Photo credit: Michael Cheuk

Dr. Anthea Butler is 

• Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania
• Author of White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America and Women in the Church of God in Christ
• Commentator on and consultant to BBC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, History Channel, Religion News Service, and The Washington Post

Dr. Butler was joined by two panelists:
Gayle Jessup White

• Public Relations & Community Engagement Officer, Monticello / Thomas Jefferson Foundation
• Author of Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant's Search for Her Family's Lasting Legacy, available November 2021
• Descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family
• Board member, Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society 

Tricia Johnson

• Director, Fluvanna County Historical Society

The discussion was moderated by  Devin Coles, Founding Pastor of Amazing Changes Ministries.

You can download a 6-Part Discussion Guide that you and your congregation can use to facilitate important and difficult conversations about religion and race. 

Please donate to our work so that we can continue to bring these kinds of educational opportunities to the public!

Click here to download a PDF of this study and discussion guide.

Written by Michael K. Cheuk
Copyright 2020 by the Charlottesville Clergy Collective

This guide provides suggested readings and discussion questions to complement our Interfaith Worship Service, “RE-IMAGINE: A More Truthful History and Memorials to Justice,” that premiered on August 12, 2020 on YouTube.

This guide is not meant to be completed in one session or even in a couple of sessions. Just as there are no shortcuts to spiritual growth, there are no shortcuts to racial awakening. We hope small groups will agree to engage in this study and conversation over an extended period of time.

Feel free to divide this guide into as many sessions as needed for your context. Add additional readings and resources from your own faith traditions. Include additional questions that may resonate better in your community. In other words, do not slavishly follow this guide!

OPENING QUESTION:

What were/are some responses that you’ve heard regarding the taking down of Confederate statues in Charlottesville and elsewhere?

GRAPPLING WITH QUESTIONS:

What is the meaning of a public statue?

Read:

“What Does It Mean to Tear Down a Statue? We asked an art historian who studies the destruction of cultural heritage.” By Jonah Engel Bromwich, published 6/11/2020 in the New York Times.

Questions: What are your responses to art historian Erin Thompson’s thoughts about … 

• statues as a way of solidifying an idea and making it present to other people?
• people rebel against the ideas represented by statues by taking them down?
• her comparisons between what anti-Confederate monument protestors are doing in the US and what the Islamic State did in destroying monuments in Palmyra?

What version of history is not represented in these Confederate monuments? 

Read:

Was Robert E. Lee Opposed to Confederate Monuments? By David Emrey, published 8/23/2017 in Snopes.com.

• Question: What are your responses to Robert E. Lee’s opposition to proposals to erect Civil War monuments and memorials, including some devoted specifically to the Confederacy?

How Charlottesville Got that Robert E. Lee Statue. By Bruce W. Dearstyne, published 9/3/2017 in the History News Network.

• Question: What are your thoughts about the inauguration of the Lee Monument in Lee Park on May 21, 1924? It was held “during a gala Confederate reunion in which the monument was draped in a large Confederate flag that was pulled away by the three-year-old great-granddaughter of General Lee, Mary Walker Lee, to great cheers.”

How the US Got So Many Confederate Monuments. These commemorations tell a national story. By Becky Little, published 8/17/2017, updated 6/12/2020 in History.com.

There are hundreds of Confederate monuments across the US — here's when they were built. By Leanna Garfield and Anaele Pelisson, published 8/18/2017 in BusinessInsider.com.

This map reveals 1,747 monuments and other Confederate symbols of America’s racist past. By Michael Grothause, published 6/11/2020 in FastCompany.com

• Question: What are your thoughts about the inauguration of the Lee Monument in Lee Park on May 21, 1924? It was held “during a gala Confederate reunion in which the monument was draped in a large Confederate flag that was pulled away by the three-year-old great-granddaughter of General Lee, Mary Walker Lee, to great cheers.”

 

• Question: What history and whose history are neglected in these Confederate monuments?

How did these Confederate monuments affect African Americans?

Read:

Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee Sculpture and our Heritage of Hate. Published 8/17/2017 in Blaservations.

