April 21, 2026 – HRDEI Committee – Video & Transcript
April 21, 2026 - HRDEI Committee
Good evening. I'm Karen Blumenfeld, Chair of the Weyland Human Rights Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
It is 6.02 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21st, and let us begin with a roll call.
Why don't we go around the table, and then we'll get the people online.
Denise Orton, Mary Ambrockowski, here.
Kevin Goodwin, here.
Joe Overtham, here.
Maya? Maya's here, but she's in the car and on mute, so I don't know how to look.
We don't want to mess with someone who's driving.
And Mariam?
Here.
Thank you.
So people who are missing tonight are Asma, Sophie, Sarah, and Heather.
And right now, Janot is missing, but she may come a little bit.
So hold on one second, please.
Oh, and Karen here.
Sorry.
Don't say that.
This meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on Wacom as soon as possible after the meeting.
Anyone who would like to make public comment may do so.
And we ask that public comment be limited to two minutes per person.
And I'll give another quick intro before we get to the public comment.
First, this evening, instead of our indigenous land acknowledgement, which we normally do,
Denise is going to share a reading with us.
The Parable of the Long Spoon. And can you read loudly to make sure people can hear you? In one village, people sit at a magnificent banquet table, eat with every food imaginable. Roasted meats and fish, freshly cooked vegetables, steaming hot bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread. Ripe fruit, beautiful desserts. Their mouths water and their stomachs ache with hunger. But their spoons are absurdly long, longer than their arms. And no matter how they twist and strain, they cannot get a single bite into their own mouths. So they curse. They swipe at each other's plates. They grow bitter and frantic. The feast sits before them. Untouched. And everyone goes hungry. In another village, the scene is exactly the same. The same table overflowing with delicacies. The same impossible spoons. The same gnawing hunger at the spot. But something shifts. One person decides to reach across the table with their long spoon to feed the person sitting in the back. sitting opposite. That person understanding immediately does the same in return. The gesture ripples outward person to person until everyone at the table is laughing and eating. The lesson is simple. Suffering isn't always a shortage problem. It can be a cooperation problem. People in communities who can cooperate, share, and think beyond their immediate self-interest unlock abundance that isolated individuals never can. Thank you. Thank you. That was beautiful. Okay so we have one person here this evening with public comment and if you could please give your name. Name and addres and I guess yeah I guess you should come up here somewhere near the owl. So people can hear you anywhere at the table. Okay. Name address and also understand that we can't respond to you and we can't interact with you unfortunately. So how does he- Let's see I don't think they can see you where you're standing. Right? Can can they see her? No, because.. Because she looks at you. Yeah. Oh. Who's she looking at? Slick. Slick. She is standing. And what do they begin to respond after the person answers at the topic of punishment. There are words that are not affected as simple as they've expected. Then she has threeć raining. Canal chicken,PHE beispielsweise, tellement pie, and a little camarada. Because maybe if she's talking, you talk to people who should be trying to figure out this is the owl. My name is Karen Tickner, 204 Hayfield Lane, 43 years resident of Wayland. And I'm here to request that the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee acknowledge in a cultural statement, nay, as Jewish American Heritage Month. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is to review the March 17th meeting minutes, which hopefully everybody has. I sent them out, didn't bring extra copies. But does anybody have any questions? Any comments on the March 17th meeting minutes? We move to accept them. Yes, please. I haven't finished reading them. Moment for Kevin. Mary Ann, would you like to make that motion? I move that we accept the last month's meeting minutes. March 17th, 2026 meeting minutes. I'll second it. Okay. So Mary Ann and Kevin seconding. All right. Are there any further comments? Or can we take a vote? I don't know. Okay. Let's vote. Ya'ul? Yes. Evan? Yes. Mary Ann? Yes. Denise? Yes. Mariam? Yes. Maya? I can't talk. Okay. Maya's not going to talk. Okay. And Karen? Yes. So it's unanimous with Maya abstaining. Okay. Okay. So the next item on the agenda is cultural and holiday statements. And there's three bullets. Under this item, which my thought is we'll address them separately, but kind of together because they're all related to each other. So the first bullet is discussion and possible vote on draft statements for Arab American Heritage Month in April and Jewish American Heritage Month in May. And the second bullet is a discussion on whether to continue issuing cultural and holiday statements. And if so, what are our criteria for issuing cultural and holiday statements? And then the third topic is a process for updating our existing cultural and holiday statements. So I just want to clarify, this discussion is separate from the statements we do. We also do statements in response to incidents that happen in town. That's a whole separate topic. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the statements for, well, for Arab American Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month and the... How many did we count? We have... I don't know. Does that count? It does count. It does count. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Yes, now we're doing our opening statement. We're going to do our opening statement. Yes, I think we're heading into the opening statement. Do you want to say a little bit more about the ten cents and... I like the name. I don't know, a dozen or so already on the website. Twelve. Yeah. All right. Yeah. That's a big approach. Yeah. So unless anyone thinks otherwise, I would say let's start with the two drafts in front of us if somebody prefers to do this in a different order. I'm open to that. I would say we handle the April 1st and the May 1st. Are there any comments on the April one? Yes. So in the first paragraph, I don't know what this sentence means. This observance celebrates more than, it's the last sentence in the statement, in that first paragraph. This observance celebrates more than a century of Arab American life. What? A century of? I know, but that's only a hundred years. More than a century. Why do we need to do that? We don't. Well, the only reason I say that is that it just, especially by adding just a century, it's like people would, I read it and said a hundred years, and it's like, wait a minute, you know, Arab, and so I went to my, I went and Googled it, you know, and there have been, you know, Arabs came over with the Spanish, you know, if not others, but it, at least, you know, because Spain is so close to Arab North Africa, I thought, anyhow. What if we said, and Mariam, please chime in. What if we said centuries? I don't know, centuries of Arab American life. I agree, it doesn't even agree. I'm sorry. This is my, I should have caught this, but it doesn't even agree with the second paragraph. Also, I meant to start with saying, they're really wonderfully written. I love how comprehensive both of them are. That, that quite, that just left me kind of wondering why. You must have picked it up from somewhere. Yes, exactly. But it doesn't, it's a little inaccurate. Mariam, any thoughts? This says more than. It says more than. I know, but still. I think we'll skip over more. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah, thank you, Marianne. I think it makes sense what you said. We can even, we don't have, we don't even have to define like specific timeframe, or we can, substitute with a plural form. Centuries, celebrate some centuries of our. Yeah, right. Go on through plural, because I just, we never really know when various groups got here. I mean, when I first started my history, I didn't even know the Vikings were here before, or whoever along the, you know, the Northern perimeter. So. That's good. Thank you. I have another comment.
And that was about the first sentence, or the next one. And it's because we're talking about enslaved people. And from the earliest enslaved Arab Africans, and then we go on and end that sentence with, they strengthened our country through their resilience, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep commitments to family education and public service. Yeah, I agree. It doesn't go with the first part of the sentence. It doesn't go with enslavement. Right. And particularly, upset. And upsetting, because in most common, in some current parlance, slavery has been said to give people a job, train them job training. Which was, yes. Don't want to do. Very good point. So here's a question. What, please train anyone. But what if we, taking your first point, what if we said this observance, no, that doesn't make, celebrate centuries of Arab American life from the earliest enslaved Arab American, Arab African, or Arabic-speaking Africans from West and North Africa, period. And then your second paragraph could be from the waves of immigration in the 19th century through the present day. But then we don't acknowledge the unbelievable... I mean, this country was built on the free labor of Black slaves. And it's hard not to acknowledge that in some way. I will also take a moment to say that we don't really say that in the Black history. Well, that's another subject of going back to the previous. But I was kind of looking... Well, I just didn't want to accuse... Or to say that it wasn't developed here when it wasn't really developed in the Black history either. So I just didn't want to... I just thought... I just missed it because I think it was such a... Slavery was so bad. I didn't know how to acknowledge it in a better way.
And I don't even have good language to change that.
Good catches. The sentence structure makes it sound different than it is aimed to sound.
Well, we could say we acknowledge that the earliest Arab Americans were enslaved. Were they all? They weren't all.
And so it's almost like you need to say... I'm just... A sentence that talks about... Those who came over enslaved... You know... I don't know. What do you say about their work here?
Good question.
They didn't have to know what kind of work they had been doing. Well, it's more that... It doesn't... You know... We... This... That their... The wealth of their work is what made us wealthy. I'm not sure we ever could have... But that's a personal feeling that I'm not sure we ever could have had a revolution if we didn't have that. A huge amount of wealth that was able to be... You know, it's hard to wordsmith on the fly, but if anyone has... Right, it is. And I apologize. I... Well, and I was really kind of struggling about what to say about it. It could be as simple as, you know, from the earliest blah, blah, blah, through the present day, Arab Americans have been something like part of the fabric of our country. And then just we... We jumped to across generations. They've made significant contributions. Okay. That sounds good. That sounds great. Maybe you're going to have to repeat it again, though. Oh, hold on one sec. Can you say that again? Just instead of have strengthened, just say have been part of the fabric of our country. And then just jump to the other sentence, across generations.
How about have been building our country rather than the fabric just saying... It seems like it still doesn't have the power, whereas if you're building... They were here building our country, as everybody was. What do you think about that? Building instead of... Yeah, that's beautiful. I thought we were jumping right to across generation. There's two sentences. Right, so we're ending the other one. After Africa, we'd have been building our country. Then we go to the waves. Of immigration.
And we can get rid of the 19th century. Okay, so hold on. So from the earliest enslaved Arab Africans or Arabic-speaking Africans from West and North Africa to waves of immigration in the 19th century through the present day, Arab Americans have been part of building our country. Across generations, they have strengthened our country through their resilience, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, okay. Does that sound good? Thank you. It makes me happy. Good catches. Thank you. But you'd want to put in the fields that they've been working in, too, because that's important to know that business, science, medicine... Yeah, that's still there. That's all still there. Yeah. Yeah, that last sentence is staying. We can take that out. Now, do we need to approve these? We do, not this minute, but yeah, we do. We need to decide if we want to proceed with them. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's get them to where we like them first, and then see what we want them to do. Or take one, each one, like the April one, we'll decide, you know, do we want to approve this with the amendments? Or as amended? Yeah. So here's a question is, we want to talk about, do we want to keep doing these going forward? And part of that discussion is, do we want to do these two? They're on the table in front of us, and we can say yes, we want to do these two, and then decide whether we want to keep doing them going forward or not. And I'm comfortable with that approach, or someone can suggest a different approach. Well, the question is, So when we discuss this, we assume we are going to do it, right? That's, yeah. That's a good point. So I, just like the others we did before, we discuss it, but we definitely need someone like Marianne to be, to finalize it. We did. We did. We finalized it. Yeah. Rather than we fine-tune every single word here and it's a bit concrete. We did a little fine-tuning here, because we did have to vote on them. Yeah, we'll give to the business someone to make it a final. Yes. But this way. But this, but these are, these are coming out, these are April and May. So we don't have time to send them back to the drawing board. We're either going to, I think, approve them or say we don't want to do this. But we're still counting. We're still counting on business someone to go publish, to fine-tune, to go. That's why we did it before. Yeah, but so here. Here we discuss it. We brought the, so we're bringing these to the table, just like we have in the past. We will discuss it. Yeah. We'll give them the rest of the copy. I see what you're saying. We'll give to some. You could, you guys could vote to say, okay, Marianne and Karen, go ahead and finalize this as we have talked about here today, rather than voting on it as amended, if you like. I mean, I think you like. So we still talk about it because of the big issues we want to make changes with them. We're going to have to know. The one problem I see is that if we wait and come back next month, the Arab-American one will be gone. That's right. We don't want to do that. Right. We don't need to. We obviously just want someone. I mean, they're very unconcerned. There's probably issues with the finalized voting. I'd make a motion that we accept it. I think that, you know, is.
