good afternoon my name is pastor frank morris um i'm a residence of bond myth about 30 years before we even start there's a little bit of anxiety so we're going to say a moment of prayer father god thank you that each and every individual that's here today wants their heart changed wants their heart activated and we have people here that are willing to speak to the issues to the struggles that are going on we are not separate from one another but rather we are joined one to another we are each responsible for our brother and our sister so today let's celebrate that let's find out how and let's put into action the love and the hope that we have for one another in one another in christ's name amen um a quick story about me i was born long time ago i'm an old man and i came to this town with my wife she works at western oregon university within my time here i have found out that i am the only black pastor here i am one of a very few population one year we moved from independence to monmouth and it changed the percentage by three percent of how many people lived in each town i mean it's just amazing i have been rescued by a monmouth police officer when i was going to get mugged in a store situation working at circle k i have faced the n-word i have been bothered by conversations at bible studies because this behavior that we have accepted over time exists even within the churches my role my purpose is to go after it i'm the guy that reaches down pulls up the plant the weed from the roots and i will not give it a break and i kind of like it

here today why are we here some of us don't know exactly how far to take it

and i was going to save this for the end i'm going to save it now do not watch the super bowl you want to start somewhere don't watch the super bowl there are women who will get beat super bowl sunday just because their husband or boyfriend's team is losing there are women who have been raped beaten up on elevators underage women who have been tormented by the things that happen within and around the nfl there is an nfl owner videotaped buying prostitution and his punishment was to pay ten thousand dollars and go back home there is currently a lawsuit against the nfl against hiring practices and it's a real lawsuit because there's a real situation if you want to start somewhere don't watch super bowl sunday there's a little woman and we celebrate her birthday yesterday 109 years old little woman by herself at the end of a hard day working and she got on a city bus and she was tired and had had enough and in that moment someone said move to the back

no i'm done i quit move to the back or we'll beat you move to the back or we'll throw you off move to the no undone and rosa parks became a hero on that day another example and it hurts i had this shirt printed up because kaepernick's knee didn't kill kaepernick was only on his knee for two and a half minutes yet he was so ostracized by this country through magazines newspapers and a politician a president a president yet when a police officer did it for nine and a half minutes i never heard the president say anything we live in a society where our balance is so far off things are so disorganized so out of order that we us need to do something we can't fix the big picture we will but we can't today so for now don't watch the super bowl for now when you see a sign for a black business go there for now when you see a black person walking down the street by themselves and they're doing the double head walk with them let us join and be with each other long time ago two years ago i spoke down at independence and my comment was on the side of the police car it says to serve and protect let's do that for each other let's serve and protect one another so now

land acknowledgement monmouth oregon is located on the traditional head homelands of the lucky mute band

following the willamette valley treaty of 1855 california people were forcibly removed to the reservations in western oregon today living descendants of these people are part of the confederate tribes of grand ronde community of oregon in the confederate tribes of the celeste indians

one more thing i just when the how do we give freedoms to blacks how can we help black business owners and everything else here's an idea when they came to settle oregon they told the railroads you make a railroad and every 10 acres you get to own it dare you i dare you to do that for some black folks or the other thing move into the willamette valley and if you're a man you get 140 acres and if you're married you get 280 acres dare you i dare you to offer that to a black person they will create a business that you will never they will never be ashamed of and we the community will never be ashamed of the folks that we've kicked out of here let's bring them back in let's bring everybody back in in making everybody successful we become the successful ones next so we now have harmony thompson and caje amares gonzalez perez will play the lift every voice and sing the black national anthem so if everybody could please rise

lift every voice

let our rejoicing

is

us

sing a song full of the hope that the present is

facing the rising sun gone let us march on till victory

let is march on victory

i've actually just met the acting president of wu dr jay kenton but i've he talks to my wife my wife's part of the university system and everything else and they have these conversations ongoing and everything else so i kind of know a little bit more about them than than i should so i'm not going to tell you this is a man who if you're an interim anything it means that you're not here forever so some of the decisions that you make may not last for a while what he's doing right now is brave the university right now is in a situation where things are changing things are not going to be the same as they were and we're in the process of changing everything in the midst of changing everything he's got to take a stand where things are today how do we operate today that's hard to do so in having him come forward and having him speak to you understand that this is a man who's also in transition this is a man who's working at a job that it doesn't have a great guarantee and it doesn't last it's an interim position so doctor would you join us and share your words

thank you pastor morris and welcome to western oregon university i want to thank you for joining us today for this black history month celebration i'd like to thank the monmouth city council marissa koontz and many others for sponsoring this event today i'd also like to thank our invited speakers who i look forward to hearing from shortly i am thrilled that we can come together to honor black americans in our state as i work to prepare my remarks today i did research on the history of black people in oregon i'm embarrassed

and ashamed of our state's history oregon was america's first and only state to begin as a whites only state

when oregon entered the union in 1859 it did so as a white only state the original state constitution banned slavery but also excluded non-whites from living here and perhaps the most troubling of all this language was not removed from our state's constitution until 2001 a short 21 years ago i had no idea this was the case shame on us

we wouldn't be here today if it were not for carter g woodson who laid the foundation for african-american history month in 1926. at the time mr woodson dedicated the second week of february for the achievements of black americans he did this because they were all but erased from national history and underrepresented in important policy decisions his goal was to add to the history of black americans to school curricula and encourage people of african descent and all others to honor the accomplishments of black people he also believed that education and fostering more opportunities for blacks and whites to interact socially and professionally could reduce racism today mr woodson's efforts are very much still warranted we are regularly reminded that racism and conflict are still alive and well in our country state and community today black students are still being taunted or harassed even assaulted based on the color of their skin just one week ago one of our students was harassed demeaned and had a drink thrown at them by a passing car which proudly displayed a confederate flag yes racism is alive and i'm sad to admit thriving in america today thanks to our former president this week as we entered black history month we learned that multiple historically black colleges and universities were racially targeted with bomb threats disrus disrupting learning environments across the country we recognize education as a fundamental human right and it should be deeply concerning to everyone

that when access to fair and equitable education is taken away from them the timing and directionality of these bomb threats is a stark reminder of the paradoxical journey of black americans one filled with achievements born in the context of continued racially motivated violence and acts of terror against them in response we acknowledge the trauma of this week condemn any future violence or threats of violence and extend our care and concern to the communities served by historically black colleges and universities as i watch our nation continue to buckle under the weight of racial prejudice and discrimination i recognize and embrace my role as president interim president that is of western oregon university in bringing oregon in us together and in making sure all residents have equitable opportunities to learn and to thrive together we must address the structures that allow for systematic racism and injustice to continue i am proud that our board of trustees is the first board of a public university in oregon to have a board committee on diversity equity inclusion and accessibility i am also proud to be in the final phase of recruiting western's first ever executive director of diversity equity and inclusion who will become a member of my cabinet when hired i'm also very proud that our students open the freedom center in this very building at the start of the fall quarter this year we are all people we all have feelings and emotions we all want to be included and treated with respect today our country is going in the wrong direction and is terribly divided we must work together to reverse this trend and restore civility and respect in all things we do as the old saying goes united we stand divided we will fall let's unite and be strong let's embrace diversity equality and inclusion it builds strength and it brings out our best division breeds weakness and undermines our collective success i'm grateful that carter g woodson created the space for us to have such dialogue with one another to reach out to our brothers and sisters of all skin colors and join in a collective effort to make our state nation and community one that we can all be proud of thank you again for coming today and for all you do to make the world safe for all people our very future depends on our collective actions today thank you again for coming

