with religious council in the early years the breakfasts were held in various churches and temple in belmont and it kind of began to outgrow the space spaces of these various churches in peter holland and the superintendent of schools when we do it nice school and we've been here ever since and this is but it's also co sponsored by belmont against racism which has been invaluable nonprofit in belmont many years and  it's so it's a hybrid it's a hybrid of ben because we it's also fund raising event it's an opportunity to raise money for the medco support fund and you'll be hearing about that later on you'll see in the back of the program there are many many sponsors they include this year officially the board of selectmen and you know many many one as a person chairing the event i want to give a call out to one part of the town that's not even listed on here which is the department of public works a great job as usual in clearing the roads and allowing us to proceed i also want to give a special call out to k prada our local a local bakery which donates every year our best our best baked goods that you have on your on your table a really terrific job suddenly announced that he had to resign tony's a young man and he had been admitted to his dream school which was to  accelerate it law program at suffolk law school and they meet at night so he couldn't even at attend human rights commission meetings and therefore he had to resign so we lost tony we've also lost paul solomon who is here paul had been a long time member of the human rights commission but paul decided that it was time after all these years for him to retire and we wished him well sorry to see him leave and we're so happy to see him back here today i couldn't talk any more but i only agreed to do it i only agreed to do it when for anyone who had been chairman repeatedly agreed to be vice chair and to help relieve me of some of the ministerial duties which i am awful at so thank you fran and then an amazing thing happened i was just not expecting this at all but the board of selectmen basically advertised their openings on the human rights commission and they were something like her twelve applicants and they were good applicants and so we now have a full human rights commission we have nine nine members we also have a couple  belmont high school and us friends and we have a liaison from the school department now for the first time mary peters and so we have a revitalized human rights commission as you can imagine putting on this event it's complicated there are a lot of a lot of details and i had a lot of help i had a great shows and fran you won friends refers to herself as the food lady she's she goes around and gets donations them lots of vendors which is not easy and i want to give a shout out as to a member of the commission who is not in this room right now that's chris foster she's over in the toddler room when twenty's six looking helping to look after small children so i want to thank everybody i want to thank we have a really terrific some really good music this year i think we've i'm very excited about the music we're about coach melissa hart and the high school basketball team girls basketball team good morning i'm honored to be with you this morning if dr martin luther king jr could have a dream an advocate for change while living in a time of violent racism and active discrimination then working together so can we if rosa parks could find the courage to remain in her seat on the bus in montgomery alabama we can help each other to summon the courage if nelson mandela could possess the patients vision and compassion to lead his country towards reconciliation despite being victimized by that country for much of his life we  can find the patience vision and compassion to affect change in our country if ruby bridges with love and faith could enter an all white school in an attempt to end segregation at six years old we too can support each other as we find the necessary audacity and resolve to face the challenges of our time the heroic of messengers an agent for change that came before us are our role models they worked with and led those around them they had the passion determination and strong will to conquer their own fears and the heat and fears of others they did not get overwhelmed or paralyzed by the mountains they had to climb it is so easy to become paralyzed by fear or the amount of change we need to end the injustice in this country it is easy to feel defeated or powerless but i pray that we can look to our faith and our moral compass to remember that we cannot we must not give up in my own religious tradition in the book of leviticus we learn that we cannot stand idly by while our neighbors blood is shed we cannot stand idly by when kids on the street or drivers in our cars are killed just because of the color of their skin we cannot stand idly by when access to health care good education or affordable housing is threatened we cannot stand i when global warming and rollbacks to environmental protections in danger are already at risk communities we cannot stand idly by when we are withholding the rights of children and asylum seekers on our border when many of our traditions teach us about a moral obligation to welcome the stranger and equally important we cannot stand idly by when we are unable to have a civil conversation with someone with whom we disagree about politics or women's rights are rights because there's so much hatred suspicion and anger in our society i know that if dr king were here today he would not stand idly by the injustices we face if dr king were here today he would remind us that we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends no we cannot stand idly by and we cannot be silent dr king would also remind us as he told us almost sixty years ago now is the time to make justice a reality i pray that we can summon the strength to stand up to speak out to raise up our voices to work together for the change we wish to see in our country so today we celebrate martin luther king's ninetieth birthday we celebrate his life his dream and his dedication to civil rights we also celebrate the nameless and countless others who shared his dream and worked tirelessly to make reality and as we celebrate the hope and change that came from dr king's dream we acknowledge that there is much much more work to do and it is our responsibility to stand up and help i pray that each of us will find the courage passion determination he sions and vision to continue the work of martin luther king jr i pray that we can stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and see dr king's still unfulfilled dream ahead of