Please join us for our planning meeting for our first Quarterly Community Forum (to be on October 25). We will meet by Zoom on Wed, Oct 11 at 7p.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81550857830?pwd=AMb5maAYVU1UzVXoY2TF8V28eX1ayR.1

Meeting ID: 815 5085 7830
Passcode: 920804

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Please join us for our planning meeting for our first Quarterly Community Forum later in October (date to be determined). We will meet by Zoom on Wed, Oct 4 at 7p.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81416664753?pwd=uQFF3gjWUlbH9CapqvEeaKFBW1DaCR.1

Meeting ID: 814 1666 4753

Passcode: 167911

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Hi RRE Members and Friends,

We are meeting again on Tuesday, Sept 26 at 7p on Zoom (link below). Agenda:

1. Land Acknowledgment
2. Plan for first community forum on policing
3. Venue: Emily
4. MMCTV: Denise
5. Josh Update: Bonny
6. Jay Update: Connie (if he’s back yet)
7. Chief C Update: Patty
8. CJC Update: Patty
9. Plan for next meeting

Richmond Racial Equity is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: RRE Community Forum Planning Meeting

Time: Sep 26, 2023 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86111204872?pwd=I13wJbGQmCK89s73b5UpUaDRDVsbJi.1

Meeting ID: 861 1120 4872

Passcode: 441349

See you there!

Connie

Please join us at our monthly RRE meeting this Wednesday, Sept 30 at 7p on Zoom:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87989440117?pwd=a2UxZE1GdDBHVmZ3VEpHUk1qajNmQT09

Meeting ID: 879 8944 0117
Passcode: 286034

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Meeting ID: 879 8944 0117
Passcode: 286034

Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/keGbVcf3sy

Hope to see you there!

Please join us this Wednesday night starting at 7p until 8:30p for our monthly Richmond Racial Equity meeting. Our Zoom link is:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85739750286?pwd=Tk41dnlQSVZTVk1pbmZMdW8reHNoUT09

Meeting ID: 857 3975 0286

Passcode: 053379

Our agenda is:

1. Land Acknowledgement
2. Reminder of our hoped for RPD qualities – any new thoughts?
3. Update on SB meeting decisions up to 8/7/23

1. 1. RRE Statement delivered to SB on 7/17/23: “Richmond Racial Equity expects that any police working/contracting with Richmond be required to engage and report on education and training on racial profiling, collect and report crime/traffic data, use alternative justice venues, and have a thorough understanding of and agreement to follow Richmond’s No Mas Polimigra Policy. The leadership of the Richmond Police Department, if working/contracting with Richmond, is required to meet with community members in regular forums (e.g. quarterly), in person and through electronic media, to review police activities, aggregate data trends, and future plans.”
   2. Discussion at SB on 8/7/23: Gretchen and others

1. Plan for first of community forums, starting fall 2023
2. Next steps

Our agenda will continue with a listening circle in which each shares equitably. Our agenda includes:

1. Land Acknowledgment – Gretchen
2. Review of our Jamboard work of the last meeting – Gretchen & Connie
   1. What is missing – what would you add about Richmond policing, policy, department or individual officer qualities?
   2. Are there ideas that you disagree with, that we should put aside for later discussion?
   3. Which of our remaining ideas are similar – that are connected and can form a related group?
3. Looking ahead and planning ahead for next steps – Patty, Emily, Gretchen, Connie

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89692867271?pwd=ZCtTRnV0R2NJL2VZaDFEUENNV05QQT09

Meeting ID: 896 9286 7271

Passcode: 464603

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CASCAN is the Chittenden Asylum Seekers Assistance Network. Its mission is to assist people in Chittenden County who are in the legal process of seeking asylum. CASAN’s main funding drive for 2023 will be an April event ~ Arts for Asylum Seekers ~ that brings together the arts and social justice to assist people who are seeking asylum in our community by recruiting artists to share their creative work in April (https://sites.google.com/view/casan-vermont/arts-for-asylum-seekers).

I signed up to receive essays from a creative writer, Katherine Maynard. She is currently traveling in Memphis TN and I have, with her permission, provided an excerpt as it helped me reflect and understand what “exile,” whether forced removal from a country or banishment within it, means:

…this week, other momentous events caught my attention, both in Tennessee:

• Tuesday, April 4 – 55 years ago the Rev. Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis
• Yesterday, April 6, the Tennessee Legislature shamefully expelled two young black members, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, for taking a vocal stance against gun violence. Significantly they did NOT expel the sole white woman, Gloria Johnson for the same “offense.” She rightly explained the reason she “survived” the ouster was due to her skin color, calling out the blatant racism of her colleagues.

Following the thread of “exile” for this CASAN creative project, prompted by the juxtaposition of these events, past and present, I revisited the meaning of the word “exile”. The etymology of the world goes back to c. 1300, meaning “forced removal from one’s country,” from Old French exil, essil (12c.), from Latin exilium “banishment; place of exile”. *

“Forced Removal from One’s Country”.

