No one argues that the bake sale was not racist. It was intended to be so, and CNN quotes president Shawn Lewis as saying, “We agree that the event is inherently racist, but that is the point.” The bake sale was analogous to affirmative action, which will be permissible on a college level in California if Senate Bill 185 (SB 185) is made law. Though the analogy is imperfect, the idea is the same: minorities are, in general, economically disadvantaged, and because of conditions beyond their control, need extra help getting into college. The bake sale kept things on a purely economic level, with disadvantaged minorities and women having to pay less because of the aforementioned conditions. The discount for women is misguided, as it is harder for men than women to get into college, but the sexist implications of the bake sale were not the main issue.

Those who are offended by the racist nature of the bake sale are making its point: Affirmative action is a fundamentally racist concept, and its implementation goes against racial equality. One can argue for the merits of affirmative action until blue in the face, but the fact that all things being equal—and as a recent study from the Center for Equal Opportunity shows, even when they’re not—a black college applicant will be accepted over a white one is racist by definition. To be for affirmative action and against racism, as I think most proponents of the former would claim to be, is an Orwellian exercise in double-think. To be against racism in every case except affirmative action is simply hypocritical.

The argument for affirmative action comes in two forms. Either whites have oppressed minorities to the point that they are noticeably lower on the economic totem pole, a situation which must be corrected, or minorities are noticeably lower on the economic totem pole than are their white counterparts, a situation which still must be corrected. The former assumes that whites are complicit in the potential crimes of their ancestors, a clearly erroneous claim, while the latter has to do with undeniable structural and social issues.

The latter, therefore, has some weight to it, but one cannot in good conscience support a program that discriminates by race. This does not mean that the issue of the poor being locked into self-perpetuating cycles of poverty does not exist, or that it should not be dealt with, but that race should be removed entirely from the equation. I, along with many Washington University students, was fortunate enough to grow up in a relatively privileged home, in the safe, wealthy suburb of a major metropolitan area, and my high school is consistently ranked as one of the top 100 public schools in the nation. Point for point, my counterpart from the inner city could never compete, and no one in his situation could. I am glad that schools make allowances for such discrepancies. Affirmative action makes the assumption that minorities are disadvantaged—itself having dubious moral implications—but to really deal with the issue, it must be expanded to include everyone, regardless of ethnicity.

The UC-Berkeley College Republicans caused a firestorm in liberal America, but while much of their attention has been negative, they brought an important issue to light. Affirmative action, and race-based discrimination in general, is morally wrong. The Republicans were wildly successful in raising awareness for their cause, and I hope not only that they will be pleased with the fate of SB 185, but also that affirmative action throughout America will be replaced with a fairer, racially-blind, economically oriented alternative.

Courtesy of Dreamworks

“The Help” focuses on black maids, who were brought together by a young white woman to tell their story. The two most prominent maids are Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer). The main criticism of “The Help” is that it is a “nice white lady saves the day” movie. It did not feel like that to me, even though there is a pivotal white lady character (look to “The Blind Side” to see something actually offensive). This is the writer character Skeeter, played in an understated performance by Emma Stone. She isn’t there for any reason other than that she thinks there’s a story worth telling. She is more of a device than any of the black characters, and a necessary device at that—without a white character to submit the manuscript to a publisher, the stories of these maids could not have been told. Skeeter does not use the maids to get ahead— she genuinely cares about these women and gives them part of her advance. And if any white person walked out of this movie feeling better about him or herself because we live in a post-racial society and all white people aren’t racists anymore, then he or she has much bigger problems.

Not once does the film try to make Emma Stone into the lead and the two black actresses into supporting characters. It is Aibileen’s story, as the movie opens and closes with her, and features her narration along the way. Despite the marketing campaign that portrayed Stone as the lead with Davis and Spencer supporting, the movie itself makes it clear that it is Aibileen’s story. A similar complaint was made about the marketing for the movie “A Single Man,” which seemed to censor the lead character’s homosexuality. While this is regrettable and less than ideal, if it gets more people to see the movie, the marketing worked—and the final product itself isn’t warped.

