welcome to community media day right here at the belmont media center i am your host jeff hansell one of your hosts and i have with me here today mr adam dash he is the chair of the board of  for coming thanks to i think me we're here celebrating community media free speech and freedom of expression october twentieth across the country is known as community media day and community television stations across the country they are doing almost the same thing that we're doing right now so liberating free speech hyper local news and community freedom freedom of expression the belmont board of selectmen recently proclaimed that community media day and i'm going to ask mr das to read that proclamation well thank you anything else you'd like to say no thank you very much from the town in belmont massachusetts board of selectmen proclamation whereas the sharing of ideas and information helps to build common understanding and common values within the community and whereas access to information in today's media environment is critical for the healthy functioning of our community and whereas community media organizations provide a means for diverse communities to tell their stories hear each other's stories and create new stories together and whereas community media organizations provide information to the community that is not covered by mainstream commercial media and whereas community meet community media organizations provide people with the skills necessary for the creation sharing and consumption of knowledge and ideas through media and whereas community media is an important resource for participating in local democratic policy and processes and whereas community media connects community organizations schools and local governments to their constituencies and whereas in many communities people are not aware of the diverse and valuable programming on public education and government access channels or community radio channels and where as communities will benefit from increased general awareness of viewing audiences for and creators of media content created by and for the community now therefore be it resolved that october twent thousand and eighteen is hereby proclaimed as community media day with in belmont massachusetts and all people are hereby called upon to promote the importance of community media training available at the belmont media center and programming available on channels eight  nine and ninety six on comcast channels twenty eight twenty nine thirty on verizon and online at belmont media dot org be it further resolved that the belmont media center plays a vital role in the building of our community by encourag conversations about our common interests increasing discourse about policy issues fostering understanding of local cultures and sharing information to improve our lives the month board of selectmen october eighteenth two thousand and eighteen adam dash and we have a number of different performers and speakers throughout the afternoon and of course will be repeating this program later on if you're watching right now saturday october twenty twentieth's come on down we've got free drinks free pizza you're doing  a free speech free media to kick off the event today we have a local musician who actually live right mind dunkin donuts creator his name is kevin macphail and he's here right good afternoon my name is catherine i'm the president of belmont against racism and i thank the media center for allowing me to speak today liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist that of all right is the dread of tyrants it is the right which they've first of all strike down they know it's powers frederick douglas a plea for free speech in boston eight hundred sixty mr douglass was trying to impress on the listeners the impact of having a meeting in boston to address how short slavery be abolished shut down by what douglas described as a mob of gentleman douglas lamented that the mob trampled on the right to free speech unhindered by the boston mayor and official we know that tyrants want to stop the expression of free speech and the news now is a silencing in death a saudi arabian journalist jamal khashoggi who advocated free speech in his home country according to the committee to protect journalism twenty seven journalists were murdered around the world this year and two hundred sixty two were imprisoned in two thousand and seventeen we hear our president declare that journalists are the enemy of the people and recently he condoled the assault on a journalist all presidents swear an oath to uphold the constitution which includes freedom of speech and freedom of the press journalism is free speech and is the cornerstone of our democracy our local media the print and online local coverage and the belmont media center help to keep us educated citizens they bring us the important event government and school related events and issues sytycd affect our daily lives we are grateful for their service and for their support to our diverse community although the constitution guarantees free speech history has shown that the voices of opposition can often be suppressed for example the civil rights era in the sixty's is littered with examples of rights advocates such as martin luther king or fannie lou hamer who had their right to free speech silenced by jail time and beatings from the rights of black and african americans to those of the l b g t q community to immigrants to the  and all those who are often deemed as other in our country being able to speak freely is essential to ensuring our country lives up to the promise of the declaration of independence of like liberty in the pursuit of happiness so what is free speech the first amendment states congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances free speech protects the rights of those we agree with and those we don't it is the ability to freely express ideas when debating ideas we can have a robust discussion that serves our democratic values every right carries with it a responsibility it's not ok to yell fire in a movie theater slander  hundred eighty nine when the constitution was started the meaning of free speech was clear and common sense and for most of us it still is we see it as an individual right however the meaning of free speech seems more complex in today's world in recent times the supreme court has ruled that corporations now the same rights to free speech as individuals and that unlimited monetary contributions aren't a form of free speech do we really want to live in a society where the more money you have the more free speech you get hate speech is not illegal one has the right to express ideas one does not have the right to attack someone hate crimes are illegal the f b i s