...

Good afternoon, and welcome to this council meeting.

It is Tuesday, May 19th.

And this meeting shall come to order.

Before I call roll, I would like to give instructions on how to submit a speaker card for items on this agenda.

If you are here in person, participating and would like to submit a speaker card, you must fill out a speaker card on the table in the middle of the room and turn it into a clerk representative across from the table, either before the item is read into record or two minutes, two hours after this meeting began that would make that time at 5.33 or submitting um online speaker cards.

They were due 24 hours before this meeting began so though are no longer accepted but again if you are wanting to submit a speaker card for an item on this agenda please fill out a card and turn it into a clerk representative either before the item is called into record or two hours after this it this meeting began whichever comes first with that, I will now call roll on roll for this meeting.

Council member brown.

Present.

Councilmember Fife.

Excused.

Excuse Councilmember Guile.

Councilmember Guile.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Houston.

Excuse.

Okay.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Present.

Councilmember.

Excuse me.

Unger.

My apologies.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Wong.

Present.

And Chair, Council President Jenkins.

Present.

We have six move are present.

Two two excused.

I will now go to our first item, item number three, modifications to the agenda.

Any modifications to agenda?

CNN.

Or is there anything from the administration for modifications to the agenda?

Thank you for that.

I will now go to our um we have no uh item four, we have no uh public hearings at this time, so we will go to item five, which are non-consent items, starting with item 5.1.

I will read this item into record.

It is a resolution commemoratively renaming the plaza, a public right-of-way at the Oakland LGBT Community Center as More Hope Plaza.

I do have three speakers for this item.

Thank you.

Councilmember Brown.

Excellent.

Um, so I'll go ahead and uh speak first and then turn it over to Councilmember Wong.

Um, so um I am beyond uh honored and humbled to be a part of the renaming of the plaza near the Oakland LGBTQ Cultural Center in the heart of the cultural district.

More Hope Plaza.

This renaming honors the lives and legacy of Peggy Moore and Hope Wood.

These two women were trailblazers in the Bay Area through their passion for social justice, advocacy, and community organizing.

Tragically, they were killed in a car accident May 2024, leaving behind uh just a huge loss here in Oakland and beyond.

And so for those of you who don't may not know uh who was Peggy.

Um, but I'm confident that many of you have so many stories to tell about her visionary leadership.

Peggy was someone who worked on both uh the Barack Obama campaign and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns, and also ran for Oakland City Council uh a seat that I currently hold and mentored so many of us finding our way in public service and organizing.

I even had the opportunity to volunteer on one of her campaigns while learning my own path forward.

Peggy was a fierce advocate for marriage equality and worked really work alongside countless community organizations and initiatives across the East Bay in pursuit of social justice.

That same passion and fire is exactly why Peggy and her partner Hope Wood were such a perfect match after meeting in 2008 while working on the Obama campaign.

Hope was someone who also had uh accomplished a lot, um, as well as attending the Harvard Kennedy School, Color of Change and Courage of Courage and the Courage campaign together.

Peggy and Hope created their consulting firm, Hope Action Change, and continued to shape movements and communities throughout the East Bay for many years, and so this tragic, this sudden and tragic loss of Peggy and Hope was deeply felt across the entire city of Oakland and the LGBTQ Plus community as well as BIPOC communities.

So the renaming of this plaza outside the Oakland LGBTQ Cultural Center is more than just a ceremonial recognition, it is a commitment to honoring the legacy of two women who fought tirelessly to create a more equitable and just world.

Morehope Plaza will stand as a lasting reminder that queer history cannot and will not be erased in Oakland.

And then lastly, I do want to thank the leadership uh from the Oakland LGBTQ Cultural Center, Jeff Myers, Joe Hawkins, Brandon Harami, for their partnership and leadership.

In addition, I also want to thank the Department of Transportation team, uh of course, the city attorneys, the Office of Mayor Barbara Lee, and my colleague Council Member Wong, for all of your support and helping bring this vision to life.

And so tears to the newest plaza in Oakland, Moorehoe Plaza.

And so I'll turn it over to Councilmember Wong, who I believe is gonna share a video.

Yes.

Alright, Councilmember Wong.

First of all, I'm just so uh privileged and proud to be the council member that um is not only a queer woman of color but also represents the LGBTQ uh cultural district, um, which is just such an icon, and for uh Peggy Moore and Hope Wood to be celebrated, um, you know, in spite of the horrifying loss of their lives due to this uh due to traffic violence.

Um, but um I'm glad we can we can celebrate.

So this is what I see as a celebration of their lives.

Um I did want to just fill in a few other things that weren't uh noted that um Peggy Moore was also the co-founder of Sisters, Steppin' in Pride.

This was really to celebrate queer women of color in Oakland.

She was the past president of the e-space Stonewall Democratic Club and uh Hope Wood, as well as um Moore.

They were leading organizers against the horribly discriminatory proposition eight that happened in California, and following the striking down of Proposition Eight, um it was uh Peggy and and Hope.

They had a wedding celebration at Lake Merritt, also in District 2.

Um, and it was really such a landmark and public celebration of of marriage equality, and so um they've continued that they just have such a legacy, and I'm so proud to celebrate them.

And I think the other thing is beyond just their resumes and accomplishments.

I also wanted to note um Peggy's her why, why did she do everything that she did in politics and Oakland?

And so I dug into the Peggy Moore archive, so to speak, and I have a video to share.

Um this was an interview, just three-minute clip uh with our favorite uh vlogger, uh Zenny.

Um, we can play the clip.

Who's Peggy Moore?

Where'd you grow up?

Moore, right?

Yeah, so look, I'm more and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Uh I'm the oldest of four.

Uh raised by my mother, stepfather.

My biological father um is in Maryland.

He's now deceased.

And I have about, you know, six siblings on that side.

But raised with my four siblings.

Um, you know, I went grew up in Oklahoma, went to junior college, but I pretty much worked all of my life.

Um left Oklahoma and went to Texas and stayed in Texas for about seven years.

Uh, and then I left Texas and then I discovered California and came out for vacation.

Uh, and then when I came off of vacation, I decided this is the place I wanted to be because I could actually fully express myself.

Be yourself.

Yeah, completely.

And you know, that was, you know, as a young, you know, lesbian coming out.

Not quite sure what all of that meant.

Um, but in San Francisco and Bay Area, I never won't forget uh one of my one of my mentors, her name is Sydney Weinstein and hairdresser in San Francisco, heterosexual woman, just that was, she took me to my first lesbian wedding.

And it was it was it was like one of the first things I knew when I came to town.

That was like 20 plus years ago.

Yeah.

This is before this legal, but it was really just love, right?

Iana, Anna and Ayana.

Never will forget it.

Walked into the room in this young lesbian from Oklahoma, hundred black, women of color.

I was like, where am I?

Oh my god, it must be like this, right?

Did you meet Bish?

No, not there.

I was the oldest.

She's 79.

Wow.

Okay, but I know some.

Yeah, I know some Lesbians.

Yeah.

But I that's another story for another time.

Yeah, definitely.

So it was it was that moment when I I was I felt whole.

I felt like the stereo types of what it was like being gay and lesbian was really just completely different for me.

Because this was like this was a body of women who had children and families and educators and personals and people who were doing their lives and fully engaged, right?

Um and then I left the wedding, I was like, okay, where are they?

Where can I find the people?

And it was that moment where I recognized that so many people in the community really chose not to come out or couldn't come out.

Because of their job or because of the children, or their own personal struggle about being out.

Um, but it was because of that.

I knew that I had to be out, not only for myself, but for those who couldn't come out.

I had to be a voice to say yes, we do have some strong, dynamic, beautiful black lesbians that are.

Uh, thank you.

And I, you know, I wanted to just note too about um Peggy that um even though we didn't cross many paths.

Actually, when I was running in the at-large race as the long shot candidate, lost to of course my colleague here on the dais, but um uh I had met up with Peggy, and uh she had actually offered to to help.

I was like, which is a rare quality in politics where you're helping the long-shot cap candidate, but she said you're a queer woman of color.

I want to help you, and that is the type of person that she was, was always extending the ladder behind her.

So um I just uh yeah, I think I think it's important to also just um note somebody's what what's at their heart.

Not only was she a giant, she had a giant heart.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I think you missed something.

You know where she shot that video at the Lake Shore Cafe, which is now Peach, District Two.

There we go.

Councilmember Houston.

Yes, I like to celebrate Peggy.

Me and Peggy go way back.

Um when she was working in um Home Depot in Emeryville when I was doing construction.

I went in there, met her.

She was a manager, and she embraced me from the jump.

You know, and every time I went in there, she took care of me.

She'd say, Can't go to special order desks, I got you.

I'll get in and out because it was real packed up, so I like to embrace her.

And when she ran for mayor, you know, when I ran for my first seat, she inspired me.

She told me some things.

She came out on my first when I did a tour about um illegal dumping.

I did Councilmember Brown, I did my first tour um through um on that 3.5 mile stretch on San Landro Boulevard, and Peggy came out, she showed up.

She went with me on the tour.

She said, Ken, this is horrendous, right?

So I just want to celebrate Preggy Moore.

Um, I never really told her, you know, how much she met or the things that she did for me to inspire me.

So that means just tell people, you know, just tell people, you know, when you see them.

John, what's up, man?

Just tell them.

I got love for you, right?

Just tell them because you never know when might be tomorrow.

You never know.

So I just want to celebrate Peggy.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Houston.

Council Member Ramatandra.

Thank you.

Um, several years ago, when I was for the first time ever vaguely contemplating running for office, I met Peggy at an LGBTQ political training from Equality California.

And she was one of the first people who gave me advice, real advice on running for office.

And I'll never remember the honesty about which she spoke about what can how campaigning can take a toll on you, your relationship, and thinking through what your values are and whether it's worth it, and it definitely can be.

So as one of the first people ever, specifically LGBTQ women who gave me advice.

I remember her words often to this day.

Um thank you, colleagues, for honoring her today.

Thank you.

I want to thank Council Member Ramachandra.

I mean, Councilmember Brown and Councilmember Wong for bringing this forward.

Had the pleasure of knowing Peggy for quite some time since I was a staffer working for Supervisor Keith Carson, and when she was working for uh Mayor Libby Shaff and Peggy ran a number of campaigns, was really active in the political scene, really active.

Um, and equality and uh cons always always always loved my conversations with Peggy.

She was full of joy, and uh I was very sad when she and Hope tragically lost their lives, but I I don't think of I don't think there's any uh more deserving people to rename this uh after Council Member Wong, or is that later?

All right.

Sorry, I forgot.

I was gonna say something pivoty after that clip, and then I got so sucked in that I forgot what I was gonna say.

Um, but the reason I do love that clip is because it was clear to me in watching it that Peggy was inspired by Oakland, and then Peggy would go on to inspire other Oaklanders, especially LGBTQ Oaklanders.

So uh that's why I thought it was important to share it at this this meeting.

Thanks.

All right, Councilmember Brown, then we'll go to public comment.

Excellent.

Um were we gonna hear from the mayor's office as well?

Councilmember Wong, were you able to confirm on the item?

They will not be saying, so I think we can move to public comment.

Okay, excellent, thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go to public comment.

As I call your name, please approach the podium.

Um, if you're here in person, if you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so I can easily identify you.

As usual, we'll start with those who are here in person in chambers.

Miss Olavala, Jean Hazard, and Isaac Cos Reed.

In any order, please approach the podium for item 5.1.

We got our pract commissioner here.

Thank you for that.

Uh recognition of my service.

But uh, I'm here to recognize Peggy Moore.

Uh such an icon.

When I saw it on the agenda, I thought apart from wanting to speak for Affordable Housing Month, I had to come out and honor her.

Seeing her in Lakeshore Cafe was kind of trippy because that's like where my family, where my boys grew up running into her with my mother-in-law all the time.

Um I knew and loved her uh at the risk of offending a current city staff member, um, who I don't see in the room any longer.

She was the first person I backed against an incumbent.

And I remember her uh uh kickoff celebration party was at Lake Merritt at the pergola where my wife and I started salsa by the lake, and she had us do a little dancing as part of the she had like an Afro-Cuban energy that that she carried forth in her own spirit in politics.