Another major criticism of “The Help” is its light-hearted tone. While it is one of the warmer movies of the year, and the lighting is like a sepia photograph brought to life, it certainly doesn’t hold back its punches. The film portrays a maid being arrested and assaulted by the police, and Aibileen suffering in the 100-degree heat of her separate bathroom. Much has been made of a scene where Aibileen and Minny are laughing in a kitchen and how this apparently devalues the entire civil rights movement, but maybe instead the scene should be seen as just two maids enjoying each other’s company and forgetting for a brief moment their horrific situation.

I also don’t understand the criticism of Viola Davis for choosing to play a maid in the 1960s. She wanted to give these women a voice, and she did it in stunning, acclaimed fashion. If she manages to get an Oscar nomination, she will be only the second black actress (after Whoopi Goldberg) to have two. That is the real tragedy of Hollywood—that minorities are so rarely honored or recognized for their work.

The movie isn’t perfect, and I do wish that it had been better in its portrayal of black men, who are almost completely absent from the movie. However, it did give many black actresses a chance to work in a movie that wasn’t directed by Tyler Perry, and hopefully opened many doors for Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer to continue working in Hollywood—and as characters other than maids and sassy best friends.

Cole Bishop | Student Life

CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien spoke in front of a full Graham Chapel on Tuesday evening. O’Brien, who is of Cuban and Australian descent, discussed racism and its role in the media.

O’Brien’s speech was the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture, which is sponsored by the Association of Black Students (ABS).

In her remarks, O’Brien addressed her personal experience with racism in America, both personally and as a journalist, and stressed the collective responsibility that Americans have to bring racial reconciliation to modern society.

She spoke about the power she has as a journalist to capture and give a voice to the marginalized stories of all Americans.

“For me, the opportunity to tell these stories is really the opportunity to remind us of our shared humanity. My goal has been to capture that humanity in stories, and hopefully teach people that diversity isn’t really about difference, but really, diversity is kind of about what we share, what we all do in our own different ways,” she said.

O’Brien shared her personal history with the audience, recounting stories about her meager beginnings in the journalism industry after dropping out of Harvard. She later returned to Harvard to complete her degree.

She continued with stories about jobs interviews for positions that she was rejected from for vague racial reasons and spoke about how her parents taught their six children to stand up for what they believed in.

“The bigger lesson for me and my sisters and my brothers was really about envisioning a life as you felt it should be lived, minimizing external voices and having a certain bravery about how you lived and then kind of tuning everybody else out,” she said.

Despite great strides, O’Brien argued, racism and segregation still have a strong presence in America, especially among populations of children, where minorities are growing at the fastest rates.

According to O’Brien, the key to addressing racial issues is embracing commonality.

“We know that segregation exists today in schools; we know that segregation exists today in our churches; we know that segregation exists today in our housing. And why does it matter? Because we’re never going to be able to come together to solve the problems that affect us as a community together if we don’t receive these problems together,” she said. “If we see ourselves as separate and different and unequal, we will never come together to solve these problems.”

In addition to speaking about the power and responsibility she has as a journalist, O’Brien went on to address the responsibility that all people have to work toward racial reconciliation.

“If you can capture these stories accurately and fairly, then you have incredible power to tell that story well. And ultimately, for me, I think it’s about bringing real and tangible change and real racial reconciliation, because it’s going to require some of those hard conversations that people don’t really want to have and genuine leadership by people who really do want the solution,” O’Brien said.

She spoke of the long road to racial reconciliation in America, but stressed the importance of forging on, despite challenges and adversity.

“We have made some steps forward, but we are not a post-racial America,” O’Brien said. “It does not exist today, and we are not close to it today. And to get there, we all have to decide that we are going to, in a shared fashion, move forward and take responsibility for conversations that bring us closer to racial reconciliation.”

The speech was followed by a question-and-answer session and later by a reception and book signing in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge.

As it turns out, Studio 7 has about as much character as Chancellor Wrighton on sleeping pills. The entire place is painted monochrome red, it’s only five years old, there are no posters on the walls, no memorabilia, no Chuck Berry autographs—nothing. It’s a place to get a haircut and yes, a lot of black people go there—but I would ascribe that simply to neighborhood demographics as opposed to any inherent “black” quality of this barbershop.