definition of a hate crime is quote a traditional offense like murder arson or vandalism with an added element of bias for the purposes of collecting statistics the f b i has defined a hate crime as a criminal offense against a disability sexual orientation ethnicity gender or gender identity hate crimes should be reported to the police our state also has a massachusetts civil rights act which protects the rights of all residents and visitors to massachusetts to be free from bias motivated threats intimidation and coercion to interfere with their civil rights this act protects rights to use public parks in transportation walk on public streets attend school live peacefully and enjoy other basic rights if you think you're a victim of bias you should contact the attorney general's office special hotline one eight hundred nine nine four three two two eight in belmont you can also contact our local human rights commission regarding a concern a biased unfortunately hate crimes and incidents of bias have been on the increase in recent years our neighbors and reading for example are now dealing with a spate of any some medicare feeding in their town and are having a rally against it to morrow so what is hate speech according to merriam webster speech that is intended to insult offend or intimidate a person because of some trait such as race religion sexual orientation national origin or disability hate speech may not be a crime unless the choose to incite lawlessness are considered a true threat when hate speech becomes weaponized to deliver hateful messages as it does was social media we verge towards intimidation and violence as an example we would all agree that using the radio waves as they did in rwanda to incite genocide was not free speech but an example of hate speech inciting lawlessness lawlessness it's a cautionary tale for us all we must also be vigilant sources that we read with russian bots and others attempting to exploit divisions in our society hate speech is morally unacceptable and a community should counter it we need to make a strong statement to say that hateful rhetoric rhetoric that demeans one of us demeans us all the people who pay most dearly are often people who are trying to make america live up to its principles and ideals to make it a more just equitable and inclusive place there's a fundamental difference between opposing someone's ideas and harassing someone for who they are or what they represent hate is usually aimed at one identity aspect of an individual for example their religion or adjustability i remember the words of professor ali a sunny at a recent panel on muslim culture saying that when you see a person only as one part of who they are you robbed of their dignity hate speech is not harmless lisa feldmann barrett professor of psychology at northeastern university said and i quote there is a difference between permitting a cultural casual brutality and entertaining an opinion you strongly oppose the former is a danger to civil society and to our health the latter is the lifeblood of democracy speech of the first kind which bullies and torment is from the perspective of our brain cells literally a form of violence unquote studies now using brain imaging being done to show the detrimental effects on the prain from the stress of being targeted bullying can be hate speech we know that bullying has long term effects on its victims we don't condone bullying in schools because we know the harmful effect it has on the child who was bullied as well as its negative effect on the culture of the entire school and thus on learning that is why most schools including belmont's have n t bullying policies workplaces often have anti harassment policies to ensure a good work culture the meet to movement has brought to light the need to address rassmann in the workplace attacks are not free speech and efforts to curb hurtful behavior do not deny anyone the right to express their ideas we use words such as micro aggressions to find vice ecology today as the everyday verbal nonverbal and environmental slights snobs or insults whether they have intentional or unintentional which communicate hostile derogatory or negative messages to target person space solely upon their marginalized group membership these every day slights take their toll and i would contend are more than micro in their effects i had the privilege last year of participating in a student led discussion with our belmont high school students who call themselves black and belmont i was saddened to hear their stories of verbal slights including a reference to a noose and an insult of one's religion coming from so many of our young people how can we say we're an inclusive welcoming community when our young people must endure this and just recently that young man who bumped into a woman  cannot outlaw hate speech we can be a counterweight to its effects each of us can stand up and reject hate speech when we hear it each of us can strive to express our ideas freely but without resorting to language of this hateful or demeaning we can reach out to others to make sure they are welcome and supported we can understand that being a diverse community is cause for some is a is a cause for celebration of the human spirit we must continue to ensure that all are respected and treated with dignity we need to keep in mind the damage the hate speech causes to individuals and to the fabric of our society it may be a fine line at times between ensuring free speech and opposing hate speech i believe the future of our democracy depends on both i leave you with a quote from james baldwin just about h please try to remember that what they believe as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity james baldwin the fire decks time you everybody welcome back to community media day here at the moment media center i have a special guest here today came all the way from lowell it's amazing thank you for coming to you it's bryant or arrow and not only is he here but it's all families here welcome back to community media day and it's we're calling it open mike free speech or free speech open mike and we're really pleased that we have this esteemed guest with us today she's also a friend her name is kelly matthews she is an academic a writer a poet and we're pleased to have you here to read some poetry really very odd that you can make it here today what does free speech mean to you kelly and you're also i should have said you're a professor and framingham state that's right teaching literature i teach literature and my focus is really on irish literature so i brought some poems from ireland today but if you ask me what free speech means i would say it's the right to ask questions and the right to speak up when