us and work together to change our world thank you selectmen this morning and allowing us to co sponsor this event with many of our belmont organizations and for all of you to be here this morning on a lovely new england winter day it's an important day it's an important event and it's a wonderful belmont tradition i want to talk today about the perils of the passive voice and don't worry it's not as boring as it may sound i hope you have the english language has the passive voice which allows people to describe actions without describing them to anybody in particular you know as an attorney i can say i like the ability to use the passive voice because i can say things like the wrong fence went up or the wall fell over as if inanimate objects have are capable of acting on their own with no human involvement behind them especially no wrongful action from you know an attorney's client but the problem is that using the passive voice allows people to shrug off responsibility things just happen you know it isn't anybody's fault the person you know the wall just fell over the person pushing on it had nothing to do with it of course on this martin luther king day we need to avoid the passive voice we need to take responsibility for our actions we can't hide behind you know flowery obfuscation of language we should concentrate on standing up for what we believe in and accepting all the benefits and losses that entails we all read and even may have personally experienced the increase in hate speech and actions of late of the general coarsening of our public dialogue of all days today's the perfect day to actively denounce and call out such disgraces t show that we do not accept such behavior and we actively and fully stand together and not apart on this we cannot say the crew the church caught fire or the tombstone fell over these acts came at the hands of persons with specific intent their response likewise has to be specific and active if bad things happen and good people call them out and it goes on and on so on and sore for so forth where do we go from here how is a country can we function and prosper with people pulling in diametrically opposed directions to the point where the government can't even operate i think we need to talk to those we prefer to scorn we need to be clear active deliberate in our speech but we do need to communicate no i didn't say we need to agree not agreeing and is an american right from the federalist papers to the op ed pages of today we all disagree at times i disagree with my fellow selectman at times what's currently missing is the respect for different viewpoints and for those who hold them we need to follow dr king's example by peacefully but in no uncertain terms stating our beliefs we then need to listen to the other side find areas of agreement and attempt to persuade on areas of disagreement and keep on trying let me give you an example last year at this breakfast we were discussing how belmont had adopted the welcoming town policy a town meeting which give some protection to immigrants this did not garner widespread support at first but those of differing viewpoints talking and working together with the involvement of belmont's police department and town administration people were able to craft an article with widespread appeal of course not everyone agreed at the end but there was a compromise with a clear consensus and a positive result more recently the recreational marijuana zoning in town was quite contentious with the help of belmont's planning board those in favor of certain areas being zone for retail marana sales and those against certain areas to speak their minds over a series of public meetings and reach a consensus that was passed a town meeting by a very a wide margin i would even give you the example of today how this very event is being sponsored not just by the belmont democratic committee but also the belmont republican committee collaboration is not weakness compromise is not a loss without both there's no agreed upon general welfare to promote there's no perfect union to form no consensus happiness to pursue without both it seems we're headed toward some terrible conflagration but it does not have to be the us one small collaboration and then another and then another becomes progress becomes unity fifty years ago the great british philosopher and poet george harrison said i look at you all and see the love that lies leaping it is there the love is there we just need to wake it up love's not going to wake itself we can't passively say love will conquer all or it will all work out we need to actively love it in order for its power to take effect we can conquer all we can work it out we need to reach out to those we do not share everything with and love what we do share there's always something to hold on to somewhere always i do not need to tell you the consequences of not doing this as you see a government shutdown as the inevitable result of doct distance incompatible irritation despite all this i will start by actively stating i am optimistic i believe in the good in others i will work to ensure this country this commonwealth and yes this town of belmont survive and prosper i leave you with my humble request that you speak actively act deliberately deliberate thoughtfully and think beyond yourself don't be passive don't ever give up we can do this americans have done this for two hundred forty two years we aren't stopping now thank you wow i've been asked by the bell my media center which is right broadcasting this event to  your attention to an open mike series that is beginning there and there's a poster sign right to go to the upper gym and have a lot of fun for the remainder of this program should depart for the upper gym it will be people out in the hall to direct them to it is including members of the girls basketball team so they are leaving we'll see you later have fun  it's my honor to introduce our featured speaker today and it cheap price the third i said to emmett when i met him a little while ago the first time i said wow you are a man of many parts is there anything you don't do are you in the new england patriots to short and he was not but he has first such a young man he has done so much and remarkable remarkable life he has been a scholar as went to university of california for his undergraduate degree and then has a masters and p h d in ethnomusicology i think from the university of pittsburgh he's written books and articles in the area of the black and modern music including a book on hip hop he's an ordained minister he has a small congregation in allston he's a professional musician with recordings he is a teacher and he is now he