So I got my hair cut (they did a great job, by the way). On the walk back, I thought about my prior assumptions about the barbershop and if there was some inherent racism in them. I had assumed this place to be a bastion of black identity, a place where people came to “be black”—stereotypes that I embraced so wholeheartedly that I was shocked to find that I was wrong.

I don’t think stereotyping is necessarily racism. Stereotypes are stronger than we think; they penetrate the most basic fibers of our thoughts from a young age. In a functional way, they help us assimilate and classify the huge amount of information our brains must process on a daily basis. Sure, there are racist stereotypes, but we often cannot run from them. Ever try looking at a list of words without reading them? It’s really hard—near impossible—to avoid the automatic impulse to read. Stereotyping is a similar impulse.

Maybe we are all, on some level, racists. Or maybe racism occurs when we fail to question our assumptions, to push back on the views of the world that are already hard-wired into our minds. Furthermore, racism feeds on an over-extrapolation of our experiences. For example, when we judge Person Two based on the actions of Person One, even if they have no connection with each other, we are in danger of succumbing to our own stereotypical thoughts.

So was I racist the other day, walking down the Loop, assuming that no less than Cedric the Entertainer was going to open the door for me and give me a buzz cut (Barbershop reference to the confused)? I think I was. It didn’t even occur to me that my projection of this barbershop would be wrong, and that is a dangerous gray area between stereotyping and racism. Unfortunately, I believe this is a ubiquitous occurrence. We see it all the time in society—from the unwarranted arrest of Henry Louis Gates last year, to any time you go through airport security. My advice? Never take your thoughts at face value.

The 25 or so students who attended the roundtable split into committees devoted to specific areas of campus life, including Washington University Police Department (WUPD) affairs, on-campus student awareness, Residential Life, student group interaction and off-campus affairs.

Students in the taskforce on WUPD affairs debated whether some students’ allegations that WUPD officers approach black students more than white ones means the officers are guilty of racial profiling.

While the group did not reach a conclusion, group members agreed that reports of suspicious activity filed by students against other students are a major contributor to WUPD stopping black students more often.

Members of the group said they would like to initiate dialogue between WUPD and students regarding methods of identifying suspicious persons, and also explored the idea of a “walk in your shoes” orientation program in which students would learn about the differences that race makes in daily life.

The “on-campus awareness” taskforce was primarily concerned with the issue of self-segregation in the student body. Group members said they hoped to break down what they termed the “fishbowl” phenomenon: a tendency for important conversations about race issues to remain confined to racially or ethnically homogenous groups.

“I know that as an African American male I have particular conversations with other African American males on campus that pretty much we keep amongst ourselves,” said senior Regis Murayi, one of the six black students rejected from Mothers bar.

The task force proposed mediating conversations about self-segregation on freshman floors. Members of the group also plan to develop initiatives to draw a greater and more diverse body of students to events like Monday night’s roundtable to engage students who might otherwise be uninvolved in the dialogue about diversity issues.

Like the on-campus awareness task force, the ResLife committee offered a plan to spur more diversity dialogue on freshman floors by designing special programming to be led by residential advisors. Group members also planned a conference with Residential Life about making ethnic and racial diversity a priority when forming freshman floors.

The student group interaction taskforce envisioned working with Student Union to create an incentive program that rewards collaboration between student groups. It also proposed the development of a multicultural retreat in which students from diverse backgrounds would bond over a variety of recreational and discussion-based activities.

Members of the off-campus taskforce expressed a desire to raise awareness of racial and class implications of policy decisions behind recent MetroLink service cuts. The taskforce hopes to launch a visual campaign to make the faces of St. Louis residents affected by the service cuts more visible to students.

Senior De Nichols, co-president of Connect 4, said her group would facilitate further meetings of the taskforces created at Monday night’s roundtable to lay out more concrete action steps. The organization hopes that this event will be a first step in empowering passionate students to turn thoughts into action.

Said junior Wanda Savala, Connect 4’s other co-president, “[Students] will start something but they don’t really feel supported. We need to rally those students who are doing something, who have ideas.”

The turnout for the roundtable was short of Connect 4’s expectations, paling in comparison to the more than 300 students who filled Lab Sciences 300 for the town hall meeting.