the mayor of monmouth c scoots

i also know her as the school board president of the school board president of finance and school board she works there

one of the things i do is volunteer at the community services consortium one of the things that really pulls in my heartstrings is within polk county there aren't a lot of services for homeless one of the things that the mayor's doing is taking a look at how can we effectually be a part of uh taking care of the 18 year olds in foster care that get kicked out of the house how can we take care of the hungry kids that are walking around how can we feed the kids before they go into school so they can learn if you're hungry you're not going to learn these are some of the efforts that i've seen with mayor cootes the other part is there's more to be done and she has a vision for it mayor c scoots

yeah if only it just took a vision thank you thank you pastor frank um yes sees koontz and in addition to my job as the director of finance and operations at the school district and serving as a member of the board of trustees of western i am very honored to be serving as the mayor of monmouth and i'm particularly proud of the group of counselors that we have and our staff and the work we have done just in the last couple of years to put a focus on people in our community who didn't always see themselves in our community dr kenton's reminders of what our state was and that's that's recent that hasn't gone away his uh mention of the student who just last week saw acts of racial aggression against him in our community our city staff city manager and police chief are working on that already they the next day

we are working on a way to stand up and say that is not okay that is not okay in this community we want to welcome people we want to make sure that everybody is honored and understood and heard and seen and i am humbled to be asked just to be here to recognize the contribution of black americans not only to our country our government our justice system but to our culture and the work that is done here at western to educate people to turn people out into the country and the community with newfound understanding of our responsibilities to each other is one of the things i'm proudest of here there's work to do and the work will be done because i'm committed to it my city council is committed to it our school district is committed to it and this university is committed to it so thank you i look forward to more learning more understanding and more fellowship with all of you who are doing this work thank you senator jeff merkley uh right now there's is he in oregon or uh washington he's somewhere he's not here but he's right there but his videos here um one of the things that if uh if you go online and i i got the opportunity to google and everything else this man is working hard um and some of the things i like and some of the idiots is true with my dad as well some of the things i like and some of the things i don't like but he's working hard he's finding out people's opinions he's finding out where people stand in everything else and he's pushing pushing legislation through or trying to get it through that's going to level out the playing field some of that leveling out hurts because it feels like he's taking stuff away from some of our freedoms away as americans we've got a lot of freedoms that can be taken away and we're not going to be hurting that bad um so it's i wish he was here because i got a couple of questions but he's not but we have a video greetings to everyone attending today's kickoff meeting senator jeff merkley here and thanks to the mama city council and everyone at western oregon university who helped organize today's event black history month is a time for all of us all across oregon and across our nation to recognize the indescribable impact the generation upon generation of black americans have made to our nation to celebrate black culture and all of its contributions to america's past present and future and to recommit ourselves to struggle to achieve and ensure justice and equality for all of our citizens that might seem difficult in today's charged environment there is no question that the tow molt and turmoil of the past few years have shown how far we still have to go to achieve that vision of justice and that vision of equality the protests over the unjust murders of black americans and the rise of black lives matter a pandemic that has laid bare the vast inequalities in economics and health and housing and access to opportunities a moment by some to erase or whitewash the history of our nation's struggle for racial justice the struggles of frederick douglass and dr king of w.e.b du bois and james baldwin and harriet tubman and sojourner truth and rosa parks and so many more but that history can't be erased because that history the history of black americans is the history of america we have to learn it and learn from it because it informs every aspect of our nation in our society we can't talk about the inequality of mass incarceration in our prisons without learning and talking about the 13th amendment slavery clause that allowed freed black americans to be re-enslaved we can't talk about economic inequality today without learning about the jim crow laws that determined when and where a black american could work and how they could earn a living and where they could live and we can't talk about today's fight to stop attacks on americans voting rights without understanding the generation's long struggles of the civil rights movement from the end of reconstruction to the passage of the 1965 voting rights act to understand american history you have to understand black history plain and simple so thank you again to not only everyone who helped organize today's event but to everyone who is participating dr king once said that human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable every step toward the justice requires sacrifice suffering and struggle the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals by being part of today's event by learning and by sharing the powerful stories of black history in america not just this month but every day and every month of the year each and every one of you is one of those dedicated individuals helping to move our country step by step toward the goal of justice and equality for all

we're going to have a music break

the band is going to they're setting up right now i'm going to tell you a quick story

living in washington dc as a kid

60 when did they burn down dc 63 64 68. my brother and i were standing on the front porch our house northeast or northwest washington and dad there was a screen door and dad said do not go outside and the sun was going down and it sounded very excited outside there was a lot of noise and a lot of things going on police sirens and everything else and we wanted to go see what it was and then there was a smell and dad said come inside come see the tv they were burning down washington dc uh 14th street was on fire all of it and we just i'm too young i'm eight nine years old don't understand and he said go back outside and smell again and this time when we smelled tears we don't know why but we're getting all clogged up and everything else and he said that's the tear gas that they're using against the people to get them back inside and everything else don't get go outside but what will happen they may shoot you they may arrest you you may get beaten up there are people driving up and down the streets right now looking for people to hurt that moment was significant in my life but this incident that happened with the student i told somebody one time that i was out in my front yard here mowing my front yard here and a big diesel truck came around the corner and had a confederate flag floating and the wind and everything else

and i was terrified because there were four or five white guys in there and they were hooting and hollering and and i thought they were the ones looking for who they might beat up who they might so i stood behind the tree in my front yard and watched them go by that is the last time in my life i will stand behind a tree and let someone like that go by my job is to stand forward because when a student is attacked in the same way that's my fault cheers

so

this

so

so

so so

so

i would just like to call kayeke who is uh the creator of this music today he's like he got um harmony to come and sing and uh put the band together so kanyeke if you could come up and one more hand for the band it's amazing um um thank you everybody for coming over here to hear this to to come to this event um this is my band we're just high schoolers you know um thank you um so my guitar teacher actually nathan he told me that there was going to be an event and that they were looking for a you know musician and play music at the event originally it was just going gonna be me playing piano you know the whole time and there wasn't gonna be a band or a singer it was all just gonna be me and so i got in contact with carol over here and i had an idea and i told carol that i was thinking of putting together a band just high schoolers just kids from my band um to to come play at this event and to get a you know harmony over here to come sing and carol said that would be great carol said that they didn't really have music planned for the event it was just going to be you know piano so i did all of that and i hit these guys up they decided to come and here we are you know okay the next generation i before i introduce deb patterson the next generation one of the things that we got to see in mon with independence were people standing on the corner on the highway in main street and there are a lot of young people out there and when you get old