You're talking about the April. That's right. Right. Okay. I will make a motion that we accept the April draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. That sounds good. I think that's. Is there a second? Second. You can always come back. Can I. Can I just something or since there are two. Yes, go ahead. I just wanted to suggest possibly having the conversation about reviewing the policy. And if we want to move on doing these things before we approve these two, because this is going to complicate the other conversations. if it comes after the vote so hold off on voting on this one um until after we discuss whether we want to keep doing them going forward and the possible change in in the policy of selection well i think we've always done something for every month but we have 14 now did you count 14 and what happens is two in a month well we already this is april uh or may one of these is already a api month which one is it um one there will be two and uh just a moment i'm going to be nice is also well that was modified it was posted in may may so is that a yeah a api month is may also so we have two for may yeah and then there's the issue that there's like a gazillion there's hundreds of cultural holidays um some of them are national some of them are international some of them are states some of them are just uh advocacy organizations so there's a world of of ones that we have not done and and so that's why if we're going to keep doing them we need to tell ourselves what our criteria are so that we know when when to do it and whether we want to spend our time that way or not so i feel like we um we have so the only thing i don't know procedurally is we have a um motion on a motion on the table can we table the motion and come back to it later i would guess i think we could i think because we we've been having a discussion yeah i'm going to say hopefully this is okay procedurally because i think we've we've gotten it i think we're pretty happy with it as amended but we're not going to vote yet and can we turn our attention to the um the one for me to the may draft and then have the conversation that mariam is suggesting before we all right all right i don't have an issue with it okay okay so we have to move to table that oh yeah you want to do that oh yeah that's a good idea let's move to table it go ahead okay make a motion that we table um the draft for it we go right at this moment okay acceptance whatever that motion marianne you're seconding yeah go ahead yes it will work conflicting Mariana and what we're going to do we're going to do is probably vote on him so we can discuss we'll vote on the episode hurry up you've got a couple more minutes i think for the opening questions marianaƩment Are you okay tabling the motion Kevin? Yes. Yes. Yes Denise. Oh Sarah's here. Hi, Sarah Or is that Sarah? Is that actually you?
She's muted. I Don't know because anyway, there was some technical anyway, okay Mariam. Are you okay with tabling it? Yes Okay, and Maya is gone I guess but Maya might be Sarah because the email invitation today to me came with Sarah's name So, I don't know who that actually is Whoever you are that says Sarah's student. Can you tell us if if you're Sarah? All right, whoever they are is muted. Maybe Still it might be still Maya. Okay, so we're gonna table sorry for all this confusion. We're gonna table I'm gonna say unanimous except Maya Abstain, I'm gonna say hello. Sorry. I'm So yeah, I don't know why my name is Sarah That's what happened to me because I got the invitation to Sarah's name. Also every week. It's every month. It's some new Rico. Yeah, so Okay, so Maya you're voting yes to table it. Okay, fine. Yes. Thank you So let's take a look at the Jewish American Heritage Month statement from May. Are there any comments on that one? I don't know. Mariam? I'm saying question about the three centuries of Jewish American life. I mean, I think Jewish people were here from the very beginning who knows when and Even if they weren't recorded so rather centuries centuries. Yeah, just leave it that. Yep, and then I Had a question about the first sentence of the next one too, and that is that they came to America seeking refuge from persecution I'm not going to say that's not true. But um There was so I again Google that In that AI or whatever Google says and you know I just didn't want to lose the fact that some people might have been here who were not fleeing persecution, you know and in many ways a lot of people came through persecution a lot of people did it but there's persecution and there's persecution so I don't want to equate anything here so And So that first sentence I just was looking for, you know, I just wanted to affirm those whom may have come here Bravely and there are in another capacity, you know a job And and you know, I did have a person getting a better way of life. Yeah and then I also I'll have to say and and found in this country the promise of freedom and justice and you know, it's a I would just say look we come home looking for that i'm not going to say that um we've all found that well my great-grandparents came over from watch ago seeking a better way of life yes right um looking for one yeah so i'm sorry because i got distracted so jano welcome uh hi to now jano just joined us so i got distracted by that and i'm sorry i didn't catch your revised wording marianne oh oh yeah that's because i struggled with that revised wording too i know so the first it's i actually wanted to divide the sentence the first sentence into two um first that jewish people first came to america seeking refuge from persecution and i um i just wanted to you know acknowledge that you know that people jewish people came um to america um both um you know seeking refuge from persecution and um there is there is one word i have i don't have a problem with it but i mean like you said you know from persecution um period and i'd say i'd say get rid of and keep and get rid of the word again because it's uh um now marianne if you want to read it as i kind of amended it and see how that sounds what is it it says that would have said well well here's the thing jewish people first came to um to america seeking refuge from persecution he thought here he found this country the promise of freedom and justice and opportunity and uh religious liberty okay um how does that sound if we get rid of the word and um i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know you'd need to put a pronoun in but also it doesn't address marian's initial concern yeah um you know jewish people can maybe um came to america seeking um and i don't want to prioritize this but you know um and you know um seeking um a better life and as well as seeking refuge from persecution i i don't want to second that i don't want you know i don't want to bottom that up but what santa TRUMP says is you put a pronoun in what is the financial or minimum wage or interest rate or the unfƶ ģczea life oderäø Children Social Care enjoying something or less. i don't know why he says it in so n oke need to put a pronoun i doesn't mean additional in we simply noticed j ××ŖŠ¾Š¼ fairy ķøļæ½ Monkey coming um who say came to america seeking um and kind i don't need to analize this but you know you know um you know um seeking um a better life and as well um a better life and as well as seeking refuge from persecution I don't want to second that. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be dismissive about the first question. The question becomes, which sounds better, which sounds more correct, wouldn't you say? Well, it's the idea that people came here as business people, and they did. Some people, Marianne is saying, some people didn't come necessarily seeking refuge. Denise, what do you think sounds better and sounds more correct? Well, you can't start the sentence with just found in this country, the promise of, because who found? You know? We don't know. They found it in, found it, or does anybody have any ideas? I think I, I think I, I think I, I think I, I think I, I think I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I think I'm getting where you're going, Kevin. How does this sound? Jewish people first came to America seeking refuge from persecution, comma, and the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity, and religious liberty in this country. So they're seeking all of those things, not finding. I see what you're getting right in there, and found in this country. Right. I'm moving this country to the end, but I'm saying they're seeking all of it and taking out the, I'm not saying they found anything, just that they're seeking it. Just, so in other words, let's read this again. Jewish people first came to America seeking refuge from persecution, period.
No, she's saying refuge from persecution and the promise of freedom. Justice, opportunity. Yeah, so in other words, we'd be taking out and found in this country. Leaving the and, but taking out found in this country. The comma after persecution. Yeah. And then, and the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity, and religious liberty in this country. All right, so we're getting rid of the word found. Right. Yeah, that sounds perfect. So Marianne, does that address your thing? Because it's all part of the seeking? Yes. Yes. All right. I think that's good. So, okay. Thank you, Janelle. That was, that was helpful. Any other- Thank you, Kevin. He had the insight. Well, I had the insight. You just had to fine tune it. Thank you, Paul. Is this only a period of time? Now the Jewish come over not for that purpose, right? Well, this- It's a wonderful country now. I mean- I mean- So we still coming. Many people, still? Yeah. Many still because of persecution. I mean, it's the persecution . You can't say everybody come here. Everybody comes here. That's what Marianne said. Everybody comes here to get away from something. Even people from European was always healed. So it's not a . That's what I'm trying to say. All the statement they look like almost identical. Mm-hm. Mm. OK. Yeah. I was just reading a story about the history of the Black Death and the plague. And there is this huge history about blaming Jewish people for the plague. And this is persecution way beyond just you're different. So I think persecution needs to be there in a special way. I'm thinking we really do want to emphasize what has happened before us is what the ideas, their contributions, what this country has done for them, almost every statement that we have, how bad we were treated, the AAPI, too, or how the Chinese were treated. So I think persecution needs to be there in a special way. Everybody has some painful experience. But I think we're looking forward. We're looking forward. We need to get everything. But that's why when it says the promise of all those good things, which we know we haven't achieved any of those really for everyone in this country, but the promise is still what inspires. Not just Jewish people, but all people. But like everybody was saying, it's why people come to this country. So, I mean, I think it says what you're saying, Yawu, when we talk about the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity, and religious liberty. That's what makes our country, you know, so attractive to people around the world. But it's our world. It's our world. It's our world. It's our work, too. Hey, you, get down.
And, you know, these heritage months, they are designed to be a positive acknowledgement of different groups' contributions to the country. But to avoid talking about bad things that have happened in the past doesn't really tell the full picture of any. I just feel we talk about too much of the pages. I'm always doing that. I'm always doing that. I will never forget those. If you don't forget the hatreds, you still have that hatred. Why we do that? Why we always hate bringing that up, bringing that up, bringing that up. Okay, that's, I think that's the forgettable test to look for. I think that's what we should do. In other words, we always say Japan is so bad. Japan is so bad. We keep, we keep. Every time there's a chance, we fight. We fight. What's that for? You know what I mean? Now we're looking forward to how we can live together, how we can live with the Japanese people. Because regardless of how better we will treat them in a certain world or two. And if we keep saying that we'll kill everybody who has done wrong to us, we'll still try to do that. There's no peace. That's, you know, then some big things have been fled. And then the people start to have another group of haters, another three years, but ever get to sort of always keep keep the hate, hate and hate. So just keep books on pasting. I think, um, for some instances, for many instances of not acknowledging a particularly difficult history is, is trying to erase it. And I think it's really pretty, I would, I find it necessary to, to acknowledge certain actions. And if we, because the two reasons, if you don't, you don't know about those actions, then you don't learn from them. In your bound to repeat them. And second of all, I think for people who have loved ones, who suffered under whatever that history is, it feels like you're trying to erase their experience, which was unique, in some ways, to them, and that that is not that that is erasing them also, because that's part of their history. And there. So I hear what you're saying. And I, and I think these are very positive, and they're forward, where, well, they're positive, but they're acknowledging the reality. Um, of the difficult things that continue. I don't, I don't see it as continuing to hate. Um, and I think it's important to acknowledge that, that experience and learn from it. That's how I see it. What I see is, okay, the black people here, they are suffering. We give that to them. Okay, they don't even attend.
The Chinese back in the very old time, we didn't miss the president. But we're not carrying the ball for the entire world. It's a sense of not here. It's not to also do something for them. It's different, right? That's just acknowledging. We're not covered the whole history. We're not what? Yeah, we're not talking about all the injustice of the world.
I feel that. Um, this, I feel that this needs to be acknowledged here.
So, I'm not sure if I fully understand your input. So I don't want to assume and I do agree with the need to acknowledge histories. But this brought up something different for me. If you look at the other statement, there is no acknowledgement of what brought people here, right? A lot of Arab Americans are here. Because of postcolonial violence is that's not something that we that we bring up. So I do agree with having to validate experiences. But it's it doesn't, it wouldn't whatever we end up voting on, it wouldn't make sense to do that in some statements and not the others. Because that would also be a point that can be understood as what Marianne said, like as if you're erasing something.