something seems wrong in our society and that's part of why i like studying irish literature because poets and writers tend to be very engaged in their society and speaking out  would you say that free speech in ireland has a different meaning or has a different perspective a different dimension than in here in terms of their history i think to some extent it does i also think the role of writers has been much more off the top of our heads living american poets whereas in ireland the poets that are star living and writing today are generally well known in our household household names you think we could find a way to elect more poets to congress you know be such a different podcast the off the page series for writers of books on various subjects and i'm going to read a few poems by writers from ireland not political poems today i thought i would read a few love poems starting with w yeats as i said nobel prize winning poet as a young man he was a namrud of a woman named maud gunn who was his friend throughout his life but she never consented to marry him he asked her six times with ink  and every time she said no but he continued to write poems about her so this one is called when you are old when you are old and grey and full of sleep and nodding by the fire take down this book and slowly read and dream of the soft look your eyes had once and of their shadows deep how many loved your moments of glad grace and loved your beauty with love false or true but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you and loved the sorrows of your changing face and bending down beside the glowing bars murmur a little sadly how love fled and paste upon the mountains overhead and hid his face amid a crowd of stars yeats also wrote poems that were focused on irish folklore so this is a love poem but taking the voice of a character named angus who is part of the mythical legend tradition of ireland and this poem is called the song of wandering angus i went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head and cut and peeled a hazel wand and hooked a berry to a thread and when white moths were on the wing and like stars were flickering out i dropped the berry in a stream and caught a little silver trout when i had laid it on the floor i went to blow the fire a flame but something rustled on the floor and someone called me by my name it had become a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air though i am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands i will find out where she has gone and kiss her lips and take her hands and walk among long dappled grass and pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun i just love the sound of that poem and i think it's amazing that yeats can channel those thoughts about being old when he actually was quite a young man when he wrote those  read a poem by someone who was young when he wrote this and this is seamus heaney also a nobel prize winning poet from ireland who died sadly five years ago and who used to teach locally at harvard university taught poetry workshops and also classes in irish and british poetry and this is a poem he won't he wrote at the time of his wedding to his wife mari heaney and it's simply called poem from ari love i shall perfect for you the child who diligently potters in my brain digging with heavy spade till sods were piled or puzzling through muck in a deep during yearly i would so my yard long garden i'd strip a layer of sods to build the wall that was to keep out and pecking hen yearly admitting these the sods would fall or in the sucking clabber i would splash delightedly and dam the flowing drain but always my bastions of clay and mush would burst before the rising autumn rain love you shall perfect for me this child who small in perfect limits would keep breaking within new limits now arrange the world and square the circle four walls and a ring i think that's a lovely poem also and i thought i would read a couple of poems by poets who are still living and one of these is derek man who's not very well known in the united states he's from northern ireland and actually this is a poem that my husband and i chose to have read on our wedding day and we keep coming back to it again and again  it's called everything is going to be all right how should i not be glad to contemplate the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window and the high tide reflected on the ceiling there will be dying there will be dying but there is no need to go into that the poems flow from the hand unbidden and the hidden source is the watchful heart the sun rises in spite of everything and the far cities are beautiful and bright i lie here in a riot of sunlight watching the day break in the clouds flying everything is going to be all right i just love the simplicity of that poem and the message and the images of nature combined with i think a really hopeful tone at the end and lastly i'm going to read one last poem by a living poet michael longly and i should say for promotional purposes i'm actually bringing michael long lee to boston in march of twenty one thousand you'll be giving a reading at the boston public library on march twenty first mark your calendar six o'clock in the evening but he's also a poet who's been very engaged  politically and socially in his home country of northern ireland and at the time of the ira cease fire in one thousand nine hundred four that very same week he published a poem called cease fire drawing upon  heroic literature actually drawing upon a scene from the iliad by homer and i think this poem in a way talks about a different form of love and the love that can be present in a scene of almost reconciliation or near forgiveness it's not it's not a neat package but it's an interesting i think complex poem and something for us to think about during times of division because that's certainly what was happening in northern ireland at the time that michael longly wrote this p and so to bring out those ideas he actually turned back to classical literature and to homer and has created a poem that i think is really timeless and it's called cease fire put in mind of his own father and moved to tears achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king gently away but priam curled up at his feet and wept with him until their sadness filled the building taking hector's corpse into his own hands achille's made sure it was washed and for the old king sake laid out in uniform ready for prime to carry wraps like a present home to troy at daybreak when they had eaten together it pleased them both to stare at each other's beauty as lovers might achilles built like a god priam good looking still and full of conversation who earlier had sighed i get down on my