The large gap in the turnout between the town hall meeting and Monday’s roundtable elicited concerns from some that the enthusiasm exhibited by the general student body in recent weeks will not last as the Mothers bar incident fades into the past.

“[The turnout] kind of made me question how passionate, how committed students are to affecting change in this area,” Nichols said.

Nonetheless, she said she was confident that a smaller group of students would continue to converse and act on race and diversity issues.

“Quite honestly, I am a very optimistic, faithful person,” she said. “The rational side of me says that people are gonna let this die, but I think we have a committed body of students who won’t let this die out.”

The ADL contacted the group of six black students three days after the original incident to offer them access to the organization’s infrastructure and advocacy from the group. This was unusual, as most people with a complaint need to contact the ADL before it will consider a case.

In this case, however, a parent of a University student was an ADL board member in Houston, and according to ADL Chicago regional director Lonnie Nasatir, “it kind of came through the ranks.”

For the students from Washington University, the support came as a welcome surprise.

“I was surprised because I hadn’t contacted them,” said Fernando Cutz, senior class president. “I was just really grateful they reached out.”

The ADL first asked the students if they would be interested in the organization writing a coalition letter to be circulated among civil rights groups in Chicago. The organization then hand-delivered a letter to the bar last Friday. This prompted the first response from Mothers. According to Cutz, the ADL “was certainly a major part in that reaction.” The group also helped the students find free legal counsel.

The Anti-Defamation League is a non-profit organization focused on fighting anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry.

“It goes back to that notion that if one minority group is targeted, we all are targeted, and that we can really be much more effective in a broad way than if we just sort of stick within our own communities,” said Karen Aroesty, the St. Louis regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Student Life, along with many newspapers around the country, has already covered this story in detail, and I will not go into detail here in my column. However, I would like to point out that racism still exists in our society, even (as some commentators have called it) in the Age of Obama. It is quite astounding to find out that in the 21st century, discrimination based on race continues to shape our societal perceptions of America and challenge the ideals that this country supposedly stands for.

According to a 2003 study conducted by Dean Karland and Marianne Bertrand, from MIT and the University of Chicago, respectively, widespread discrimination still existed in the workplace against applicants whose names were simply perceived as “sounding black.” Furthermore, these applicants were 50 percent less likely to receive a follow-up telephone call than applicants with names perceived as white.

A survey conducted by CNN in December 2006, prior to the Obama election, found that while Americans, white and black, see racism as a lingering problem in society, they disagree on how serious racial bias is. For example, 49 percent of black respondents said that racism is still a “very serious” problem, while only 18 percent of whites shared that view. Interestingly, 43 percent of whites and 48 percent of blacks said that they knew someone who was racist, but only 13 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks consider themselves racially biased.

On the question of whether or not whites and blacks dislike each other’s races, there was a similar disagreement. Asked how many whites dislike blacks, 40 percent of black respondents said “all” or “many,” while 26 percent of whites agreed with that assessment. With the converse question of how many blacks dislike whites, 38 percent of whites agreed with an interesting 33 percent of blacks concurring with that statement. With a five percent margin of error, statistically speaking they are equal.

University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for close to 35 years, estimates that up to 80 percent of white Americans may have racist feelings, of which they are consciously unaware. He points out, for example, that racism in the 21st century is manifested differently than in the 20th century, as “contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways.”

In the end, racism is still a problem in the United States, but this country has come extremely far in improving race relations, with Obama’s election being the ultimate proof. However, we still have a way to go before we reach our founders’ vision of a more perfect union, one fulfilling the promise that “all men are created equal…[and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Isaac is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at iamon@artsci.wustl.edu.

In cases of racist activity, however, the wrong that must be rectified is not the act itself, but the sentiment behind it. The impetus behind wrongful acts such as turning customers away from an establishment because of their race begins long before these acts take place.

It is therefore necessary—and appropriate—that the settlement announced this Wednesday between the Original Mothers bar and the six Washington University seniors it turned away on the basis of race does not involve punitive financial damages but rather mandates direct participation in diversity awareness training for the employees of the bar. Because racist acts begin with ingrained prejudices, these prejudices must be removed—layer by layer—if the inherent wrongness of the action is to genuinely be rectified.