i love saying that about myself because i don't feel old i just act that way when you get older you kind of quit and uh it was really encouraging to me to have these kids out there young kids holding signs and absorbing the abuse they people would honk at him not for the right reason people were waving at him but not using all five fingers people were making comments to him but not asking him to come over for dinner the things that they wanted to eat so those comments were flying at these kids and that encouraged me in such a great way i talked about racism being in church i walked into church bible study one day and the them and those people conversation was going on man have thought somebody got in a fight with me i came out of there screaming ranting and raving and it took about 15 minutes and i left and that bible study changed that day but it wasn't because i did something it was because young people had done something and encouraged me we need each other we need the young kids to play the music that encourages us to get up and dance to stand on the corner and protest to do the very things that we old people don't do so that we old people will get up and do the things that we can it's going to take all of us so senator deb patterson i saw a big smile and a big thank you from one of the other participants

there is something right about doing something right

and just in watching that moment senator patterson is doing something right and it's affecting the lives of others come and tell us thank you so much pastor morris thank you president kenton thank you to everyone at western oregon university thank you mayor koontz and all the members of this monmouth city council thank you all this afternoon and hello to my colleague senator lou frederick sitting over there who will be speaking in a moment pastor morris i'm so glad you started with the land acknowledgment that western oregon crafted the board of directors of western oregon crafted out of recognition this was not our land

this week in senate veterans and emergency preparedness we heard testimony also by other oregonians impacted by racism we heard from oregonians whose parents and grandparents had been sent to internment camps and who still served as american soldiers during world war ii we must remember the cruel injustice

of the displacement of the indigenous people of the internment

of japanese americans and also here in oregon as president kenton has said we have excluded black americans by practice and by public policy from opportunities to work own property and even live in this state we must remember the cruel injustice of these acts and these public policies and our shared history history matters learning history matters learning from history matters as we forge the future together one of the most important bills on the docket during this sec this session is house bill 4002 that would require farm workers to be paid overtime the fact that we don't pay overtime to farm workers is based in the racist way that black farmers farm workers were treated in intentionally excluding them from president roosevelt's fair labor standards acts act which was part of the new deal in 1938 it's no coincidence that the vast majority of farm workers who are being excluded from equal protection under the law with the fair labor standards act today are people of color

w.e.b du bois senator merkley mentioned him a renowned black historian among many renowned black historians knew that learning from history matters this is why he spent his life recording history centered on the lives and work of black americans in a seminal essay on reconstruction after the civil war he reminds us of the important contributions to restoring democracy that black americans made to this country i urge you to find and read his books if you haven't done so already and the works of so many others not just this february during black history month but all through this year and every year why is black history important

well if we have to ask that should be the obvious answer for why it's important and not only is it important it is urgent that we learn about and learn from black history because our current acts and our current public policies must be more fair and just i'm glad we passed house bill 2936 last session which affirms anti-racist policies for social media accounts and background checks it was part of the work of the judicial committee related to law enforcement but all employers should have anti-racist policies for social media accounts of their employees and background checks i'm also proud to say that i supported house bill 3037 which makes child care more affordable and accessible for low-income and working families in addition i also supported house bill 2681 which prohibits the display of hate symbols on school property a bill brought by and carried by senator frederick

while these are good steps toward making oregon a more inclusive place we still have more work to do can i have an amen i'm a minister too

congregational this session i will also be prioritizing equity specifically i'll be focusing on expanding access to health care and addressing racism as a public health crisis as a co-sponsor of house bill 4052 thank you for your work on that

i'm also sponsoring senate bill 1556 which creates a certification for caregivers over 40 percent of whom are people of color to help create a career ladder for entry-level workers in long-term care i want to highlight senate bill 1579 which directs the oregon business department to develop and implement the equity investment program similar to every 10 acres this program if funded and i'm supporting it i suspect senator frederick is too he's nodding hold him to that hold me to that it will award grants to organizations that provide culturally responsive services to support economic stability self-sufficiency wealth building and economic equity among disadvantaged individuals families businesses and communities in oregon these are bills i believe our communities are calling for despite that truck with the flags right as your senator from this district it is of utmost importance to me that i help pass bills that benefit everyone in our communities including people who are black indigenous and other people of color i hope that these bills are a step in the right direction with the idea that i and we can always do better we need to continue to learn history and learn from history to do that because i believe and i believe that you all do too that we want to be a part of writing a history that is welcoming and inclusive of all thank you for the opportunity to be here today so looking up information about people that i have never met senator lou frederick and i have a little bit in common that i didn't realize

alaska going doing all kinds of stuff my dad is a phd political scientist mit northwestern university morgan state and i have had to listen to his lectures over and over and over and he'll be at my church or in new life ministries tomorrow night and i'll get to hear him again

and i love my dad

one of the things about political scientists and people that any individual that has an outside view of the world is they see things differently than the way we might see it my dad two years before donald trump was elected said while we were in ghana said donald trump's going to get elected and boy did i laugh and he was right there is something that is inherent with understanding politics with understanding history with understanding the character of the individuals that are making decisions that are making for votes that are putting policies forward that if you don't know history if you don't know the situation where you find yourself lying you are bound to repeat the history of the past come change history i introduce senator lou frederick to you

well hello thank you very much i want to thank the the mayor and the president for for inviting me i appreciate that carol where did you go oh there you are right there i thought i saw you over here thanks again as well um and uh western oregon university and the monmouth city council i really appreciate being here my name's lou frederick i'm a state senator for district 22 north and northeast portland i struggle with trying to figure out just where to start and and how much to put in but first of all i've got to say it is great to see another faculty brat on the front front of here my father is my father was a mycologist in fact he was the head of the botany department at howard at for a while but he was also at southern university atlanta university central states and when he died a couple years ago he was a senior senior researcher at tuskegee his alma mater dad was hit the last lab assistant for george washington carver so uh i to say that my my life has been steeped in black history is truly an understatement i found myself at all sorts of levels uh dealing with issues of uh of black history around the dinner table as you did but you know outside when we have a barbecue or whenever we would go to different places i had the the my next-door neighbor was uh horace mann bond julian bond's dad julian was actually my next-door neighbor for a while is there and there were a number of other people my my story is you mentioned your tear gas my tear gas was when i was eight years old in baton rouge louisiana and it was not directed officially at me it was a group of students who had gone downtown to to sit at the woolworth's lunch counter and were not served as they walked out of the door they got tear gassed and they rushed and jumped in the car that i happened to be in and they were filled they were full of tear gas so that's when i got my first tear gas and i was in the middle of the of the civil rights movement growing up we moved from baton rouge louisiana and scotland louisiana to atlanta georgia so from the frying pan into the fire basically uh as i said my next-door neighbor was one of my next-door neighbors was julian bond but my other next other playmates my classmates were uh or schoolmates were yolanda marty and dexter king so dr king was the father of my playmates he was the fellow who told me to quit running through the house and to sit for a little bit and and not and and don't don't get uh too excited luge you just need to rest and relax and just listen for a little bit um he um was also uh he also echoed what my folks always said which was an interesting sort of comment which was your job as an adult is to make things better for the people who come after you that's what that was he bought something he said something my folks said something all the adults said so every other weekend we would march we would have clan members on either side of the street throwing things at us we would have all sorts of other things we didn't go to the selma march because my sister had chickenpox that weekend so we didn't make it to that but i ended up desegregating my high school which was an interesting time as you can well imagine 1964. uh and we were and i saw i walked into high school it was a court case and they're finally starting to to um um to uh talk about my my attorney carol uh carol baker motley carol carol baker motley who was my attorney uh she was she became a federal judge eventually but they're finally putting together stories on her but i ended up um the first day getting people yelling at me as i walked in and the parent and the kids of those parents were um were made at a point of trying to try to make sure that i was going to feel uncomfortable and and and fight with me you know i was only 4 foot 10 at the time so i was a little guy and there were lots of bigger people there and i ended up dealing with fights as well but i i dealt with it in a different way because i was dealing because i was regularly seeing dr king because we were marching constantly and because he and my folks were telling me that the the goal was to make things better and you don't make things better necessarily by by in being involved in a fight intentionally involved in a fight you try to make sure that other things are done so it was a um a determination for us to do things now let me give you a sense of how that worked with my family because it's a little um it's a little strange at times every summer we would travel to all of the to the american institute for biological sciences meetings they were held all across the country so one time as we were heading for a boulder colorado we were going through going through illinois i'm sorry going through missouri missouri and just about to reach independence missouri independence missouri not independence oregon and we were traveling through uh going to independence or missouri my father looked over he did this all the time um he looked over and he said well that's what harry truman's library is why don't we why don't we stop by there now you know you just that was not something that most folks did but we decided to do that so we drove over we parked the car had all of our gear on the top of the car station wagon of course and that kind of thing we got got got out of the car walked towards the parking lot and through the parking lot got about halfway through the parking lot and we suddenly had these people in uniforms not military uniforms but docent uniforms for the library come rushing out to us and they grabbed us and they moved us on through the museum and the library rather into an auditorium and in the auditorium there were a whole group of people in a little stage like this set up and we and they put us on the front row of the of the uh the library auditorium and we said what is going on because we were not expecting this we did not know what was what was happening and a little bit later there was a they were giving an award to president truman and so president truman came out and he immediately got the award he was very pleased everything and of course as soon as he left as soon as he finished getting the award he got off the stage and went and talked to us