knees and do what must be done and kiss achilles hand the killer of my son thank you very much for listening and thanks to the belmont media center for hosting do not hi everyone and wendy murphy thanks so much for watching i'm really grateful to the media center here in belmont for sponsoring this important event you don't to be a lawyer although i am to understand how important the first amendment was and how important free speech is especially to me as an activist for women's rights i teach sexual violence law at new england law boston i run the women's and children's advocacy project there and i do impact litigation on behalf of women and children's civil rights and constitutional rights in state and federal courts around the country and the reason i'm here today is in part to talk about how difficult that work is because of the absence of speech in media in particular absence of news coverage the absence of attention frankly the invisibility of many of the rights that i try to advance and force and protect on behalf of women and children every day in my career it is forums like this that i value so much because they do create visibility for issues that aren't otherwise important enough frankly to be covered in mainstream press so what i would like to talk about in terms of is in visibility of women's issues in particular is the equal rights amendment and i'm sure many of you watching are saying to yourselves what is the equal rights amendment and for those  have heard of it before you're saying didn't that already pass studies show that very few people are even aware of the equal rights amendment what it means for the few who do know what it is about they think that it's done and you know we don't need it anymore so let me just give you the basics the equal rights amendment simply put is a proposed amendment to the united states constitution that would give women a quality under the law that's it it's really that simple and it's shocking but true that women currently do not have equality under the constitution we were explicitly denied equality under the fourteenth amendment when that amendment was pas the word male was inserted into the constitution and that was subsequently interpreted by the united states supreme court to mean that women were not protected under the fourteenth amendment in particular so women remain second class citizens although it's really hard to know why it matters or to notice that women are not fully equal persons under the law because there isn't much being said about the fact that women are second class citizens or what it means and as an academic and an activist who deals with violence against women what i'd like to make clear today to all of you is that violence is the most severe expression of women's second class status no surprise to me maybe it is to you that women are beaten and raped and killed in extremely high numbers in this country the united states of america was recently named one of the top ten most dangerous countries on earth for women and think about that we think we're such a wonderful democracy and that we do such a good job protecting women's rights we do a terrible job protecting women's rights in part by not even teaching children in school or for that matter teaching lost students like me that women are not equal under the constitution it really is a problem of invisibility that i think if we understood more about what inequality means there would be tremendous visibility frankly there would be outrage in the streets as there ought to be so what do i mean by violence against women is the most severe expression of inequality it's really a very simple concept when state and federal governments pass laws that in adequately protect women from violence like rape and domestic abuse  those laws though inadequate are legal so when a woman goes to court after she's been abused or raped and she's seeking protection under the law or seeking equal justice or expecting the police and prosecutors to take effective steps to redress her suffering and she is denied protection or denied equal redress under the law any challenge to that unfair treatment  cannot be mounted it cannot be successfully mounted as a constitutional matter because if you go to court and say hey i'm a woman and i was raped or abused and i went to court and the court did nothing about it and now my views are back out and i at such high risk of being abused again i have to live in a shelter i have to be incarcerated in a domestic violence shelter because i met risk of being killed because i'm female and that's because the legal system inadequately responded when i reported when you complain about it as a woman the courts are allowed to say i'm very sorry but you are not entitled to equal protection of the law and that's why so many women are killed raped and abused in this country they're not intitled to equal protection under the law on par with the protection of rights that we afford every other type of person in this country so how  visualize it and really just kind of keep it in your in your mind is a very clear concept is to just look at you know look at what equality and inequality is here's equality here's women here's second class citizenship that space in the middle that's where violence against women happens with impunity under the law meaning there's nothing you can do about it that's the space we need to close so here's where the equal rights amendment comes into play the equal rights amendment would close that gap by mandating that all state and federal government actions lawmaking law enforcement by both prosecutors and judges all branches of government state and federal would be forbidden to discriminate against women it's really that simple right now they're not for been with the equal rights men in place they would be forbidden and what that means is then when women go to court and say i haven't been adequately protected you're treating me as a second class citizen as a result i'm at high risk of violence you'd actually be able to win a court case complaining about that second class treatment and resulting increased risk of harm so where are you where are we with the with the equal rights amendment this is a really interesting question sometimes when i ask people if they understand that there's a lot going on with the e r a today they say earned run average you know they just aren't exactly sure what year a means  so it's one of the reasons i'm here today is to hope hopefully by this little talk forever stop you from wondering what the equal rights amendment is or where we are with the area in this country so you know the way a man mint work the way you pass constitutional amendments in this country is provided the explicit way that it's