• Question: Paul Goodloe McIntire donated land for five city parks: Lee (in honor of Robert E. Lee), Jackson (in honor of Thomas “Stonewall Jackson), Belmont, Booker T. Washington, and McIntire (named by the city in his honor). Were you aware that African Americans were NOT allowed in any of the parks other than Booker T. Washington Park?

 

• Question: How well do you think African Americans in Charlottesville were represented in the city government that decided to establish these parks?  

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

Question: What are your thoughts and responses to hearing these testimonies?

• Reverend Carol Carruthers Sims recalls growing up white and freely roaming all over  Charlottesville and the University.

• Apostle Sarah Kelley recalls the places she was not allowed to go as a child, and being mocked and taunted by white gatherings at Lee Park as she walked along Market Street to go to the Paramount Theater.

• Deacon Don Gathers recalls the traumatic experience of counter protesting the Unite the Right rally on August 11-12, 2017.

• Rabbi Tom Gutherz recalls the shocking experience of the same Jew hatred that killed members of his family during the Third Reich violently proclaimed here in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017. 

“SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A MOTHERLESS CHILD”

The photos interspersed within the dance show the progression of . . .

• The arrival of the first enslaved Africans at Point Comfort, Virginia in 1619

• The Richmond Slave Trail, led by the Elegba Folklore Society

• The selling of enslaved Africans here in Charlottesville, as marked by the “Slave Auction Block” sidewalk plaque in Court Square.
  • Read “Humans Were Sold Here.” By Jalane Schmidt in Medium.com.

• The brutal history of enslavement and lynching documented at National Memorial for Peace and Justice (“The Lynching Museum”) and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration (where one sample of the soil from the site of the lynching of John Henry James in Charlottesville/Albemarle County is stored). Both the memorial and the museum are part of the work of the Equal Justice Initiative.

• Finally, a sample of pictures and names of black victims killed at the hands of law enforcement. 
  • Read “Say Their Names: Black Lives Matter, Their Lives Mattered.” By Sandra Barrett in Medium.com. This article lists the names of black victims who are now famous because they were killed at the hands of law enforcement. This is not an exhaustive list of every black victim killed by police.

Question for white people: Imagine where you would be now if your white ancestors were enslaved, raped, robbed of their property and their labor, denied housing and employment, and incarcerated and murdered with impunity for the last 400 years? 

Question for white people: How would you respond if white people were then labeled -- as a people -- “lazy,” “thugs,” and “dangerous”?

THE PAST AND PRESENT

“We don’t need monuments of steel and stone to remind us of our country’s heritage of slavery, because that heritage is present in the bodies of American descendants of slavery. WE are the living memorials to this history.” 

Question: What do you think about this claim? 

Read:

Writer and poet Caroline Randall Williams’ 6/26/2020 editorial in the New York Times: “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument.”

Watch NBC News’ interview of Caroline Randall Williams, published 7/2/2020.

Question: Given the generational trauma and pain experienced by American descendants of slavery, what does it say about their strength and resiliency that empowers them to survive and even thrive in American society today?

A MORE JUST FUTURE

Removing these symbols of white supremacy is a necessary step toward a more just and equitable society. But it is NOT sufficient in and of itself. If we do not also work on dismantling the unjust systemic and structural inequities that continue to negatively impact black communities today, the dismantling of all Confederate statues and monuments will be for naught. 

The worship video names some of the ways systemic racism is still present today in our health, employment, community, housing, criminal justice, law enforcement, financial, education, and governmental systems.

Read:

“What is systemic racism? Here's what it means and how you can help dismantle it.” By N’dea Yancey-Bragg, published 6/15/2020 in USAToday.com.

“The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published 6/2014 in The Atlantic.com.

Question for white people: What is the next step that you and your congregation can make to dismantle systemic racism?

“Dear White People, Please Stop Pretending Reverse Racism Is Real” by Manisha Krishnan, published 10/2/2016 in Vice.com.

“Sure, black people can be racist, too.” By John Blake, published 9/22/2019 on CNN.com interviewing Ibram X. Kendi about his book How to Be An Antiracist.