Um, you know, I wanted to say also worked with her as a public affairs professional.

She went into the private sector and she fought for her clients beautifully and in the same way that she fought for the people when she was in the public sector.

So may her memory not just inspire to be uh inspire us to be our best civic selves, but also may it be a reminder of how important safe, responsible driving and roads are to a civil society, I was probably one of the first persons who met Peggy when she came here.

Most folks don't realize, and we would do political strategies, and most folks don't realize she was supposed to run for the assembly, the same seat that Mia Banta has.

But then she decided instead to open up a consulting firm, and that's when she uh was a consultant for Libby Shaft's campaign.

It hurt me because I was ready to hit the ground for assembly race.

And it was sad what happened to her.

I was at Hope's and her wedding at the return.

I mean in the uh atrium, and came over to the place on Broadway for the reception.

But yeah, she had a good heart, good spirit, good person.

Y'all drain my energy when y'all start using that term a woman of color.

This this beautiful black woman was outstanding.

And her blackness should always stay in place.

So in the future, when you're dealing with black women, keep that perspective black in place.

And a woman of color, we are not women of color.

We are strong black women.

And the last thing is there are a lot of us there in this city.

Some of us are not getting out just to, I'm glad this sister is.

But I'm gonna bring up Latanya Simmons again.

And hope someday she will get her due respect in this in this chamber.

Thank you for your comments.

That concludes our public speakers for this item.

Thank you so much.

So we have a motion and a second.

I apologize.

I have a motion by Councilmember Brown.

The second is Wonk.

Um I stated on the record motion by Councilmember Brown, second and by Wong to move item uh to approve item 5.1 on roll, Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember Fife is excuse, Councilmember Gaio.

Aye.

Houston.

I Ramachandran.

Aye.

Onger.

Aye.

Wong.

Aye.

Chair Jenkins.

Aye.

Item 5.1 is approved with seven eyes, one excuse.

That now takes us to item number S5.2.

I will read the item into record.

Item 5.2 is adopt a resolution approving the appointment of an annuity without a 180-day break in service where the appointment is necessary to fill a um critically needed position before 180 days have passed since the employee's retirement in accordance with the government code section one two one two two four and seven five two two point five six.

I have one speaker for this item.

ACA Baker.

Uh thank you.

And through the chair and the council, my name is Chuck Baker, Assistant City Administrator.

We are bringing this item forward uh to retain a retiring employee that is supporting critical and time-sensitive work with the Oakland Army base.

Uh John Manette has been working uh on this particular project exclusively for over 15 years, and so this ensures continuity during his transition into retirement.

While it's administrative in nature, Cowper's regulations require council approval.

And Brendan from our economic and workforce development department will provide additional detail.

Happy to answer any questions.

Good afternoon.

Brendan Moriarty, Director of Real Estate and Special Projects.

Um I'll be very quick with this one.

So John Minuta has uh worked for the city since uh 26 years ago, so 26 years of service here, most of the time working on the Oakland Army-based project.

He's currently a project manager too in the economic and workforce development department.

He is planning to retire as um in the coming days.

Um and we would like to hire him back as a retired annuitant.

It's a temporary part-time position.

It's a strategy we use in the administration when we need specialized skills performing work of a limited duration.

Um, it would be no more than fifth uh part-time, 50% uh full-time equivalent.

Um, so he would be supporting on uh helping to ensure that we meet our obligations under a quarter billion dollar state grant, um, ensuring that we're compliant with environmental regulations, ensuring continuity in real estate negotiations, such as for the Costco uh project, coordinating with agencies around a variety of complex projects, and then training other staff so that we can continue the work in the in the long term.

And and as um assistant city administrator Baker said, Calper's regulation simply requires an act um non-consent um to approve uh continuation of that service after retirement without a break.

So that's why we're here um to ensure uh no um um loss in continuity of operations here.

So that is it.

Available answer questions and uh thank you much very much for the time.

Thank you.

We wish him well in retirement.

Councilmember Houston uh turn your uh mic on councilmember guide will turn your mic on now test two one two yeah thank you uh I've known uh Mr.

Maneta for many many years certainly have known his work appreciated the work that is contributed to this uh city of Oakland uh and with that I'll make a motion to approve uh staff's recommendation thank you um I was gonna make a motion this passed unanimously out of the committee I chair finance and um I will second the motion thank you and do the chair I'd like to just share something with the staff I met John Manetta 24 years ago uh we worked together he saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars when they had they were gonna be fined like $10,000 a day with the EPA and um that's what I have first started of as a um community based organization helping out the justice impact in unhouse and he actually hired us to actually do the swep and and and he saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars and worked it out of that um that violations that they had with the EPA so he's a competent person I'm sad to lose him he's uh I love some Johnetta right so uh if he's listening John um I'm glad to keep you here and um keep doing the great work EAP is so part of your uh lexicon you can't stop saying it submit EPA yeah I was thinking about the AP yeah is they the same one so EPA thank you let's go to the public speakers Mr.

Sada Olabala like I said in finance committee I have no problem with this gentleman continuing his work I do have a tremendous problem with anything going on at the army base oakland army base is heavily contaminated with toxic substances including lead arsenic petroleum projects asbestos and other solvents these pollutants remain in the soil and remain in the groundwater causing significant environmental and public health concerns for the surrounding West Oakland community the site has required extensive remediation with remediation failures throughout with high levels of contamination still in place deem they it has been deemed that the parts of the site are too costly to develop for residential commercial or temporary shelter use but you ignoring that and you you do this a lot you ignore the best interests of health and safety to do things that are going to be financial beneficial in this city so the the man okay anything going on at West Oakland Army base is inappropriate and not safe thank you misses that conclude the public speakers that concludes our public speakers okay there was a motion by council member guy seconded by council member Ramachandron to approve item s point five s 5.2 on that um parole council member brown aye council member five is excused council member guy houston aye Ramachandron aye onger aye wong aye and chair gink item number s 5.2 is approved with seven eyes one excuse five that now takes us to item s 5.3 I will read the ordinance into record adopt an ordinance authorizing the borrowing of funds and the issuance and sale of the 2026 27 tax revenue anticipation notes in principal amount not to exceed 200 million dollars payable from revenues received for it accrue to the general fund of the city during the fiscal year 26 to 27 in approving a certain related matters I do have one speaker for this item all right good afternoon uh president Jenkins and council members um david jones with the treasury bureau uh before you this afternoon is the first reading of the ordinance providing for the borrowing of funds and the issuance and sale of the 26 27 notes payable from revenues received during the 2627 fiscal year in an amount not to exceed 200 million dollars uh the note will mature in less than 15 months and the city has done this successfully um over the years if you will uh the funds will be used to finance the temporary cash flow needs basically arising from fluctuations in monthly and tax receipts as well as including a prepayment of the city of uh oakland unfunded accrued liability uh which allows for the city to garner a 3.34 percent discount from CalPERS um the ordinance only approves for the borrowing of funds and we will be coming back next month for the second reading of this ordinance as well as a resolution approving the documents for the for the transaction and I'm available for any questions that you may have thank you see no question oh council member thank you just another statement this passed out of finance committee unanimously and I'm happy to make a motion got a motion and then council member guy you want to turn your mic on yeah I mean I he's going off there you go that's all again all right anyway so is this an ongoing practice every year where we do this type of borrowing that is correct that is correct and uh so when do we make we borrow the money when do we repay the money and approximately 15 months it basically is just to smooth out the fluctuations in your revenues throughout the course of the of the um of the fiscal year and this money will specifically the 2000 be used for what service your general fund you know operations essentially for the general fund yes that's operation not a specific activity or service no no just operations as well as potentially uh prefunding your CalPERS accrued liability contribution which would allow for us to receive a discount from uh from Cal Purst thank you all I'll second the motion thank you all right this goes to the public speakers Ms.

I found it interesting during the discussion period of this item in finance that nobody brought up that the arrangements are that the money would be repaid within one year not only be repaid using expected future revenue such as fees grants or taxes so it sounds like you might be looking for measure e money that's future money to be the source of how you repay this and now we're talking about measure e is strongly gonna fail thank God vote no on measure e please everybody uh but that was never discussed fiscally that should have been a point of clarification we have to pay this back in one year you brought it up Mr.

Gallo it wasn't brought up in committee and the actual identification of how we will pay this back in one year and the last question should have been if we don't pay it back in what year what are the consequences for not paying it back in one year do we have to give a council member up or what what is the consequences and a second.

There was a motion by council member Ramachandra and seconded by councilmember Gaio to approve this ordinance on introduction.

Council member brown.

Aye.

Council member Fife is excused.

Council member Gaio.

Aye.

Council member heuston.

Aye.

Council member Ramachandran.

Aye.

Council member unger aye council member wong.

Aye.

Chair Jenkins.

Motion passes with a vote of seven ayes.

One excused.

Councilmember Fife.

Moving to your consent calendar, which includes all of item six.

Starting with item six point one, approval of the draft minutes from the meeting of May 5th, 2026.

Item 6.2, a declaration of a local emergency due to the AIDS epidemic.

Item 6.3, a resolution renewing the declaration of medical cannabis health emergency.

Item 6.4, a declaration of a local emergency due to homelessness.

Item 6.5 is an ordinance for the easement at 260 Oak Street.

Item 6.6, an ordinance for adoption of a federally compliant flood plan.

Item 6.7 a re a resolution for SB 1313 for public water systems grant loans related to PFAS.

Item 6.8 a resolution for AB 1821 for the California Public Records Act.

Item 6.9 a resolution for SB 1314 for smoke shops.

Locations, hours of operation, and sale of nitrous oxide.

Item 6.10, a resolution for assembly bill 1738.

Item 6.11, a resolution for SB 1230, strengthening illegal dumping enforcement.12, a resolution in support of assembly bill 2310 for illegal dumping liability and enforcement.

Item 6.14, a resolution for AB 2351.

Item 6.15, a resolution celebration of May 2026 as Affordable Housing Month.

Item 6.16.

A resolution for support of assembly bill 1837.

Video imaging of parking of violations on public transit vehicles.

Item 6.17.

A resolution authorizing reimbursement reimbursement for council member Cobb.

Item 6.18, a resolution for Gary Pate, Gary Payton commemorative street renaming.

Item 6.19, a resolution for settlement for Madison Clark versus the City of Oakland.

Item 6.20, a resolution for national prescription opiate opiate.

A resolution for appointments of the commission on persons with disabilities.23, a resolution for fiscal year 26 to 27.

Landscaping and lighting assessment district.

Item 6.24, a resolution for HSIP 9, rectangular rapid flashing beacon project, construction contracts award.

Item 6.25.

A resolution for cooperative agreements for purchasing electrical equipment and accessories with Gay Bar Electric Company.

Item 6.26, a resolution regarding the illegal dumping expenditure plan.

Item 6.27, a resolution for Caltrans Community Cleanup and Employment Pathway Grant.

Item 6.28, a resolution for digital lift digital literacy training for older adults.

Item 6.29, a resolution for path sided program, acceptance of intergovernmental transfer award.

Item 6.30, a resolution for OFCY 24 through 25.

Final year in independent annual evaluation.

Item 6.31, a resolution for ceasefire lifeline contracts.

Item 6.32, a resolution for purchasing agreement with Bauer Compressors, and your final item 6.33, a resolution for purchase agreement with Ellen Curtis and Sun, and I believe staff has some amendments to item 6.6.

Hi, good afternoon.

Councilmember Jenkins, a member of the council.

Chief Building Official Cecilia Moila, I wanted to bring forth item 6.6 as the adoption of this floodplain ordinance as an emergency ordinance pursuant to city charter section 213.

Um it's necessary for the immediate preservation of public peace, health, and safety because failure to adopt FEMA compliant floodplain management regulations by May 25th would result in suspension of the City of Oakland's uh good standing with the national flood insurance program or the NFIP, thereby jeopardizing the availability of federal funding uh for our constituents and the eligibility for certain forms of federal disaster uh assistance in the event of a natural disaster or other flood-related events.

So immediate adoption is further necessary to ensure continued implementation of the updated floodplain management standards that protect life property and public infrastructure from flood hazards, and we would like to amend uh the ordinance to include this statement.