done is provided in what's called article five of the united states constitution which says that congress shall propose amendments which shall become law when ratified by three fourths of the states well we did a very good thing with the equal rights amendment almost a hundred years ago in one nine hundred twenty three alice paul right after suffrage alice paul a well known women's rights activist wrote an equal rights amendment and said look we don't just want the right to vote we actually want equality under the law and she wrote it and proposed it and didn't go anywhere no surprised until it was a little bit rewritten in the one nine hundred forty s but then in one nine hundred seventy two two and then gets sent to the states for ratification which means the states now have to vote through their legislatures to figure out for themselves whether they want to support this as an amendment to the united states constitution and pretty quickly thirty five states ratified massachusetts ratified very quickly most of the states in the north ratified very quickly but here's the here was a glitch congress imposed a seven year deadline on ratification for the states meaning that it would expire in one nine hundred seventy nine and by nine hundred seventy eight we were still stuck at thirty five states we needed thirty eight and we passed an extension to the deadline which brought it to hundred two so basically we got a total of ten years to pass the array to ratify the era through the states so we make it to nineteen eighty two when the deadline expired and we still hadn't made it past thirty five states we weren't close to thirty eight and the deadline expired and people women's rights groups in particular just gave up and said we didn't make it there's not enough time you know we don't have enough time we give up and that's how things were for a while after one thousand nine hundred two until one nine hundred ninety two when something really interesting happened the madison amendment was ratified by the states and the madison amendment was a different amendment that granted two members of congress a constitutional automatic right to pay raises that amendment which was ratified by the proper number of states by the thirty eight state in  really irked women and women's rights advocates because they got a whole lot more than ten years to ratify between the time congress passed the madison amendment and ratification in one thousand nine hundred two get so many years past two hundred three the madison amendment was passed by congress in seventeen eighty nine and they had until the one nine hundred ninety two to ratify that's how much of a window of time they got which made the women's rights window of ten years seem a little paltry that got women really angry as a result they started rising up again and saying listen if congress for a pay raise amendment which is not nearly as important as basic human equality if they get over two hundred years we certainly have more than ten we should have more than ten and we started going back to those states asking states that hadn't yet ratified to step up to make to make the decision to vote because lots of the states that might have considered ratifying just didn't do anything at all because they thought the clock had run out well after a lot of years of a lot of hard work and no visibility remember that whole theme about invisibility there was absolutely no visibility to this initiative but basic grassroots right grassroots activism and women's rights advocates just took to the to the streets and really just pounded the doors of certain people in certain state legislatures and actually got it done in two states in two thousand and seventeen we finally got to thirty six which was nevada nevada ratified into the i'm sorry in  thousand and seventeen we got to thirty six and then this year in two thousand and eighteen we got to number thirty seven with illinois illinois became the thirty seventh state so we are now only one state away from ratifying the equal rights amendment in the united states it's very exciting time again it's not getting a lot of news attention it should but it isn't so here we are one state away what states are likely to to be next virginia looks like a very good possibility we actually have the votes in virginia but some anti ers anti irrate types in one of the committees is refusing has been refusing to let it out we think he's going to let it out this year when they start up again in two thousand and nineteen  can january two thousand one thousand and in arizona we're very close to having the right number of votes there as well so those are the two states it's likely to ratify and to become the historic thirty eighth state possibly north carolina it won't be surprising to you i think to hear that most of the un ratified states are in the south there's one i think one state missouri which is above the mason dixon line that still hasn't ratified strangely but this is an awkward kind of north south fight still to this day it's interesting that wasn't the fight with suffrage with suffrage it was a kind of east west fight with the western states quickly supporting suffrage in the eastern states not i know it's weird but here we are two thousand and eighteen one state away from ratifying the equal rights amendment and a very exciting time for women in this country i don't think it requires a lot for me to persuade you that women are rising up from the me too movement and so many other really important stories that are just horrific about the status of women and the status of women's lives in this country we've i think we've finally come to a point where we realize without baseline constitutional equality nothing else is possible you cannot have equal pay without equality at the constitutional baseline you cannot have equal access to health care without equality at the constitutional baseline you know put another way dead women don't need contraception we're really talking about one of the most serious issues to ever affect women's lives the fact that one in three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime i think the number is probably much higher the fact that  similarly high number of girls and young women are sexually assaulted in school the numbers are really high for women and for women compared to other classes of people no matter  matter what other class of people you compare women to women suffer more violence abuse harassment because they are female and it's largely because the laws in the state and federal governments the laws are disproportionately disrespectful of women's right to equal protection i'll give you one example here in massachusetts that i hope you'll find shocking gender is the