I'm going. No, no, this is fine. I mean, we want to see both looking forward side, emphasizing that, you know, that every statement, I'm not talking about just Jewish law. I'm talking about Chinese law too, okay? So every time I think about looking at that, 500, 1, 200 years ago, I don't feel comfortable looking at it. Why don't we do what we do, how we can live together, how the Jewish people, Arab people, Chinese people can live in freedom peacefully. That's what we can do. That's my goal. Yeah, I think we would all agree that that's the goal. Right, that we can all live together harmoniously, as we would say. I think at some point, this our statement, should lead us to that kind of feeling. Because we are not a world organization, to take care of the world business, we can do that. We don't have that problem. But we do want to have the people in freedom. We live together peacefully. I don't want to do what the faith is we have before, okay? And so that's how we live. Sometimes we're very sensitive. So sometimes things happen, we emphasize. We emphasize, we mix in smoke, and emphasize the entries are slid. So sometimes how we do that, okay? Not to unnecessarily amplify the incidents. The incidents will happen because we deal with people, some people just not have the knowledge as others, or understanding as others. So I think that comment can be helpful in the conversation about the, you know, importance of these statements, if that's something we want to be spending our time doing versus doing something else. That's why it's a little hard to go through them before we've discussed that, you know, but I can see, I mean, Yahoo talking about that while we are discussing the idea of moving forward with, you know, our need to issue statements or not, or if we'd rather use our time to engage in initiatives that actually produce some on the ground effect.
Wow, we have a lot on the table right now. I think there's agreement that we want to make Wayland a place where people get along with one another. Right, and also feel welcome. And feel welcome and feel that they belong. That's one area of agreement. And then there's the question of acknowledging difficult histories and whether that makes people, I'm going to oversimplify a little bit, but does that make people feel more seen because we've acknowledged difficult histories, or does it keep drawing attention, as Yahoo was saying, to these open wounds in a way that just kind of keeps the wounds open? And I have a feeling some of these things can coexist at the same time. I don't think there's probably a right or a wrong here. Well, here's something to think about now. I have a tote bag that says... Never forget September 11th. Now, is that always opening a wound, or is that just in remembrance of all those who died at that time? I think it depends who you are, is what I would say to that. I think what you're saying is it depends upon how you look at it.
Well, when I look at these statements, I think, I mean, there is an acknowledgment of struggle that, you know, the different groups, and not just the ones that we're looking at this month, the Arab American heritage and Jewish American heritage. But I think the bulk of the statement is highlighting the enrichment that these members of our wider community, wider community um bring you know bring to our country and bring to our communities and i i like that i think it's a good balance um to i mean we can't pretend that um these two groups in particular right now are um in the you know one of the most difficult periods in history for you know for arab americans and for jewish americans but what we're what we're celebrating in the heritage month is the really wonderful contributions that people have made and i i think that's appropriate for our committee um right it's not just one good and maybe a little contribution mariam were you saying that there was something missing from the arab american heritage month that's analogous to um something that's in the jewish american heritage month statement is there something that you were suggesting we might add yeah i was thinking about you know the the whole conversation about uh validating histories and i completely agree with that i'm not against talking about hard stuff and the challenging stuff and yes for some people they may feel like an opening the wound for others they may feel little um the um validation of why they're here right and they're not all the here the same similar to what you know how jewish people got here it's similar to the conversation you were talking about um and the answer is yes i do feel like there is a matching between you know this historical statement and the stories you're talking about and how everything we just had. But I, to be very honest, I don't want to dive deep into the nuances of these because I have my own arguments against the need for us to keep doing this in general and resort to doing something alternative. Share thoughts about that while you have the floor. Share thoughts about the idea in general? About, yeah, whether we should continue doing these. I would say two main points. First is we do have, you know, finite time and attention, and these can be largely symbolic. So if all we're doing is just, you know, issuing these statements more than we're actually engaging in initiatives in town, that can feel very performative. And, you know, we will be diverting our attention from other efforts, I guess. That would actually have direct change or outcome in town. The other thing is that the current criteria that we have is that we only issue statements for federally recognized heritage months. But usually, I mean, we all know as an HRDIC where federally recognized heritage months come from, right? It's a historic and a political process. It's not a neutral or complete acknowledgement of marginalized groups. So those who don't have, specifically those who don't have recognized heritage months are those probably mostly affected by systemic bias and the ones that are least visible or whose voices are most heard. So either we will have to, you know, struggle with that idea and see how we can expand on recognizing other groups. Or just if you don't want to deal with it, let's not deal with it at all. I think that's where I am. Or if we alternatively, instead of, issuing statements that we acknowledge something that's already federally acknowledged, maybe use some input. For example, we want to acknowledge Jewish Heritage Month. Let's, this Jewish Heritage Month, we acknowledge the contribution of so-and-so who did this and this, for example. Like, this would at least give me more material or information. But just issuing statements, especially with the limiting criteria that we have, that's only federal. I don't know how productive that feels for me. Honestly, like, even this conversation now, we could have been discussing, I don't know, doing some initiative or some of the ideas that, you know, we bounce off each other occasionally. So I don't know. I don't know how others feel about it. But I know that if we keep doing it without taking a second look at our criteria, it's going to show up. If not, you know, next month, the month after or the month after or the month when someone comes and says, can you recognize this month that is not Heritage Month, that is not federally recognized, and we're going to have to struggle with that then. So let's be equitable from the beginning and, you know, set our criteria, our policy in a way that makes sense long-term. Thank you for that. I wonder if it would be possible for a couple of people to talk about this offline and think about it and come back with a proposal to the committee about how to think about it. Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to talk about doing these going forward. Well, it will just end up in this discussion then. Well, at least somebody would put forward criteria and say either like, we shouldn't do them anymore, or we should do them. And here's the criteria. Here's how we decide.
Because after three, four years now, we did a lot. Actually, to me, I find almost everyone's identical. We're suffering. Well, we're contributing. And that was the struggle we had before. It's all just... So maybe it's getting old, is what you're saying. Right? Is that what you're saying? It might be getting old because we seem to be repeating ourselves. Maybe we should think about how we deal with this Heritage Month and how we do things we can do, and it's much more meaningful. Right. So let's think about it. Right. Maybe we have a sort of, we could have a sort of short statement, so every time we use that statement for documents, like this is challenge AAPI, this is Jewish, we do need to have a long one, but we have something more precise. A template of some kind? We also think of other things we can do. So is anybody volunteering to go off and give this some more thought and come back to us with a proposal? Mary Ann? Yeah, let's call them out. I also want to say something, though. Yeah? You know, I grew up in an era when none of these things were discussed. I mean, these months didn't come up, they didn't drop on us, like, because, they came up because there are a lot of issues. We have people who are being ignored, both in our curriculum and continue to be ignored in our curriculum, at schools, and in our knowledge as adults, and that the majority culture has pushed so many of these groups aside, and so that's the era I come from. And so, and this was a big improvement when that, when these months were developed. This was like, oh my gosh. And yes. We've gone to a spot where saying Black history isn't just February. That's an improvement, but also, I hate to say it, you know, it's in February that we managed to get some Black history in, and it's another discussion about, oh, it shouldn't be just February. Which is a reminder that, you know, maybe we haven't moved as far as we want to move. But, and I would also say, we're the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. If we can't have these discussions here, then, you know, where else are these discussions being held in this town? So, they need to be held. And, and that's our title. So, it's symbolic, and it's, you know, it's hard work. It's hard to worry about our, you know, you worry about having, these are hard conversations. So, but, so. It's, I can't, I did go on, like, as we, I went to see if other towns still met these statements. Other towns still do have these statements, and continue to make these statements. I only looked up two towns. Yeah, and some of them are not doing them anymore, for the reasons that, you know. And, when you look at our other statements, I mean, these are, these are so comprehensive in what they say. And maybe there is a certain, there is a certain reference. There's a certain repetition in what, in how it's approached. But there's still different, there's still a nuance about recognizing the, the experience of the various groups. And this is what it looked like before. And so, clearly, we've moved to what I think is a better, you know, spot, because I think a more comprehensive conversation is better. Not, and that's not saying anything bad about it. That's sure. Okay. But just saying that, you know, now we feel we, you know, what else would we like to say? And again, it's that tough conversation that we have to be willing to have. So, anyhow, that's what I've got. Marianna, I have a question. I have a question. The other towns that you looked at, and you found that they still do it, do they only do federally recognized months? Or do they go beyond that? Because that is the biggest piece in this. For me, as an HRDIC, we should not play the game and, you know, dismiss people who are already marginalized. We need to understand that systemic move. So, if that's our criteria, that goes against the value and the vision of HRDIC. I can maybe answer a little bit of that from the history of the committee. So, when we first started talking about HRDIC. A cultural and celebration calendar, we researched, you know, everything that was out there. It was not at all looking to see what is the federal list. That was, I mean, I don't think we even really consulted, you know, what the federally recognized one is. We looked at what are the calendars that have been developed by different communities. And not just communities in Massachusetts, but calendars of, you know, large organizations, even international organizations. Just to see what are all the events. And we kind of distilled it down. Because, you know, it would be more than one thing for every single day, every single month. So, we thought, well, we could start by at least trying to reach out to people who are looking to raise awareness about these heritage months. But there was never, you know, a decision to use, you know, the federally recognized list. We were thinking more about people in, representing, you know, people in the community here. In the wider Wayland community. So, when you mentioned earlier that, you know, it could be that, I mean, just to give an example. So, maybe there are some praying Indians who live in Wayland who are not federally recognized. And who might like to be recognized by the committee. And I think that would be a very positive challenge for the committee to receive. For us to focus on our own heritage. And that we're not bound by a roster of, you know, federally approved heritage months. I think we need criteria. Because there are hundreds of international and national and state and local cultural holidays. And in my mind, and we don't have anything in writing saying that it's national. But in my mind, that has been the criterion. Although we haven't always followed it historically. We have some statements that are not nationally recognized. But in my mind, that's just been a way to try to sort out how do we decide what we do and what we don't do. Otherwise, any time, if we don't have criteria, how do we know whether to say yes or no when somebody comes to us? If we don't decide, I mean, we're going to end up trying to solve all the world's problems. Exactly. Which we can't. Exactly. Yep. What I would like to put on the table. What I would like to put on the table for everyone's consideration is we have these two drafts in front of us. I would like us to consider voting on these with whatever amendments we need to have. Absolutely. And then deciding going forward, which we probably won't get to finish tonight. But are we going to keep doing these or not? And if we do, how do we decide which ones to do? Yeah. Yeah. To vote. Oh. Women. Women. Women. Three, four, five. We still have a quorum. You're having a quorum. I'd like to get my vote in. You'd like to get your vote in. So, what do... So, Mariam had suggested, I think, in