Questions: How do Krishnan and Kendi understand “being a racist” differently? Which group of people is the intended audience of each article? What can all groups of people take away from both of these articles?

Listen:

“In Conversation: Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem” in On Being podcast with Krista Tippett

Question for white people: Discomfort is a portal to new awareness, but many people don’t want to be uncomfortable. What are ways discomfort can help you identify and work to dismantle systemic racism? 

Question for white people: The onus is not on those affected by racism to teach white people what to learn. The onus is on white people to do the hard work themselves of identifying their learning edges and blind spots. How can white people take responsibility for their learning?

• Take the initiative to Google questions you have about race . . . and note the various responses of individual authors.
• Visit this archive of 163 years of The Atlantic’s writing on race and racism in America, by Gillian B. White, published 6/16/2020.
• The Charlottesville Clergy Collective has a webpage of resources.

Question for white people: Black organizations (like the NAACP), movements (like Black Lives Matter), and local congregations have and are providing leadership in anti-racist work. How can you join in what they are already doing instead of reinventing the wheel?

RELIGIOUS READINGS AND PRAYERS

Betül Toprak, a member of the Muslim Community, read a verse from the Qur’an — the sacred text of Islam. It is from the Surah Al-Nisa (the 4th Surah), and it is the 135th verse. It is a verse emphasizing that every individual must not only be just, but they must stand out for justice, even if it is against their own interests. …  This statement is a reminder to myself of how I should position myself in conflictual situations. It tells me that no matter who is involved, no matter what interests may be involved, I should take the side of justice and advocate it. It also tells me that I should not be a bystander, and only act when I am affected by a particular injustice, but to always stand out for justice and be its advocate. We should stand out for justice no matter what, and Allah will be the one protecting us, our kin, our interests when we objectively stand for justice.

• Question: Why do you think the verse is telling us to disregard whether the situation in question is related to yourself, your parents, your kin, or whether it involves the rich or the poor?

 
Sharon Beckman-Brindley of the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville states that Kuan Yin (Avalalokiteshvara) is the representation of the Buddha qualities of enlightened compassion for the struggles and sufferings of all beings. She hears all and, when called upon, she responds with wise and whole hearted guidance to bring all beings everywhere to full healing and freedom.

• Question: As we cultivate our responses to centuries of violence and injustice, how do we find room in our hearts, our relationships and our communities to respond to separation in ways that do not just burden ourselves and others with more division and hatred?

 
Rabia Povich of the Inayati Universal Sufi Order read a Sufi poem, After the Darkness There are Many Suns, which was written by Mevlana Jellalludin Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, Islamic Scholar, and Sufi mystic. He wrote a six-volume masterwork, the Masnavi, that opens with the eighteen line verse: “Listen to the reed and the tale it tells, How it sings of separation...” After the Darkness is from book 3, lines 2922-2925 of the Masnavi.

• Question: How/where do we find hope even as we are aware of 400+ years of discrimination and oppression toward Africans, African Americans, indigenous people and people of color that continues today?

 
Manouchehr (Mike) Mohajeri, a member of the Baha’i Faith, shared a prayer for humanity, given by Abdu’l-Baha in the early twentieth century. Abdu’l-Baha was the son and successor of the Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i Faith, Baha’u’llah. Abdu’l-Baha’s given name was Abbas, but he chose to be called Abdu’l-Baha which means the servant of Baha’ or Glory. He, together with his father and the rest of his family, suffered banishment and exile from his homeland of Persia to Baghdad first and eventually to the Holy Land (Palestine, then and Israel, today). All of that suffering was brought upon them through the intrigues of Muslim clergy (religious supremacists!) when he was between the very sensitive ages of 9 and 24. Later in his life, after he was freed from prison, he traveled to the West and spent about 8 months in 1912, in the US and Canada for a visit with the western Baha’is and on a speaking tour. It was in this country where he very deeply felt the long-sufferings of the black people and prayed fervently for the unity of the human race as a whole. … This prayer is a daily reminder for me to further develop an understanding and loving heart, cleansed from any trace of prejudice and supremacist feeling.

• Question:  What is it going to take for the members of the human race to get rid of the spiritual disease of supremacy (be it racial, gender, national, religious, etc.) and become united as members of one family?