I am certain that some will criticize the settlement, saying that it is not harsh enough, that a lawsuit demanding punitive damages is justified, that Mothers bar ought to be put out of business because of its actions.

Such a lawsuit, though, would localize the incident and limit the dialogue that it has the potential to create. As members of our community discussed at the Town Hall meeting on Monday, and as several students have alluded to in comments on the Student Life Web site, the fact that students were turned away from a club because of their race was not surprising. The Mothers incident speaks to a larger problem—one that no amount of money could rectify, and one that putting a single nightclub out of business could hardly make a dent in.

The fact is that racism still exists in our society. It exists, however, in ingrained prejudices that cannot legally be manifested, thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent civil rights legislation.

The great civil rights battle of our generation will not be fought on legal grounds, but rather on social grounds; it is only when owners of nightclubs do not associate gang activity with race that justice will truly be served. This is perhaps a utopian vision, but I believe that it is a goal worth striving for.

By forcing the bar to sponsor fundraisers for socially just causes, and by forcing its employees to undergo diversity training, the settlement begins to rectify a larger social wrong than what happened to the “Mothers Men” last weekend.

In her column this Wednesday, Eve Samborn wrote that we ought to take the response to this incident as a model for student activism. Knowing how the response has played out in legal terms, I’d like to take this prescription a step further: We ought to take the response to this incident as a model of how to resolve acts motivated by prejudice.

The apology to be issued by Mothers should retract the racist sentiments behind the bar’s action. The diversity awareness education programming should force its employees to formulate other, more appropriate, ways of thinking about the relationship between race and culture.

The six students who negotiated this settlement demonstrated an admirable capacity to look past the problem at hand and ensure that the incident creates a larger dialogue about race and social justice. Hearing Wednesday’s news made me proud to be a member of the Wash. U. community.

Kate is a junior in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached via e-mail at kate.gaertner@studlife.com.

The six black students who were allegedly denied entry to Mothers bar in Chicago due to their race. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

View a slideshow from the town hall event

Students expressed anger at the Original Mothers bar and demanded that the establishment issue an apology during a town hall forum Monday night.

“I’m flabbergasted that an apology hasn’t been given because the first step is admitting that you have a problem,” senior Jessica Strong said at the forum.

Almost 300 students showed up at the meeting, which was organized by the Association of Black Students, Connect 4 and the Senior Class Council.

The forum, held in Lab Sciences 300, was arranged to discuss an incident of alleged race discrimination by the Original Mothers bar in Chicago against six black male students on Oct. 17. Students have accused the bar of denying entry to the six because of their race.

Although the bar has not returned phone calls from Student Life, it released a statement saying it does not discriminate but will investigate the incident.

Students at the forum called for another student protest against the bar to follow up on the first one held by seniors in Chicago. Others demanded that the bar’s managers be fired or be given anti-discrimination training.

“We need to demand that they write an anti-discrimination policy, and they need to post it outside of their bar,” senior Nikki Spencer said at the forum.

Still other students suggested that the bar return the money that was spent there by seniors on the night of the incident.

“Our money is our vote,” senior Audrey King said. Another suggestion was made that Mothers should fund a scholarship for a University student.

The forum was intended to help the six black students and members of the Senior Class Council develop an official list of demands to give to the Original Mothers bar. The demands will be presented at a news conference held by the Senior Class Council at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in Danforth University Center room 276.

Summary of the town hall

All six students who were denied entry to the bar were in attendance at the forum.

Senior Class President Fernando Cutz announced at the beginning of the event that the incident and the University’s response to it have prompted national and international media attention. CNN ran a TV spot on the story Sunday night, and The New Zealand Herald covered the story Monday.

Cutz also addressed questions about why students at the bar had not staged a walk-out from the establishment on the night of the incident.

Cutz took full responsibility for this and cited concerns he had on the night of the incident that people “weren’t level-headed and that it could escalate the situation.”

“The Senior Class Council and the six students who were involved were the only ones outside when it happened,” Cutz said in an interview. “The majority of students, I don’t believe they should be blamed for that decision. It wasn’t their decision to make.”