only category not currently protected under the massachusetts hate crimes law every other category is protected everyone which means if you're targeted for violence because of who you are in society that's considered a hate crime which doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going to suffer more punishment are you going to go to prison for a longer time but it at least gives it the name it recognizes the value the importance of the fact that a person was chosen to be victimized by violence because of who they are in society every class of person in massachusetts is protected except women transgender was added in two thousand and twelve with a lot of support from mara healey our attorney general who was at the time running the attorney general civil rights division well mara healy does not support adding gender to the state's hate crimes law now i find that odd i find it odd for any politician to say out loud that they think women deserve second class treatment second class protection under the state's take crimes law especially considering that women suffer more violence than the other categories more violence because they are female think about that and here's why it matters so much here's why i think it matters so much that we understand and and frame and talk about the fact that women are targeted because they're female here's why it matters we understand intuitively when we talk about and think about civil rights issues and civil rights laws that if a black person is beaten or insulted or hurt because of the color of their skin we all understand intuitively that that's an injury not only to that person to that victim but to all of us to our communities i know how i feel when i hear about racist violence i feel injured and i'm obviously not a black person but i feel injured because i'm a member of the community where that harm happened that's the beauty of civil rights laws they create legal injury in the collective they make all of us feel injured as we should so that we all feel like we have skin in the game we have an interest in prevention we have a feeling of connectedness to that harm and then we play a significant role in making things better in fighting back in standing together with each other across all lines to make sure it doesn't happen again we don't do that for women and we should when a single sexual assault or a single act of abuse happens it is not only an injury to that woman it is an injury to all women as a class and to each one of us as a member of her community that's why the e r a matters it will change how we feel about women suffering it will engage all of us in prevention it will make women's lives safer because they will be equal and i hope you care about the array i hope you consider the importance of the e r a when you vote for all your elected officials moving forward and i hope if you ever need help from any whatever issue you regard to violence against women or children you call me because i'll help you thanks for watching jesus christ with the world it doesn't matter if i'm an alleyway if i am in a club if i'm in church i want to share the world jesus christ said what he thought for me so all i want to play a few songs this one's much everybody we're back online community media day free speech open mike and we have a special guest today he's always special yes john doucette thank you so much so john thanks for showing up here today to sort of celebrate community media free speech what is free speech mean to you in your life i was an important free speech i think is pretty much everything these days and i think of course it's a little bit under attack but i think that everybody has a different way to express themselves and you know for me it's important to do some of it through song i actually wrote a song a few years ago it was back during the time of the l a riots and which got me very upset and so i wrote the student but it but importantly i think that all voices should be heard because that's what a democracy is well we're glad you're here we're celebrating local voices local free speech and hyper local news here and we're here to really preserve community media not only in belmont but across the country so without any further ado mr john doucette take it away thank you jeff all right let's see what we can do here when the man you thought were leaders and hero well it's done to ask yourself why i've built my world around you i need you so baby even though you don't need me you don't now that i've found you i can't let you go build my world or around you i need you so baby even though you don't need me you don't  now that i've found you i can't let you go build my world around you i need you so baby even though you don't need me you don't there have ever been witness to that or wrestle with that it's a very serious thing and it's very difficult thing and the thing about my mom was that when we were growing up we we sang a lot with my mom she loved to sing and when she was in the later stages of dementia she couldn't speak really anymore but we went over there christmas time and we started and then you'll find you're on your way back home  your head the only love you keep it's the one that you really wish i had a dollar for every ne more what to do dear goodness all right million things to try and a fallows in different ways to be with you  thanks everybody thanks for doing this for belmont and everybody hello belmont it's great to see all the talented people who are my neighbors i come to you as a bard rather than a minstrel to read a poem i wrote from a prompt four years ago the prompt was right about where you're from my poem went up on a writer's community called com and then was recently published again online in open thought vortex a monthly magazine of prose and poetry but before carrying on a few words about i've lived in belmont for twenty years this month and spent most of my non working hours either cooking or writing my two greatest passions after foraging for wild mushrooms which i won't go into now in those twenty years i may have written almost five hundred stories essays memoirs in a novel tossing in a dash of poetry the novel is called turkey shoot by the way it's a literary thriller that doesn't have any good guys just a dirty half dozen of young european radicals intent on bringing down a tyrant i spent the better part of three years researching writing revising publishing and now marketing the book which was released on september eleventh to thunderous silence and so as it is new on harold to on the heralded and really a good read i'm taking this opportunity to alert the community about it you can find or at least order it at almost anywhere almost everywhere nice town but the vandals kept