 
Linda Olson Peebles, Interim Lead Minister of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist, offered a prayer that she wrote. She was inspired by the interfaith clergy on the streets Aug 12, 2017, who faced the militia and Nazi hate groups. 

• Question: “If it is in our power to shine light into the world, how can we do that in real ways in our everyday lives (in the face of hatred, injustice, bias, pressure to be complicit, etc.)?

 
Cynthia Power of the Charlottesville Friends Meeting paraphrased a passage from the Journal of George Fox. Fox was the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the mid-17th century. The actual quote is:  “Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places...then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone…”  Friends have neither creed nor scripture. When asked what they believe, they frequently mention “that of God in everyone.” … The idea of “that of God in everyone” clearly says to me that we are all equal, deserving of the same rights and benefits. This is the basis of my most strongly held values.

• Question: As we work together for racial justice, how can we incorporate the Quaker notion of answering that of God? Is it compatible with other faith stances?

Jess Kerman of Congregation Beth Israel brought a teaching from: 
Talmud Bavli Shabbat 55A: 
And Reish Lakish said: The letter tav is the last letter of the seal of the Holy One, Blessed be God, as Rabbi Ḥanina said: The seal of the Holy One, Blessed be God, is truth [emet], which ends with the letter tav. Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani said: The letter tav teaches that these are people who observed the entire Torah from alef through tav. 
and Pirkei Avot 1:18:
Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel used to say: on three things does the world stand: On justice, on truth and on peace, as it is said: “execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates” (Zechariah 8:16).

• Question: What does an imbalance of justice, truth, or peace look like? How do we seek balance between justice, truth, and peace?

LIVING INTO OUR CALLING

The photos interspersed in the dance show:

• Memorial and statues at Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, AL, located across the street from 16th St. Baptist Church, the target of white supremacist terrorism when it was bombed by the KKK in 1963, killing four young girls. The park served as an assembly spot for activities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and other groups in the Civil Rights movement. Today, this public park contains emotionally powerful sculptures depicting the civil rights struggle in Birmingham. This park is an example of how Market Street Park in Charlottesville might be re-imagined to include statues and memorials to commemorate the contributions of Black Americans and to solidify the idea of a more just and equitable future.
• The response of the Charlottesville faith community in response to the KKK gathering in July 2017.
• Pictures of the Black Lives Matter marches in San Francisco, CA, Miami, FL, and Newcastle, PA, after the George Floyd killing. 

Our worship service ends with an empowering song and dance, because the history of Black Americans cannot be reduced to words like “trauma” and “pain.” The themes that run throughout this history are resiliency, resistance, persistence, faith, and most of all, joy!

Read:

“American culture sees Blackness as the damage it did to us, not the joy we take in ourselves.
One cannot fully understand Blackness in America without understanding the joy that we derive from being Black — and why.”  By Donald Earl Collins, published August 9, 2020 in NBCnews.com.

Collins writes: “Quite simply, there is no American joy, no American culture, without Black joy, and no Black joy without Black pain from and resistance to American racism and exploitation.”

Questions: 

• How can we have the eyes to see and celebrate Black joy? 
• How can we contribute to Black joy by our resistance to American racism and exploitation?
• What is the next step for YOU to live joyfully into your calling toward justice and beloved community?

NEXT STEPS

One next step beyond reading, studying, and discussions is to join organizations to take action toward systemic racial justice. Below is a short, non-comprehensive list of racial justice organizations to check out. Many of these organizations have local chapters for you to get involved in whatever ways you can.

Black-led racial justice organizations

• Poor People’s Campaign - Rev. William Barber
  
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
  
• Black Lives Matter
  
• Showing Up for Racial Justice has a more comprehensive list compiled by leadership from the Movement for Black Lives.
  
• A Partial Map of Black-led Black Liberation Organizing
  

Other organizations are committed to supporting black-led organizing and anti-racist activism

• Congregate Cville
  
• Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
  
• Beloved Community Cville
  
• Check out the Racial Equity Resource Guide to find organizations are working within the field of racial equity and on a variety of issues and topics.
  