Karen Aroeste, St. Louis regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, also spoke at the event.

Aroeste said University students have the potential to use the incident to make a significant positive change.

“You do have an opportunity to turn lemons into a seriously large pitcher of lemonade,” Aroeste said.

Students react to Mothers,University-wide response

After the event, students shared their personal reactions.

Alex Cooper said he was unsurprised when he first heard about the incident at Mothers.

“I think the things that happened at Mothers bar were ridiculous but not too surprising just knowing how America is,” Cooper said.

Brandon Wilson, a sophomore and African-American studies major who is black, echoed Cooper’s sentiment that incidents of racism are common in America today.

“I’ve been called n—– and have racist comments directed towards me all the time,” Wilson said. “This [incident at Mothers] is really a microcosm of a bigger issue. We can get angry all day about six young men being rejected from a bar, but there’s 60,000 men being rejected from society in East St. Louis.”

Junior Wandalyn Savala, a member of Connect 4 who was involved in planning the event, said she felt students at the town hall were energized about the issue but fears they will not be for long.

“Everyone’s really fired up, and I’m excited about that,” Savala said. “But I know in a few weeks, people are going to be like, ‘Eh. Kinda don’t really have time. Kinda have a midterm.’”

Said junior Audrey Morrow, “I just really hope that when the spotlight goes away, that people still remember that we still have these problems to fix.”

Click here for updated coverage of the town hall and the Mother’s incident

Students expressed anger at the Original Mothers bar and demanded that the establishment issue an apology and return students’ money at a town hall forum Monday night.

Some students called for another protest against the bar. Others demanded that the bar’s managers be given anti-discrimination training or be fired.

Almost 300 students showed up at the forum, which was arranged by the Association of Black Students, Connect 4 and Senior Class Council to foster discussion about an incident of alleged race discrimination by the bar against six black male students on Oct. 17.

All six students, who have said they were denied entry to the bar because of their race, were in attendance at the forum.

Senior Class President Fernando Cutz announced at the beginning of the event that the incident and subsequent response have generated both national and international media attention. CNN ran a TV spot on the story Sunday night, and The New Zealand Journal covered the story Monday.

Cutz also addressed questions about why students at the bar had not staged a walk-out from the bar on the night of the incident.

Cutz took full responsibility for the decision not to stage a walk-out, citing concerns he had that people “weren’t level-headed and that it could escalate the situation.”

The Mother's Men stand in front of a packed town hall meeting to discuss the next steps following the alleged discrimination incident at Mothers bar in Chicago. Approximately 400 people filled Lab Sciences 300 Monday evening for the town hall event. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

“The Senior Class Council and the six students who were involved were the only ones outside when it happened,” Cutz said in an interview. “The majority of students, I don’t believe they should be blamed for that decision [not to stage a walk-out]. It wasn’t their decision to make.”

Karen Aroeste, St. Louis regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, also spoke at the event. Aroeste made the suggestion that Mothers could fund a scholarship for a University student as a means of making amends for the incident.

The floor was then opened up to students to express their opinions and suggest future courses of action.

Students react to Mothers, University-wide response

Alex Cooper said he was not surprised when he first heard about the incident at Mothers.

“I think the things that happened at Mothers bar were ridiculous but not too surprising just knowing how America is,” Cooper said.

Brandon Wilson, a sophomore and African and African-American studies major who is black, echoed Cooper’s sentiment that incidents of racism are common in America today.

“I’ve been called n—– and have racist comments directed towards me all the time,” Wilson said. “This [incident at Mothers] is really a microcosm of a bigger issue. We can get angry all day about six young men being rejected from a bar, but there’s 60,000 men being rejected from society in East St. Louis.”

Junior Wandalyn Savala, a member of Connect 4 who was involved in planning the event, said she felt students at the town hall were energized about the issue, but will likely not be for long.

“Everyone’s really fired up and I’m excited about that,” Savala said. “But I know in a few weeks people are going to be like, ‘Eh. Kinda don’t really have time. Kinda have a midterm.’”

Said junior Audrey Morrow, “I just really hope that when the spotlight goes away that people still remember that we still have these problems to fix.”

Click here for updated coverage of the town hall and the Mother’s incident