Crystal Johnson, Jan Booher, Jeff Booher, Hannah Holland, Amanda Young and Elizabeth Taggert met in this group.
Hannah wants to talk about our personal journey with Climate Justice. How we can take it back to our communities. Restoring faith in the context of voting. Crystal says that faith must be restored in the voting process. Even though blacks loved Obama they did not feel that Obama represented who they were. Obama had to put up with being disrespected. Crystal thinks he did the right thing. He did speak up on the Trayvon Martin posters. Elizabeth says that the Black community did not feel that they put him in office. Crystal thinks restoring has a lot to do with healing. There is no faith in the black community in the judicial system, the voting system. Change came and went, and now there is no faith in the process. Crystal votes regularly, but now she feels it is crucial for people to vote.
The popular vote versus electoral college votes was not understood in the community. People say, "If this happened with Al Gore why didn't Obama do something about that?"
Reports stating that "Your neighborhood has been targeted for falsifying police reports, increasing arrests, etc" have left the community with no faith in law enforcement. Citizen police review board has marked everything as "unfounded." Then the government says, "there wasn't anything toxic about the arsenic." Gentrification is directly affecting the minority community and there's no way to take a breath. The community is being blamed. Crystal ran for City Council and lost, but there were 4 black women ran. Crystal is now running for Mosquito Control. She may have to move if she gets it. And doesn't want to move.
Jan: after Hurricane Irma mosquito control was very present in the communities in Miami. Mosquito Control is really important in areas with standing water.
Running for office: you have to be in the community doing things to show that you care.
There is a voter pride T shirt that looks good. MLK, Easter and 4th of July would be great times to sell T shirts like that.
Hannah: people mostly knock on the same set of doors because they know they vote, but they should knock on all doors. 7,000 out of 40,000 people voted for Mayor in Dunbar.
Crystal: we need to be engaged all year round, personal relationships, you have to put in the work, the community has started to listen but haven't yet come out to vote, how do you convince people to vote when it's so difficult to get things done with the government
The community needs more wins.
Community Forum Foundation: empowering the community, strengthen programs that are already in place. Starting a Know the Law for the youth in the community. Kids WANT to be empowered.
What would help people vote? They need a win.
Dunbar possible community wins: transparency from the police department, cleanup the sludge, Lee County school board with people of color on the board, removing Robert E. Lee statues
How do you get the community leaders to work together, especially in the church leadership?
There's no sense of us
How do we take care of those who serve, when people don't want to help
How do we really hear our communities needs?
Recorded by Jan and Hannah
Sent from my iPhone
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