Um it's also important to know that uh the flood floodplain ordinance did pass with a four-zero vote at public works committee and a 7-1 vote at council's first reading.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will also include an amendment to the ordinance with findings.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any more through the chair.

If I could, I'd also ask the council to include in their approval of the consent calendar to continue item 6.5 to the June 2nd council meeting, which is the council meeting immediately following this meeting.

So the motion should include that we're going to continue item 6.5 to the following meeting and the amendments that staff read, correct?

All right, all right, no comments from my colleagues, then we'll go to public comment.

As I call your name, please approach the podium in any order.

As with practice, persons in chambers will be taken first.

Those on Zoom will be taken immediately after.

And please raise your hand on zoom so I can easily identify you, and those in chambers, please state your name and steps to the podium in any order.

Kevin Daly, Carla Guerrera, Dwayne Nelson, John Jones the third, Arthur Shanks, Mrs.

Ada Olabala.

Have you with multiple items for the maximum amount of time?

Mr.

Hazard, I have you with multiple items for the maximum amount of time.

Jason Dixon, Isaac Coss Reed, Annie Elaine Leadberry, Nima Link, Cecilia Wynne, Renee Hayes, Jesse Williams, in any order.

And again, if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand so I can easily identify you.

Hello.

Is this thing on?

I'm I'm speaking on the consent calendar today.

There are many items on the consent calendar, but before I speak on the particulars, there's some statistics that the council should know about days.

So there are 52 weeks in a given year, and 20 of those weeks approximately are council weeks.

Which means that there's about a 38% chance that any given week will be a council week.

Now there are 365 days in a year.

And there is a 1 in 7 chance that that day will be a Tuesday.

And there's a 1 in 365% chance that that will be a birthday.

So if we combine all of these statistics together, that there's a 14% chance that any birthday will be on a Tuesday, and a 38% chance that that Tuesday will happen to be a council day, multiplied by the point.

You can extend the time.

Thank you.

So I think it's important for the council to know that information on the consent calendar.

Today is Councilmember Rowena Brown's birthday.

Happy birthday.

Council member.

And I know she keeps it a secret, so she might be mad at me for doing this, but I have lit you a candle, which is Palo Santo.

So I don't know if you can blow this out from there.

You want to try?

Happy birthday, Councilmember.

Thank you, Nima.

Hello, Council, Lord Council members.

I'm here speaking on item 6.18 of the renaming of uh the commemorative plaque for Gary Payton.

Um I grew up in East Oakland.

Um I was able to spend some time with his father, Gary Payton Sr.

Um, he knew I wasn't much of a basketball player, so he mentored me off the court, right?

And Gary Payton is carrying on that legacy.

Um he expressed to me how he wants to revitalize uh basketball courts uh that aren't as attractive in Oakland, and it's uh it's just good that we uplifting uh community members that has poured into the community.

Um so thank you uh the to the Peyton family and uh council member uh no um uh it's just real important that um we uplift our community members um uh so yes, thank you to the the Peyton family.

Um, Jason Dixon, uh Zarek Payton, uh Brandon Payton, and the whole Peyton family.

Thank you.

Before you go, can you give me your name?

Arthur Shanks.

Okay, hey.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, how y'all doing?

How y'all doing?

Good afternoon.

My name is Cecilia W.

And I am here as a Hope and Justice Committee member with St.

Mary Center.

I am proud to be a member also with the East Bay Housing Associations.

East Bay Housing is a member-driven organization, convening and diverse coalition that advocates to produce, preserve, and protect affordability housing opportunities for low-income communities in the East Bay.

Our membership of over 400 individuals and organizations include groups, faith, institutions, and residents of affordable housing across Alameda and Counter Costa counties.

Thank you, Oakland City Council, for recognizing affordable housing month and affirming your commitment to affordability housing.

Good afternoon, good afternoon.

And Renee Hayes, also with St.

Mary's.

Community celebrations, days of action, panel discussions, housing workshops, community trainings, and more.

There are also grand openings and groundbreakings of new affordable housing communities that showcase and celebrate what is possible when community members, nonprofits, and local governments come together.

You can view a vis a list of events at ABPO.org/slash events.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jesse Williams.

I'm also representing St.

Mary's Center here in Oakland.

The goal of Affordable Housing Month is to lift and up and up the center, lift up the center of those and center of those affected by housing crisis.

This month, we call attention to the housing affordability crisis, lift up solutions, celebrate our achievements, invite all community members to join us in our movement.

As we continue this work, we are reminded that real change only happens when communities come together to prevent and advocate for one another.

We can keep each other safe and housed, but only if we work together and remain committed to a vision of a racially and economically just East Bay, where everyone has access to safe, stable, and affordable housing.

On behalf of St.

Mary's Center and East Bay Housing Organization, I thank you very much for this honor, and we hope to see you soon at one.

Hello.

And I'm with the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation.

Thank you so much to City Council for your support and leading a strong affordable housing culture here in Oakland.

Thank you so much to HCD staff and OHA staff for their hard work in collaborating with Abalty this year.

We've been able to work on four affordable housing new construction projects with the city this year.

That includes Sun Lake at the Phoenix, Clara E.

Chan residence at Chinatown Bart, and 34th and San Pablo apartments.

Avalzi is proud to be an anchor partner on meeting the affordable housing needs of Oaklanders for the last 50 years and is excited to be leading 15% of Oakland's current construction and pre-development in the pipeline.

Thank you so much to all of our partners and all of the residents helping to advocate for affordable housing and stability.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon.

For the record, John Jones III here to speak in support of item 6.18.

Before I speak, I just want to do a moment, a quick moment of silence for all the loved ones and family members who was impacted by the horrible tragedy on Eddie Fifth.

And on behalf of my family, I want to just give a special shout out to OG Frog from Eddie Fifth.

My uncle OG Ben is from Eddy Fifth.

And when my uncle passed away a couple months ago, Frog came to the funeral and spoke on his behalf.

East Oakland is hurting right now, so I just want to ask all of us to really focus prayers of healing and mercy for our community.

And with that being said, this commemoration for Gary Payton.

I love the fact that it's occurring on the same birthday as El Hajman Ligel Shabbaz, aka Malcolm X.

I see Davis referred to Malcolm X as our Prince, a shining black prince.

And I think so were those words are also can and most certainly apply to the one.

Um, thank you for bringing this resolution forward and recognizing this important moment.

And more importantly, thank you to all of the council for investing in affordable housing and good policies that are driving down costs, cost of homeownership is down in Oakland.

I know that's not good news for everybody, but it is certainly good news for affordability.

And also, I can't believe we made it this far in the meeting without noting the huge success that was realized today of a 20% reduction in the point account for homelessness in the city.

So kudos to staff for um all their work, Emily Weinstein and her team.

They've truly been delivering on the promise of affordable housing in this city.

I'm lucky enough to work with Ebaltsey uh that spoke earlier.

Um, and we'd like to reiterate our invitation to their groundbreaking and night market next Friday at the 34th in San Pablo project.

It's gonna be beautiful.

Hope to see you there.

Ums Brown, you are so blessed to be born on Malcolm's birthday as well as the fact that you've been gifted with so many talented.

Happy birthday, Malcolm.

Okay, so I would hope at some point staff would be instructed related to items 6.6.

You have to do something about bringing items for which they are time constraints that you have to immediately move on something.

Make sure that staff is instructed to do everything in a timely manner.

That tree notice of violation took three years for them to give a notice of violation.

Uh item six uh six point one nine, the lawsuit, department of transportation.

I keep asking you when are you going to bring a discussion to the table about the number of lawsuits that are being in court relating to the Department of Transportation, mostly around potholes.

We have to have that discussion and stop these lawsuits.

Uh item 6.25, cooperative agreement.

Do y'all understand this is a cooperative agreement from the city of Kansas City, Missouri?

What does that mean, council members?

You're gonna approve it, rubber stamp it.

Do you understand what that means?

A cooperative agreement.

S6.26 illegal dumping plan.

Like I said in committee, we have a culture of disrespect related to illegal dumping going on.

That culture has to change and it won't change anytime soon.

All of these initiatives we're gonna be being repeating, picking up trash, because people do not respect the cleanliness of this city.

Item 6.27 grant for youth employment.

We got 2.1 million dollars for our youth employment summer program to be expanded past the summer.

But we got these young people picking up litter, cleaning up uh graffiti and abatement.

We got to find better ways to have our children engaged.

We have a lot of children, a lot of problems with our youth, and we got to give them some opportunities to have activities of substance.

6.28, the literacy training for older adults, uh, our senior centers all open up, Mr.

Houston.

They all open now.

Good.

Uh 6.29.

Uh nonprofits.

Uh that is that is an item involving nonprofits, the Lau family and the Spanish-speaking unity council is getting rich off of the city of Oakland.

You give them too much money.

6.31 ceasefire life strategy.

I have asked you and over and over, present the data of effectiveness of ceasefire.

Have not seen it.

That's the last one.

My name is Dwayne Nelson.

District 3 West Oakland resident, proud supporter of the Arsenal Football Club, presumptive champions of the English Premier League for the first time in 23 years.

I rise in opposition to uh item 6.26, the 1.1 million dollar spend on the uh legal dumping.

Uh, the mayor, last night, council member wong, uh, talked about how the budget reflects our values and commitment to transparency, but I don't feel like we're getting that from public works here.

Now you're about to bypass the procurement process, but we don't have any KPIs.

What's going on with that?

Why are you gonna allow them to do that?

And also, they said they're ready to execute right away.

If they're ready to execute right away, why do we have to wait a year before we get a report?

I don't understand why this council isn't exercising their oversight.

I don't think the urgency is about spending the money, it's out on those streets, the same streets that you're on Monday through Sunday picking up trash.

I want to see urgency around the outcome here, not on spending the money.

You need more frequent reporting, and you need to see those KPIs.

You thank you one second.

I need a council member to come to the dais.

I need one council member to come to the dais.

So we do not have a quorum.

We need to wait.

We cannot continue this meeting.

Oh, there we go.

No, he finished.

He finished.

Thank you.

If your name was called and you wish to speak, please approach the podium.

Good evening.

Uh, much respect to the president.

And uh, I've been in communication with item 61.18 with uh Mr.

Noel and uh Rosa and uh just appreciate the council creating this platform for us to speak weekly, and cheers to everybody here out of all the places we can be.

We're here uh trying to make Oakland a better place.

But um Oakland has a lot to be proud of too.

Uh specifically this item I'm speaking on, but we're doing a lot of good things in Oakland, it's not just things we need to fix.

So I just wanted to say that.

But yeah, cheers to everyone here.

Let's make sure we keep appreciating uh the things we're doing good and the things we can work on as well.

But uh yeah, I'm here um speaking on behalf of um Gary Payton.

I appreciate the city council, the mayor's office, everybody involved, Mr.

Jones, Mr.

R.

Shanks, and uh appreciate all your time, your effort.

And uh we're basically here to uh, as they already spoke, and considering honoring Gary Payton, the legend, Gary Payton, the glove, with the street naming.

This means a lot personally to me because the Peyton family helped shape my life.

Gary's uh father helped guide me at a young age when I uh became a father at an early age.

He uh he helped me and uh I passed on a blessing to the community.

Like he uh helped me uh coach me in basketball and uh helped me through mentorship and discipline in the community and uh with my time is that can you give me your name, please?

Thank you all right.

I'm getting tired of this council and you, Mr.

Dickens violating the rules.

This is the transcript from April 14th, 2026, on the protected tree ordinance, and I got it on May 5th.

I handed out to you the following look at it, Guile.

I tried to tell you don't do a motion for uh reconsideration at that May 5th meeting, but you want to rush back in here and listen to the lies from the city attorney.

April 14th, that matter died.

Casa didn't have President Jenkins, a majority vote.

The mayor refused to break the tie.

Let me tell you what the legal opinion of two previous city attorneys.

The core legal consensus under both John Russo, City Attorney, 2000 to 2011, and Barbara Parker, 2011 to 233.

It's dictated by the Oakland City Charter, the definitive legal posture on what happens during a tie vote when the mayor declines to break its uh break it.

Core legal mechanism.