On Tuesday, June 9, approximately one hundred people gathered at the Free Speech Wall in Charlottesville's downtown mall for a peaceful prayer vigil organized by Don Gathers and the Charlotttesville Clergy Collective. Below are pictures courtesy of Mike Kropf and Richard Lord. (Photo credit above: Eze Amos)

Credit for above photos: Mike Kropf

Credit for above photos: Richard Lord

On Tuesday, October 29, 2019, the Charlottesville Clergy Collective organized the third "Conversations toward Reconciliation" dinner gathering. It was hosted by Unity of Charlottesville. Over 125 people from 23 different faith communities attended the event.

Reverends Don Lansky and Patricia Gulino Lansky, Co-Pastors of Unity welcomed us and offered a prayer to begin our time together.

Apostle Sarah Kelley, Pastor of Faith, Hope, and Love International Healing and Deliverance Center, led in the singing of "Reach Out and Touch, Somebody's Hand."

Rev. Dr. Michael Cheuk, Secretary of the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, gave an overview of the work of the CCC and a recap of previous "Conversations toward Reconciliation" gatherings.

Rev. Dr. Brenda Brown-Grooms spoke about her shift in thinking about white people in relation to her call to serve as Co-Pastor of New Beginnings Christian Community in Charlottesville.​

​Rev. Albert Connett of Olivet Presbyterian shared the shift in his thinking about justice in housing for African Americans and how that shift led to his advocacy for this issue in our community.

REMARKS AT AUGUST 12, 2019 INTERFAITH SERVICE 
Rabbi Tom Gutherz /Congregation Beth Israel /Charlottesville, Virginia

I’ve been asked to share some reflections on the impact of August 12, 2017
on the Jewish community in our town. Most Jews in America today are here 
because they, or more commonly, their ancestors, were refugees escaping religious persecution, often pogroms or genocide. Most of us carry these family stories, 
and especially for first- and second- generation Americans, these stories were related 
to us directly by those who experienced them, by our parents or grandparents. 
 
We were raised to believe that America was a kind of promised land. Not a place 
where all anti-Semitic attitudes would be completely absent, but a place where organized anti-Semitism, aided and abetted by the institutions of government and society, would not occur in this land of liberty and freedom.
 
Most of our community has experienced garden-variety antisemitism: the pennies thrown on the floor, insensitive words that convey some unpleasant attitude or some unflattering idea about Jews or Judaism. And many of us grew up with some name-calling: Kike, Hebe, Yid.  But by and large the public expression of hatred towards Jews was thought by us to be a thing of the past.  

And then came August 12, in Charlottesville.

Since that weekend two years ago we have had to have certain kinds of conversations with our children and our friends, that we never had before. Trying to explain to them: Why do people hate the Jews so much? 

The Unite the Right Rally here was a public coming-out ceremony for a movement 
that had been steadily organizing itself in the corners of the dark web, where Jew-hatred is glorified and amplified. Where the names of Jewish journalists, activists and public figures have their names bracketed with the three parentheses to signify “JEW.”

Before August 12, we did not pay much attention to this.  We, like many of you, were surprised that when the Klan came to town—the Klan, whose very existence is a visceral reminder of racial terror for African Americans--and most of the signs they carried were anti-Semitic. 

And we did not fully understand why the people who came here, ostensibly to protest the removal of Civil War hero statues, were chanting: JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US” 
And maybe some of you still do not know.

The reason is this: that for many on the alt-right, hatred of Jews is a part of the glue 
that holds together the white supremacist worldview. This movement has cut and 
pasted classic anti-Semitic tropes into their version of “the Great Replacement 
Theory.” According to them, the Jews, not being truly whites and certainly not Christians, work secretly for the demise of the white race. 
This myth of sinister Jewish power is what motivated the shooter at the Pittsburgh synagogue last year. He blamed HIAS--the Hebrew  Immigrant Aid Society--for 
being behind the invasion (his words) of immigrants at our border. So he went to a synagogue to murder some Jews. 