has  been at northeastern for a good number of years but he has now moved over to he is the title this is a long title professor of worship church and culture dean of the chapel and founding executive director of the institute for the study of the black christian experience at gordon conwell theological seminary he's one of the nation's leading experts on music of the african diaspora christian worship and the black christian experience good morning i am grateful to be here before i get into the topic i have to just give another round of applause to these young people from the chinnery middle school want to be selfish here just for a second one of the hatch that i do wear is one of the ribs on all revved up on w g b h is n p r station eighty nine point seven f m on mondays you hear me today around one twenty i'd like to make sure i get one of those downloads so i can take over to the station with me on tuesdays and fridays the gym and marjorie record live from the boston public library over downtown and they try to do as many live performances as they can and so i want to leverage a little pool that i had to see if we can get our young people from belmont over there to the library i'm all about accountability so i know this is being recorded and broadcast live so you kind of got me right i can't there's no to our to our lawyer there's no you know plausible deniability right i mean did i've said it i can't be passive with it let me think you all for such a wonderful invitation to be here with you as you celebrate twenty five years of this phenomenal breakfast i've had the privilege over the last seventeen eighteen years that i've been in the new england area to be able to serve as a keynote for many breakfast is like this some have been on for a long time some are just starting and and have just a partial number of folks here but the one thing that i've seen consistently across the region a cross the commonwealth that when people show up on a monday morning usually after a snow storm or ice storm or a nor'easter that you already by your presence are committed and so many ways  in the community that come from we use the terminology of preaching to the choir folks have self selected themselves to be in the choir and so when we look over our shoulder to suggest a couple of things more about being aspiration encouraging and inspiring to keep on keeping on not to suggest that anyone in this room is not committed to to the fight against racism or the fight against anti semitism you are here you are  leaders spiritual directors in the room we have all engaged in this work to think about in process and teach what does it mean to be moral and humane people in the world and i think that's one of the things that we all work together with and i believe in even in the moments of disagreement and not disobey disagreeable in our disagreement that we can disagree and in our moments of disagreement that we can learn from each other that we can actually inspire each other by our convictions of what we disagree to the extent that we're all living organisms the only constant in life is change and every now and then if one allows oneself to we can change our minds about what saw yesterday on tomorrow so i used that as a opportunity to also say thank you to karl brauer and for his leadership and for the invitation i'm a little biased here as well he invited you know me and reached out to me so thank you and to all of the elect it's in the appointed it's in the room those who have been elected officials those who have been appointed officials and those who are serving diligently for those who have kept the the store roads in the streets in the parking lots clean for us to be able to be transported from place to place we thank you as well as just not enough room to really take time to think everybody look at the back of the program and i'm just so entire it's by the number of organizations and peoples who have come together to put this phenomenal breakfast on and i am assured that in year twenty six and twenty seven i'm certain that the list will just get longer and longer and longer and that's a good thing it's a really good thing to those who have volunteered this morning to make sure that people get to the right tables and get in the room and know where the upstairs is from the downstairs we think it was will for all that you are doing i want to share with you and carl mention that i am not a patriot i'm not a patriot i have been protesting the n f l for the last couple of years and and i'm not inviting you to join in but that's just my where i am and but i do sh you i heard there were some interesting calls on one of the games and but i think you know the patriot nation you know live to see another day in and if you are in that nation we join with you i am a lifelong  raider fan and so that kind of sums it all up we're not sure where we're from i can't even say the l a raiders of the oakland raiders or the laws vegas raiders because we're just not sure where we're i also want to say i'm grateful for those who are good police officers those who do keep us safe those who have committed to what they have vowed to do and there are many of them there are many of them around the country i have a number in our congregation  who served with us and so i'm thankful for those in the law enforcement officers thank you so much for your service and appreciate  have learned in my short life that life doesn't have to be binary you don't always have to be on this side of that side that i think if you're honest about what you believe there's a space for you and i think d king was one of those individuals who was very adamant about suggesting what he believed and i think what he believed got him in so much trouble that it made him an icon and i want you to think about this with me that that he got in so much trouble that it made him an icon i want time he was on the america's most wanted in this as terrace we forget that can't we we know the the one who won the noble peace prize we forget that kean was hated even amongst blacks we forget that we forget the king who had so much challenge in his own personal narrative that it really propelled him that he had no choice but to be the person that he ended up being that the king would have been ninety years old last week on january fifteenth and to think about one who lives such a full life was assassinated thirty nine for the phenomenal truly phenomenal in our history books we see dr king in that quarter page black and white photo for those of you were in advertising you know what i'm talking about a quarter page right in the corner and it makes him seem like he was in his fifty's it does doesn't do