addition to the Arab American Heritage Draft, acknowledging why people of Arab descent have come to the United States escaping colonial violence or post-colonial violence. and we can certainly add a sentence like that if people want um are we close to being ready to to vote because denise needs to leave are we close to being ready to vote on these two first of all do you guys agree that that would be something we want to do is there anyone who doesn't want to vote on these two or doesn't think we should i agree we pair that vote with um the vote that we will work on future um criteria or change the way we share or the content right um there are so many ideas in which we can engage the community like ask people for example to submit uh you know someone they would like to highlight for this or that month and then vote on that so there's so many other ways that we can do it that that would share knowledge and engage people and instead of you know just and i'm not saying that the intention is performative but it feels performative when we're not adding as much on you know on the ground would you be willing mariam to i i think yahoo and marianne i think raised their hand saying they'd be willing to um bring something back to the committee would you be willing to work with them to bring something back to the committee yeah sure we can um work and come up with multiple options i'm either not doing it or doing it in a different way or uh criteria for how we pick and you know the group can vote on it you yeah i think that would be great because i do think we need to decide whether we want to keep doing these going forward and if so how um do you want to suggest mariam a sentence that you want to add to the april statement um not really uh do we do we want to do it now so we can uh so we can vote on them i don't want to i don't want to push it if you or others don't feel comfortable voting right now um denise is leaving and would like to get her vote in i don't want to push it but are we ready for for that i guess is my question yeah i would say um uh from the earliest enslaved arab africans or speaking africans from west and north africa um and maybe just change the term wave of immigration to a term that would encompass different ways in why people migrate i think that would suffice well so what can you say with that question i think that would suffice i think that might say i will need a moment please take it take it so we're going on the basis that we are trying to get these done so we can vote on them and i think so move forward on i don't want to push it if somebody doesn't want to do it but if y'all are comfortable with it i would say we've got these two on the table um i wouldn't i wouldn't walk personally i wouldn't walk away from them i would say we've got them here if they're you know satisfactory let's vote on them as they are and i think that would suffice i think that would suffice i think that would suffice amended and but then to absolutely not do any more statements after this until we figured out how we want to do them well how and whether we want to update the other ones and whether we want to update the other i think we should go ahead actually we do a few a year finally we should have all 12 or whatever there is each month each one will have a good article done every each for each month if for example if this is a jewish one paradigms we'll have to put it in the center of the the web page and then put a link to this document yeah that's all that that's the type of thing you all can propose for afterwards yeah so we have a current information we have this
ready to available information okay so that's one idea for later but let's come back to this um mariam do you have a thought about that sentence yet or okay i tried to see if ai would help me formulate that sentence
how does something like from the earliest enslaved arab and arab speaking africans from west and north africa to successive migrations uh beyond shaped by forces including uh economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial conflict through the present day and then arabs have strengthened law successive migrations shaped by what
successive migrations shaped by forces including economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial conflict or post-colonial violence okay i can't write as fast as you can talk economic opportunity for that economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial violence okay and then through the present day and then the sentence goes on yeah um yeah that makes it more similar to the other one in that it talks about what are some of the factors that brought people here but we still have the first part with the enslavement that we had talked about yes so let me let me see if i can read this second paragraph uh out loud from the earliest enslaved arab africans or arabic speaking africans from west and north africa to waves of immigration no no ah sorry okay uh from west and north africa to successive migrations shaped by forces including economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial violence um through the present day is that what comes okay sorry okay through the present day arab americans have been part of building our country yeah our country is that right have been part oh brother or we can still do this have strength our country through their etc or build or fabric off they all yeah before we talk about building because we wanted to reference the first part of that sentence i'm sorry it's just such a mess on the page i should um so from the earliest enslaved i thought we said no those who came over enslaved those who came over enslaved you know i guess that's what i wrote it wasn't what did you have from the earliest enslaved arab americans or arabic speaking africans from oh brother i've got so much stuff written here now i don't even know yes and from west and north africa to successive migrations yeah but we that that gets rid of that they have been building our country that was the idea was that that's later we get to that yeah that's after that sentence okay but then that connects um well okay
about who who has come from a vast read you know vast regions and why i was trying to acknowledge i don't know if you were hearing when we started general that the acknowledging the fact that enslaved people came here and built this country and they didn't you know that linking that to resilience entrepreneurial spirit and deep commitments to family and and country wasn't exactly appropriate yeah but then we marianne we in the new version we added that there's also displacement and post-colonial violence so that also you know and then the sentence after would showcase how all of these regardless of why they got here were part of building i i hear what you were saying earlier um what you were saying earlier but with this added i don't see it giving the meaning that it was giving in the first draft if that makes sense well i just worry that we are again um putting aside that enslaved people didn't make that choice and they are not being entrepreneurial here and it wasn't the resilience that made you know there wasn't their resilience i mean their their strength and so i don't know what we're looking at anymore yeah that's why doing it on the computer because this is getting so messy um so from the earliest enslaved arab africans or arabic speaking africans from western north africa to successive migrations shaped by forces including economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial violence through the present day arab americans have been part of building our country okay period got it um i was gonna say does that sound good to everybody i like that sentence and then you want um does everybody else agree with it but then what happens to that last half of that sentence it's the generations here how about this okay then if we go um have been part of building our country period through their resilience entrepreneurial spirit and deep commitments to family education and public service they have made significant contributions across the generations in fields industrialized including business science medicine the arts education and public service is that good i like it sounds good and in the first sentence in the first paragraph we change the lessons to this observance celebrates centuries of arab american life okay um so i think we i think we have it unless this one unless anybody has any more comments so let me just read it one more time so the first paragraph ends with this observance celebrates centuries of arab american life also the second paragraph says from the earliest enslaved arab africans or arabic speaking africans from west and north africa to successive migrations shaped by forces including economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial violence through the present day arab americans have been part of building our country through their resilience entrepreneurial spirit and deep commitments to family education and public service they have made significant contributions across the generations in fields including all those things that are listed also system development from her by state labors neo-americans have not been all difference all right any other changes to that one do we feel ready to vote on this one I knew okay so this is the one that we had this is very right this is April okay this is the one that Kevin had courses now Denise isn't here but with a table this Kevin hadn't had to accept it as amended and Denise had seconded but Denise isn't here anymore so maybe we just need to you have another second have another second yeah let's take another second so Kevin proposes heaven moves that we accept it as amended who's gonna second it I'll second no okay Juno seconds okay are we ready to vote yeah okay yeah okay Kevin yes Mariam yes Mariam yes Maya yes Juno yes and Karen yes okay I'm down when you go yes okay all right now the next one are there any so the changes we made on this one which I am just gonna give me one second changes we made on this one which I am just gonna give me one second I can save this as an update before I okay see that to say and then let's get the Jewish American Heritage Month we have we said this observance celebrates centuries refuge from persecution, comma, and the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity, and religious liberty. That's the only change that we made. Are there any other changes we need to make to this one? Do they feel comparable now, these two statements? Do you need a motion? Well, I'm just asking, does everyone feel comfortable that they feel comparable to each other? I would say yes. Do you want to make a motion? Yeah, I move that we accept the main statement for Jewish American heritage. Kevin, you're seconding? Yes. Okay, so let us vote. Jono? Yes. Mariam? Yes. Maya? Yes. Yalu? Yes. Kevin? Yes. Marianne? No. And Karen, yes. Okay. So that is it for those two. Thank you. These are not easy discussions, and they're especially not easy discussions in public while we're being recorded. And this group, and if we can't do it here, where can we do it anyway? So thank you for this not easy conversation. Appreciate it. And thank you, Yalu, for your flexibility and for agreeing to figure out how we want to do this going forward along with Mariam and Marianne. Yeah. Do you want to table on the process for updating existing? Yeah. To kind of, with that other discussion. That can be part of that other discussion. Yep. Is this the second bullet, we're tabling, or the third? The second and third. Second and third will be discussed offline and brought back. Okay, okay. Alright. So we're at number five? Correct? Are we at number five? We are. Okay. Now I know where we are. Okay. So we're at number five? Yes. Okay. So this isn't the second bullet. We're at number five. Yes. Okay. Now I know where we are. Okay. Two minutes. Two minutes. Two minutes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. um okay it's getting late okay um thank you for coming um all right so i said we would finish at 7 30 and i want to get a sense from the group probably everybody wants to leave at 7 30 of the things here what feels numbers five and six what feels like we really need to make sure to get to it this time versus what we can wait until i think number five can wait until next time i would i would probably say um well do we have the conversations for change and coming up yeah why don't we do very fast two minutes okay all right why not okay because i think you said five and six because if i'm looking at six the fifth anniversary born the women festival of the murder um um um and then if we go to six let's go let's kevin let's go through each one really fast and see if whoever belongs to that bullet one needs to say anything yeah so the bulletin board persons um real quick um yeah um sophie and i are getting together on wednesday um we'll see where we are for our plan um uh it may be that we're going to put it up for the summer rather than for um because of that believe it or not this bulls board has is has another person who's going to be on it in monday on may now that we only wanted half of it but um so anyhow we're we're moving along that's great thank you whalen festival anything time sensitive or can that wait till next time um just a quick update that um i'm going to be uh collaborating with palavi our chair of our whalen cultural council um exploring getting a grant for the festival and we're thinking that we may focus on um experience um experiential dimensions of the festival
okay do we have a date for the women's festival is there a date yes what is it october 4th i think isn't it i think it was october 4th last year right it was so what would it be yeah it's that same uh first saturday in october third yeah right thank you october 3rd okay fantastic and thank you for working on that cultural mass cultural council grant uh the mural project is there anything update on that uh so the mural project it's a little bit complicated um i spoke with kelsey in the town office and she referred me to carol martin of the select board carol and i spoke and the the lady in the town office was talking about um what the The select board is very concerned and protective of staff time. They said, you know, staff time is actually a cost. So to run the grant through the town, they would like to work with Heidi, who is an experienced grant writer. They only want one point of contact. That would be Heidi. They absolutely do not want different people from, you know, different committees pestering them about little details. And they asked us if we could come to the select board meeting on the 27th. Carol said she couldn't guarantee that she could keep it on the agenda, but that she would try. So that's where we are.
