Minutes - Council Work Session - 05/18/2021 - Special

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racist, you have unconscious bias, I can judge your unconscious bias, but you can’t see; you don’t know you have it; its just subconscious, but I am superior enough to you that I can actually judge that in you because I’ve been trained in it. What gives you that authority? What gave that authority to those people to come and judge it? Because you know, I looked at all the comments and all the trash written about me on the community pages. And Mr. Grimmer, who is a CD6 DFL chair who I saw you liked the post he put up with the letter condemning me from the group on the CD6 DFL page. He was arguing with a lady in the community who has suffered tremendously from this mandate. And who has stood up for her? She has been abused by people in the community for not being able to wear a mask. Her children have been screamed at. Who stood up for them? When did you stand up for them, Mayor? When did you ever stand up for the people who have suffered? Because that’s what I didn’t hear. Nobody’s comfortable standing up for the minority; were only comfortable standing up for the minorities that are socially acceptable to stand up for and that is the problem that we have here. And Mr. Grimmer made a point because he was arguing with her on the pages. He said, “It’s not what Chelsee didn’t say, it’s not what she said; it’s what was implied.” We can look at what each of us say and we can make our own judgments and look at it through our own lenses, but do not tell me to ever apologize for something I never said. Conscious unbias; anyway. It belongs on a dung heap!” Councilmember Woestehoff: “I hear you, I didn’t mean to bring up any of that, I want you to understand that I don’t believe you meant to imply that Japanese Interment was a mask mandate, we can talk about that at a later date. My point was more around the fact that you say the color of someone’s skin doesn’t matter and, I understand that, but from my perspective it has to matter because we don’t understand what some other people go through. My only purpose in this is to identify the fact that perhaps there are opportunities for us to take a moment and hear from other people and learn from them, which I know you agree with, however perhaps my wording was poor in both what I wrote and my presentation now, as it’s, I don’t mean to offend you by any means and I hope you don’t take it that way. This has derailed quite a bit, but I think there is an opportunity for us to hear from Chief when he’s back if there is an opportunity for Council to have a discussion about it at some point in the future. I don’t think it has to be a strategic goal by any means but I do think it would be an important topic for us to visit at some point. I apologize that I equated it to that whole incident, it was a bad example, but honestly it is an example of where perhaps we are not listening to different perspectives as well as we could and I think that you did get more than you deserved on that one, I apologize.” Councilmember Howell: “Tremendously more is what I would say. If you go and look at the JACL website, its problematic. I’m going to put it out there. you know what, I look at people, I realize the direction critical race theory goes. I’ve done some reading on it, you know you have unconscious bias if your skin looks a certain color you’re lower on the totem pole and you don’t understand anything about oppressed people. It’s baloney. I realize I’m being completely unprofessional right now. It is a bunch of baloney. Whose to judge it? Its theories that belong in a classroom. And applied to real life they have terrible results; terrible results.” City Council Special Work Session / May 18, 2021 Page 16 of 19