justice to the fact that he was thirty nine and he's assassinated and here we are so many years later still speaking of the impact  influence that he had and i would challenge many of us to be honest about the fact that we've had to change our minds about team over the years we've had to change our minds about king i hope that i can help you change your mind even a little bit more because king's narrative is really critical that the king was born michael king jr his father minister had the chance to travel overseas and became really passionate about martin luther the great german reformist martin luther had an interesting stance against racism and anti semitism and and daddy keene really felt  profound notion to to in a sense to use spiritual language to convert himself and he changed his name from michael keenan to martin luther king it was one small challenge that a young martin or michael king jr was five years old at the time one hundred four can you imagine being five and just starting to come into your own and all of a sudden your name changes if you're just learning who you are you're just becoming somewhat sturdy not even stable in your own sense of identity in self worth and all of a sudden you wake up one morning and daddy had a phenomenal experience which means that your life is totally disrupted and we know from many who are passionate and intimate friends of dr king that he suffered from depression for the majority of his life starting early in his adolescence i want to pause here for the young people who are still in the room to suggest that your challenges should not deter that they should inspire you that the things that you're wrestling through there are so many models and individuals who have resolutely not with the same because us can walk in each other's shoes but similar challenges and to be inspired by those who have risen above the narratives that are super imposed upon us so dr king struggled with depression but they just twelve at one point his grandmother's maternal grandmother who was the organise of their church was murdered on the organ and he felt so bad that he could do something about it that he even tried to take his life we don't know this king we don't know this king who tried to jump out of a second story window and lived he did not want to live and furthermore he felt he didn't have anyone to talk to some of our young people understand what that looks and feels like again i would encourage you to stay the course see the reality about dreams is that if we don't dream then we're prone to nightmares and i would argue that too many of us are prone to nightmares because we don't dream we have personal narratives of super imposed narratives that have been placed on us to tell us who we will be oh what we can do or what we can't do or who we won't be and when we buy into those narratives we stop dreaming about the possibilities i'm talking to every hear in the dissent in my voice it's never too late to start dreaming about what the possibilities in the future could be ho i'm excited to hear the selectmen talk about that he's hopeful because those of us who have a position of privilege and a platform must understand our responsibility to be ambassadors of hope then we ha responsibility because people are looking to us because the assumption is that we know more than everyone else that assumption is based on the fact that most often we elect people so that they can know more the us otherwise everybody would run for every position we have a very interesting dynamic there too i think we've kind of seen that before as well but the challenge is how do we remain well it's in that context and i'd like to speak one of the big challenges that we have is that many of us have forgotten our own personal narratives we've forgotten from whence we've come we've found ourselves operating on  that we may or may not fully agree we found ourselves operating in spaces that we may or may not fully agree with we find ourselves operating in rooms that we may or may not fully agree with but we've forgotten our own personal not going to disclose his age because we are live but it george price died at thirty nine to he would have so much murder assassinated he took ill and was not availed the resources to get well my grandfather was a pullman porter a respectable position in the black community of the day he was from new orleans again we're limiting with our brothers and sisters we've been with them but it's all new orleans and he was on the new orleans chicago line serving on the train and on this particular day he took ill and they were below the mason dixon line so there were no health care opportunities for him those who were the superiors decided that since he was unable to work and to fulfill his responsibilities at the next train stop they would release him and put him out the grandfather sat at the station where he was dropped off and his story tells he expired later inquiries into this realize that he died of something that could have been resolved if not solved by a certain tablet of penicillin something that we take for granted today and so you can imagine what my thought processes on access to health care it's not because of a platform it's not because of a position it's not because my facial expression leans left or lose right it's it's because of my personal narrative and because of the because of his life and things idea around his life demonstrated to me that thirty nine seemed to be some kind of mystical age for black min and i'll call those who are below thirty nine young black men having  for my grandfather was thirty nine dr king was thirty nine malcolm x was thirty nine an interesting when you have these kind of anxiety as you start to look around to see who else that thirty nine number personal narratives but interesting enough i had to get to thirty eight in order to hit thirty nine i didn't think i was going to live to twenty one growing up in los it's in the height of the game warfare in the crises with certain institutions in the area they were commercials on the television and radio is said one out of four black males was going to survive three out of forward either end of the day it incarcerated or played by the aids epidemic you can see what time period i'm looking at  and so it was almost like us young people particularly black males would go around to plague the goose with one another one two three four one two three four one two three four with all the one stand up and you c imagine the sense of needle is in the sense of loss of hope in that scenario is that sense of loss of hope that caused the perpetuator fed into the riots of one nine hundred ninety one that the rodney