The story of HIAS and Pittsburgh is a personal one for me. My father Joseph was 
born in Poland in 1924. He lost his entire family in the Holocaust. By the time he 
was 20 years old, every single person who he knew growing up, every family member and friend, with one or two exceptions, was murdered because they were Jews.  
They were victims of a society that whole-heartedly embraced these same theories of racial supremacy, that believed in worldwide Jewish conspiracies. My father survived. HIAS brought my own father to America in 1950, and helped him to settle in Cleveland Ohio, where I was born. 

The thought that Nazi ideas are avidly discussed on the internet and neo-Nazi insignias proudly worn on our streets, makes the Jewish community uneasy. We feel that the ground is shifting, though we do not know exactly how. We are uncomfortable about being suddenly cast into the public eye. And though we are grateful for all the expressions of support we received from so many of you in this room, our synagogue 
has gotten used to security measures that we never felt were necessary before. There 
are moments of fear, when we see or hear about some unusual activity. 

But together with our fears and uncertainties, we are also aware that Jews as a community have been embraced in a unique way by this country. Barriers that once restricted our admission to neighborhoods, universities and or organizations have mostly disappeared. 
We are no longer shunned as marriage partners, as was the case only two generations ago.  

I’ve told you part of my father’s story. And yet I am also aware that when he arrived 
in this country, and settled in Cleveland Ohio in the 1950’s, there were certain neighborhoods he could live in, bank loans and jobs he could get by virtue of the fact 
that he had been designated as white, or kind of white, in America’s either/or racial lens. 
I and many in our Jewish community--the ninety percent of our community 
who are not Jews of color--enjoy privileges that were not available, and still are not, 
to African Americans and people of color.  

We know that for every synagogue shooting, there have been dozens of attacks on African American churches and communities. And we know that much white supremacist violence is directed at Muslims and, as we saw just last week in El Paso, at the Latino community. 

I had known about the violence of racism and its history in our country. 
But on August 12 I, and many of you, saw it and felt it in a different way.  
I may have been surprised by my exposure to the depth of the hatred and 
the violence of white supremacy in this country, but African Americans have 
always known it. It is as much a part of their life, of your life, as the air we all 
breathe. And havin seen and felt that, I think, imposes a special obligation on 
all of us.

So I have a lot of questions that need to be answered: 

Why did I not feel that violence? 
Was I too optimistic about the things I saw changing?  
Too complacent about the pace and efficacy of those changes?
Why did I not know the history of the statues that are one block away from the synagogue, that I pass every day? Why did I not have the curiosity to find out?  
Shame on me!

And what else is there that I just do not want to see? 
And what is at stake in my not seeing? 
What will I have to give up, to support, to change, in order to contribute to undoing 
the racial injustice that some are fighting so hard to maintain? 

Many of us in our town have made the commitment to answering these questions. 

Part of what changed for me on August 12, was a realization that I needed to change 
my way of thinking about racism in this country. That I needed to understand that 
it is not just about what is in my heart or my mind. But to understand the structures 
it has built: economic, educational, political, and social; to understand its tenacity, its violence, its legacy.  How it has shaped almost every aspect of the world we live in.
As well as its near invisibility to me as a white person.

My generation of Jews, born after the Holocaust, was raised under the slogan “merbr Again.” This was presented to me, and perhaps to many of you, as a “lesson” of the Holocaust. It its narrow meaning, this lesson translates to this: that Jews must take seriously the words of those who seek to harm us. We have learned that history does not only go forward. It can go backwards as well.

But I understand “Never Again” in a much larger way. “Never Again” means 
that on account of my personal history, on account of what I and my community has experienced, on account of what all of us here in Charlottesville have experienced, 
we have a special responsibility to be vigilant about racial and ethnic hatred 
and injustice wherever we see it. And to look for it, to ferret it out, when we do not see it. 
To understand clearly how it works, and to look for ways to dismantle it. To be a resister and not a bystander. 

The Jewish tradition teaches:  You are not obligated to compete the task
But neither are you free to desist from it. Each of us must find that way that
we can best contribute to this task. 
I am so grateful for those of you in this room who have taught me, and continue to 
teach me. I am learning. We are all trying to learn. And I believe we will all find
our way forward together

​