his his folks wanted to have us as a as poster children for for being there at the at the truman library now that was just fine as far as my dad was concerned because truman was one of my father's uh not only heroes but he was certainly he certainly was one of the people he admired because he had managed to d to integrate the armed services while my dad was in the service so he thought that was really an important thing so we ended up having harry truman so i can say and i and i'm pleased to actually say this i have talked with every president since harry truman um and that was sort of point where i have no desire to talk with the previous guy so but uh it was one of those things where it was just a determination this is the kind of thing that we did my father made it made it a point of getting into places where we were not expected to be uh and that was his his major one of his major efforts was to we would go to the nature conservancy meetings for georgia and they had never seen a black person in the nature conservancy meeting for georgia uh they we would go to all across this all across the country and you mentioned alaska what he was alluding to was the fact that neither one of us had been to alaska you've been to alaska well that's not fair oh that's not fair okay well you you've got me beat there that's the only state i haven't been to but i managed to get around the states of the united states but i also managed as a television reporter for 17 years i got to go to all of the counties in the state of oregon and i only had a couple of bad experiences i'll put it that way uh difficult experiences and two of them two of those experiences took place before i was a reporter medford um police officers two different years told me that i was i had to be out of town by sundown that was 1975 and 76. i've also but i also have to deal with the fact that i have police officers pulling me over in my neighborhood um usually once a year and i have been have was not pulled over yes last year because most people weren't out primarily yeah knock well last year i said like i'm not not counting for but uh i was usually pulled over at least once a year but i had police officers pulling me over asking whether i was lost or not whether they i needed help because i was obviously in it in a gentrified neighborhood and i wasn't supposed to be there uh that was a and i when i when i told one officer that i ended the last guy who i talked with about that i said you know i know why you're pulling me over he said oh i just you know just concerned him i said no i know why you're pulling me over you don't expect me to be here i get that now why am i going through this neighborhood slowly because i live right there but it was not something that was expected these are the kinds of issues that we're still trying to struggle with and we can go down the list and unfortunately the list is long but we can go down the list what we really need to be doing though is figuring out what the next steps will be where we want to go what should the world look like what should oregon look like how can we deal with oregon in a way that's going to actually bring things up not only in terms of of obvious public safety because we really need to have police officers understanding that they are not warriors but peace officers there's a difference and there's a different mindset that takes place there's a one of my friends was in ashland uh a couple of years ago and he was standing there and noticed a police officer there and on on the police officer's bumper sticker was peace officer and he went over to her and said now this does this change the way people look at you and he she said no but it changes the way i look at other people that's a different mindset altogether there too we also need to be changing things in terms of housing and uh and in uh in getting business loans and and and doing other things related to um

health care and and and other other issues for me the issue is education it's one of my key my key issues because we do not need to be having uh kids especially black kids it's not a remedial situation for folks it's discovering what it is that they are strong at and and encouraging that strength rather than somehow believing that by by by disciplining them by by somehow creating problems for them you're going to make them feel as though they want to learn i want all students in oregon to want to learn i don't want them turned off by my tests i don't want them turned off by all sorts of detention issues or anything like that we need to have support and one of the things that i think we've seen as a result of this pandemic is that we've seen the holes in our safety net and now we can begin to change things now now we can do that i am so excited when i talk with students because i know i used to used to like a regular adult i go in and say what do you want to be when you grow up uh and i stopped doing that i now ask students what what problem do you want to solve when you grow up what do you want to solve right now that's a different mindset altogether too and we need to find a way to make sure that that's what's going on i really am uh am excited about the fact that we actually have the attention of the world on changing things black history month is a classic example of of how we can do that but it's got to be a black history month is a a year-round situation so as so does those indigenous history and and and asian history and latinx history uh and and pacific islander history all of those groups of people who have been ignored we have not ignored the contributions and ignored the challenges as well so it's time for us to make those changes that's what i'm working at and what i am so pleased to see and what i i cannot begin to tell you is uh i get a chance to work with deb patterson who brings these issues forward so that i don't have to

and because it's not something that i have to change it's not it's not i'm not worried so much about it it is it is speaking to the um to the euro population about what's going on and that's a different approach than what we've had just what we've seen in the past so i am i'm pleased to see that now i'm also pleased to see and i it had one when i came into the oregon house i was the only african-american person in the oregon house um

jackie winters was the senator uh the black senator so when jack went i used to joke that when i went over to the oregon senate to see jackie the whole capital sort of tilted a little bit but the fact is now we have 15 people of color in the oregon oregon legislature

pretty amazing and we will be we will be probably having more as well that's that's right now we will have more as well what's more important is not just the oregon legislature but the city councils the county commissions the school boards all of these folks are beginning to understand that we have a change that's got to take place and we've got people who need to do that so i want to thank you for inviting me to be here and i invite you to get involved with making sure that oregon looks like the people in oregon oregon's politics look like the people in oregon and and let's see what we can make things make things better and bring out an organ that we're all proud of that 10 years down the line we will know that they're going to be doing things i talk to the talk to students and i say to them i want you happy healthy wealthy pleased with everything because you're going to be choosing my nursing home you know and and i want you to make sure that you're doing very well so let's see if we can get our scientists and poets and all philosophers and all sorts of folks in this state doing well and we can only do that if we get make sure that all the folks are doing well thank you very much

one thing i want to add

and i had i thought about i'm four generations away from slavery you would be similar um my great grandfather uh lorenzo marsh was traded in south carolina and there in south carolina he had

