied, this one is going to get satisfied for all Mi prime and M minus i tilde. So therefore, even if you pick this arbitrary theta i prime and theta minus i tilde and apply those strategies on them, this should also get satisfied for the same. So we rewrite this inequality 1 again, but now we are changing those things. So here we have made that substitution, this substitution and this substitution has been made in these two places and this inequality should get satisfied. Now we apply the second condition, we know that whenever you are looking at this Si's and S minus i's and the corresponding theta i's and theta minus i, they should implement the same. So the outcome should be the same as the social choice outcome as at those types.  Similarly, this one will be f of theta i prime theta minus i tilde. And now whatever you have is nothing but this and this is the definition of DSIC. So of course, the second condition is trivially satisfied in this case because you are essentially implementing the same social choice function. The direct mechanism in that case is the decision rule is f itself. All that we needed to satisfy is this condition here which is getting satisfied as we have shown here. So we can conclude that this function f is DSIC. So the whole phenomenon can be shown by by a schematic diagram here. We were initially looking at this message spaces. So remember this Si theta i where living in capital S1 theta 1 was living in M1. Similarly, Sn theta n was living in capital Mn and so on. So in this world we were so even though players were having their own types the mechanism the indirect mechanism was not asking them to reveal their theta ones rather they were asking them to give the messages in this message space. Something like purchase of those railway tickets of a certain class was their message that was being asked by the indirect mechanism not that type directly. So this indirect mechanism was taking those messages and applying this rule of G and that G of S theta 1, S1 theta 1 to Sn theta 1 was given as an output. Now what we can equivalently look at in this after we know this revelation principle is that if you are looking at only those indirect mechanisms which are DSIC then you can actually look at this dotted box here. So instead of looking at all these intricate details of this S1 and M1 same tools you can look at the direct mechanism theta 1 to theta n and this social choice function f directly and ask these agents to reveal their types. So they can report their types directly you apply this f on that and you can also find that this there exists a mechanism the direct mechanism which will also implement this in dominant strategy. So it is dominant strategy incentive compatible if you have a dominant strategy implementable social choice function. Similarly you can talk about the Bayesian extension so far we have actually spoken about only the types of others which can take any value. So we were saying that no matter what the message has been chosen by the other players or the types that has been chosen by reported by the other players the best response for this agent will be to report its type truthfully. So that is exactly what is meant by this inequality here that agent i is picking its type theta i and the other players are picking whatever they are trying to pick. So this is this theta minus i was arbitrary this inequality gets satisfied for all theta minus i tilde and of course for all theta i's and also for all i's. So here in the Bayesian extension we are weakening it a little bit rather than looking at the the inequality being satisfied for all theta minus i tilde we are taking the expectation with respect to theta i theta minus i tilde given theta i once. So this is something like the interim game where agent i has observed its type and it is trying to predict what is the type what could be the type of other agents and if it takes the expectation with respect to that then it is beneficial for that agent to report its type truthfully. So let us define it formally. So we are going to assume that these types are generated from a common prior and this common prior is a common knowledge you can see much similarity with this of this with the Bayesian game. So there also we had a common prior and that was also common knowledge and this type the type of a specific agent is revealed only to that respective agent. So we are looking at this interim stage where the types are realized but only you see the ith component if you are player i and you cannot see the other types even though you have a probabilistic belief about those types. So you can define this Bayesian game which has the same set of players the the message space is essentially taking the space place of the actions you have this original types capital theta i's now you have this common prior p and based on what type you are you have a different normal form game and this message mapping remains as before so all the setup and notation remains as before you are mapping these types into the message spaces. Now we can define the indirect mechanism in 1 to mn, g to be implementing a social choice function in Bayesian equilibrium in earlier case we were talking about dominant strategies now we have Bayesian equilibrium everything remains the same in particular this part also remains the same the change that happens is earlier we were having in this case we were having only m minus i tilde and we were so this both these cases were m minus i tilde and we are getting this satisfied for all m minus i tilde rather now what is going to happen is that we are taking this this quantity here that is player i is choosing this it's two two type is theta i and it is choosing this action or the strategy of s i other players are choosing their own strategies and this is becoming Bayesian equilibrium so you are taking the expectation with respect to theta minus i given theta i once you have observed theta i you have this belief you take the expectation with respect to that belief and once you take that reporting picking any other mechanism any other message in my prime is not beneficial for you why and you are still looking at the expected utility when you have observed your own type so this is quite naturally a little weaker than the previous definition of course if the previous definition was true that is some mechanism was dominant strategy implementable that is definitely Bayesian implementable you can do it as an exercise so in if this can two conditions get satisfied then we call this f to be Bayesian implementable via this indirect mechanism m 1 to m n comma g under this prior p so of course whenever we are talking about Bayesian incentive comp Bayesian implementability then we are also talking about this prior because that is very crucial we have just mentioned that this result that if your social choice function is dominant strategy implementable then it is also Bayesian implementable it it is very straightforward similarly to the direct mechanism in the in the previous case we can say that the direct mechanism is Bayesian incentive compatible similar to the dominant strategy incentive compatibility we have an equivalent definition for Bayesian incentive compatibility and we use this acronym BIC for it if the same thing happens that for every theta i and theta i prime notice that there is no theta minus i tilde anymore because this is expected over so you have this utility here when you are taking the expected utility after observing your own type that is going to be at least as much as whenever you are moving on reporting some other theta i prime this case so you are misreporting theta i prime that is not going to be any beneficial for you and you can also state a very similar result like the revelation principle for DSICs or DSi social choice functions here it is Bayesian implementable social choice functions that if the social choice function f is implementable in Bayesian equilibrium then it is also BIC so if you have an indirect mechanism which is implemented in Bayesian equilibrium then there must exist another the direct mechanism which is also Bayesian incentive compatible so that essentially demystifies the fact that we don't really need to look at if you are looking at only incentive compatibilities either Bayesian or dominant strategy you can rule out the indirect mechanisms altogether you can only without loss of generality look at the incentive compatible mechanisms or the direct mechanisms and the proof is very similar to DSi I recommend that you follow the same steps the only difference will happen is in the case where we are writing for all m minus i tilde here it will be expectations and that expectation has to be taken care of carefully but the steps are fairly straightforward so even though we have only defined all these results in terms of cardinal preferences you can also think of a very similar setup when these are all ordinal preferences and you can define all this dominant strategy implementation and dominant strategy incentive compatibility and similarly the Bayesian versions of it in the similar way and the corresponding revelation principle will also hold for those ordinal preferences and that I also leave as an exercise