If the mayor declines, the item fails under both Russo and Barbara Parker.

The legal opinions of the city attorney have consistently maintained a bedrock principle of municipal law.

Get it.

And uh parliamentarian want to listen because you have to clarify what I'm saying.

A tie vote means there's no majority of permanent vote.

Therefore, the motion legislation fails.

Russo's opinion reinforced that with council members split evenly.

The item is effectively frozen without a majority.

If the mayor does not step in to provide the fifth vote, the item cannot legally pass.

So what you did, and there's no such thing for your edification, Mr.

Guile.

There's no such thing as a motion for reconsideration.

But you with the city attorney said to you, I tried to warn you in the bathroom, and I was going to out you when you got in here.

It's illegal.

So how do you correct it?

You got a cue and correct under the law.

Government code 54954 prohibits motion for reconsideration without agenda.

You didn't even agendize May 5th.

It has to be agendized.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

Well, can you address it in open forum?

Mr.

Hazard.

Can you address it in open forum, please?

In open forum.

Your time is up.

You can now move this minute.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Thank you, Mr.

City Clerk has no idea.

Mr.

Hazard.

You're violent.

You're violating the Brown Act, or Mr.

Bayer.

You're violating the Brown Act.

You're violating the Brown Act, Mr.

Hazard.

Mr.

Hazard, open forum.

Mr.

Parliament chairs.

Mr.

Hazard.

You can not approve the minute in his passage.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

You'd be back for open forum.

That's okay.

Okay.

Kevin Daly, are you in the chair?

Don't vote for James.

In the chamber.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

The Zoom speaker, Miss Guerrera.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

I have you with one card for item 6.15.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council members.

My name is Carla Guerra.

I am the policy and advocacy senior manager at the Unity Council, and I'm speaking in support of IM 615, Affordable Housing Month.

On behalf of the Unity Council, we wish Council Member Brown a happy birthday.

And we also want to thank you all for bringing forward this resolution for acknowledging the collective work happening across Oakland to build, protect, and preserve affordable housing.

This Fest Friday, we celebrated the exciting groundbreaking of 2700 International Boulevard development that's uh very beautiful and it's 75 units.

Uh multifamily affordable housing uh development with 22 units set aside for formerly homeless veterans.

This was only possible because of measure you funds and your support across our portfolio.

The Unity Council currently has 408 affordable units under management, 589 units built and preserved and 607 units in the pipeline.

We look forward to many more years of building affordable homes together.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, Kevin Daly.

I do not see him in the chamber or on Zoom.

That was your last speaker.

I'll entertain a motion.

Excellent.

Um, thank you so much.

If you would like Council President Jenkins, if you want to put time on the clock, because I'm going to be speaking to a number of the uh items.

So to start off with the items that we are supporting from our state legislators, um SB 1314 for the smoke shops, um, both of the legislation around illegal dumping, as well as the affordable housing bond, which is SB 417, um, also assemblymember Bonta's AB 2351 around the shelter bedrancy act.

We know that this is super important to ensure accountability and also that there's data to help address um homelessness in our city and getting and getting the accurate data.

Um I do want to shout out the recent results of the point in time count where the city of Oakland showed a 20% reduction in homelessness.

Um, and I think that that is absolutely um amazing.

Um, earlier uh before the council meeting, I had the opportunity to connect with um a handful of our community organizations that are supporting uh the work of building more affordable housing, as well as our amazing city staff from HCD uh during uh affordable housing month.

And so, as the chair of community and economic development, uh it is um the tradition to ensure that we are recognizing May as Affordable Housing Month.

We know that this is so crucial, giving all given all of the federal cuts that are taking place um in social services, rental assistance, grants to support with affordable housing.

Um I did want to just shout out that at the next CED meeting on May the 26th, we will uh have a handful of items coming um to uh report back on the City of Oakland's annual regional housing needs allocation, receiving different uh various data as well as a report from the Oakland Housing Authority as well.

And so I just wanted to give a huge shout out to all the organizations and community members and all of the great work of so many of our providers working to build more affordable housing in our city.

And then lastly, I did want to thank city staff uh as well as my council colleagues that were on the council budget committee uh for the allocations to help support the illegal dumping expenditure action plan, and we know that these investments will definitely help uh mitigate the impacts of illegal dumping in our communities, and so that's item 6.26, um, all of which um I'm a hundred percent in in support of, and so I'll make that motion to move the consent calendar as amended as amended, all right.

Councilmember Houston.

Through the chair before council member Houston begins, just including that that amendment includes this item 6.5 continue to the next council meeting, which I believe is June 2nd and item 6.6 as amended in an emergency ordinance.

Councilmember Houston, then Councilmember Geiger.

Um, through the chair, I really don't know where to start.

So a bunch of things that I like to address on here.

I want to just piggyback on my council member Brown's agree with what she's saying.

Um a tragedy happened in my district um on 85th.

Um, it's tragic.

It's tragic.

Um individuals ran down, it's still under investigation.

I'd like to um close this meeting, mentioning the deceased and the ones that were injured.

And it's maybe a couple that I won't say because I'm not sure if their family knows the condition.

But Robert Dixon called him frog.

He was from 85th.

And I got a call at one, 123 on Sunday, May the 17th in the morning.

And they said, Ken, where are you?

And I went out there and it was just tragic, right?

And I thought it was the frog from 11.5.

You know, it's two frogs.

There's one from 11.5 and there's one from 85th.

And I thought it was that one, but it wasn't.

But this is just a tragic situation.

So I wanted to end the meeting with saying the individuals that were deceased.

Maybe this might be more appropriate for item number seven, right?

When we have announcements and adjournments.

Yes.

Yes.

So I wanted to talk about some other things.

Okay.

But I'll bring that up.

I'll bring that on under seven.

I wanted to talk about on the street warming, or it's really the flashing beacon on S6.24.

Um, when you think about it, since 117, 2020, Misha Singleton was um ran over on 98th.

And then um 517 2023, you had Carlos ran over on 98th.

This is all in my district.

My district's been suffering, right?

And I just I appreciate all my council members understanding what's happening in my district to embrace it.

And then on uh 4.1, um, Lewis was ran over.

I wanted to mention Misha.

She was she was killed.

She had seven kids on 98th.

Yeah.

So this is somebody that I um, that I knew personally that I did work with in the community at Stonehurst Elementary School, right, with the legal dumping.

She was a straight advocate, and she left behind seven children.

My community has been suffering, right?

And then at one o'clock, these individuals was ran down.

It's a lot more to it, but I just want to tell everybody that's out here that's listening, let's just wait until the investigation is over before we make some um some moves or some decisions on what we're gonna do because this can be very, very dangerous in a critical situation with the things that are happening.

But what I'm saying is just wait.

Just wait until the police do what they have to do to investigate.

Um, and on the illegal dumping pieces like 6.11, 6.12 that my colleague was talking about.

Um, these these issues, and I'm gonna say it again.

My community's been suffering, right?

These some of these penalties is too light.

I'm gonna go with it, and I endorsed them, right?

I'm gonna go with them, but some of these penalties is $500, $1,000.

They've been dumping hazardous contaminated materials in my community for decades, right?

People need to be prosecuted.

People need to go to jail, right?

Because it's been happening to my people.

My mother's black, my father's Latino.

I touch both worlds, and that's I touched both worlds, and they've been impacted on a whole nother level.

District 7.

Councilmember Wayne, impacted on levels where they drop off obestus, things that the dump won't take.

So think about this.

Things that the dump won't take, that it would take a special permit to go, dump it, they dump it in my community where my seniors and my babies are.

Let me tell you something.

People better be glad I'm a council member because what it's doing is it's pulling me back from how I would really act.

Because I gotta behave myself a lot a lot more.

So let me say this.

These people that are dumping on my community, the support, the new DA, the DA that's in place, because she's gonna prosecute.

She's gonna prosecute, right?

And what we need to do was some money put to the side through the budget, because I only had three small things that I wanted in my budget.

It was about public safety, homelessness, and um the EEOs.

The EEOs are the individuals that actually collect the the data, collect the dish, right?

They need to be safe too.

And if you don't have the right information and they don't collect the right data, how can you prosecute these fools that's dumping in my community?

So my thing is this that money that was put to the side in the last budget, and I know council member Brown heard because she had mentioned something about it.

I want to find out how our EEOs are going to be trained to collect the data.

Say, for instance, somebody go to the block and they shoot, right?

They're not just gonna sweep up the bullets, they're gonna collect them, right?

So what we're doing is we just collect, we just cleaning up trash that's dumped in our community instead of logging it in so we can prosecute these fools that's dumping in my community.

Because my community's fed up.

People ready to stand up on a whole nother level because they ain't gonna keep doing this now that I'm elected.

My fat I'm from a different fabric.

People don't understand where what what trickles through my bloodline, right?

So I'm from a different fabric, and I'm tired of my babies and my community being dumped on.

So these things, these fines is way too light.

But I supported it because we gotta start somewhere.

But what here's my last point.

We need to stop clean up, clean up, clean up, clean up, cleanup is not working.

It has not worked, it has not worked.

Councilmember Guile goes out every day, every week on cleaning up, which should be applauded.

But we're not a cleanup service.

We need to deter this problem and prosecute these fools that's dumping in my community.

Or we're gonna have to do something else to these fools.

And let me say this to you it's not only a public health and safety issue on the people that have to clean it up, other people have to live amongst it.

It's another public health and safety issue for the people that report it because this individuals that reported it that they got guns pulled on them, pull a gun on me.

I shoot back.

Um, council member, I think you've exceeded your time.

Did you want to add wrap up?

Okay, all right.

You want to right?

You want to wrap it up?

To say that uh I'm I'm gonna support these these things, but we're being a little bit too soft.

We need to be harder because it's a it's proof.

I've been in this game for 20 something years, and it has not changed but got worse.

So we must do something different, President.

That's all I'm saying.

Thank you.

Is that a second?

All right.

So we have a oh council member.

Thank you.

You know, council member Houston brought up a good point on item um S 6.26, which I support, and I'm really glad that we're going to have a thoughtful expenditure plan moving forward, but I do want to uplift what he said about the positions that were put in in the past budget.

So when we're thinking about expenditure, what about the environmental environment officers that we put in there?

What about I'm looking at the budget amendments right now?

Unfreeze two EEOs for illegal dumping enforcement, um, add funds for technology improvements to a desk illegal dumping, eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

OM for environmental officer training, um, OM for environmental crime data collection, public information officer, Oakland Proud illegal dumping education campaign, unfreeze a painter for graffiti abatement.

These are things that are budgeted.

So we think about expenditures, where if if these positions haven't been hired, where is that money?

And so I hope that they're going if they're not going to these positions but haven't which haven't been hired that they're going somewhere related to illegal dumping, but as we think about dumping illegal dumping expenditures, I would like to understand, not today, because it's not a this is not here, but where's the money that's already been expended that we've already put in the budget around these matters?

And I I'm grateful to Councilman Brown and Houston for uplifting what we put in the budget, but we only have the power to put items in the budget, not control what happens to it once it once it's there.

So I I know that there's they're thoughtful leaders in all of these departments, and I want to I wish I I hope that there's more transparency moving forward.

Councilmember Gaio.

Turn this mic on.

Am I on testing one, two, three?

All right, thank you.

Uh thank you for that information.

Uh I'm not gonna get into the illegal dumping right now, but but if you have a recommendation, I can give you one that but you know you gotta understand.

Okay, San Leandro.

City next door, they're allowed to go once a month to waste management and dump their trash, like other cities do.

Why can't Oakland do that?

Why?

And I've been recommending we do that, right?

As opposed to going down to to the uh public works yard, having people stand there over time whole day waiting for people to come drump their trash, then they gotta take it a waste management.

But San Leandro, I was there Saturday unloading our trucks, long line of cars, and I could say, where are they from?

Oh, they're all from San Leandro bringing their trash and unloading it free.

And why can't Oakland do the same thing?

You know, members of the council, come on, let's why can't we do that here as they do in other cities?

But I want to take take my two minutes and recognize Gary Payton uh as we celebrate and not only his contributions, but for those of you that don't, I see a lot of young people that don't know Oakland in the past.