four generations okay he had 13 kids and when he turned 30 years old they sold him to louisiana in louisiana they couldn't understand his language so he became morris instead of marsh and in louisiana he had 14 kids and i am his great great grandchild from that history one of the things that happens is as black families

i fight my dad my dad's a great example he fights to keep his family together he fights to know every member of his family i have cousins that i've never met that my dad can tell you stories about and everything else we need to reinstate and assist in the building of families again it's too easy to use the divorce word to walk away and everything else we have kids out there that are coming from broken homes and part of that brokenness will affect our society as a whole that's just a quick sub note let's have some happy sounds

so

so

do

so

julian jackson okay now sometimes you go on and you look up somebody and everything else and uh the only thing that you can say when you're doing is damn

damn so i'm going to tell a quick alaska story my wife and i got to go up to alaska and we were in anchorage and we were looking for a place to eat and there was this really cool little funny restaurant it had the name waffles and whatnot and it looked really kind of fun and everything else so we went there and there's a breakfast place and it had formerly been a carte restaurant and we walked in and it was a black owned business now where in alaska are you going to find a black-owned business and one of the front tables had 15 airmen from the local air force base and half of those guys were black where are you going to find a group of black guys together and one of the things that bothers me here in monmouth is you see three black guys together and the first thing is well i wonder what team they're on come on really i wonder what they're studying i wonder what their major is i wonder what they're i wonder what they do for free time i wonder if they live in town if they have to leave and go away on the weekend i wonder if they have friends local friends i wonder what they're doing right now why what are they talking i wonder yeah so in looking up this this woman in her business damn her vision for what we can do for what is available for what is possible not only for black women but for us us knuckleheads is amazing so i'd like to introduce you to julian jackson good afternoon i'd like to thank you all for having me at this event to celebrate black history month may we also celebrate those making black history in this moment uh and may we also uplift those who will come behind to do more when we could than we could ever imagine today when i was asked to speak on the topic uh of black joy i was excited and i thought that this was going to be simple right this is something i do all the time but i'm going to honor my feelings today and i'm going to say that after hearing about the murder of amir loch on the birthday of trayvon martin i'll admit that black joy is not as easy a topic as it should be so i remind myself in this moment that black joy is an act of resistance

so before i get to the business of celebrating all that we are let us take a moment to remember those who are no longer with us whether we know their name or not

the origins of black joy as a concept date back to the start of black history itself although it's garnered more attention in recent years simply due to the version of black history taught today that focuses largely on pain and struggle

but i assure you we have been singing dancing and creating joyful traditions since time immemorial black people are and continue to be literally the beginning of everything

from the first human known to man to being the first at so many other things we have birthed a nation we built it we've enriched it and have always and continue to hold a level of humanity for others that is absolutely astounding and often undeserved from our ancestors we have received a seemingly unending amount of hope being black in america being black in oregon just being black wherever one may find themselves often means unsolicited stares under breath comments blatant disrespect black body trauma and repeated trauma as we view those that look like us snuffed out publicly time and time again and yet we move like water navigating daily systems that were not designed for us and even through all this more than anything what separates black people from all others is our resilience our compassion our fortitude and last but not least our joy black people are again black people are and continue to be the beginning of everything i want to talk today about maintaining and expanding that joy it's black men and women as black men and women we are taught that we are not enough that our mental health and our pain and our generational trauma are irrelevant and often we are pushed to just keep going i want to challenge that we were never less than and we are in a position to change the narrative on the way that we love ourselves and those in our community one of my heroes angela davis spoke often on the need to take care of oneself practicing yoga and meditation even while imprisoned we have seen simone biles and naomi osaka choose themselves on the world stage we have been blessed to witness dwayne wade turn against misogynistic norms to be there for his child and blessed to see michael jordan cry publicly over the loss of a dear friend

we are in a beautiful time of awakening in america and none are waking up faster than we are and i for one i'm for that this is how we maintain our inherent joy we began to challenge the white supremist ideas that we have about ourselves we free ourselves from the bondage of conformity doing so with the knowledge that we were never supposed to be this

we learn our heritage and we learn how to decolonize our thoughts i had an amazing conversation with someone the other night and something they said struck me we weren't made slaves because we weren't valuable in fact quite the opposite is true we are quite valuable indeed our land our knowledge our ability to create and build all had value we must shed ourselves of this skin it's not ours our men are not super predators or savages daily they bear the entire brunt of america's bitterness they are strong courageous and deserve to be allowed to step into their tenderness and take their armor off our women are not angry we are unheard misunderstood and put upon with the responsibility that was never meant to be ours alone our black girls are not fast they are missing with no one looking our black boys are not inherently bad but they are often struck down or incarcerated before they can even decide what they will be our black queer and trans communities aren't sinful they are what our african ancestors have celebrated long before our arrival here and are dying more rapidly than any demographic it is time for us to remember who we are and run towards our power and our magic with open arms displaying joy and meeting your needs is an act of resistance letting go of your hardness is an act of resistance and it is the only path towards healing and the establishment of true equity and damn it truly loving everything you are is straight up rebellion

by choosing acts of love and joy for ourselves and others in the face of hatred we can feel ourselves regain our own humanity maintaining joy will not change laws it certainly won't always change hearts but it is the ultimate act of defiance in a world where your joy is not considered you are worthy your value immeasurable your skin is perfect and your strength unmatched treat yourself accordingly

as i close i want to you to encourage you to also work to remove pain points for our communities of color by supporting legislative change

current uh a current bill that needs your support is senate bill 1510 which aims to change stops and arrests parole and probation as well as secure funding for culturally specific programming thank you and i appreciate your time my wife and i go to winnebagona every summer we've been going there seven years five years seven anyway we went there one time and there was a room this big but it had balcony all the way around and we were with five thousand africans educated phd's master's degrees head of departments deena president of the cardinal of the cat i mean everybody was there and then students down the middle and as they were having this conversation everything else they started playing music and it was one of the most joyful times i have ever had in my life because you could feel it coming they were going to dance and they were going to dance joyfully and there was absolutely no way to stop them but they weren't done with the program and i can remember the the vice chancellor standing up front putting up his home saying stop wait wait not yet we have one more thing to do oh man the chairs are moving and you can hear people in their side i've never seen that in america

the day that obama got elected my mom called me on the phone she was in texas and i was here and she said we did it we did it i'm so happy then i had to go to work the next day

and it was not a it was different

sometimes i'm really sad being in this place sometimes i need someone to pull me up and remind me that i have value thank you so the next speaker um angel harris now i asked her before this whole thing started i said look i found out all this information about you and i've got it listed and she said that's the other angel harris

yeah but i've got this really cool quote right here and she's that's the other angel harris so she said don't worry about it just step aside i'll introduce myself so ladies and gentlemen angel harris

i gotta like recover from the julian jackson and quite frankly i have to recover from this whole program because this is more than a program right

what were you doing when you were 14 years old in high school were you singing the black national anthem

thank you harmony did you take your saturday off to celebrate black history month in mammoth oregon home of ten thousand

plus our university students you don't want to forget about them right what were you doing at 14 years old powerful y'all so i take a moment i am one of those criers anyways

i feel deeply and that's why i brought my phone up here so i could put my timer on

i'm the last one so i want to make sure to honor your time but i'm a talker so i'm looking out for y'all okay

