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REGULAR MEETING JULY, 10, 2006
<br />very significant decision that needs to be made this evening. It will be a culmination of
<br />two years of work, organizing research, planning and gathering information. She and
<br />Councilmember Kelly have talked about this for at least the last six weeks, and want to
<br />thank everyone in the audience and the listening audience for the way that everyone has
<br />conducted themselves respectfully. There are some challenges in the community with the
<br />young people today, and one of the things that took place when she was growing up was
<br />that adults have to practice what they preach. We cannot act disrespectful and expect our
<br />children to be respectful and we have a lot to be proud about the way everyone has
<br />handle themselves. She stated that obviously everyone knows that she has very strong
<br />feelings, she noted that she is very passionate about things, and feels very strongly about
<br />justice and human rights. She stated that she is black, female, and a baby boomer, who
<br />was born in 1947, right after World War II. She stated that she is overweight and
<br />struggles with weight problems and she wears her hair in dread locks. She wears her hair
<br />in dread locks for a good reason, and she intends to keep it this way because you cannot
<br />separate dread locks and that’s the way she feels we are as humans. You cannot separate
<br />them, what you do to one you do to all. She stated that you cannot pretend that we allow
<br />for a large segment of the community, if we allow them to be disrespectful, we are
<br />compromising humanity. She wanted to remind everyone of that. She stated that it was
<br />very interesting that the Reverend in the invocation tonight, talked about Abraham
<br />Lincoln, and she was going to say the same thing. She reminded everyone that it starts
<br />out with “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all
<br />men are created equal.” It did not say some men, it didn’t say woman men, white men,
<br />straight men, it said all men. She stated that we are endowed by our creator with
<br />inalienable rights, those rights include, life, liberty and the pursuant of happiness. She
<br />reminds everyone that a couple of years ago at a Community Prayer Breakfast, that she
<br />had the honor to hear President Jimmy Carter and his wife talk about what it means to be
<br />privileged. In those days, about 15 years ago, she stated that she was struggling, she had
<br />children, she didn’t feel privileged at all.But President Carter reminded everyone that if
<br />you own a home, if you have a place to live, you are privileged. If when you go home
<br />and it has been burglarized and you can turn it over to an insurance company, you are
<br />privileged. That if you call the police and they show up, and they treat you with respect,
<br />for some of us that is a privilege. And that you can go out when you get your insurance
<br />company and replace everything that was stolen that is privileged. She stated that she
<br />realizes that she had a privileged life. She wants everyone to know that there are many
<br />who have privileges and privileges are a benefit whether or not you acknowledge it,
<br />many of us have privileges that others do not have. She stated that she is not going to
<br />allow anyone to put people into a box or categorize them as a group. She would like for
<br />everyone to think about a human being a person, a person that you know, someone that
<br />you care about, not some that you love, because we often disrespect and mistreat people
<br />we love and the people we care about we treat better. Think about that human being that
<br />matters to you, who either maybe gay or maybe perceived of gay. Do you really think
<br />that person doesn’t deserve to live in decent housing? Do you really think that person
<br />doesn’t deserve to have employment? Do you really think that person doesn’t deserve to
<br />go to a restaurant and be served? Do you really think that person ought to be
<br />discriminated against and have no recourse? The recourse that everyone else has, that
<br />what she is talking about here tonight. She advised about the bill before the Council
<br />tonight, she stated what it does not have in it. There are a lot of misperceptions of this
<br />bill and she would like to clarify them. This bill is not about marriage or civil contracts
<br />or about couples. This bill has nothing to do with the homosexual agenda. She stated
<br />that she is not homosexual, she is married, a Christian, and has been her entire life. She
<br />knows nothing about promoting a homosexual agenda. She knows everything about
<br />promoting a human agenda. She stated that she was listening to C-Span this weekend
<br />and they were talking about some of the wonderful people that have gone before us. One
<br />of them was Barbara Jordan. She remembered watching Barbara as a young person, and
<br />at the Democratic Convention, when this black women, someone who looked like her,
<br />came upon the stage and lit the whole audience up, she lit the world up, with her
<br />eloquence. She was brilliant. Barbara Jordan was a lesbian. It was kept hidden, Barbara
<br />Jordan, had to keep it hidden, because if people knew she was a lesbian, her career may
<br />have been compromised. A brilliant woman like Barbara Jordan. She stated that when
<br />she was coming along and growing up in Niles, Michigan, she remembered when her
<br />girlfriends in high school got jobs down at Woolworth’s. She wanted a job, so she went
<br />down and took the test, a 100 point test, and she got 98 on it. They did not hire her, she
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