Oakland at one time was the fifth largest market in the country for recruiting professional athletes, the fifth largest market in the country for recruiting professional athletes from basketball, football, baseball, and so forth.

And uh you would see them at our high schools a lot recruiting uh a lot of our youngsters that were graduating from Oakland High, Fremont, McClyman's, and so forth.

As an example, you have Marshawn Lynch, uh Gary Payton, uh Damian uh Lillard is still playing, Ricky Henderson, Jason Kidd, you're still coaching, you know, Brian Shaw, Bill Russell, uh Paul Pierce, um Dave Stewart that I played baseball with in high school, uh Hall of Famer, uh Kurt Floyd, and many others that came out of Oakland, and I just want to thank the family.

Uh Gary Payton Jr.

is playing for the Golden State Warriors still, and I'm sure he'll be present in our dedication with some other uh warrior athletes.

But I want to publicly thank Gary Payton for his con contribution.

I know there's a couple of schools in East Oakland where he's contributed to the basketball court.

Uh he came out of Jefferson Elementary School, his mother taught her Jefferson Elementary School.

And uh, but uh on June 18th, for those of you that are interested in joining us, please come out and celebrate and recognize his contribution, because not only you know our schools in in East Oakland, but there's other elementary schools where um the Golden State Warriors, Jason Kidd and many others have contributed for his development.

But I want to thank the family uh of Gary Payton for joining us, and certainly it's an honor to recognize uh his leadership contributions, and um I've already received uh from Dave Stewart and other professional athletes that want to join you, and uh it's an honor to have you and thank you so much.

And um and I'll second the motion on the items.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Gaio.

Um councilmember oh, you already seconded Council Member Houston already second.

Councilmember Wong.

Since we're all weighing in here, um, I just wanted to talk about that.

I I think in the upcoming budget process, we have an opportunity.

I I think we need um at least one full-time OPD officer that's dedicated to illegal dumping and graffiti vandalism.

I've been engaged in this uphill battle with our city staff on to get to have somebody to give a crap about the graffiti problem.

So this is related to item 6.12, right?

Absolutely.

Yes, it is.

So um, but uh yeah, I just and the other thing that was noted in the auditor's report, right?

Is that when their team had notified OPD, nobody actually bothered to file, you know, actually investigate the crime of an of illegal dumping.

So we need to dedicate some resources, and on top of that, the other problem is the DA then even take up the case.

So we have multiple issues to solve, but we I think as a body need to start really be unified in pressuring both the DA and our own police department to make some changes because it's these quality of life crimes that continue to contribute to the fact that people do not feel safe and they do not feel like it's a clean city, and like we don't have basic pride in the city of Oakland when we allow this to happen.

Thank you, Councilmember.

So we have a motion and second.

I believe that's going on in Houston.

Yes, we have a motion by Councilmember Brown, second by council member Houston to approve the consent calendar, which also includes continuing item 6.5 to the next council meeting of June 2nd, and with item 6.6 as amended and as an emergency ordinance.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember Fife is excused, Councilmember Guyo.

Aye.

Council Member Houston.

Aye.

Council Member Ramachandran.

Aye.

Councilmember Unger.

Aye.

Council Member Wong.

Aye.

And Chair Jenkins.

Aye.

Motion passes with a vote of seven ayes.

That concludes all your action items.

Moving to item seven, which is council acknowledgements and announcements.

Yes.

Uh so in addition to uh the victims that tragically lost their lives on 85th Avenue this weekend when I joined this meeting in memory of Wilson Rowles Jr., um former council member uh who departed and former police commissioner who did uh wonderful work for the city of Oakland while he was here.

Uh I also want to say happy birthday to Kevin Garnett, Malcolm X, and my council member, Councilmember Brown.

Thank you.

Um happy birthday, Councilmember Brown.

Happy AAPI Heritage Month, happy women's health month.

Um and I, in addition to all of the names mentioned, I wanted to also adjourn in the memory of Christopher Buckley, who just succumbed to a battle with cancer.

He's a former arborist for the city of Oakland who spent his time um really committing to the cause of supporting and uplifting Oakland trees, including um for many years after he retired.

Um he continued to work tirelessly to beautify the city of Oakland and balance it with historic preservation, public green space, and the importance of well-maintained street trees.

He personally donated and planted and cared with his own hands for thousands of Oakland trees.

Um, and yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Houston.

So through the chair, I want to say happy birthday, Councilmember Brown, happy birthday.

Um, and in the memories and of the injured, the deceased and the injured, um, Robert Dixon Frog, 85th, forever, um, Charles Blackman, deceased, um, Sylvester Patterson and injured uh Dashawn and Gabriela.

I'm gonna go call Gabriella and it's another one that I'm not gonna mention because I'm not sure if family knows, but I want to end the meeting and for the deceased and the injured in my district.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Let's go to Oakman Forum.

As a carry name, please approach the podium in any order.

Please state your name for the record before beginning.

If you are on Zoom, please raise your hand so I can easily identify you.

You will have one minute to address the council.

Kevin Daly, Miss Asada Olabala, Mr.

Hazard, Sylvia Guzman, Cynthia Rodriguez, Jacqueline Guillen, Daniela Lopez, Asuena, Serrano Hernandez, Alicia Pablo, Jason, Chalez, Brianna Ramirez, Bruce Condi, Linda Wade, Fick P.

Fiomo, Alberto Para, Thomas Abird, Mark Robles, Renee Moon, Lacretia Flemings, Melvin Calamy, Gudelia Cruz Hernandez, Mary Leckett, Kathy Harris, Sharon Green Pace.

I think this is a duplicate.

Kathy Harris, Cora Clark, Isabel Ruiz, Michelle Washington, Greg Slayer, excuse me, Greg Slaughter and Crystal Harding.

So it's real clear.

The government code and the government code 54960.

Actions taken in violation of key open meeting laws are avoidable by the courts.

City must expressly, and this is, you all know this now.

You have to cure and correct May 5th, 2026 public hearing.

President Jacks vote no on Jenkins, vote no on uh measuree.

Uh the minutes are an accurate record of what actually happened, not a declaration of whether what happened was legal.

May 5th was legal, illegal, guile.

Open your mouth.

Get a uh legal opinion from the city attorney.

I gave you the illegal opinion from uh Russo and Barker.

May 14th was April 14th was fail.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

Your time is up.

Open your an effect of voice, not just a channel.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Silvia Guzmán.

I'm a healthy housing champion with La Clinica de la Rasa.

I live, work, and play out of East Oakland.

I'm a mother of three and recently a grandmother to one.

When my youngest children were born, they were born into a building that was infested with lead.

Lucky we were able to move out.

To here, I'm here to talk to you about proactive rental inspections.

Many of the families that grew up with my children are now parents themselves, like my eldest.

Most of these families continue to live there being impacted by the conditions in the outside.

If you walk by that building, it's now falling from the outside in.

It's literally falling, and you can see that.

I'm here to ask you for proactive rental inspections.

As council members, you have the power to help prevent children from being exposed to lead before it causes irreversible harms.

Unfortunately, I see this in those neighbors.

Today I'm here to ask that you have the power to create these policies and give priority to prevent and good afternoon, City Council members.

My name is Cynthia Rodriguez.

I'm an Oakland resident, and I'm also a youth break coordinator for La Clinica Healthy Homes Initiative, where we work to address the ongoing issue of lead exposure in Oakland.

So throughout this school year, our youth have had the opportunity to learn about the dangers of lead and how deeply this issue impacts our communities.

They have worked hard to raise awareness, educate the community, and advocate for the health and safety of their families, their friends, and community members.

Today we come before you in hope and urgency.

We ask that the lead settlement funds be used to strengthen and expand the lead abatement and practical rental inspection program so that more families can live in safe and healthier homes.

Thank you for your time.

Good morning.

I mean, good afternoon, City Council.

My name is Daniela Lopez.

I am an 18-year-old senior in high school and a resident of Oakland.

I am part of Casa Che in collaboration with Healthy Homes Initiative to support healthier and safer communities for youth and families.

Throughout this program, I've learned more of civic engagement and how important it is for you, young people to speak up about issues affecting our community.

Today we are here to talk about our policy campaign focused on lead exposure and the importance of lead abatement programs.

With the support of Casa Che, we are here advocating in support of using the city's led settlement funds to start an equitable led abatement program and proactive rental inspection program.

These policies are important to me because they help create safer homes, healthier communities, and better opportunities for children to grow and succeed.

Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon.

I'm a senior in high school, and I am a member, and I'm here today as a member of the Youth Bridge Program at Casa Chet in collaboration with the Healthy Homes Initiative.

Today I want to bring attention to a problem our community faces on a daily basis: lead contamination in houses.

Lead contamination has been a serious problem in Oakland for almost half a century now.

In a report done by KQED, it was reported that 83% of rental houses in Oakland are lead contaminated.

Many of these houses are occupied by immigrant families who are often unaware of the dangers that are being exposed to, leaving them at a great disadvantage and at risk of the Palippine health conditions that are in life.

And even if the families are aware of the dangers that are being often exposed to, they are often unable to speak up and advocate for themselves due to factors such as language barriers, immigration status, and economic insecurity.

So I come here today as to ask for your support, the city plans to use the lead settlement funds to create an equitable lead abatement program supported by this.

Families should not have to worry about whether their water or homes are safe.

As a student, I believe every child deserves a healthy and safe environment where they can learn and grow without being harmed by something preventable.

Our community needs more awareness, safer housing conditions, and action from local leaders to help protect families from lead exposure.

If we work together as a community, good afternoon, council members.

My name is Jacqueline Guian.

I am 16 years old and I am currently a junior at Cristo Rey de La Salle.

I am a part of La Clinica's Healthy Homes initiative, working to address the issue of lead in homes and protect families in our community.

Lead poisoning is a serious issue because it can affect children's brain development, behavior, growth, and ability to learn and concentrate.

This issue matters deeply to me because many families in Oakland, especially in the Fruitville area, live in older homes where lead paint is still a danger.

Many families may not even realize their homes contain lead hazards, and their children should not have to grow up in unsafe environments that can harm their health in future.

As young people, we care about creating safer and healthier communities for for future generations.

That is why we are asking for continued investments in lead prevention programs, home inspections, and resources for families affected by lead exposure.

Thank you for your time.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Alicia Paulo.

I'm a senior at CCPA.

Today I'm here on behalf of Healthy Housing Initiative with La Clinica.

In Oakland, there are many challenges we face, one of them being lead poisoning.

Today we are seeing the impacts it has on children, and no one is doing anything about it.

Those who are exposed to lead have many health problems, like cognitive, emotional, physical development that could be long term.

As a teen living in Oakland, specifically East Oakland, I have seen the impacts of lead firsthand.

My little sister who is seven years old was exposed to lead in a house she would spend time in.

She began having stomach pain.

This was the start of her suffering.

We began looking for answers, and it wasn't until she got tested that we found her pain was due to lead poisoning.

No child should have to go through this.

Luckily, she was taken care of.

But imagine how many children in Oakland are currently experiencing these same health issues, and no one is doing anything about it.

This is why I am here to advocate for those who can't be here today.

I want you to know that I'm advocating not only for my sister, but for the future of other children.

Can you tell me what they're going to do about it?

Anybody, I guess.

Uh Jen Houston is my counsel number.

Yeah, we'll make sure that you guys get updates.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

My name is Crystal Harding.

I'm representing All Children Thrive, Cal California and the Haven's Court Safe Homes Initiative.

Shout out to those youth that just spoke.

Give it up for them.

That's what I'm talking about.

Act is a community-led movement transforming how cities address childhood trauma, bringing together residents, city staff, and elected officials to co-design policies and programs that foster child and family well-being.

Communities of color in East and West Oakland, including Haven's Court, are among the most at risk for childhood lead poisoning in the entire state.

Fruitvale had higher lead poisoning rates than Flint, Michigan at the height of its water crisis.

We know that it has some permanent harm and damages.

And Oakland has over 14 million from the 2019 legal settlement with the paint companies.

We want you to take action and move this money forward.

Invest in the Equitable Lead Hazard Abandonment Program and the Proactive Rental Inspection.

We thank you for your time.

Thank you.

I just want to uh encourage African American black people, take an opportunity to embrace yourself and talk about what's going on with us.