king incident i remember being there and i remember the sense of a hopelessness that i have felt except for the mere fact that on that very day that the gentleman roger pulled out of that big rig some of you remember this in maine and torture i happened to be probably about a mile away in the same street ironically and my sis in the hill is a desire in my own emotions body to pull over and join in because those who were responsible for keeping us safe and those who we put our lives in the hands had chosen a different route they chosen a different path and we didn't seem like we had anybody advocating for as it didn't seem like we had anybody pulling for us it didn't seem like we had anybody who were desirous of our success and if it wasn't for this young young lady one of my classmates who was two years below it went to the same school and i was carpooling her home my father always taught me he said you have a responsibility for your life you choose what you do what type of risks you take what type of risks you choose not to take but you have no choice in anybody else's life so any moment where you have somebody else's life that was relying on you you do everything possible to make sure that you honor their life you don't take risks on behalf of other people's lives you don't choose for them you honor their choice and this young lady on that day probably saved my life because i had the responsibility of getting her home that was my responsibility we were carpooling and as a young seventeen year old male and losing all of my mind in that space i understood that i had a responsibility and i did not participate in  from that day on i had a urgency in a crisis and anxiety and a decision to choose what i do with my life unlike the great musician john coltrane who decided that he wanted his life to be a force for good i also decided that i wanted my life to be a force for good and it changed the very way that i saw the world view and the landscape it changed the way that i saw people many of whom i was actually socialized to not like even to hate but i had to make a choice whether that socialization was correct or not and the more i learned about people's personal narratives and the more i learned about what individuals had gone through and what their parents had gone through and what their parents parents had gone through i began to see something so similar and common not the same but similar in common that part of the human condition demands struggle it demands suffering many of our faith traditions try to help us to reconcile that with the divinity and with the face no three but the reality is every person on the planet has had an interaction which suffering and which struggle and the challenge of that reality is that should bring us closer together than to tear us apart because your tears hurt just as much as my tears and your laughter is as exuberant as my laughter and inherently i want us to laugh until we well that's a different type of crime than weeping and until we can get to that place where we desire that for one another so what i'm suggesting is that we all have to figure out how to leverage the platforms of the positions that we have and behalf of those who don't have to this day i really wish somebody would have seen my grandfather however he was sitting in that train station i wish they would have seen him  i wish they would have seen him some of our young people today wrestling with some very difficult challenges really wish that some of us would see him not see them that way that we have been indoctrinated to see them but to see them to see them to to hear them they may use different language and different lot nomenclature and different lingua franca than we use but can we hear them and when they speak can we feel them can we have our hearts and their hearts that have a wonderful connection it may not be what we're used to it may not be how we were raised it may not be what we understand but can we feel them because if we can see them if we get hear them if we can feel them inherently we're correcting the generational wrongs of us not being see us not being h see there's a responsibility here for us there's a responsibility for us too to do a forensic audit of the things that inherently went bad in our situation and to do the best  we can to not do that to in our various traditions they're different manifestations of do unto others as you would had them do unto you so simple so profound really provocative and extremely difficult it's really difficult because we had to go back and interrogate those things that we have been taught those of us who are a little older as young people one that i have a really really really i mean i'm just a star kids will tell you i wish they were here today they get caught in a traffic situation but the my kids will tell you you know name calling daddy does not like name calling and we get into this thing and many of us grew up because words can kill because policies are words and when people see themselves represented on the television as things that are superimposed narratives that are not real but people begin to believe those narratives those words her and they can peel they can break your self esteem says that you experience racial or cultural or ethnic or faith humiliation and dr king's terminology and nobody ever wants to feel that way and i'm not sure we even inherently do it for that but we need to check ourselves in the way that we communicate with when and if our goal is to be effective an a transmission of message is only effective and efficient if it's received so if you're barking at somebody and you want them to take notes it's not going to work because it's kind of rough ruth but if your desire is to communicate so that is effectively received then we have to learn how to speak to one another at the heart level and that takes understanding each other's personal narratives and that means getting to know one another the people who we fear the most of the ones actually we really want to get to know we just don't know how to break the ice to folks who are scared of it most afraid are the ones that we're just so interested in and we just don't know how to ask a question the people who we most in our minds misunderstand the greatest of the ones who we have the greatest since a curiosity about it we just don't know how to ask that question and so i'm going to challenge us to ask the question ask that question in your own mind in your own heart you know with that question is because where that question is are a whole lot and you'll begin to believe that the things that you learn from asking that question will supersede the things that you always thought you knew