stealing them so either the town quit replacing them or spawn a new model for itself so the poem is blank verse with each stance a sentence or two with up punctuation i'll read it slowly because it has a lot going on and oh yes with apologies to dylan thomas for stealing his style the image you see is a map done in the late one nine hundred century by someone named bailey of my town and it in the middle you see a church and and we lived right next to that church when i was born but it didn't look exactly like that i'm not that old the pomus call i am i am from a farm town that slid into suburbia in time lapse frames my paper route after school with a big canvas bag bringing home news of interstate highways and fallout shelters and sputnik and that computers were coming but nothing about the internet and remember seeing constellations in eclipse's and shooting stars and watching kittens being born and hearing insects everywhere over the crickets and the sick and as in fireflies in tiny frogs chirping  up after they dropped and before i mowed the grass sitting on a sulky my father had kindly made for our rio lawn mower and i remember my grandmother's gardens full of primroses and sweet peas and sunflowers and roses and petunias in zinnias i liked her morning glories best i am from new england upstate new york houses with quiet parlors d geraniums smelling of damp and tobacco with oriental rugs and overstuffed furniture and fly specked wallpaper and radios bigger than me and i remember the boy next door who never who i never knew a practicing american patrol on his trumpet over and over even though the big war by father did not go to was over i was five when i saw soldiers suffering a bitter pogroms scattered russian jews transports transposed to new jersey merchants morphing into american farmers who for souk the land for education and lost touch with their traditions and i remember my aunts and great aunts making plinths is in much simple soup and gossiping about their relatives in manhattan kitchens while the men folks smoked in the parlor and worried about the news when i moved there for college only a few were left to visit i am from mineral collections and model trains on a ping pong table and electronic projects in my chemistry lab where i made soap and dyes and fizzy stuff and high explosives that should have killed me but i was lucky and i remember turning my lab into a dark room when i got my first camera and father taught me to develop and print photos like the one i took of a chipmunk after waiting an hour for him to emerge from his burrow under my tree house where i went to read comic books i am from preachers and teacher elders who could bring out the best in people even though they did not know how they did it except by listening to people and being helpful even though they did not always get along with each other especially with my grandfather upstairs watching cronkite in sitcoms and with his devoted wife and ranting about juvenile delinquents and commies and liberals i remember his pride in the hundreds of books that line to study that i sold after he died but now in my study i write at his big desk and i am from a mother and father who earn little but burnish the world with their generosity of spirit and activism and taught me to value truth and learning and respect for all and made me do my homework and feed the chickens and gather eggs and i remember being sent to sunday school at a church next door by myself where i colored pictures of the holy family and drew one of them flying in an airplane in the clouds with their pilot pontius that was my first  hi all we're back here at the community media day at the drama media center i am hearing myself in here and ok i get it sorry about that i'm hearing my own voice and i'm here with ralph jones former selectmen a longtime community member and longtime resident and now a new board member of the bell and media center thank you thank you for joining us thank you very much ralph first of all can you say give us a little bit of history of your own involvement in belmont government and how you see the dominant media center has helped in terms of governing i love to in fact i was thinking as we looked at that and lines her media day free speech that one of my fundamental principles as chair of both the school committee and also the board of selectmen was that i thought free speech for all people on all points of view was vital to get to the bottom of issues and get t consensus when i was chair of those two committees if we had a very divisive issue i wanted to get as many people involved as possible and the media center covered those meetings and gave all presidents a chance to speak so it is very helpful in terms of my own background i started in town government and nineteen own eighty nine i think as a member of the warrant committee and then in one nine hundred ninety six i joined the school committee were served for three terms then i went back to the work committee in the interim and then i was elected to the board of selectmen and served two terms there and i've continued to be involved in a variety of committees i'm currently the chair of the committee to study experience and perspective on issues you know mostly local issues as well i know we see that this is an expression that's come about news deserts where you see that in many communities there's just a diminishing of news sources and information sources and i know that here we started an archive community video archive as well as an increase in car covering government meetings and it just seems to be a greater and greater appetite and certainly it does seem that  without some sort of local media public media you can't really depend on private privately held social media sites or websites for actual facts for actual information as as as you know someone can say and the board is likely to go back and look at the video and see exactly what we decided and exactly when to decide and so absolutely true i was astounded to read somewhere that over one hundred million people in the u s get their news facebook facebook is not a new source course i can tell right and i think there actually is some risk of becoming a news source and then being regulated as one but that's astounding to me i am very proud of one of my children my son who whenever he sees a story will actually go back to local newspapers and check what actually happened in that city and he won't believe that a sensible fax from a major media organization or from social media until it could confirm yeah one of the things is interesting here were our channels or go over the local cable system so you can receive them if you're a subscriber and you're seeing the signal unfiltered unhatched so it's