We're so open-hearted, we're always talking about everybody, but concentrate on us.

Nothing wrong with that.

I am concerned about the West Oakland Senior Center.

I just got a text that is still not open.

I'm gonna say vote no on measure E.

And we have an important decision to make in this city, and I want to address it right now.

We have to appoint a police chief.

And I am in a position, my position is it can't come from a person from within the Oakland police department.

That culture of the police department is well protected.

Somebody's gotta come in here and change the culture and be willing to make a difference, and it's not gonna happen when anybody that's already in that police department.

When they came here and gave a report and said that no longer do we have racial profiling in the Oakland police department.

I talked to you earlier today, President Jenkins.

Okay, I want to do what I need to do right now.

I need to ask you to stand.

I need to ask Councilmember Brown.

Can she please stand?

You know I'm coming at you, Councilmember Houston.

I need you to stand.

Okay.

This is what I want to tell you guys.

To me personally, you guys are the dream team for Oakland Station.

The reason why I say that, Councilman Brown, when you came there, you left a grown man in tears because he you listened to him.

He felt real good when you did that.

Okay, and I thank you, and he thanks you.

President Jenkins, when you came on the Saturday, I gotta call 8 30 Sunday morning to get my butt over to Oakland Station because you came there with a team.

And one of the team members you came with is sitting over here.

And I want to do this in front of your colleagues, uh, Mr.

Houston.

Like I owe you an apologies for the things I said in the past, because after the conversation that me and you had and what you've been doing, you just did it on the under.

You have anything else to say?

Okay, you let me know what you were doing, and we appreciate that.

You guys should take a vow seriously.

I have one more place that I need you and Brown to come to, and that's City Towers, 8th Street in Oakland.

It's just as bad as Oakland Station.

And with the team effort that we're doing together, we're gonna get we'll get that building together like we do on Oakland Station.

Ken, I'm gonna tell you, I am with you 100% behind circling that building that they're trying to build, and let's shut it down.

We're gonna do it as we're gonna do it as a team.

Me and you're gonna be up front.

You're gonna be you're gonna be the general, I'm gonna be your lieutenant right up on you because I'm gonna stand up there, pretty good.

Nobody in there, okay?

And I personally personally thank you guys.

All right.

Before you go, can you give me your name, please?

Sir.

What is it?

Your name.

Oh, I'm sorry.

My name is Gregory Slaughter.

Thank you.

And I'm a resident of uh Oakland, California.

Next morning the 28th, I'm proud to say I'll be 73 years old.

I'm still handsome too.

Okay.

Hello.

Um, my name is Tomasa Bird, and I live at um 105 um international in the new building, so-called.

Um I've uh had so much problems.

I broke my wrist being there and lost my car.

Um I've been there for five years, and nothing's being done about the bars in my bathroom.

I fell so many times, and I'm sick and tired of it.

You people are helping me where shit.

Five years without bathroom bars.

And I just been following all the time.

Um, I feel and they said I have to pay for my bars to be put in the bathrooms.

From what I know, I'm not supposed to it's they were supposed to be there already.

And I've been writing down every year for bars in my bathroom, and nothing's being done.

There's still no bars.

I went out and all they had was plastic bars.

I went to get.

Can you can you guys give uh any ask her question?

Can give her 20 more seconds.

Oh, no, did was there anything else you have to say?

Uh yeah, I had I have it rained in my apartment, and uh I had roaches the following day.

I I would really hate to wake up and calling on me.

I really need that uh, thank you, ma'am.

If your name was calling you in the chambers and you wish to speak during open forum, please approach the fort, excuse me, the podium.

At this time, all names have been called.

All right.

Okay, um, if no, if open form is done, I would like to ask the council if I too could do an adjournment in honor of Edam May Johnson.

Um, if you know she used to come to council meetings all the time, and she passed away on April 21st.

So I would ask that the council adjourn in her honor and her services, I believe, are Friday, May 22nd.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Councilmember Houston.

Through the chair, I wanted to tell all the individuals that came out from the Oakland station.

I got you.

I got you.

And let me say this.

When we went out there, ex um expired fire extinguishers, handrails didn't work.

Um the roll-up door didn't work.

It smelled like stench, and it was just awful.

No one should have to live like that.

And let me tell you what I did.

I'm gonna bring it to the next council member meeting.

I'm gonna bring the bottle, the glass of roaches that I got from there.

I'm gonna show it.

I'm gonna put it online.

So I'm gonna say, do you want to live like that?

I have them, and I'm gonna bring them, and I'm gonna show them what you had, because you showed me some, and I went there and got got them myself.

So I'm gonna show the public.

Should my seniors, should my Oaklanders have to live like this, would you live like this?

And you're gonna say no, it's appalling, and I'm gonna bring it, I'm gonna show it.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Yeah, thank you, and thank you for everyone that uh joined us uh this afternoon.

Uh, for those that brought up the issue of lead in the paint, there's a process for that.

The city does have you was awarded five million dollars, and the county has nine million dollars.

All right, but the process for if you get ill, you go to child if you're a child, you go to children's hospital, they'll do the testing, and they'll submit that information to the city or or to the county for service.

If you know if you're an adult, you can go up to Kaiser and get tested, and they'll submit that information to the city or to the county uh to follow up, test uh your facility, your home, and also remove the the lead, the paint, the lead in the paint, and uh so we'll all ask the city administrator.

Uh we've been through this challenge where there have been some lead in the pain issues, but we have not responded as the city.

All right, and we've been at this for a number of years, and I've tried working with the county, but then the county says we deal with the county and not the city, because that's city property and the city has been finally we hired a consultant group to tell us how to do it after a number of years, and uh so if we can respond to those that are here, because we do have the money, and I'll give you this last example because it happened here at City Hall, my office upstairs.

This is a hundred and thirteen-year-old building.

All right, and so what happened is one of my assistants' child got ill, and he went we he went to children's hospital, and he came back extremely positive with lead in the paint.

But the mom said, Well, you know, I already had my home tested, it's not there.

But she brings her child here to mine, then she went to got tested, and the numbers were extremely extremely high.

But I'm trying to work with the city with the inspectors to come, but it took a while to get it done, but I'm still waiting for the results of the lead in the pain issue, because in some of our offices, the lead is falling through the walls through the ceilings, the windows, and the strong paint came out of the windows that we have, and but I'm still waiting for the the inspectors came a month later to inspect my office, but I'm still waiting for the results because I saw your previous office upstairs, man.

They're pain spilling left and right, and I know you're no longer there, but I know I'm still up there.

But anyway, so I think that city administrator, you need to communicate and let the council members know where are we with the lead in the pain issue, because we have not responded to members of the public, including to our own here.

Um outside of council and making sure that we get on debt lead settlement money getting out.

Councilman Wong.

I um just on the topic of lead on last Friday I went to Castleman Councilmont High School, um, with the Frontline Catalysts uh group, and something that I had picked up there from one of the student presentations where they were doing lead testing given all the lead in the school pipes, is that they basically rely on these electronic filtration systems, and there is literally one working drinking fountain for the entire school.

That is part of you know capital improvements for the school district, but man, it's just totally unacceptable to have lead going into our children's bloodstreams like that.

Thank you, Councilmember.

All right.

Over forms done, adjournments are done.

Uh oh, no, now it's time for Germany.

Thank you.

We adjourn this evening in honor of all the victims of the 85th Avenue tragedy, those who passed and those who are injured, Wilson Ryos Jr., Christopher Buckley, and Edam A.

Johnson.

Thank you.

This meeting is adjourned.

Yeah, I can't do it.

We heard you, Oakland.

You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing jobs and everyday essentials.

The draft lands use framework for Oakland's general plan shows how we can make that vision real.

The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities like housing and services near transit and jobs, well-maintained open spaces, and transportation that gets people where they need to go.

With assistance you need.

With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a button.

And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided.

All you have to do is ask.

What if you're at a city facility with neat language services?

The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff.

They come in contact with.

Here at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland, we want you to be able to access city government on your terms, in your language, and provide you with the best possible experience the city has to offer.

Everyone deserves access to their city government.

We're going to have a battle of that, the baby.

Necessitas services de traduction para acceder a los servicios del gobierno de la ciudad.

La oficina de acceso igualitario de la ciudad de Oakland está aquí para ayudarle.

Hay muchas maneras de utilizar los servicios de acceso linguistico in todo la ciudad.

Desde folletos y hojas informativas in various idiomas hasta personal bilingüe que pueden proporcionar services de traduction in vivo.

Aquí hay algunas de las formas in que la ciudad de Oakland puede ayudarle a aprovechar al consigue maximum los services de su gobierno municipal.

Donde puede indicar for telephone to an intérprete en el idioma que habla.

Y personal de la ciudad.

Hello, Oakland.

I'm Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.

Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.

Now I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.

We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.

Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed to create fear and division.

So regardless of your status, you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help, call 911 to report an emergency or visit city offices to access services.

Now, if you're looking for support, visit our city website for know your rights information.

We'll protect the town.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You go high get what the high use in Taiwan get you cow.

We heard you Oakland.

You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing jobs and everyday essentials.

The draft land use framework for Oakland's general plan shows how we can make that vision real.

The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities like housing and services near transit and jobs.

There are many different ways that language access services can be used throughout the city, from brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to bilingual staff that can provide live translation services.

Here are some of the ways that the City of Oakland can help you get more out of your city government.

And city staff can call an interpreter over the phone for the language assistance you need.

With our city website, information is available in multiple languages with the click of a button.

And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided.

All you have to do is ask.

What if you are a city facility but need language services?

The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in contact with.

Necessitate services of production for the services of the government of the city.

The officer of accession of the city of Oakland is here to help you.

There are many manner to use the services of access to linguistic in all the city.

And the officer of access to equality of the city of Oakland.

You're saying the more experience possible that the ciud.

Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.

Now I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.

So regardless of your status, you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.

If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.

Individuals, families, organizations, city workers, and even elected officials.

Thank you very much.

We will protect the town.

We heard you, Oakland.

You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing jobs and everyday essentials.

The draft lands use framework for Oakland's General Plan shows how we can make that vision real.

The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities like housing and services near transit and jobs, well-maintained open spaces, and transportation that gets people where they need to go.

Are you in need of translation services in order to access city government?

The City of Oakland's Equal Access Office is here to help.

There are many different ways that language access services can be used throughout the city from brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to bilingual staff that can provide live translation services.

Here are some of the ways that the City of Oakland can help you get more out of your city government.

Language access posters are available, allowing you to simply point to the language you speak, and city staff can call an interpreter over the phone for the language assistance you need.

With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a button.

And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided.

All you have to do is ask.

What if you're at a city facility but need language services?

The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff that come in contact with at the library or by reserving an OPRYD facility for a birthday party.

If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.

All you have to do is ask.

You can minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in advance.

If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you may require the use of translation headsets.

Oh my god.

Oh that's a good thing.

Necessitate services of traduction for the services of the government of the city.

But we have services linguistics.

Hello, Oakland.

I'm Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.

Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.

Now I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.

So regardless of your status, you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.

If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.

Individuals, families, organizations, city workers, and even elected officials.

Protect the town.

As personal immigrants for the less than Oakland.

Sabemos que muchas familias están preocupados por lo que está pasando in todo el país.

Oakland is una ciudad santuario and no vamos a permitir actions that we can cause money or divide a nuestra community.

So you for more case, you're holding on to the watching.

We heard you Oakland.

You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing jobs and everyday essentials.

The draft lands use framework for Oakland's general plan shows how we can make that vision real.

The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities like housing and services near transit and jobs, well-maintained open spaces, and transportation that gets people where they need to go.

Does this plan reflect what your community needs to thrive?

There are many different ways that language access services can be used throughout the city, from brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to bilingual staff that can provide live translation services.

Here are some of the ways that the city of Oakland can help you get more out of your city government.

At all city departments, language access posters are available, allowing you to simply point to the language you speak.

And city staff can call an interpreter over the phone for the language assistance you need.

With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a button.

And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided.

All you have to do is ask.

What if you're at a city facility but need language services?

The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in contact with at the library or by reserving an OPRYD facility for a birthday party.