about those people in this country we have a challenging notion about history history is most often chronicled by the victorious which forces us into a binary of victorious and victims and the problem with that is i'm not sure that everybody who sees themselves as a  is victorious and that everybody who is who is presumed to be a victim is a victim i think we have differing opinions and perspectives and experience and i think it's our responsibility to interrogate that particularly as we teach our young people which is why i'm so inspired by the verity of groups that have joined together to come together today we desire to see and to see peace but not a peace that is the absence of war conflict but a peace that we borrow from our brothers and sisters in the jewish faith the peace to come from the word shall know which is a comprehensive wellness overarching not a superficial or surface sense of keeping the peace of being p c so that we don't ruffle the feathers but desiring to reconcile in a way where we see each other as a part of the same equal system and that each one's health is each one else's responsibility it's that kind of loan that we desire and that may change our perspectives on what it means to advocate for to not advocate for a wall or to advocate for or not advocate for a safe space for everyone or to but how do we seek peace shalom and bill is a very difficult and complex challenges and they force us to have more conversations and less had a student one time and i begin my dismount here at a student one time and we were in a class and we were very contentious conversation about rican and he stood up he said enough he said i need to tell you something he said i have a family that can trace our roots five six seven generations and he said in a five six seven generations that we can trace the the contour and the shape of the united states map has changed great he said my family were from mexico but but but they lived in what's currently called new mexico and he said where the ancestral and family burial grounds have now found themselves on the wrong side of the border and he said our ability to pay all maids and to visit the grave sides of our families not only has been decimated by a border that numbers can't cross but by polic that have now desecrated the ancestral land into a subdivision so he said even if my family was able to get across the border to pay homage to the end sisters that space is no longer there in the class had the same reaction that you ha and the point of the story is not for you to pick sides but to hear the personal narrative and it may or may not change your mind been in the faith journey long enough to know that my responsibility change your mind in my faith i am not the one who converts anybody i'm just introducer i'm the one who makes the introduction and let ya head at conversation let it be what is going be i'm going to help with little bit when i can but i'm not the one to convert or to say even one which is why i can be friends with folks from different faith traditions that's why i can be in loving relationships with folks of different beliefs but i bear witness to you that i can actually coal my own and i can talk but i think there's something beautifully brilliant in the way that humanity was not only created but called into existence that if we ship missed the beauty of our difference a understand of what the divine is is a small that there's something miraculously wonderful about the fact that we are so different that helps us to revel in the fact that this ecosystem this divine ecosystem is much larger than we could have ever imagined and it's debt that propels me forward to not only be a staunch advocate against hate and a staunch advocate against anti semitism but also sta advocate for us to learn how to see each other to hear each other and to feel each i wish you well bill maher ya'll are doing a phenomenal job twenty five years and stretch twenty five years in reaching twenty five years and three me for a better belmont for a better commonwealth for a better nation for a better world we have a microphone if anyone would like to ask reverend price dr price some questions preston as the mike my response is going to be shorter than your question yes can you give us a little snaps of how you went from your music education and interest into into the ministry or you know just a little bit about your journey i think we'd all be interested in that appreciate it it's one that i'm still trying to reconcile it's really confusing to me too and when i explain it to folks it doesn't make sense until it makes sense as a young person in the last census that i talked about two or three things saved my life i would argue you know one the young lady on that day and by extension a supportive community my parents a phenomena still on the planet i thank god for that we talk often they still live in los angeles  the church my faith community was very influential in me not so much at that time because of the face but because they were trying to walk it out and that i had a space in the th music i grew up in los angeles i started playing piano at the age of four and was one of the you know kind of black you know kind of weird black kids who played a lot of chopin and you know you know rock on and off and all that kind of stuff it really didn't fit into that i want to play stickball outside of basketball but there was talent there my parents saw it and they kind of groomed it and so when i went to university california berkeley out from undergrad i was a math major  i met the professor in my first semester who was the first african american professor i'd ever seen in my life and he would just glide from one side of the hallways a chair to music department the time so when i went to the music farm to practice i would time my time  the practice room so i can sneak up stairs in the main corridor just to see this black guy glide from one side of the hallway and so one day i mustered up the courage to ask that question and my question wasn't really refined i want to him and i asked him who are you ali wilson who was a phenomenal composer and great scholar who became my mentor and helped me to understand that you can study music as a cultural soundscape of the world and so in essence music can be a different form of history but music seems to be less edited and less censored because most musicians have a sense ability and operating in their personal narrative right and so i began to do that that took me to graduate school and along the way i was also a church musician and so as a church musician which i kind of used it to help pay my way through school i played in probably thirty