i want to first of all thank carol

the city of mamas senators in the lou fredrickson and senator patterson i want to thank each of you okay now caico did i get that right kai see i'm messing people's names up but this young man i'm inspired y'all because again i'm 45 at 14 years old as you'll hear a little bit i didn't know much and i didn't know i didn't know and i suspect there's a lot of y'all in this room that don't know what you don't know right and that's why we're here we're learning and we're growing and that's some good stuff that's some juicy stuff right so enough of that my name is angel harris i'm not much into the title thing so it's actually perfect that when he googled the wrong angel harris who was also a part of the naacp national and illegal defense fund he got her see i told him he had to google angel harris corvallis greetings from corvallis but i loved it because again i'm not into the whole title thing i really always think that i'm uh just wanting to make the world a better place that's kind of always been my thing as a little girl is that i want to make the world a better place and for me titles don't necessarily do that they open doors though y'all i am learning that they open some doors but my title does not really tell you who i am so i'm going to tell you that myself okay and because i want to stay on cue see i'm off i'm off track i'm gonna i'm i i even type this up for y'all so i can stay okay

so i am at the first annual right mama's first annual black history month program

i've been to a couple of first annuals and let me tell you the exciting part about the first is that we get to do it again and again and it's never the first again right and we can always go well it's 2022 what happened what took so long we can kind of beat us ourselves up but i still remember that quote right when we know better we do better so there's always an opportunity to do the right thing so that's why i'm excited to be here i want to thank jason j dorsett president current president of our lynn bitten naacp because he could not be here today which meant i could so thank you president dorsett

so who am i first of all because sometimes our stories right our testimonies senator patterson was preaching up here by the way i thought we were going to do an altar call and pass the plate all at the same time

but our testimony right because we overcome by the word of our testimony right and the blood of the lamb is what the bible says so my testimony tells you way more about me than my credentials actually so first of all i'm a mom of three kids 16 year old a 14 year old and 11 year old i should just stop right there and you may want to do something for me after hearing that right right i'm also a wife of of one you have to be very specific these days i got one husband wife of one right

i am a registered nurse and i'm currently getting my master's degree in nursing at lynnfield so i'm back at lynnfield i also am an adjunct now nursing faculty at bushnell in eugene and i will start my first teaching my first class in may

happy black history to all of us and if you know anything about health care if you know anything about the history of nursing you will understand what a big deal that is yeah and identify as a black woman by the way

i am the past president as you can see on the screen of the lynn bitten naacp that also tells you a lot about me as well that is a volunteer position but it was a full-time position i actually took off i quit my nursing job to dedicate that those two years to our community because it is a full-time job right social justice work is not a part-time gig it's our lives it should be all of our lives actually i it doesn't stop when i go to work whatever my job is wherever i am whether if i'm sitting in legislat in this legislation or legislature right if i'm sitting if i'm whatever office jobs social justice work does not stop there it does not begin in this room right and when i leave this room there's still justice work to be done right so i i focused and did that for two years right as president now i didn't tell you what i was doing before that i was also an executive team before that as well

i'm also a racial equity consultant and i love building bridges i love it y'all it's going to take all of us even those we don't agree with

probably especially those we don't agree with actually so when we talk about building bridges we remind ourselves especially as a black woman that i am not i'm a bridge builder but i am not the bridge that you walk over i had that confused for a long time right

and what what is my purpose of being a racial equity consultant it sure is a fancy title but my purpose is to meet with individuals and organizations and help towards racial healing right racial healing and community healing and what i tell people is i really need you to respect and treat people like people i don't know if there's a title for that y'all how to be kind to each other how to fight for each other don't know if there's a so i just called a racial equity consultant but it's really like rodney king can we all just get along and it sounds really basic but it's really hard it's really hard

so we heard earlier about carter g woodson the father of black history thank you so much very powerful by the way we got background history on black history month which started out as a week right in 1926 and then moved into a month in 1976 which is the year i was born 45 years ago and we see ourselves today to pack 400 over 400 years of black history in america into 28 days that was not

his that was not the goal y'all we're not supposed to actually like a celebration right when i have my birthday it's not saying angel we're only going to acknowledge you and celebrate you on december 4th just in case y'all want to give me some gifts december 4th right that's not what that is that was not what it was supposed to be it's supposed to be yes we have our birthdays but angel we're going to also remember you throughout the day throughout the years right valentine's day is great but hello can you imagine your spouse or your partner only acknowledging you on one day that was not the goal so here we find ourselves 45 years later over 400 years later still saying black lives matter

black history is american history

how many more years do we continue to cry not even say it but crying that out right

when do we see the humanity in black lives because again we are people fully human not animals not things to be owned but people with feelings and stuff and a few angel hairs you got lot sorry angel hairs corvallis you got lots of feelings

i'm gonna keep giving your hard time faster

we got we as julianne said we got lots of joy i always tell people because i think sometimes they just want to be like oh you poor black girl that's how you should see myself actually and i said you know we can talk about racism without always talking about these poor black people who were slaves there was more to our story way more to our story than that so i always sit before people stand before people zoom before people and i remind them let lest we not forget i'm thriving in life i'm thriving thriving you know we can it doesn't have to be and you're right it doesn't have to be like either you're struggling or you're not i can struggle and still have joy y'all right so don't look at me and say oh that poor black woman actually i am amazing amazing and it's not just me some people are like you're different you're not like the rest of them it's like i know a lot actually they're way better than me i mean nothing against me i'm pretty cool but they're like i'm like right here like i'm in the middle y'all nothing against myself i'm pretty cool but i'm in the middle when you think i'm the exception to the rule that's a problem

there's plenty of us plenty of us you just gotta get to know us you gotta humanize us right we get to be people with joy and with some struggles struggles that we didn't necessarily create at times right and we get to acknowledge that we can take knowledge isn't that a strong word when we acknowledge something we get to acknowledge it and then we go how are we going to fix it how we're going to fix it what are we going to do about it because again i'm thriving y'all and it feels really good to thrive especially when people put you in little boxes have you ever been put in a little box as a black woman i've been playing lots of boxes didn't even know i was in the box have you ever been in a box and never knew you in a box because that's all you knew you only knew this little space and you were allowed to occupy that space and once you stepped out of that little space people got real nervous

i didn't even know not only was i in a box i was put in a box i thought that that was all i could do was what was in this box y'all angel the harris corvallis

i tell my kids about it all the time who i see myself as who do you see yourself as well i can't do nothing angel what can i do what can i do as a white person what can i do as a black person what can i do as an immigrant to this country i don't even understand your history what can i do and i think about how we all are put in these boxes that and these shackles that say we can't do anything about it