Thank you for that. I just want to mention the dates of the last conference. The last conversations for change event at the library. It is Thursday, April 30th in the evening. And that's going to be a fabulous, another fabulous conversation led by Dr. Eden Renee Hayes. So I hope all of you can make it to that. And then the last conversations, not confrontations, session with Jameel Adams is Tuesday, May 12th in the evening. And that wraps up our, if you add up all the sessions for both of those. I mean, we really knocked it out of the park this over this time period with all of these programs with partner, wonderful partnerships in town with the library, with the schools. So I'm, I'm really pleased and proud about those programs. And that'll take us through, you know, the end of this school year as it were. And then, well, in June, we can begin to think about the next fiscal year, but that takes us through this year and major kudos to everybody here. Who's done so much to make these programs successful and the festival and human rights day and all the other things that we've done this year. It's almost time to write our annual report. So then we get to look at all the stuff that we've done this year and remind ourselves that we've done good work. We've done exactly. Let's pat ourselves on the back once in a while. So thank you, everybody. I wanted to number seven announcements matters, not reasonably anticipated. Wayland post in case you guys missed this, the Wayland post is having pizza and bingo. On Sunday, May 3rd from one to three at the new community center, and it's a real opportunity to cut for people, all different kinds of people that come together and do something silly and fun. I happen to have a conflict that day. But I'm going to try to do both. Cause I think we, it's really nice to support those kinds of activities that bring the community together. And we want the Wayland post, just. And we want Wayland post to stay in business. Yes, we do. It's such an incredible resource. Any other announcements? Yeah, I have a little announcement. So the Wayland Baha'is have been supporting Carlisle Baha'is in a Ray Samity movie in game night. And it's been fun to watch them in the back, watching the Baha'i in full ķ. And like I said, I'm very excited that they're doing this and we're just looking forward to this next week. Thank you. Okay. been at the Carlisle library and it's been so much fun um we thought we'd launch it in Wayland um and it's I'll have to send you the the first date it's going to be at Fran Pollitt's house um I think the first one right oh do let us know that's great thank you and it's it aired on PBS they're short little episodes so I think the first one is going to be um Harriet Tubman um and her Quaker male Quaker partner that story from the underground railway excellent um okay and I was going to say if we can and excuse me if that conversation was already had and I missed it if we can add to a future agenda discussing the possibility of live streaming
not necessarily recording but maybe live streaming just to get better access I know that I personally couldn't go to all of them I mean it's a very tricky time of the day for parents and but I also know there's an issue you know with recording so maybe that's something we can dig through a little bit at another time sure I'll add it for next month thank you um okay oh sorry all right um would somebody like to move that we adjourn well you both did so I move that we adjourn at 7 20. is it 7 28 or 7 29. it is 7 28. okay I move that we adjourn at 7 20 18. and Yahoo is seconding right okay folks let's vote um Janelle yes Maya oh Maya yeah there we go okay thanks um Mariam yes Yahoo yes Evan yes Mariam yes and Karen yes so we are now adjourned good
The Parable of the Long Spoon. And can you read loudly to make sure people can hear you? In one village, people sit at a magnificent banquet table, eat with every food imaginable. Roasted meats and fish, freshly cooked vegetables, steaming hot bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread, bread. Ripe fruit, beautiful desserts. Their mouths water and their stomachs ache with hunger. But their spoons are absurdly long, longer than their arms. And no matter how they twist and strain, they cannot get a single bite into their own mouths. So they curse. They swipe at each other's plates. They grow bitter and frantic. The feast sits before them. Untouched. And everyone goes hungry. In another village, the scene is exactly the same. The same table overflowing with delicacies. The same impossible spoons. The same gnawing hunger at the spot. But something shifts. One person decides to reach across the table with their long spoon to feed the person sitting in the back. sitting opposite. That person understanding immediately does the same in return. The gesture ripples outward person to person until everyone at the table is laughing and eating. The lesson is simple. Suffering isn't always a shortage problem. It can be a cooperation problem. People in communities who can cooperate, share, and think beyond their immediate self-interest unlock abundance that isolated individuals never can. Thank you. Thank you. That was beautiful. Okay so we have one person here this evening with public comment and if you could please give your name. Name and addres and I guess yeah I guess you should come up here somewhere near the owl. So people can hear you anywhere at the table. Okay. Name address and also understand that we can't respond to you and we can't interact with you unfortunately. So how does he- Let's see I don't think they can see you where you're standing. Right? Can can they see her? No, because.. Because she looks at you. Yeah. Oh. Who's she looking at? Slick. Slick. She is standing. And what do they begin to respond after the person answers at the topic of punishment. There are words that are not affected as simple as they've expected. Then she has threeć raining. Canal chicken,PHE beispielsweise, tellement pie, and a little camarada. Because maybe if she's talking, you talk to people who should be trying to figure out this is the owl. My name is Karen Tickner, 204 Hayfield Lane, 43 years resident of Wayland. And I'm here to request that the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee acknowledge in a cultural statement, nay, as Jewish American Heritage Month. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is to review the March 17th meeting minutes, which hopefully everybody has. I sent them out, didn't bring extra copies. But does anybody have any questions? Any comments on the March 17th meeting minutes? We move to accept them. Yes, please. I haven't finished reading them. Moment for Kevin. Mary Ann, would you like to make that motion? I move that we accept the last month's meeting minutes. March 17th, 2026 meeting minutes. I'll second it. Okay. So Mary Ann and Kevin seconding. All right. Are there any further comments? Or can we take a vote? I don't know. Okay. Let's vote. Ya'ul? Yes. Evan? Yes. Mary Ann? Yes. Denise? Yes. Mariam? Yes. Maya? I can't talk. Okay. Maya's not going to talk. Okay. And Karen? Yes. So it's unanimous with Maya abstaining. Okay. Okay. So the next item on the agenda is cultural and holiday statements. And there's three bullets. Under this item, which my thought is we'll address them separately, but kind of together because they're all related to each other. So the first bullet is discussion and possible vote on draft statements for Arab American Heritage Month in April and Jewish American Heritage Month in May. And the second bullet is a discussion on whether to continue issuing cultural and holiday statements. And if so, what are our criteria for issuing cultural and holiday statements? And then the third topic is a process for updating our existing cultural and holiday statements. So I just want to clarify, this discussion is separate from the statements we do. We also do statements in response to incidents that happen in town. That's a whole separate topic. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the statements for, well, for Arab American Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month and the... How many did we count? We have... I don't know. Does that count? It does count. It does count. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Yes, now we're doing our opening statement. We're going to do our opening statement. Yes, I think we're heading into the opening statement. Do you want to say a little bit more about the ten cents and... I like the name. I don't know, a dozen or so already on the website. Twelve. Yeah. All right. Yeah. That's a big approach. Yeah. So unless anyone thinks otherwise, I would say let's start with the two drafts in front of us if somebody prefers to do this in a different order. I'm open to that. I would say we handle the April 1st and the May 1st. Are there any comments on the April one? Yes. So in the first paragraph, I don't know what this sentence means. This observance celebrates more than, it's the last sentence in the statement, in that first paragraph. This observance celebrates more than a century of Arab American life. What? A century of? I know, but that's only a hundred years. More than a century. Why do we need to do that? We don't. Well, the only reason I say that is that it just, especially by adding just a century, it's like people would, I read it and said a hundred years, and it's like, wait a minute, you know, Arab, and so I went to my, I went and Googled it, you know, and there have been, you know, Arabs came over with the Spanish, you know, if not others, but it, at least, you know, because Spain is so close to Arab North Africa, I thought, anyhow. What if we said, and Mariam, please chime in. What if we said centuries? I don't know, centuries of Arab American life. I agree, it doesn't even agree. I'm sorry. This is my, I should have caught this, but it doesn't even agree with the second paragraph. Also, I meant to start with saying, they're really wonderfully written. I love how comprehensive both of them are. That, that quite, that just left me kind of wondering why. You must have picked it up from somewhere. Yes, exactly. But it doesn't, it's a little inaccurate. Mariam, any thoughts? This says more than. It says more than. I know, but still. I think we'll skip over more. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah, thank you, Marianne. I think it makes sense what you said. We can even, we don't have, we don't even have to define like specific timeframe, or we can, substitute with a plural form. Centuries, celebrate some centuries of our. Yeah, right. Go on through plural, because I just, we never really know when various groups got here. I mean, when I first started my history, I didn't even know the Vikings were here before, or whoever along the, you know, the Northern perimeter. So. That's good. Thank you. I have another comment.
And that was about the first sentence, or the next one. And it's because we're talking about enslaved people. And from the earliest enslaved Arab Africans, and then we go on and end that sentence with, they strengthened our country through their resilience, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep commitments to family education and public service. Yeah, I agree. It doesn't go with the first part of the sentence. It doesn't go with enslavement. Right. And particularly, upset. And upsetting, because in most common, in some current parlance, slavery has been said to give people a job, train them job training. Which was, yes. Don't want to do. Very good point. So here's a question. What, please train anyone. But what if we, taking your first point, what if we said this observance, no, that doesn't make, celebrate centuries of Arab American life from the earliest enslaved Arab American, Arab African, or Arabic-speaking Africans from West and North Africa, period. And then your second paragraph could be from the waves of immigration in the 19th century through the present day. But then we don't acknowledge the unbelievable... I mean, this country was built on the free labor of Black slaves. And it's hard not to acknowledge that in some way. I will also take a moment to say that we don't really say that in the Black history. Well, that's another subject of going back to the previous. But I was kind of looking... Well, I just didn't want to accuse... Or to say that it wasn't developed here when it wasn't really developed in the Black history either. So I just didn't want to... I just thought... I just missed it because I think it was such a... Slavery was so bad. I didn't know how to acknowledge it in a better way.
And I don't even have good language to change that.
Good catches. The sentence structure makes it sound different than it is aimed to sound.
Well, we could say we acknowledge that the earliest Arab Americans were enslaved. Were they all? They weren't all.
And so it's almost like you need to say... I'm just... A sentence that talks about... Those who came over enslaved... You know... I don't know. What do you say about their work here?
Good question.
They didn't have to know what kind of work they had been doing. Well, it's more that... It doesn't... You know... We... This... That their... The wealth of their work is what made us wealthy. I'm not sure we ever could have... But that's a personal feeling that I'm not sure we ever could have had a revolution if we didn't have that. A huge amount of wealth that was able to be... You know, it's hard to wordsmith on the fly, but if anyone has... Right, it is. And I apologize. I... Well, and I was really kind of struggling about what to say about it. It could be as simple as, you know, from the earliest blah, blah, blah, through the present day, Arab Americans have been something like part of the fabric of our country. And then just we... We jumped to across generations. They've made significant contributions. Okay. That sounds good. That sounds great. Maybe you're going to have to repeat it again, though. Oh, hold on one sec. Can you say that again? Just instead of have strengthened, just say have been part of the fabric of our country. And then just jump to the other sentence, across generations.
How about have been building our country rather than the fabric just saying... It seems like it still doesn't have the power, whereas if you're building... They were here building our country, as everybody was. What do you think about that? Building instead of... Yeah, that's beautiful. I thought we were jumping right to across generation. There's two sentences. Right, so we're ending the other one. After Africa, we'd have been building our country. Then we go to the waves. Of immigration.
And we can get rid of the 19th century. Okay, so hold on. So from the earliest enslaved Arab Africans or Arabic-speaking Africans from West and North Africa to waves of immigration in the 19th century through the present day, Arab Americans have been part of building our country. Across generations, they have strengthened our country through their resilience, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, okay. Does that sound good? Thank you. It makes me happy. Good catches. Thank you. But you'd want to put in the fields that they've been working in, too, because that's important to know that business, science, medicine... Yeah, that's still there. That's all still there. Yeah. Yeah, that last sentence is staying. We can take that out. Now, do we need to approve these? We do, not this minute, but yeah, we do. We need to decide if we want to proceed with them. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's get them to where we like them first, and then see what we want them to do. Or take one, each one, like the April one, we'll decide, you know, do we want to approve this with the amendments? Or as amended? Yeah. So here's a question is, we want to talk about, do we want to keep doing these going forward? And part of that discussion is, do we want to do these two? They're on the table in front of us, and we can say yes, we want to do these two, and then decide whether we want to keep doing them going forward or not. And I'm comfortable with that approach, or someone can suggest a different approach. Well, the question is, So when we discuss this, we assume we are going to do it, right? That's, yeah. That's a good point. So I, just like the others we did before, we discuss it, but we definitely need someone like Marianne to be, to finalize it. We did. We did. We finalized it. Yeah. Rather than we fine-tune every single word here and it's a bit concrete. We did a little fine-tuning here, because we did have to vote on them. Yeah, we'll give to the business someone to make it a final. Yes. But this way. But this, but these are, these are coming out, these are April and May. So we don't have time to send them back to the drawing board. We're either going to, I think, approve them or say we don't want to do this. But we're still counting. We're still counting on business someone to go publish, to fine-tune, to go. That's why we did it before. Yeah, but so here. Here we discuss it. We brought the, so we're bringing these to the table, just like we have in the past. We will discuss it. Yeah. We'll give them the rest of the copy. I see what you're saying. We'll give to some. You could, you guys could vote to say, okay, Marianne and Karen, go ahead and finalize this as we have talked about here today, rather than voting on it as amended, if you like. I mean, I think you like. So we still talk about it because of the big issues we want to make changes with them. We're going to have to know. The one problem I see is that if we wait and come back next month, the Arab-American one will be gone. That's right. We don't want to do that. Right. We don't need to. We obviously just want someone. I mean, they're very unconcerned. There's probably issues with the finalized voting. I'd make a motion that we accept it. I think that, you know, is.