If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.

All you have to do is ask.

You can minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in advance.

If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you may require the use of translation headsets.

City staff will need time to arrange for equipment to arrive at the meeting venue on time.

So requesting them in advance is advisable.

Here at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland, we want you to be able to access city government on your terms, in your language, and provide you with the best possible experience the city has to offer.

Everyone deserves access to their city government.

And then that's the day.

Necessitive service of traduction for accidental services of the government of the city.

The Officer of Access Equality of the City of Oakland is a good idea.

In la biblioteca or reservando una facilidad de los parques de la ciudad para una fiesta de cuestión.

Solo tiene que pedirlo.

El personal municipal necessitará tiempo para organizar la llegada del tipo al lugar de la reuniona.

In la oficina de acceso equalitario de la ciudad de Australia, puede acceder al gobierno municipal in sus propios termos, in su idioma, y ofrecerle la mejor experiencia possible que la ciudad puede ofrecer.

Hello, Oakland.

I'm Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.

Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.

Now I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.

We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.

Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed to create fear and division.

No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status.

So regardless of your status, you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.

You go high get out.

We heard you, Oakland, you want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing jobs and everyday essentials.

Are you in need of translation services in order to access city government?

The City of Oakland's Equal Access Office is here to help.

There are many different ways that language access services can be used throughout the city from brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to bilingual staff that can provide live translation services.

Here are some of the ways that the City of Oakland can help you get more out of your city government.

At all city departments, language access posters are available, allowing you to simply point to the language you speak.

With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a button.

And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided.

All you have to do is ask.

What if you're at a city facility with need language services?

The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in contact with at the library or by reserving an OPRYD facility for a birthday party.

If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.

You can minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in advance.

If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you may require the use of translation headsets.

Necessarily services of production for the services of the government of the city.

What does it work in an installation municipal?

So we have to pay it.

Hello, Oakland.

I'm Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.

Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.

Now I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.

Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed to create fear and division.

No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status.

So regardless of your status, you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.

I have signed an executive order affirming that city property and spaces are to be used for city approved uses only.

If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.

Call the Asylum Hotline.

This resource is available for everyone, individuals, families, organizations, city workers, and even elected officials.

Thank you very much.

We will protect the town.

So, baby, watching you when it hikes, if you go.

Ling I all the Oaklands again long time.

So, you for more case of your holiday, you hold our jungle yin.

Need you so you hang on joy and task?

So, you're going to hang on and seeing food, get by decade half or more daily.

So you inform more how you demand joke.

So, you can find capsang for more than high.

We heard you, Oakland, you want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing jobs and everyday essentials.

The draft land use framework for Oakland's general plan shows how we can make that vision real.

The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities like housing and services near transit and jobs.

Does this plan reflect what your community needs to thrive?

Scan the QR code or call the link to review the framework and share your feedback today.

Here are some of the ways that the city of Oakland can help you get more out of your city government.

With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a button.

And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided.

All you have to do is ask.

What if you're at a city facility with need language services?

The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff, they come in contact with at the library or by reserving an OPRYD facility for a birthday party.

If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.

All you have to do is ask.

You can minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in advance.

If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you may require the use of translation headsets.

City staff will need time to arrange for equipment to arrive at the meeting venue on time.

So requesting them in advance is advisable.

Here at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland, we want you to be able to access city government on your terms, in your language, and provide you with the best possible experience the city has to offer.

Everyone deserves access to their city government.

Necessitas services de traduction para acceder a los services del gobierno de la ciudad.

La oficina de acceso equalitario de la ciudad de Oakland está aquí para ayudarle.

Hay muchas maneras de utilizar los services de acceso linguistico in toda la ciudad.

Desde folletos y hojas informativas in varios idiomas hasta personal bilingual que pueden proporcionar services de traduction in vivo.

Aquí hay algunas de las formas in que la ciudad de Oakland puede ayudarle a aprovechar al consigue máximo los services de su gobierno municipal.

Donde puede indicar el idioma que habla.

Y personal de la ciudad pueden llamar por telefone a un intérprete que le ayudará en el idioma que necesites en el sitio web de nuestra ciudad.

La information está disponible in varios idiomas con solo hacer clic in un button.

Solo tiene que pedirlo.

What does it seem to be an installation municipal?

Members del public or interpretation simply hablando con el personal municipal con el que entren in contact.

In la biblioteca or reservando una facility of parkers de la ciudad para una fiesta de cookie años.

Si necesitan ayuda, solo tiene que communicarlo a un member of the personal.

Hello, Oakland.

I'm Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.

Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.

Now I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.

We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.

Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed to create fear and division.

So regardless of your status, you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.

If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.

Now, if you're looking for support, visit our city website for know your rights information.

This resource is available for everyone, individuals, families, organizations, city workers, and even elected officials.

No, no, no.

You go high, you get what?

So I joined how you joy the gun.

The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities like housing and services near transit and jobs.

Well maintained open spaces and transportation that gets people where they need to go.

Does this plan reflect what your community needs to thrive?

And share your feedback today.

From brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to bilingual staff that can provide live translation services.

Here are some of the ways that the City of Oakland can help you get more out of your city government.

At all city departments, language access posters are available, allowing you to simply point to the language you speak, and city staff can call an interpreter over the phone for the language assistance you need.

With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a button.

And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided.

All you have to do is ask.

What if you're at a city facility but need language services?

The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in contact with at the library or by reserving an OPRYD facility for a birthday party.

If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.

All you have to do is ask.

You can minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in advance.

If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you may require the use of translation headsets.

City staff will need time to arrange for equipment to arrive at the meeting venue on time.

So requesting them in advance is advisable.

Necessitive service of traduction to the services of the government of the city.

There are many manner to use the service of access linguistic in all the city.

Hello, Oakland.

I'm Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.

Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.

Now I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.

We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.

Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed to create fear and division.

No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status.

So regardless of your status, you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.

If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.

Individuals, families, organizations, city workers, and even elected officials.

Thank you very much.

From New York, this is Democracy Now.

My community is mourning.

This is something that we have never expected to take place.

But at the same time, the religious intolerance and the hate, unfortunately, that exist in our nation is unprecedented.

Killing three people, and what authorities are saying was a suspected hate crime.

The center housed both a mosque and a school.

We'll get the latest.

And I couldn't let it stand.

I called you right after the attack.

I was very disappointed that you wouldn't report him.

They never would have believed me.

We'll speak to filmmaker Ivy Mirapal, director of the new film Ask Eugene.

All that and more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org.

The Warren Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman.

President Trump said Monday he postponed an imminent U.S.

attack on Iran at the request of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump's reversal came after he repeatedly threatened to launch new strikes, warning Iran there won't be anything left of them.

We were getting ready to do a very major attack tomorrow.

I'd put it off for a little while.

Hopefully, maybe forever, but possibly for a little while.

Because we've had uh very big discussions with Iran, and we'll see what they amount to.

It's not clear whether there have been any breakthroughs and stalled talks to end the US and Israeli war on Iran.

Iranian negotiators continued to demand an end to the U.S.

naval blockade of Iran's ports, the release of Iran's frozen assets, and the lifting of international sanctions.

Iran's foreign ministry said it remains skeptical after President Trump twice ordered attacks on Iran while negotiations were underway.

We approach every diplomatic process with deep distrust and serious skepticism in order to safeguard the national interests of Iran.

Iran is aware that given the U.S.'s track record of undermining negotiations, it might repeat the same actions at any moment.

As the World Health Organization said an outbreak of Ebola virus in the DRC in Uganda has reached 500 suspected cases and 130 suspected deaths, with those numbers expected to rise.

This is the WHO's Director General, Tedros Adnan Gabriesis.

I'm deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic.

The WHO says the DRC will open three Ebola treatment centers in the eastern Ituri province where the outbreak began.

Meanwhile, the centers for disease control says a U.S.

doctor tested positive for Ebola after working with a medical missionary group in Congo.

Dr.

Peter Stafford was exposed to the virus while treating patients in the capital of Aturi province.

He's been evacuated to Germany for treatment.

To see our interview with Dr.

Craig Spencer, who was positive for Ebola virus about a decade ago, but now is critiquing U.S.

policy on Ebola and other uh viruses.

We go to DemocracyNow.org.

Israeli forces are continuing to intercept ships with a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla off the coast of Cyprus.

More than 50 ships with a global smooth flotilla set sail from the Turkish port city of Marmoris last week.

According to organizers, Israeli forces have intercepted 41 of their boats in the eastern Mediterranean, about 250 nautical miles from Gaza, which is under an Israeli maritime blockade.

Video shows armed Israeli commandos climbing onto boats.

337 activists have been taken into custody.

10 boats are still sailing towards Gaza.

Meanwhile, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Italy and Greece in solidarity with the Gaza-bound activists as world leaders condemned the Israeli raid.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim wrote on social media, quote, the world cannot continue to bow to tyranny and corruption.

The oppression against Palestinians and those who mobilize and deliver humanitarian aid must be stopped immediately, and Israel must face justice and accountability, he said.

This is Turkey's president, Retchip Taib Erdwan.

I curse in the strongest terms, this act of piracy and banditry against the passengers of hope on the Samood flotilla.

We're taking the necessary steps to ensure the safe return of our citizens of 40 different countries.

We call on the international community to take action against Israel's lawless and rule breaking actions.

In California, two teenage attackers fatally shot three people on Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County.

Among the dead was a security guard, Amin Abdullah, a father of eight, who police said played a pivotal role in saving children's lives.

The suspects, age 17 and 19, were found dead from a parent's self-inflicted gunshot wounds in a car near the scene.

Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.

Law enforcement officials told CNN hate speech was scrawled on one of the weapons.

A suicide note that contained writings about racial pride was also found, according to the officials.

CARE, the council on American Islamic relations noted the attack comes as anti-Muslim bias complaints reached their highest level on record last year, with 8,683 complaints filed nationwide.

This is Taha Hussain, the Imam and Director of the Islamic Center of San Diego.

My community is mourning.

This is something that we have never expected to take place.

But at the same time, the religious intolerance and the hate unfortunately that exists in our nation is unprecedented.

After headlines, we'll be speaking with Linda Sarsur and Minnesota prosecutors have file criminal charges against an ICE officer who allegedly shot a Venezuelan immigrant in North Minneapolis during an immigration raid in January, lied about what happened.

On Monday, Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty announced federal agent Christian Castro will face four counts of second degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

These charges have activated a nationwide warrant for his arrest.

Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa Cellis suffered a leg wound when Castro allegedly shot him through the door.

This comes as Hennepin County prosecutors continue to investigate the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents during the Trump administration's violent immigration enforcement campaign known as Operation Metro Surge.

We'll go to Minneapolis later in the broadcast.

A new report finds more than a hundred thousand children in the U.S.

have had a parent detained since the Trump administration began its mass deportation campaign last year.

That's far more than under President Trump's first term, and more than double the number of family separations that would be projected using government data.

The finding comes from a Brookings institution study that estimates some 400,000 people have been booked into ICE jails since January of last year.

The Justice Department announced Monday it'll create a 1.776 billion dollar fund to make payments to Trump supporters who say they were wrongly investigated or prosecuted by previous administrations.

The so-called anti-weaponization fund would be overseen by five commissioners, four of whom would be appointed by the attorney general to serve at the pleasure of the president.

The announcement came as part of a settlement agreement between President Trump and his own administration.

After Trump, his sons, and their family business sued the IRS for over $10 billion over the leak of Trump's tax returns by an IRS worker.

Following Monday's announcement, the Treasury Department's top lawyer resigned.

Brian Morrissey leaves his post just seven months after his Senate confirmation.

He did not respond to reporters' requests for comment.

Democrats have accused Trump of creating a slush fund for his MAGA allies, including insurrectionists who joined the January 6th riot at the U.S.

Capitol.

On Monday, 93 Democratic lawmakers filed an amicus brief in federal courts seeking to block the fund.

Virginia Congressmember Don Byer wrote, quote, he's just stealing your money.

There's no transparency.

We won't know who gets paid or how much.

It's illegal and corrupt as hell.

We're fighting it in court, Congressmember Bayer said.

The EPA proposed Monday to kill drinking water limits for four so-called forever chemicals set by the Biden administration in 2024.