it's a lie and if it was not a lie i know i wouldn't be here i tell people all the time there is not a job that would pay enough for me to waste my time to tell my story which is a treasure and to talk to people who don't necessarily care anything about me but because i know there's hope i can do this all day y'all i can do it all day knowing that there's hope that people change because i changed and i see people changing all the time in all the shades and all the colors because when i talk about a box again i'm not just talking about white people i'm not just talking about black people and for some they don't even know what the heck how they identify that wasn't a real sentence but i made that they don't even know what the heck they identified i loved it you can quote that can you imagine going through your life biracial multiracial and not having a clue where you belong because we all know race is made up and you cannot just look at angel harris and say what she is you wouldn't have known i could have been from the dominican republic i could have been from africa you have no idea but i am judged by this melanin this beautiful melanin in my skin right so when i say we all need to know who we are i literally mean all of us because in some ways we have been put in a box that tells me you can't do it and it's not true and as we celebrate black history month we are reminded over and over and over again of those who did which is why we are here think about dr king we can think about dr king because we just celebrated his birthday last month why i bring the reverend dr martin luther king jr up because we know he's not the only one but he's fresh in our minds because we just celebrated him last month rosa parks she's not the only one because remember there's a slew of us black joy come on julian black joy right there's a slew of us that stood and knew that we could do something more we could change things rosa park seller would have celebrated her birthday yesterday yes 109 she would have been and if anyone knows about anything about rosa parks first of all about rosa rosa was a part of the naacp

we were taught that it was just some kind of fluke that what happened on the bus was just some general thing that oh i just decided one day they had been planning this and because you have to plan when you do justice work you can't just be flimsy about it you got to have a plan they had a plan right and they knew they had to use rosa why did they have to use rosa y'all

does anyone know yes look at you because she's light-skinned it would not have worked with angel hare's corvallis and that think about that they used rosa parks because they knew because you have to plan you have to be strategic right senator frederick you have to be strategic this was a plan y'all right and it didn't stop with her saying no on the bus what did it take to make it successful

the boycott which takes people not just black people all the people y'all all the people so if we think we're gonna do some real work just think about think back to all the amazing

black folks that left legacies that i get to stand up here think about what happened think about the white folks who died standing right we say ally i don't know if allie's a strong enough word of what those white folks were doing right

it wasn't about just being in a meeting and saying oh don't talk that way to julianne they really had to lose some stuff y'all to steps to stand up what the president said up here today

yeah that takes a lot of courage and as brene brown would say daring leadership

for some people listening to him that is not going to go over well that's what it takes it takes angels saying i can't help myself because i have to speak up and if you don't like it right because like i think of a senator who said it's not like we're trying to cause trouble it's more like john lewis this is good trouble

and for those who are like me who wanted to be to do everything right to check all the boxes i thought trouble was bad i didn't know doing the right thing can also get you in trouble

and people pleasers don't do well social justice i found that out the hard way as well because people are not going to like you when they want to continue white supremacy

when they want to stay comfortable because this is not comfortable work for anyone including us brown and black people who are still in the box because we've been told you can only do this how dare you be a senator how dare you even think you can lead the naacp as a black woman how dare you think you can be a junk nursing faculty and maybe one day be associated right like who are you and you you better not be thinking you're gonna be a dean one day like don't you dare even go there it's okay for you to stay in the box of being a cna being a nursing assistant but don't you dare think higher than that you're just angel harris from vicksburg mississippi

you're very nice girl stay that way be quiet don't talk too much we'll invite you into the table just don't try to shake things up how dare you black person succeed how dare you uh and when we think about dr king even right what's the narrative

he was so peaceful just so peaceable

the man who knew it wasn't going well for him right right he knew people were after him literally he was arrested how many times what was that

so now we're told to be more 30. we were told to be more like dr king but i don't think people understand who dr king was he was you know his wife coretta scott king you all know her i got to meet her i got the content of character award in high school in grant high school y'all i thought i was really doing some i didn't know they gave awards for that like being all peaceable and stuff i didn't know i thought you had to be out there loud and doing some stuff i was a scared girl i was a scared young lady

right but coretta knew the death like the purpose of her husband's life and they follow god and i'd be loving me some jesus by the way everybody knows knows that who knows me but you have to follow something to do

social justice work y'all or you go crazy that's why some people tell them about joy because you will lose your mind in social justice work and what we've seen is you will lose your life some of us so coretta had to know whether she had to know that there was a bigger purpose for her husband she had to know because when he thought well maybe i should stay home with the kids and be with you she says no martin you go

you think with the bomb in your house right you would quit some people tell me it's too hard it's too hard angel this is too hard oh those are white people and i just say you have no idea

and they still did it y'all

right and nobody's calling anyone to be a martyr none of that but we are we i am calling you to stand up and play your part in what you're supposed to do it does not look like right like what i'm supposed to do no you don't have to be up here this is what i'm supposed to do my name is angel which means heavenly messenger now i know i talk so much y'all look at that forgot to put the timer and everything what did they say at church you know stay with me i'll be closing stay with me i don't see anybody sleeping yet maybe okay you're not sleeping okay good at first i thought you were but then you're you know you get the mass so high but anyways back to what i was saying they did not give up oh how powerful is not giving up

knowing that there could be death on the other side even

right so when we talk about what's uncomfortable that does not compare to me with death me being uncomfortable i always tell people i'm used to being uncomfortable if i'm not uncomfortable i think something's wrong sometimes because have you ever been in a room where you're the only one quite often

right it's a little bit uncomfortable have you ever experienced that and if you haven't you really need to you really need to know how that feels not to be the majority it is a powerful lesson it is a very powerful lesson and you want to give up because you don't see anyone else looking like you and then you begin to believe the lies well the reason why they're not x y and z is because they until you find out there's this thing called systemic racism

and that moment for me y'all happened don't judge me in 2012

because of trayvon martin so i've talked about rosa i've talked about dr king and i want to talk to you really briefly about another key person who changed my life and left a legacy and this was the saddest of all 17 year old trayvon martin who would have been 27 today was murdered

his mom was actually at oregon state university 2019 i got to meet her and she she speaks around the country she actually read for office amazing woman but you shouldn't have to right you shouldn't have to be doing those things after the death and murder of your 17 year old son with skittles in his pocket and for me all of my life even as a mississippi girl i came in oregon you know 1990 as an eighth grader i didn't know um i i didn't really know about racism i mean when you when most of your towns 60 or so percent is black as a little girl you don't in all the segregation right you just go about life right you moved to oregon in eighth grade and all of a sudden i'm black and there are these people who are bi-racial multi-racial and we don't have that because it's not okay in mississippi right so even then we were bussing by the way in seventh grade we were bussing trying to integrate still right so when i come to oregon there's this thing and i'm black and i'm trying to figure out what that really means because apparently it's a negative thing and if you're 14 years old like our young people over here you would think by then you would know like what that means but i had no idea because in mississippi they were all black you don't just sit around and talk about it you just get up and go to work and do your thing and laugh and play and have family unions you go to church but in oregon it was a conversation of oh mississippi burning because they had watched that movie about the kkk didn't know anything about grant's past and portland's history with the kkk but they wanted to tell me about mississippi and how bad mississippi was as an eighth grader y'all and i had a really thick accent back then and you learned really easy how to change that so you fit in and now i miss it but it's okay i know who i am right so i thought