impossible for you to for us to be hacked in that way the way that many online news sources are now so it's pretty basic but i think i know my own feeling is people can only make decisions if they have the information and that's really what they want increasingly not opinion although that's important but tell me what you have so much going on and then i'll make up my own mind so we're glad to have you here and we hope that your present school also encourage other folks to be involved and to use this as a media center thank you very much i'm very proud to be a member i hope to support free oh hi everybody i'm joanna julius i am the ball to me journalist for belmont citizen herald and work at local belmont i'm also an associate producer for belmont journal belmont media's new weekly cable news show which  i love being part of i also happen to live in belmont so it's kind of unique i think to live in the town that you cover the news for and it has its pros and its cons i consider my role to be a public servant because i serve the public by giving them the news they need to know about the selectmen meetings the planning board meetings the school committee meetings anything to do with the local community and it does have its challenges at times but we are we are the press and it's our job to deliver the news and to deliver it accurately and to get to get the information we need from our sources so if i ask a source a question and i don't get an answer and i'll continue to ask it many different ways whether it be by phone or email or in person and i still don't get any answer then sometimes i do have to file what we call a foil which is  freedom of information act and then they have to give us that information sometimes for privacy reasons they can't like it's a human resource thing you know that's fine but but there are they do have to abide by that law there's been a lot of letters to the editor coming in our paper lately and commentaries which is i think a wonderful thing that our newspaper does for people newspaper and website it gives them the opportunity to be heard especially now with the upcoming debt exclusion because we have a debt exclusion vote november sixth so there's a lot of yes letters coming in i can kind of gauge how the vote is going to go just by the letters that i've received i'll be very surprised if the debt exclusion doesn't pass as i've only gotten to know letter so far i can't imagine living anywhere outside america like north korea are saudi arabia where journalists are considered enemies and not allowed to report real news it breaks my heart when i hear about a journalist being tortured or killed to be a journalist you have to work hard not be afraid to ask a lot of questions even difficult ones but be sensitive to the people you're interviewing be dedicated and determined sometimes people will run the other way as soon as you say you're with the press but as but in belmont for the most part i feel respected and appreciated for what i do and when i read an editorial that we wrote in our newspaper  it's called no we're not your enemy when to start with the first amendment to the constitution congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or perhaps prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a read for a redress of grievances that is the first amendment of the constitution although thomas jefferson played no direct role in drafting the constitution and its bill of rights he was representing our new country in paris in seventeen eighty seven his sentiments were strongly expressed in letters to his compatriots in philadelphia one letter included his famous quote that were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government i should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter twenty years later during his second term as president he would eat those words in another letter declaring that so many false words in errors were being published that someone who never read a newspaper was better informed and nearer to truth in his ignorance similarly john adams who was in philadelphia for the constitution's drafting and who also later favored with all my heart adding the bill of rights that included the first amendment with just a few years later as president oversee the arrest and imprisonment of several editors and publishers of newspapers in journals who favor the tenets of the party of his vice president that would be one thomas jefferson the relationship between presidents and newspapers or the media these days has always been complex it may or may not be at an all time low as super heated as the rhetoric from president donald trump might be his enemy of the american people line first tweeted just a month after taking office has become the favorite go to line in his rallies but consider that the obama administration for all its mellow locutions had abysmal record of abusing drollest and using the espionage act to track down leakers it sees records of a p reporters surveilled a fox news reporter including colleagues and family members and threaten to jail in new york times reporter in a drawn out dispute its unresponsible cygnus to freedom of information requests was well known it's unfortunate that there may be a need in these times to say that no we are not the enemy of the people and frankly we don't believe that the people at least the vast majority think that we are there were more than twelve hundred daily newspapers when trump took office and thousands more weeklies all serving their communities they run the gamut in their perspective and approaches but generally we all provide our communities in print online and in social media not just a snapshot of events great and small but perspectives and trends affecting reader lives i just wanted to share that with everybody and you know don't don't kill the journalist she's just trying to do her job you can't run just your problems no one else's problems you just have to do things you can run you can't hide you can't run so if you just put your hand in mine we'll  if i have more time this song was written after the death of the artist's brother and the death of john f kennedy and he cited turn it around and write something hey everybody thanks for watching the community media day free speech open mike it's our first edition it's also a community media day across the country and we're celebrating it here in  are celebrating it around the country if you support local hyper local news if you support public media if you support free speech please support the belmont media center go to belmont media dot org and joining or donate or come down any time to nine lexington street in waverly square and say hello and get participate thank you for watching keep speech free