Usually when I’ve considered exile, I’ve pictured people forced to flee their country’s borders, expelled by tragedy, violence, persecution, war, political unrest, or environmental disaster, i.e. External exile.

However, clearly there are ways to forcibly remove someone from their country from within a nations’ borders. When people are removed from their lives, homes, deprived of civil liberties and due process within their country, whenever citizens are barred from full and free participation in their nation’s life: this is Internal exile. It is frequently done through nefarious means, especially through the passing of unjust laws, or the systematic failure to enforce the laws that exist. The goal of authorities is always to silence people’s voices, to marginalize their concerns, to dilute their influence. They also often seek to avail themselves of coveted resources which the targeted population possess or seek to share. The purpose is also to warn there’s a price to pay for speaking up against injustice, corruption, and social evil. Internal exile can be equally brutal – and is actually more common. It can, of course, mean shipping dissidents to harsh faraway places within a country, such as sending them to the Siberian Gulag, or crowding people into inhumane “camps”, such as has been done to the Rohingya in Myanmar, and the Uyghurs in China.

But other methods can be just as effective. Besides assassination, here’s how this has occurred in the US:

• We imprisoned and exploited millions of enslaved African Americans for over 250 years, robbing them of liberty, dignity, rights, and legal recourse from abuse. We trapped them in our cotton fields, hounded them with slave catchers if they tried to break free, brutalized their bodies through beatings, rape. We refused/refuse them citizenship and its protections, subjecting them to the ongoing violence of lynching and the terror of Jim Crow codes, segregation, and police brutality.
• We enslaved and massacred indigenous communities, stole their lands, sent pestilence among them, forced them on death marches such as the Trail of Tears, stole their children who we abused and murdered in “re-education” Boarding Schools, and – as recently as 1973 – slaughtered hundreds of Lakota at Wounded Knee. The Dakota Access Pipeline protests in recent years shows our assaults on Native Americans have not abated.
• During World War II we incarcerated around 120,000 Japanese Americans solely for their ethnicity. They lost livelihoods, homes, and dignity – with minimal reparations or apology offered afterwards.
• Meanwhile attorneys Michelle Alexander and Bryan Stevenson have painstakingly documented the millions of BIPOC citizens we have essentially “removed” from this country through mass incarceration and the so called “War on Drugs” which disproportionately target minorities.

The human tragedy of “exile” – external or internal – just goes on and on and on….

Please join the next RRE Large Group Meeting via Zoom on Wednesday, May 17, 2023 at 7p. We will be sharing updates from our three workgroups (Education, Reparations, and Policy & Policing) as well as planning administrative support (Zoom, website, others) and future events. Zoom details – note that there is a passcode:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82248499929?pwd=RC9FSWdUeHRTWnFEa2YrYkNIakFwZz09

Meeting ID: 822 4849 9929

Passcode: 049918

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Meeting ID: 822 4849 9929

Passcode: 049918

See you there… Connie

The work of RRE continues in the small group “wings” of our organization: Education, Policy & Policing, and Reparations. We are not meeting as a large group this month and continue to stay in touch via email. If you have a topic to discuss in our large group setting, please let Patty Brushett know at brushett55@gmail.com. And thank you for your continued support!

Please join us at our RRE Large Group meeting this Wednesday, November 16, 2022 from 6:30-7:30 via Zoom, at which time we will be voting on the mission statement (Official Warning).

Our agenda:

Connie- Welcome and Land Acknowledgment

Patty-Shall we revise our Mission Statement? Vote/ mDo we need more time?

Current:” Engaging our community in opposing racism – and advancing equity for Indigenous, Black, and people of color – through education, policy change, and reparations.”

Possible revision suggestions from the last meeting: “Engaging our community in rejecting racism and fostering inclusion by advancing equity for Indigenous, Black, and People of Color – through education, policy change, and reparations.”

Patty-Who will represent your committee when questions come up that your committee is best able to respond to and who will be your committee’s social Media person to post what your group is up to?

Next Large Group meeting January 18th?

Committee reports-

Education

Emily- preliminary discussions of Richmond signage- Town Center and Entering Richmond

Jana- Preliminary exploration into Vermont Reads project- The Most Costly Journey and Anti Racism book sharing for Black history month in February.

Policy and Policing

Ann-P&P is meeting with the Town Manager and Interim Police Chief to work on the first step of the plan approved by the Selectboard Board to provide community oversight of and engagement with the police: improve data collection and share policing activities and outcomes. We have met several times and are currently working on updating the RPD website.

Reparations

Alexis-We are in conversation with Abenaki scholar, artist and teacherJudy Dow to set up a date for her presentation on Lank Acknowledgement to RRE. Would like to set up this date at Wednesday’s meeting.

Zoom link:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85099089981?pwd=elRrWjIvVGFDdDdwenNVS2xKM3dZQT09

Meeting ID: 850 9908 9981

Passcode: 130365

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