angel who wants to just please everybody right first child mom ended up being a mamie to most things which is how can i serve everyone but myself right the mamie who is the maid and that's the nurse right i just take care of everybody i just wanted to know how i could serve all the people and if we educated each other right let's just educate let's talk about racism if there there's racism but it's just a couple of people right all we have to do is talk and i believe that i went to osu in 95 and i still didn't get it people were saying things to me touching all over my hair and it was still like maybe if you do something different those things wouldn't happen to you even though i thought i was still i did all the things no drinking no drugs no sex before marriage i was like because those things didn't even calm to me anyways right my heart has always been to like how can i help people that's how it came at my mom's womb right yet i find myself downtown corrales you must be a drug dealer so someone called i'm on a date right with my now husband right i would always explain those things away because for me racism meant again it's only a few people who just are really out there and extreme for the most part we all get along because i didn't know about systemic racism i didn't know about policies that were in place redlining portland's his organs history of the black exclusion laws i had no idea no one ever told me that and then i found out i'm not the only one who didn't know so when trayvon martin right i mean before that i was even marching on cnn news with oregon state university students right after anita hill's posters were platforms the n-word one of our friends was urinated on that was 1996 but angel was fighting but angel didn't understand the real fight

i didn't understand what we were really up against y'all again i just thought it was people i didn't understand there were actually laws that were holding us down that have been meant to keep us out so when trayvon martin was murdered i didn't understand it all came together i was hit everything started adding up everything that i explained away most of my life i realized oh my goodness and i called my pastor and i said you have to pray for us because it's not okay this is not okay and the black community is definitely not okay because i was on facebook how many of us are on facebook and if you have white and black facebook friends ha the white friends were talking about the football

which i don't really right it was like other than they didn't even know about trayvon martin the black community was in anguish and i felt torn because i said how in the world are we living in two different americas but we're in the same place they don't even know who trayvon martin is i was rocked and that's when i realized systemic racism and how policies are super duper important policy change policy work right

it changed my life i mourned for about a year and a half i literally mourned and then i found naacp nwc found he found me and the purpose of that y'all is to remember that we can't do this by ourselves we can't change by ourselves we need people around us and with us right

so we have four you had four speakers i shouldn't say that you've had more than that but you've heard from senator frederickson or frederick's sorry senator senator patterson thank you so much for championing our bill you've also heard from julianne jackson who is hoping to create as you heard earlier legislation as well and myself who is also a grassroots person we are not right we are not legislators we are community members advocating because we understand the importance of policy change and systemic change because i can change which i did i changed y'all but guess what if i go to the store and there's still these policies in place i'm still kept out if i go to school which we my kids do and there's still these old policies they're kept out so i can change here but we have to also change the rules right and so i don't think it's by coincidence that the four of us who don't really know each other by the way we've like met briefly that we are here today because we understand that policy is critical and we had we are in the beginnings of our legislative short session right it's very short it's about a month and so they they have oh my gosh amazing as senator patterson said some amazing um justice and equity center bills that are in the house and in the senate right now and i'm learning because i always thought politics was really bad right because when you see some politicians it looks really bad but i am starting to realize that you can't just again paint you know have a broad stroke of just painting things and stereotyping there are actually some really amazing heart like leading with love legislators who really want to see systemic change in our state in our country right so we get to join in in that work so i want to and when you say what can i do i need you to figure out what is going on in your with your representative with your senators what bills are out there that you want to champion you can write letters yes you can actually speak at the hearings in the committee hearings you actually get to do i had no idea this was possible right so when we talk about what we can do it's not just we're going to hold signs those are good have programs this is great but we want long-term systemic change all and that comes in salem it's super important that we all get involved in that and use our voice to make changes okay

all right so to end i wanted to say the words one more time to the powerful black national anthem and just hear how many us's and hours because it's not just about one person it's about all of us coming together lift every voice and sing every till earth and heaven ring ring with the harmony of liberty let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies let it resound loud as the rolling seas sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us facing the rising sun of our new day begun let us march on till victory is one right it says it didn't say give up it says let us march on till victory is won and that's what we're gonna do what will your legacy be thank you so much

i did a poster testimony in uh independence city park the nine and a half minutes that a knee was put up upon a man's throat and it cardboard testimony you don't say a word you just have words written down and the people reading the words get to put in their own emotions and everything else and during that period of time i got to look at the faces of the people out there and people wanted to run facing

inequality

is hard and sometimes we do want to run the other way i like a good fight not i've learned to phys at 14 years old what was i doing 75 fights a year my brother and i figured it out he and i went to school together and he was the younger one he'd always say my older brother will fight for you and we figured it out it's 75 fights a year and i was really good at it and then we moved to chicago everything changed i wasn't the only black kid there but then i came out here and i'm the only one and i get to say that so many times and i don't like it

but i'm there i go into the small communities i took over a church in a really small community and when i went over to that small community to take it over everybody every pastor in town said don't they won't like you good good to every one of you here speak up

tell them tell them how beautiful a black person is tell them how wonderful it is to be around a black family to go to a black celebration to sing the black anthem learn the song whistle it make it something that you quote

but take the opportunity to make yourself uncomfortable and in making yourself uncomfortable you will make those around you uncomfortable until we're all uncomfortable and willing to make room for the next person the 25th

yes couple of announcements here she comes here she comes you know what so i am not i do not like text i do not like working you know i i'm affiliated with five churches and everything else and i get texts all the time and so-and-so needs help and so and so and i'm involved with celebrate recovery and i all over the place carol i look forward to hers and they you know there's three or four and they come at 10 o'clock at night what are you doing up at 10 o'clock at night so here's carol and give her a big one so i've been asked to announce that there is a black history month display upstairs here in the werner center so please take some time and take a look at it we would also like you to know about the monmouth elementary school children's art display that are in these businesses also independence elementary school has a couple classes also and here are the teachers we had 13 teachers monmouth elementary and i think four at independence elementary what we did is they took a black author or poet and did some artwork on it and you'll find these on these businesses in monmouth and independence so take a look at it we also have 36 black history month flags in downtown monmouth now so thank you to the city

for putting that up so and uh we'll actually um and there's just one more thing here some thank yous if the kayaking's band is still here please one more time for amazing music

so what's your homework

before you leave today make a commitment to something one of the things uh we mentioned and chola davis was mentioned my dad uh was involved with a northwestern graduate political sci dean of graduate studies northwestern university we had a fancy dancy house on lake michigan jesse jackson came to our house and he i mean we had to all you kids go upstairs and jesse jackson and his group was downstairs angela davis came to the house and you kids go upstairs we have stuff to talk about downstairs and we had all these influential people but i was such a rebellious young man that i didn't get to meet all these people the the discussions i have with my dad now are amazing um he's met and been a part of but he also gives me homework he's an educator i'd ask my dad how do you spell pneumonia and he'd say look it up i don't know how to spell it how do i look it up that's my dad so my dad gives me homework and he's like so you live in oregon you're living on all white town what are you doing i go everywhere i can to make people uncomfortable i'm that black guy you can not get around me you cannot i'm that guy i wear t-shirts that are inappropriate because it's not the way you feel i say things that are inappropriate because i think a little bit differently than you and i stand in front of you every single day willing to accept whatever you throw so what's your homework what are you going to do how can you change your neighborhood your community i'll close with a prayer father god to each and every one of us

we have a place in our life that won't move unless you speak a word of truth to us words were spoken today that were true enlighten them set them on fire let it cause us to be moved but most of all let it cause new growth new life new promise

and new alliances with people that we have set aside have ignored and haven't even acknowledged as being a part of us we turn ourselves over to you that you might be glorified in the simple things that we do and then in the magnificent things that you will do help each and every one of us through this week through this month through this year but most of all help each and every one of us become better than we were when we walked in this door and i pray that in christ's name amen