denominations thirty different faith communities and i would always look at these hymnals and see how they had similar hymns in there wanted to words were different based on that the out theological practice and so that forced me to write think about them a mathematician to someone like you know look at permutations algorithms calculus how do we put the quadratic in here right so i'm trying to figure that out and so that leads me to to graduate school to study ethnomusicology which is the relationship between music and culture and so then i begin to think about african american music or music in the black tradition alongside the historical and i realize that there's a different way of talking about the african american experience united states than the histories that historians have talked about and so that leads to my desire to become a scholar and be a professor you know i edited  encyclopedia for that this in fact made of african american music three volumes five hundred entries and did all this work but along the way my faith was still there and i was trying to figure out how something this supposed to be so liber terms of faith became so divisive because again i've been always denominations and so i say oh you know what i was and get this i was a professor at northeastern university where i was for fifteen years i was chair of the african american studies department where i was four years i was a husband i was a father and all of a sudden i want to go to seminary my wife is a saint she's an abs so i go to seminary it takes me eight and a half years to finish up and part time evening whatnot and so i'm at northeastern you know year fourteen kind of you know one of the younger people that at the school i was hired they were right the hundred sixty five around the time of year twelve year thirteen would like it thirty seven i was like yeah i'm part of it right because i'm a chair department i'm not going anywhere the phone rings and it's a similary that i graduated from asked if i would come teach a class in my first initial reaction was i know but of course kind of got in this little bit so i taught a class in the second week of teach in the class of students there literally learned to launch a campaign to get me hired i didn't apply to show up and now i'm at the seminary and it's kind of like i would say it was a midli early midlife crisis except i didn't create it i wasn't going through anything but it's been one of these trajectories to help me meet different people and to experience different situations in different lives and to really engage and along that certain you know opportunities come up and you know certain personal tragedies occur and you know life is life and so i don't want to suggest that it's always good but there was always a vision for how could i do good and how could a change agent and allow the things that i touched prayerfully to manifest good stuff and not harmful stuff and i think that's one of the things that any other questions yet that's a great question laughs so the question was how do you inspire your children to see the people around them and love them and also i'm going to paraphrase emmy love my children along the way to yea r so we're we're we're blessed we have two biological children fifteen and thirteen and a nephew who are raising who's also fifteen so we have a house of testosterone three teenagers to fifteen year olds who are  soft more than high school and in a thirteen year old and the best whack and best way i can answer this is the lots and lots of communication lots of lots of conversation a lot of kind of friday night conversations over pizza about you know with me and you mommy on t v have gone through and what our recommendations to you are a lot of correction lot of individual conversations because three different personalities three different perspectives they're different and the thing that they were paling rebuff is they don't want to be compared with each other and they don't want to be seen in the shadow of you know one of them is a phenomenal athlete when i was a phenomenal musician one of them still kind of finding their way and they're always sensitive about you comparing so we kind of have to wrestle to death by lots of conversation lots of dialogue even set a point of them being able to set the agenda sometimes and will you know you know what are you watching these days on netflix you know let's drop thirty minutes of it up and all watch it together and then you know conversation about it what do you listen to on on your i pod you know listen pull something up and listen to it unless and you can't be squeamish you really can't be squeamish because when you do that the first thing they're going to pull up is that they were all at the prolific lip you know language you know some you know some light you know provocative stuff visually because they want to see you know of you want to talk honestly if you really want he friday night for real right no video game so we can talk ok let's check you out there see how invested you are in this right so you kind of had to go with him correcting along the way and i think you also have to think through what are the majors and what are the minors right so for us right now and i household we're two fifteen years into thirteen year old the majors are how do we treat women as a huge conversation you know articulate so that we can advocate on behalf to we have a conversation with folks and so when you're at school and you hear some of your buddies say such and such are you willing to be the uncool person and make the corrective conversation right and when you get to the place of applying for jobs and you have a dear friend who's a woman who applies for the same job and perhaps you both get it and you see the pay inequity are you willing to say something right are you willing to say something so this kind of conversation we have you know now me you know definitely you know hands off you know definitely can sit and talk about what consent means but it's about them micro elements of conversation to you know when you're talking to women do you look them in their eyes are you trying to find their name tags i mean you know how do you have these conversations with teenagers i mean you have to have the time versation there's clever ways that we can do it you know using a little bit of humor because they know me i know with him but we have to have the conversations and every time you see a news situation that that is going to impact their sense of safety we got to talk about it i mean that the challenge is to your question is that you should be that we as parents to be preventative we can feel the things rising up socially