You're talking about the April. That's right. Right. Okay. I will make a motion that we accept the April draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. Draft. That sounds good. I think that's. Is there a second? Second. You can always come back. Can I. Can I just something or since there are two. Yes, go ahead. I just wanted to suggest possibly having the conversation about reviewing the policy. And if we want to move on doing these things before we approve these two, because this is going to complicate the other conversations. if it comes after the vote so hold off on voting on this one um until after we discuss whether we want to keep doing them going forward and the possible change in in the policy of selection well i think we've always done something for every month but we have 14 now did you count 14 and what happens is two in a month well we already this is april uh or may one of these is already a api month which one is it um one there will be two and uh just a moment i'm going to be nice is also well that was modified it was posted in may may so is that a yeah a api month is may also so we have two for may yeah and then there's the issue that there's like a gazillion there's hundreds of cultural holidays um some of them are national some of them are international some of them are states some of them are just uh advocacy organizations so there's a world of of ones that we have not done and and so that's why if we're going to keep doing them we need to tell ourselves what our criteria are so that we know when when to do it and whether we want to spend our time that way or not so i feel like we um we have so the only thing i don't know procedurally is we have a um motion on a motion on the table can we table the motion and come back to it later i would guess i think we could i think because we we've been having a discussion yeah i'm going to say hopefully this is okay procedurally because i think we've we've gotten it i think we're pretty happy with it as amended but we're not going to vote yet and can we turn our attention to the um the one for me to the may draft and then have the conversation that mariam is suggesting before we all right all right i don't have an issue with it okay okay so we have to move to table that oh yeah you want to do that oh yeah that's a good idea let's move to table it go ahead okay make a motion that we table um the draft for it we go right at this moment okay acceptance whatever that motion marianne you're seconding yeah go ahead yes it will work conflicting Mariana and what we're going to do we're going to do is probably vote on him so we can discuss we'll vote on the episode hurry up you've got a couple more minutes i think for the opening questions marianaƩment Are you okay tabling the motion Kevin? Yes. Yes. Yes Denise. Oh Sarah's here. Hi, Sarah Or is that Sarah? Is that actually you?
She's muted. I Don't know because anyway, there was some technical anyway, okay Mariam. Are you okay with tabling it? Yes Okay, and Maya is gone I guess but Maya might be Sarah because the email invitation today to me came with Sarah's name So, I don't know who that actually is Whoever you are that says Sarah's student. Can you tell us if if you're Sarah? All right, whoever they are is muted. Maybe Still it might be still Maya. Okay, so we're gonna table sorry for all this confusion. We're gonna table I'm gonna say unanimous except Maya Abstain, I'm gonna say hello. Sorry. I'm So yeah, I don't know why my name is Sarah That's what happened to me because I got the invitation to Sarah's name. Also every week. It's every month. It's some new Rico. Yeah, so Okay, so Maya you're voting yes to table it. Okay, fine. Yes. Thank you So let's take a look at the Jewish American Heritage Month statement from May. Are there any comments on that one? I don't know. Mariam? I'm saying question about the three centuries of Jewish American life. I mean, I think Jewish people were here from the very beginning who knows when and Even if they weren't recorded so rather centuries centuries. Yeah, just leave it that. Yep, and then I Had a question about the first sentence of the next one too, and that is that they came to America seeking refuge from persecution I'm not going to say that's not true. But um There was so I again Google that In that AI or whatever Google says and you know I just didn't want to lose the fact that some people might have been here who were not fleeing persecution, you know and in many ways a lot of people came through persecution a lot of people did it but there's persecution and there's persecution so I don't want to equate anything here so And So that first sentence I just was looking for, you know, I just wanted to affirm those whom may have come here Bravely and there are in another capacity, you know a job And and you know, I did have a person getting a better way of life. Yeah and then I also I'll have to say and and found in this country the promise of freedom and justice and you know, it's a I would just say look we come home looking for that i'm not going to say that um we've all found that well my great-grandparents came over from watch ago seeking a better way of life yes right um looking for one yeah so i'm sorry because i got distracted so jano welcome uh hi to now jano just joined us so i got distracted by that and i'm sorry i didn't catch your revised wording marianne oh oh yeah that's because i struggled with that revised wording too i know so the first it's i actually wanted to divide the sentence the first sentence into two um first that jewish people first came to america seeking refuge from persecution and i um i just wanted to you know acknowledge that you know that people jewish people came um to america um both um you know seeking refuge from persecution and um there is there is one word i have i don't have a problem with it but i mean like you said you know from persecution um period and i'd say i'd say get rid of and keep and get rid of the word again because it's uh um now marianne if you want to read it as i kind of amended it and see how that sounds what is it it says that would have said well well here's the thing jewish people first came to um to america seeking refuge from persecution he thought here he found this country the promise of freedom and justice and opportunity and uh religious liberty okay um how does that sound if we get rid of the word and um i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know you'd need to put a pronoun in but also it doesn't address marian's initial concern yeah um you know jewish people can maybe um came to america seeking um and i don't want to prioritize this but you know um and you know um seeking um a better life and as well as seeking refuge from persecution i i don't want to second that i don't want you know i don't want to bottom that up but what santa TRUMP says is you put a pronoun in what is the financial or minimum wage or interest rate or the unfƶ ģczea life oderäø Children Social Care enjoying something or less. i don't know why he says it in so n oke need to put a pronoun i doesn't mean additional in we simply noticed j ××ŖŠ¾Š¼ fairy ķøļæ½ Monkey coming um who say came to america seeking um and kind i don't need to analize this but you know you know um you know um seeking um a better life and as well um a better life and as well as seeking refuge from persecution I don't want to second that. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be dismissive about the first question. The question becomes, which sounds better, which sounds more correct, wouldn't you say? Well, it's the idea that people came here as business people, and they did. Some people, Marianne is saying, some people didn't come necessarily seeking refuge. Denise, what do you think sounds better and sounds more correct? Well, you can't start the sentence with just found in this country, the promise of, because who found? You know? We don't know. They found it in, found it, or does anybody have any ideas? I think I, I think I, I think I, I think I, I think I, I think I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I I think I'm getting where you're going, Kevin. How does this sound? Jewish people first came to America seeking refuge from persecution, comma, and the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity, and religious liberty in this country. So they're seeking all of those things, not finding. I see what you're getting right in there, and found in this country. Right. I'm moving this country to the end, but I'm saying they're seeking all of it and taking out the, I'm not saying they found anything, just that they're seeking it. Just, so in other words, let's read this again. Jewish people first came to America seeking refuge from persecution, period.
No, she's saying refuge from persecution and the promise of freedom. Justice, opportunity. Yeah, so in other words, we'd be taking out and found in this country. Leaving the and, but taking out found in this country. The comma after persecution. Yeah. And then, and the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity, and religious liberty in this country. All right, so we're getting rid of the word found. Right. Yeah, that sounds perfect. So Marianne, does that address your thing? Because it's all part of the seeking? Yes. Yes. All right. I think that's good. So, okay. Thank you, Janelle. That was, that was helpful. Any other- Thank you, Kevin. He had the insight. Well, I had the insight. You just had to fine tune it. Thank you, Paul. Is this only a period of time? Now the Jewish come over not for that purpose, right? Well, this- It's a wonderful country now. I mean- I mean- So we still coming. Many people, still? Yeah. Many still because of persecution. I mean, it's the persecution . You can't say everybody come here. Everybody comes here. That's what Marianne said. Everybody comes here to get away from something. Even people from European was always healed. So it's not a . That's what I'm trying to say. All the statement they look like almost identical. Mm-hm. Mm. OK. Yeah. I was just reading a story about the history of the Black Death and the plague. And there is this huge history about blaming Jewish people for the plague. And this is persecution way beyond just you're different. So I think persecution needs to be there in a special way. I'm thinking we really do want to emphasize what has happened before us is what the ideas, their contributions, what this country has done for them, almost every statement that we have, how bad we were treated, the AAPI, too, or how the Chinese were treated. So I think persecution needs to be there in a special way. Everybody has some painful experience. But I think we're looking forward. We're looking forward. We need to get everything. But that's why when it says the promise of all those good things, which we know we haven't achieved any of those really for everyone in this country, but the promise is still what inspires. Not just Jewish people, but all people. But like everybody was saying, it's why people come to this country. So, I mean, I think it says what you're saying, Yawu, when we talk about the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity, and religious liberty. That's what makes our country, you know, so attractive to people around the world. But it's our world. It's our world. It's our world. It's our work, too. Hey, you, get down.
And, you know, these heritage months, they are designed to be a positive acknowledgement of different groups' contributions to the country. But to avoid talking about bad things that have happened in the past doesn't really tell the full picture of any. I just feel we talk about too much of the pages. I'm always doing that. I'm always doing that. I will never forget those. If you don't forget the hatreds, you still have that hatred. Why we do that? Why we always hate bringing that up, bringing that up, bringing that up. Okay, that's, I think that's the forgettable test to look for. I think that's what we should do. In other words, we always say Japan is so bad. Japan is so bad. We keep, we keep. Every time there's a chance, we fight. We fight. What's that for? You know what I mean? Now we're looking forward to how we can live together, how we can live with the Japanese people. Because regardless of how better we will treat them in a certain world or two. And if we keep saying that we'll kill everybody who has done wrong to us, we'll still try to do that. There's no peace. That's, you know, then some big things have been fled. And then the people start to have another group of haters, another three years, but ever get to sort of always keep keep the hate, hate and hate. So just keep books on pasting. I think, um, for some instances, for many instances of not acknowledging a particularly difficult history is, is trying to erase it. And I think it's really pretty, I would, I find it necessary to, to acknowledge certain actions. And if we, because the two reasons, if you don't, you don't know about those actions, then you don't learn from them. In your bound to repeat them. And second of all, I think for people who have loved ones, who suffered under whatever that history is, it feels like you're trying to erase their experience, which was unique, in some ways, to them, and that that is not that that is erasing them also, because that's part of their history. And there. So I hear what you're saying. And I, and I think these are very positive, and they're forward, where, well, they're positive, but they're acknowledging the reality. Um, of the difficult things that continue. I don't, I don't see it as continuing to hate. Um, and I think it's important to acknowledge that, that experience and learn from it. That's how I see it. What I see is, okay, the black people here, they are suffering. We give that to them. Okay, they don't even attend.
The Chinese back in the very old time, we didn't miss the president. But we're not carrying the ball for the entire world. It's a sense of not here. It's not to also do something for them. It's different, right? That's just acknowledging. We're not covered the whole history. We're not what? Yeah, we're not talking about all the injustice of the world.
I feel that. Um, this, I feel that this needs to be acknowledged here.
So, I'm not sure if I fully understand your input. So I don't want to assume and I do agree with the need to acknowledge histories. But this brought up something different for me. If you look at the other statement, there is no acknowledgement of what brought people here, right? A lot of Arab Americans are here. Because of postcolonial violence is that's not something that we that we bring up. So I do agree with having to validate experiences. But it's it doesn't, it wouldn't whatever we end up voting on, it wouldn't make sense to do that in some statements and not the others. Because that would also be a point that can be understood as what Marianne said, like as if you're erasing something.
I'm going. No, no, this is fine. I mean, we want to see both looking forward side, emphasizing that, you know, that every statement, I'm not talking about just Jewish law. I'm talking about Chinese law too, okay? So every time I think about looking at that, 500, 1, 200 years ago, I don't feel comfortable looking at it. Why don't we do what we do, how we can live together, how the Jewish people, Arab people, Chinese people can live in freedom peacefully. That's what we can do. That's my goal. Yeah, I think we would all agree that that's the goal. Right, that we can all live together harmoniously, as we would say. I think at some point, this our statement, should lead us to that kind of feeling. Because we are not a world organization, to take care of the world business, we can do that. We don't have that problem. But we do want to have the people in freedom. We live together peacefully. I don't want to do what the faith is we have before, okay? And so that's how we live. Sometimes we're very sensitive. So sometimes things happen, we emphasize. We emphasize, we mix in smoke, and emphasize the entries are slid. So sometimes how we do that, okay? Not to unnecessarily amplify the incidents. The incidents will happen because we deal with people, some people just not have the knowledge as others, or understanding as others. So I think that comment can be helpful in the conversation about the, you know, importance of these statements, if that's something we want to be spending our time doing versus doing something else. That's why it's a little hard to go through them before we've discussed that, you know, but I can see, I mean, Yahoo talking about that while we are discussing the idea of moving forward with, you know, our need to issue statements or not, or if we'd rather use our time to engage in initiatives that actually produce some on the ground effect.
Wow, we have a lot on the table right now. I think there's agreement that we want to make Wayland a place where people get along with one another. Right, and also feel welcome. And feel welcome and feel that they belong. That's one area of agreement. And then there's the question of acknowledging difficult histories and whether that makes people, I'm going to oversimplify a little bit, but does that make people feel more seen because we've acknowledged difficult histories, or does it keep drawing attention, as Yahoo was saying, to these open wounds in a way that just kind of keeps the wounds open? And I have a feeling some of these things can coexist at the same time. I don't think there's probably a right or a wrong here. Well, here's something to think about now. I have a tote bag that says... Never forget September 11th. Now, is that always opening a wound, or is that just in remembrance of all those who died at that time? I think it depends who you are, is what I would say to that. I think what you're saying is it depends upon how you look at it.
Well, when I look at these statements, I think, I mean, there is an acknowledgment of struggle that, you know, the different groups, and not just the ones that we're looking at this month, the Arab American heritage and Jewish American heritage. But I think the bulk of the statement is highlighting the enrichment that these members of our wider community, wider community um bring you know bring to our country and bring to our communities and i i like that i think it's a good balance um to i mean we can't pretend that um these two groups in particular right now are um in the you know one of the most difficult periods in history for you know for arab americans and for jewish americans but what we're what we're celebrating in the heritage month is the really wonderful contributions that people have made and i i think that's appropriate for our committee um right it's not just one good and maybe a little contribution mariam were you saying that there was something missing from the arab american heritage month that's analogous to um something that's in the jewish american heritage month statement is there something that you were suggesting we might add yeah i was thinking about you know the the whole conversation about uh validating histories and i completely agree with that i'm not against talking about hard stuff and the challenging stuff and yes for some people they may feel like an opening the wound for others they may feel little um the um validation of why they're here right and they're not all the here the same similar to what you know how jewish people got here it's similar to the conversation you were talking about um and the answer is yes i do feel like there is a matching between you know this historical statement and the stories you're talking about and how everything we just had. But I, to be very honest, I don't want to dive deep into the nuances of these because I have my own arguments against the need for us to keep doing this in general and resort to doing something alternative. Share thoughts about that while you have the floor. Share thoughts about the idea in general? About, yeah, whether we should continue doing these. I would say two main points. First is we do have, you know, finite time and attention, and these can be largely symbolic. So if all we're doing is just, you know, issuing these statements more than we're actually engaging in initiatives in town, that can feel very performative. And, you know, we will be diverting our attention from other efforts, I guess. That would actually have direct change or outcome in town. The other thing is that the current criteria that we have is that we only issue statements for federally recognized heritage months. But usually, I mean, we all know as an HRDIC where federally recognized heritage months come from, right? It's a historic and a political process. It's not a neutral or complete acknowledgement of marginalized groups. So those who don't have, specifically those who don't have recognized heritage months are those probably mostly affected by systemic bias and the ones that are least visible or whose voices are most heard. So either we will have to, you know, struggle with that idea and see how we can expand on recognizing other groups. Or just if you don't want to deal with it, let's not deal with it at all. I think that's where I am. Or if we alternatively, instead of, issuing statements that we acknowledge something that's already federally acknowledged, maybe use some input. For example, we want to acknowledge Jewish Heritage Month. Let's, this Jewish Heritage Month, we acknowledge the contribution of so-and-so who did this and this, for example. Like, this would at least give me more material or information. But just issuing statements, especially with the limiting criteria that we have, that's only federal. I don't know how productive that feels for me. Honestly, like, even this conversation now, we could have been discussing, I don't know, doing some initiative or some of the ideas that, you know, we bounce off each other occasionally. So I don't know. I don't know how others feel about it. But I know that if we keep doing it without taking a second look at our criteria, it's going to show up. If not, you know, next month, the month after or the month after or the month when someone comes and says, can you recognize this month that is not Heritage Month, that is not federally recognized, and we're going to have to struggle with that then. So let's be equitable from the beginning and, you know, set our criteria, our policy in a way that makes sense long-term. Thank you for that. I wonder if it would be possible for a couple of people to talk about this offline and think about it and come back with a proposal to the committee about how to think about it. Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to talk about doing these going forward. Well, it will just end up in this discussion then. Well, at least somebody would put forward criteria and say either like, we shouldn't do them anymore, or we should do them. And here's the criteria. Here's how we decide.
Because after three, four years now, we did a lot. Actually, to me, I find almost everyone's identical. We're suffering. Well, we're contributing. And that was the struggle we had before. It's all just... So maybe it's getting old, is what you're saying. Right? Is that what you're saying? It might be getting old because we seem to be repeating ourselves. Maybe we should think about how we deal with this Heritage Month and how we do things we can do, and it's much more meaningful. Right. So let's think about it. Right. Maybe we have a sort of, we could have a sort of short statement, so every time we use that statement for documents, like this is challenge AAPI, this is Jewish, we do need to have a long one, but we have something more precise. A template of some kind? We also think of other things we can do. So is anybody volunteering to go off and give this some more thought and come back to us with a proposal? Mary Ann? Yeah, let's call them out. I also want to say something, though. Yeah? You know, I grew up in an era when none of these things were discussed. I mean, these months didn't come up, they didn't drop on us, like, because, they came up because there are a lot of issues. We have people who are being ignored, both in our curriculum and continue to be ignored in our curriculum, at schools, and in our knowledge as adults, and that the majority culture has pushed so many of these groups aside, and so that's the era I come from. And so, and this was a big improvement when that, when these months were developed. This was like, oh my gosh. And yes. We've gone to a spot where saying Black history isn't just February. That's an improvement, but also, I hate to say it, you know, it's in February that we managed to get some Black history in, and it's another discussion about, oh, it shouldn't be just February. Which is a reminder that, you know, maybe we haven't moved as far as we want to move. But, and I would also say, we're the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. If we can't have these discussions here, then, you know, where else are these discussions being held in this town? So, they need to be held. And, and that's our title. So, it's symbolic, and it's, you know, it's hard work. It's hard to worry about our, you know, you worry about having, these are hard conversations. So, but, so. It's, I can't, I did go on, like, as we, I went to see if other towns still met these statements. Other towns still do have these statements, and continue to make these statements. I only looked up two towns. Yeah, and some of them are not doing them anymore, for the reasons that, you know. And, when you look at our other statements, I mean, these are, these are so comprehensive in what they say. And maybe there is a certain, there is a certain reference. There's a certain repetition in what, in how it's approached. But there's still different, there's still a nuance about recognizing the, the experience of the various groups. And this is what it looked like before. And so, clearly, we've moved to what I think is a better, you know, spot, because I think a more comprehensive conversation is better. Not, and that's not saying anything bad about it. That's sure. Okay. But just saying that, you know, now we feel we, you know, what else would we like to say? And again, it's that tough conversation that we have to be willing to have. So, anyhow, that's what I've got. Marianna, I have a question. I have a question. The other towns that you looked at, and you found that they still do it, do they only do federally recognized months? Or do they go beyond that? Because that is the biggest piece in this. For me, as an HRDIC, we should not play the game and, you know, dismiss people who are already marginalized. We need to understand that systemic move. So, if that's our criteria, that goes against the value and the vision of HRDIC. I can maybe answer a little bit of that from the history of the committee. So, when we first started talking about HRDIC. A cultural and celebration calendar, we researched, you know, everything that was out there. It was not at all looking to see what is the federal list. That was, I mean, I don't think we even really consulted, you know, what the federally recognized one is. We looked at what are the calendars that have been developed by different communities. And not just communities in Massachusetts, but calendars of, you know, large organizations, even international organizations. Just to see what are all the events. And we kind of distilled it down. Because, you know, it would be more than one thing for every single day, every single month. So, we thought, well, we could start by at least trying to reach out to people who are looking to raise awareness about these heritage months. But there was never, you know, a decision to use, you know, the federally recognized list. We were thinking more about people in, representing, you know, people in the community here. In the wider Wayland community. So, when you mentioned earlier that, you know, it could be that, I mean, just to give an example. So, maybe there are some praying Indians who live in Wayland who are not federally recognized. And who might like to be recognized by the committee. And I think that would be a very positive challenge for the committee to receive. For us to focus on our own heritage. And that we're not bound by a roster of, you know, federally approved heritage months. I think we need criteria. Because there are hundreds of international and national and state and local cultural holidays. And in my mind, and we don't have anything in writing saying that it's national. But in my mind, that has been the criterion. Although we haven't always followed it historically. We have some statements that are not nationally recognized. But in my mind, that's just been a way to try to sort out how do we decide what we do and what we don't do. Otherwise, any time, if we don't have criteria, how do we know whether to say yes or no when somebody comes to us? If we don't decide, I mean, we're going to end up trying to solve all the world's problems. Exactly. Which we can't. Exactly. Yep. What I would like to put on the table. What I would like to put on the table for everyone's consideration is we have these two drafts in front of us. I would like us to consider voting on these with whatever amendments we need to have. Absolutely. And then deciding going forward, which we probably won't get to finish tonight. But are we going to keep doing these or not? And if we do, how do we decide which ones to do? Yeah. Yeah. To vote. Oh. Women. Women. Women. Three, four, five. We still have a quorum. You're having a quorum. I'd like to get my vote in. You'd like to get your vote in. So, what do... So, Mariam had suggested, I think, in addition to the Arab American Heritage Draft, acknowledging why people of Arab descent have come to the United States escaping colonial violence or post-colonial violence. and we can certainly add a sentence like that if people want um are we close to being ready to to vote because denise needs to leave are we close to being ready to vote on these two first of all do you guys agree that that would be something we want to do is there anyone who doesn't want to vote on these two or doesn't think we should i agree we pair that vote with um the vote that we will work on future um criteria or change the way we share or the content right um there are so many ideas in which we can engage the community like ask people for example to submit uh you know someone they would like to highlight for this or that month and then vote on that so there's so many other ways that we can do it that that would share knowledge and engage people and instead of you know just and i'm not saying that the intention is performative but it feels performative when we're not adding as much on you know on the ground would you be willing mariam to i i think yahoo and marianne i think raised their hand saying they'd be willing to um bring something back to the committee would you be willing to work with them to bring something back to the committee yeah sure we can um work and come up with multiple options i'm either not doing it or doing it in a different way or uh criteria for how we pick and you know the group can vote on it you yeah i think that would be great because i do think we need to decide whether we want to keep doing these going forward and if so how um do you want to suggest mariam a sentence that you want to add to the april statement um not really uh do we do we want to do it now so we can uh so we can vote on them i don't want to i don't want to push it if you or others don't feel comfortable voting right now um denise is leaving and would like to get her vote in i don't want to push it but are we ready for for that i guess is my question yeah i would say um uh from the earliest enslaved arab africans or speaking africans from west and north africa um and maybe just change the term wave of immigration to a term that would encompass different ways in why people migrate i think that would suffice well so what can you say with that question i think that would suffice i think that might say i will need a moment please take it take it so we're going on the basis that we are trying to get these done so we can vote on them and i think so move forward on i don't want to push it if somebody doesn't want to do it but if y'all are comfortable with it i would say we've got these two on the table um i wouldn't i wouldn't walk personally i wouldn't walk away from them i would say we've got them here if they're you know satisfactory let's vote on them as they are and i think that would suffice i think that would suffice i think that would suffice amended and but then to absolutely not do any more statements after this until we figured out how we want to do them well how and whether we want to update the other ones and whether we want to update the other i think we should go ahead actually we do a few a year finally we should have all 12 or whatever there is each month each one will have a good article done every each for each month if for example if this is a jewish one paradigms we'll have to put it in the center of the the web page and then put a link to this document yeah that's all that that's the type of thing you all can propose for afterwards yeah so we have a current information we have this