you know politically culturally and you can kind of head them off by  preventative and also prep you know prepared to but now you know twitter feeds and facebook and you know you can always reactive so you've got to have those conversations i appreciate that question  actually was not on the program but we're going to sing it because we think it's relevant to your speech think you have it and it's called unchained me and i before i get started thank you to the tannery middle school students and really of them around that  you guys sounded beautiful and i will say that it's really not easy to get up here and sing your heart out i know when i was your age i wasn't singing publicly because i was too afraid in too shy as she did in the house in the house where there was no one else looking but anyways thank you again and i hope you enjoy this one it's called unchained me and since i have them i would like to say this to everyone and i said to the children they are the reason why this world is going to change how many believe that if you if you wonderful souls can please stand up again and history president future it is all the sa dr king we celebrate him this day and it's because you know italy and i are born our parents are able to love each other they're able to have a family together as a multi racial couple sing lifted before we get the donation part on lifted this song is about lifting the energy coming together really and working together because we can't do anything alone no matter how much we think we can all right let's get it lift it's great fouling a great band and a wonderful speaker and then come up here as  me good morning thank you all for coming out in this beautiful new england weather thank you reverend price for your thoughtful words and you know we're thinking about really hearing feeling and seeing others i think that's such an important message thank you so reverend trice cave you were just open your mind offered music to lift your spirits and open your hearts and i'm here to ask you to open your wallet for a good cause maiko program the metropolitan council for educational opportunity always allows an exchange of urban and suburban experience and belmont has benefited from this program for fifty one years now benefit from having a diverse student body and having a bridge for both students and and families between the urban and suburban communities we are fortunate to have the program here the belmont support fun in school here over the years the metro support fontes expanded involvement and response to requests from echo director to teachers coaches and other staff of the school department in the after school and the school did a whole take back to wall they were all wrote every single student wrote something to take back the walls of the school and one of the under bill thing we can always learn from our children activities of our boston belmont friends group which is composed of matt cohen belmont families in particular they have an annual bowling event it had one hundred seventy participants last year at boston ball the next  march tenth so get your bowling shoes on and another example a group called urban improv that to trust is racism and bullying through performance and interaction was students has been performing at the students at the middle school on days when they stay late to meet with teachers or participate in activities it's covered small but meaningful things such as crafts for the win brooke mentors for pumpkin carving cloth for our high school seniors to wear at graduation bar supports to school departments district wide effort on improving the social emotional and academic outcomes for african american for teachers to attend ideas conference at bentley college with keynote speaker beverly tatum folks might know her book is why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria in an era of increasing inciden and hate the f b i says seventy seventeen percent in the last few years we are not amused and we need programs more than ever to ensure that our community truly embraces the notion that we are all and provided a taxi from the school to their home we have not abandoned this worthy service and there is still a need however the school department has had difficulty this year in securing a company to provide that service the right share khana me has taken its toll and the cab company to school department has formerly used has gone out of business and we have yet to be able to find another one we will continue our search and we welcome any ideas or input from any of you please see me if you have some breakfast is our primary fundraiser for a donation to the mcas support  table if you have a checkbook you could write a check or cash and put it in this on follow up the check could be made out to bar and put that co on the by line at the back of the room you'll see and your smartphone and click in w w w belmont against racism dot org and click on donate via pay pal so members will go through collecting avalos and if you have any questions you can ask bars perspective that's a huge thing and one of those shot out recently the i'm going to take police chief richard clarke on who's in the back of the room i'm going to embarrass  baris very quickly please step out of a police department released recently joined communities for restorative justice nonprofit the partners with police departments for bringing restorative justice practices to twenty four communities and also the middlesex attorney general in suffolk d a s office we thank the police department under the leadership of four police chief bryan for joining and also for d a ryan for her i would like to recognize the chief and thank him for his years of service to belmont and for our collaboration over the years he's going to be retiring in december so this will be his last martin luther king breakfast as cheap could you stand up reverend jane too many people lord still it is the way into the human hearts the  for our prophets a bust today you have been spoken to our people and to be able to rule the different prophets and today you speak to us now in this unfolding mystery of life and he's three there is such a thing as being too late there is an invisible po destruction this may well be our last chance to choose between between disorder and community through compassionate policy thank you very much we will now leave those people who have volunteered to help clean up this is your moment we need many hands make light work so please help us clear the tables get rid of put things in the trash but things in recycling there's a lot of recyclable stuff here and we're going to have here in just ten or fifteen minutes thank you