ready to available information okay so that's one idea for later but let's come back to this um mariam do you have a thought about that sentence yet or okay i tried to see if ai would help me formulate that sentence
how does something like from the earliest enslaved arab and arab speaking africans from west and north africa to successive migrations uh beyond shaped by forces including uh economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial conflict through the present day and then arabs have strengthened law successive migrations shaped by what
successive migrations shaped by forces including economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial conflict or post-colonial violence okay i can't write as fast as you can talk economic opportunity for that economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial violence okay and then through the present day and then the sentence goes on yeah um yeah that makes it more similar to the other one in that it talks about what are some of the factors that brought people here but we still have the first part with the enslavement that we had talked about yes so let me let me see if i can read this second paragraph uh out loud from the earliest enslaved arab africans or arabic speaking africans from west and north africa to waves of immigration no no ah sorry okay uh from west and north africa to successive migrations shaped by forces including economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial violence um through the present day is that what comes okay sorry okay through the present day arab americans have been part of building our country yeah our country is that right have been part oh brother or we can still do this have strength our country through their etc or build or fabric off they all yeah before we talk about building because we wanted to reference the first part of that sentence i'm sorry it's just such a mess on the page i should um so from the earliest enslaved i thought we said no those who came over enslaved those who came over enslaved you know i guess that's what i wrote it wasn't what did you have from the earliest enslaved arab americans or arabic speaking africans from oh brother i've got so much stuff written here now i don't even know yes and from west and north africa to successive migrations yeah but we that that gets rid of that they have been building our country that was the idea was that that's later we get to that yeah that's after that sentence okay but then that connects um well okay
about who who has come from a vast read you know vast regions and why i was trying to acknowledge i don't know if you were hearing when we started general that the acknowledging the fact that enslaved people came here and built this country and they didn't you know that linking that to resilience entrepreneurial spirit and deep commitments to family and and country wasn't exactly appropriate yeah but then we marianne we in the new version we added that there's also displacement and post-colonial violence so that also you know and then the sentence after would showcase how all of these regardless of why they got here were part of building i i hear what you were saying earlier um what you were saying earlier but with this added i don't see it giving the meaning that it was giving in the first draft if that makes sense well i just worry that we are again um putting aside that enslaved people didn't make that choice and they are not being entrepreneurial here and it wasn't the resilience that made you know there wasn't their resilience i mean their their strength and so i don't know what we're looking at anymore yeah that's why doing it on the computer because this is getting so messy um so from the earliest enslaved arab africans or arabic speaking africans from western north africa to successive migrations shaped by forces including economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial violence through the present day arab americans have been part of building our country okay period got it um i was gonna say does that sound good to everybody i like that sentence and then you want um does everybody else agree with it but then what happens to that last half of that sentence it's the generations here how about this okay then if we go um have been part of building our country period through their resilience entrepreneurial spirit and deep commitments to family education and public service they have made significant contributions across the generations in fields industrialized including business science medicine the arts education and public service is that good i like it sounds good and in the first sentence in the first paragraph we change the lessons to this observance celebrates centuries of arab american life okay um so i think we i think we have it unless this one unless anybody has any more comments so let me just read it one more time so the first paragraph ends with this observance celebrates centuries of arab american life also the second paragraph says from the earliest enslaved arab africans or arabic speaking africans from west and north africa to successive migrations shaped by forces including economic opportunity displacement and post-colonial violence through the present day arab americans have been part of building our country through their resilience entrepreneurial spirit and deep commitments to family education and public service they have made significant contributions across the generations in fields including all those things that are listed also system development from her by state labors neo-americans have not been all difference all right any other changes to that one do we feel ready to vote on this one I knew okay so this is the one that we had this is very right this is April okay this is the one that Kevin had courses now Denise isn't here but with a table this Kevin hadn't had to accept it as amended and Denise had seconded but Denise isn't here anymore so maybe we just need to you have another second have another second yeah let's take another second so Kevin proposes heaven moves that we accept it as amended who's gonna second it I'll second no okay Juno seconds okay are we ready to vote yeah okay yeah okay Kevin yes Mariam yes Mariam yes Maya yes Juno yes and Karen yes okay I'm down when you go yes okay all right now the next one are there any so the changes we made on this one which I am just gonna give me one second changes we made on this one which I am just gonna give me one second I can save this as an update before I okay see that to say and then let's get the Jewish American Heritage Month we have we said this observance celebrates centuries refuge from persecution, comma, and the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity, and religious liberty. That's the only change that we made. Are there any other changes we need to make to this one? Do they feel comparable now, these two statements? Do you need a motion? Well, I'm just asking, does everyone feel comfortable that they feel comparable to each other? I would say yes. Do you want to make a motion? Yeah, I move that we accept the main statement for Jewish American heritage. Kevin, you're seconding? Yes. Okay, so let us vote. Jono? Yes. Mariam? Yes. Maya? Yes. Yalu? Yes. Kevin? Yes. Marianne? No. And Karen, yes. Okay. So that is it for those two. Thank you. These are not easy discussions, and they're especially not easy discussions in public while we're being recorded. And this group, and if we can't do it here, where can we do it anyway? So thank you for this not easy conversation. Appreciate it. And thank you, Yalu, for your flexibility and for agreeing to figure out how we want to do this going forward along with Mariam and Marianne. Yeah. Do you want to table on the process for updating existing? Yeah. To kind of, with that other discussion. That can be part of that other discussion. Yep. Is this the second bullet, we're tabling, or the third? The second and third. Second and third will be discussed offline and brought back. Okay, okay. Alright. So we're at number five? Correct? Are we at number five? We are. Okay. Now I know where we are. Okay. So we're at number five? Yes. Okay. So this isn't the second bullet. We're at number five. Yes. Okay. Now I know where we are. Okay. Two minutes. Two minutes. Two minutes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. um okay it's getting late okay um thank you for coming um all right so i said we would finish at 7 30 and i want to get a sense from the group probably everybody wants to leave at 7 30 of the things here what feels numbers five and six what feels like we really need to make sure to get to it this time versus what we can wait until i think number five can wait until next time i would i would probably say um well do we have the conversations for change and coming up yeah why don't we do very fast two minutes okay all right why not okay because i think you said five and six because if i'm looking at six the fifth anniversary born the women festival of the murder um um um and then if we go to six let's go let's kevin let's go through each one really fast and see if whoever belongs to that bullet one needs to say anything yeah so the bulletin board persons um real quick um yeah um sophie and i are getting together on wednesday um we'll see where we are for our plan um uh it may be that we're going to put it up for the summer rather than for um because of that believe it or not this bulls board has is has another person who's going to be on it in monday on may now that we only wanted half of it but um so anyhow we're we're moving along that's great thank you whalen festival anything time sensitive or can that wait till next time um just a quick update that um i'm going to be uh collaborating with palavi our chair of our whalen cultural council um exploring getting a grant for the festival and we're thinking that we may focus on um experience um experiential dimensions of the festival
okay do we have a date for the women's festival is there a date yes what is it october 4th i think isn't it i think it was october 4th last year right it was so what would it be yeah it's that same uh first saturday in october third yeah right thank you october 3rd okay fantastic and thank you for working on that cultural mass cultural council grant uh the mural project is there anything update on that uh so the mural project it's a little bit complicated um i spoke with kelsey in the town office and she referred me to carol martin of the select board carol and i spoke and the the lady in the town office was talking about um what the The select board is very concerned and protective of staff time. They said, you know, staff time is actually a cost. So to run the grant through the town, they would like to work with Heidi, who is an experienced grant writer. They only want one point of contact. That would be Heidi. They absolutely do not want different people from, you know, different committees pestering them about little details. And they asked us if we could come to the select board meeting on the 27th. Carol said she couldn't guarantee that she could keep it on the agenda, but that she would try. So that's where we are.
Thank you for that. I just want to mention the dates of the last conference. The last conversations for change event at the library. It is Thursday, April 30th in the evening. And that's going to be a fabulous, another fabulous conversation led by Dr. Eden Renee Hayes. So I hope all of you can make it to that. And then the last conversations, not confrontations, session with Jameel Adams is Tuesday, May 12th in the evening. And that wraps up our, if you add up all the sessions for both of those. I mean, we really knocked it out of the park this over this time period with all of these programs with partner, wonderful partnerships in town with the library, with the schools. So I'm, I'm really pleased and proud about those programs. And that'll take us through, you know, the end of this school year as it were. And then, well, in June, we can begin to think about the next fiscal year, but that takes us through this year and major kudos to everybody here. Who's done so much to make these programs successful and the festival and human rights day and all the other things that we've done this year. It's almost time to write our annual report. So then we get to look at all the stuff that we've done this year and remind ourselves that we've done good work. We've done exactly. Let's pat ourselves on the back once in a while. So thank you, everybody. I wanted to number seven announcements matters, not reasonably anticipated. Wayland post in case you guys missed this, the Wayland post is having pizza and bingo. On Sunday, May 3rd from one to three at the new community center, and it's a real opportunity to cut for people, all different kinds of people that come together and do something silly and fun. I happen to have a conflict that day. But I'm going to try to do both. Cause I think we, it's really nice to support those kinds of activities that bring the community together. And we want the Wayland post, just. And we want Wayland post to stay in business. Yes, we do. It's such an incredible resource. Any other announcements? Yeah, I have a little announcement. So the Wayland Baha'is have been supporting Carlisle Baha'is in a Ray Samity movie in game night. And it's been fun to watch them in the back, watching the Baha'i in full ķ. And like I said, I'm very excited that they're doing this and we're just looking forward to this next week. Thank you. Okay. been at the Carlisle library and it's been so much fun um we thought we'd launch it in Wayland um and it's I'll have to send you the the first date it's going to be at Fran Pollitt's house um I think the first one right oh do let us know that's great thank you and it's it aired on PBS they're short little episodes so I think the first one is going to be um Harriet Tubman um and her Quaker male Quaker partner that story from the underground railway excellent um okay and I was going to say if we can and excuse me if that conversation was already had and I missed it if we can add to a future agenda discussing the possibility of live streaming
not necessarily recording but maybe live streaming just to get better access I know that I personally couldn't go to all of them I mean it's a very tricky time of the day for parents and but I also know there's an issue you know with recording so maybe that's something we can dig through a little bit at another time sure I'll add it for next month thank you um okay oh sorry all right um would somebody like to move that we adjourn well you both did so I move that we adjourn at 7 20. is it 7 28 or 7 29. it is 7 28. okay I move that we adjourn at 7 20 18. and Yahoo is seconding right okay folks let's vote um Janelle yes Maya oh Maya yeah there we go okay thanks um Mariam yes Yahoo yes Evan yes Mariam yes and Karen yes so we are now adjourned good