The EPA said it will keep limits on PFOA and PFOS, the two most widely studied PFAS compounds, but will allow some water utilities to extend their compliance deadline from 2029 to 2031.

The role acts could delay or eliminate drinking water protections for up to 105 million people.

PFAs have been linked to cancer thyroid disease, liver damage, decreased fertility, and immune system damage.

In a statement, Catherine O'Brien, senior attorney at Earth Justice, said, quote, this move only underscores that the Trump administration's Maha rhetoric, that's make America healthy again, is just that.

Empty rhetoric, and it will leave children and families to bear the cost of continued drinking water contamination, unquote.

Here in New York, Long Island Railroad strike ended Monday night after the MTA and five unions reached a tentative agreement ending a three-day work stoppage that paralyzed the largest commuter rail system in the United States.

Over the weekend, 3,500 unionized workers walked off the job for the first LIRR strike in over 30 years.

The deal still needs to be ratified by members of the five unions.

If rejected, the strike could resume.

And New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani announced Monday the city's first municipally owned grocery store will open in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx next year.

The 20,000 square foot store will be located inside the peninsula and affordable housing and mixed-use development.

The plan is part of a broader $70 million initiative to open one city-owned store in each of the five boroughs under the proposal.

The plan still requires city council approval.

This is Mayor Mamdani.

Standing here this morning, I cannot help but think of the words of our 40th president, Ronald Reagan.

He famously said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

It's a good quote, but I disagree.

We are going to use the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table.

And those are some of the headlines.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.

In California, two teenage gunmen fatally shot three people on Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County.

Among the dead was a security guard, now identified as Amin Abdullah, a father of eight, who police say played a pivotal role in saving lives, particularly children's lives.

The suspects aged 17 and 19 were found dead from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds in a car near the scene.

Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.

Law enforcement officials told CNN hate speech was scrawled on one of the weapons, a suicide note that contained writings about racial pride was also found, according to officials.

CARE, the Council on American Islamic Relations, noted the attack comes as anti-Muslim bias complaints reached their highest level on record, with 8,683 complaints filed nationwide.

This is Taha Hussein, the Imam and director of the Islamic Center of San Diego.

My community is mourning.

This is something that we have never expected to take place.

But at the same time, the religious intolerance and the hate, unfortunately, that exists in our nation is unprecedented.

All of us are responsible for spreading the culture of tolerance, the culture of love.

All of us, we are responsible.

From whatever position we have, as parents, as media people, as elected officials, as law enforcement, as religious leaders.

All of us, we can do something to protect our nation, to protect our society.

And please, I have one request to the media.

Stop sharing the picture of the victims.

Let the families mourn.

Let them pray.

As we do always at the Islamic Center of San Diego.

It's a house of worship.

It's not a battlefield.

Come on.

People come to the mosque to pray, to socialize, to celebrate, to enjoy their time together.

Muslims and non-Muslims alike, everyone have been always welcomed.

Our doors are always welcomed.

We never ask people.

When they show up at the door of the Islamic center, we never ask them whether you are a Muslim or not.

Who are you?

Because everyone is welcome.

So let's do our best to spread this culture of love and tolerance and sympathy.

For the sake of this nation, for the sake of the future generation.

That was Taha Hussein, the Imam and Director of the Islamic Center of San Diego, attacked on Monday.

Police said they'd begun a search for the two teenage gunmen two hours before the attack, after the mother of one of the shooters called police.

This is San Diego police chief Scott Wall.

She believed her son was suicidal.

And she began to share information that several of her weapons were missing.

Her vehicle was missing, in addition to her son.

She also said that she was her son was with a companion.

And that they were dressed in camo.

And that is not consistent with what we would typically see from somebody that is suicidal.

That's the San Diego police chief.

We're joined now by Linda Sarsor, Palestinian American Muslim organizer, friend of the Imam at the Islamic Center of San Diego, author of We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders, and co-founder of Empower Action Fund.

Linda, thanks so much for joining us again.

But under these incredibly sad circumstances, the guard has just been named who was killed by the gunmen.

The gunmen themselves apparently dead of self-inflicted wounds.

Can you talk about what you heard yesterday and your reaction as it was unfolding?

You're a friend of the Imam.

I immediately saw a tweet on X that said that there was a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, and I immediately texted Imam Taha Hussein, who's an old friend of mine, and I said, Are you okay?

And he immediately called me back and said that we are in a lockdown right now.

There has been an active shooting.

At that moment, he had not known about all the fatalities, but they did know about Brother Amin Abdullah, who was the armed security guard of the mosque and a father of eight and a wonderful, incredible human being that I also had the honor and privilege of meeting myself.

There are also two other adult males that were also killed in the shooting.

One of them is Brother Mansur, also known as Abul Ariz.

He is an elder, a caretaker of the mosque.

Also was uh running the Islamic bookstore at the mosque, and just the beloved um kind of uncle in the community.

Another one is Brother Nadid.

Brother Nadid is a neighbor of the mosque, a congregant, um, someone who is heavily involved in the mosque itself.

Um is just a very devastating experience.

There is also over about 200 kids uh in a pre-K to third grade um Islamic school that is a part of the Islamic Center of San Diego, who are also on lockdown, hiding under, excuse me, hiding under desks and closets.

Um, and if it wasn't for Brother Amin Abdullah and these brothers that came out to put their bodies on the line, we could have had many more fatalities, and many of them could have been small children in this country.

So even though the children are safe, thank God, um, they are forever gonna live with this trauma of knowing that their mosque was attacked because they were Muslims.

I was watching as uh parents wept also uh talking about how Amin had saved their children, that the kids the first thing they look forward to going to school in the morning is seeing him there.

That's right.

That's that's who he was.

Um, and this was his job as a matter of fact.

A few days before uh this horrific shooting, he had made a post um on social media on on Facebook and said something like a lot of people look for fame, they look for financial stability, they look kind of for the worldly things.

But for him, he just wanted to be a good Muslim and he wanted to meet his lord as pure as he was when he was a baby.

And that is his last message that people saw on social media.

Umam Taha, also the director of the Islamic Center, who was in the building when this happened, he was on the second floor, um, is an incredible ally.

He's uh someone who is very well known in the immigrant rights movement, in this in the San Diego economic justice movement.

He's at m often at many rallies.

This is a mosque that has opened its doors to the community.

They literally have open mosque day where anyone in the community can show up to the mosque, and they are opened, uh, they are welcomed with open arms, and they have uh film screenings, they do like community events, they do festivals, like this is the epitome of of a of a mosque that shows our true values as Muslims in community and in solidarity.

So it's just devastating.

Um, and no house of worship should have to ever experience this.

You were with Imam Taha Hussein just a few weeks ago.

Mm-hmm.

Um Taha is a national leader.

He is part of many of the movement work that I do.

Um, he's someone that we go to as an Islamic scholar uh to help guide us through the social justice and uh work that we do.

And we were in Dearborn just uh, you know, a few weeks ago.

Um he was there as a as a mentor to many Muslim organizers um in this country, and he's someone that I've um spoken on many panels with.

We we do the uh Muslim Student Association conference in uh California, just someone who's always at the right place at the right time and very encouraging and of women's leadership in our community, of youth leadership in our community, and so it's just devastating to see that his mosque um was was targeted as someone who has poured so much into our community and movements.

Can you talk about what you understand the mom of one of the alleged shooters?

Uh Kane Clark was, I believe, 17.

Uh, he was with Caleb Vasquez, these two now dead teenagers um have been identified.

How the mom got in touch with the police hours before she I think she had a cache of weapons, but she saw her guns gone and her car gone, and her kid was dressed in camo with the ammo.

Um, and as the mayor, as the police chief said, even though he had left a suicide note, that is highly suspect when they're putting on camo, obviously.

I mean, the we can't deny um, Amy, that there's been increased political rhetoric against Muslims in this country, um, and the ways in which Muslims are treated, even after this horrific shooting, right wing MAGA accounts, um, some of them verified, uh, some of them high profile, have begun conspiracy theories or have actually blamed the mosque itself for their own uh shooting that happened there.

It is absolutely horrific to see the ways in which elected officials anywhere from Randy Fine to the members of Congress who have started this, what they call the Sharia free caucus.

Um, people are not held accountable for their anti-Muslim hate.

We are anti-Muslim hate is one of the few types of bigotry in this country that is acceptable.

You don't lose your job, there's no consequences for it.

And here comes a 17-year-old who is probably brought into all this propaganda.

He's wrote a suicide note.

The officials are saying that there was hate rhetoric uh scrolled on the weapons, which also tells me how how long were or how long were your guns missing?

How long did it take him to scroll, you know, hateful uh, you know, rhetoric on uh on guns.

Also, how is the mother storing her guns?

You know, did you just leave them around?

Is there was there no key?

Was there no way for this to be uh protected so that your child does not go out and kill innocent people at a mosque?

So there's something very um, you know, strange that's happening here, but I will say this about the 17-year-old and also a 19-year-old.

I'm sad, Amy, for them.

I really am sad.

They're they're too young for this type of hate.

Uh, and the fact that it it drove them to the point where they went to a mosque and they shot innocent people and could have shot children.

I mean, the fact that there's an Islamic school, if it wasn't for Brother Amin and the brothers that interfered, we literally could have had dozens of children who would have been literally shot and killed.

And and the thing is we've seen this before.

We saw it, we saw it in Sandy Hook, we saw it in Uvaldi.

Um, and so for me, I'm just like it's an issue around let's end this anti-Muslim hate.

Let's make sure that there are consequences for people who propagate this hate for media outlets who propagate this hate.

And also let's get some sensible gun reform.

How did this mother get the where were they registered guns?

How is she uh storing them at home?

How did your son wear cat why how where did your son get cameo from?

Like wearing, I mean, the whole thing just is just it just seems like it just doesn't make sense.

During a televised news conference on Monday, a woman disrupted the news conference just as San Diego mayor Todd Gloria was beginning to speak.

She accused him of emboldening what she called Zionist propaganda.

Thank you.

That's like the two nice.

So the after that the mayor uh began speaking, but she referred to him as Todd, which was his first name.

Uh Linda Sarser, I don't know if you could make out what she was saying, but if you could respond.

She was saying basically to him that this is that that you're part you're part of the problem, that this is because you've emboldened this the this this hateful rhetoric.

Like she was basically holding him accountable.

Mayor Todd, in the course of genocide, has condemned Palestinian organizers, he condemned Palestinian students.

He would never show up to any events led by Palestinian American or Muslims that were related to the genocide in Gaza.

Um, and he continued to vilify folks that organize around the genocide.

And he is someone who has aligned himself with right-wing Zionists and others.

So I think again, who you ally with as a leader of a city, right, like Sandy, like San Diego, tells me where you stand.

If you're gonna be willing to stand with people who are uh condemning, uh vilifying, dehumanizing people who are standing up for justice for the Palestinian people, then you're part of a larger problem that we have here, which is reaffirming anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab hate.

You know this, uh Amy in this country.

People don't know the difference between a Muslim, Arab, or a Palestinian, and that's the problem here.

Um, and so all these things are are conflated.

In the past, this mosque has been targeted during genocide by right-wing media.

Um, there was a New York Post article that just literally got published yesterday after horrific shooting that basically said the shooting that happened at an Islamic center with a history of controversy.

Like they're they're they're instead of reporting the news, they're telling us that there's a controversial mosque here.

What does that have to do with what is happening to these people?

The far-right political activist Trump ally Lara Loomer um posted a message on Exxon Monday reading.

The mosque that was quote unquote supposedly shot up today.

Just remember the people who attend this mosque want us all to be killed.

We will be told they are such amazing people.

I'm not advocating for violence.

I condemn violence.

I'm showing you how evil this mosque is and always has been.

It should be raided by ICE and the FBI, she tweeted.

In a follow-up tweet, Lara Loomer called for the DHS to quote, deport every Muslim in America back to the Middle East, unquote.

Her response, Linda.

And this is exactly what's um across the entire internet.

That's it.

This is the the conspiracy theory is blaming us for the tragic and horrific shooting that has happened at this mosque.

And this is the kind of rhetoric that's acceptable.

No one else, Amy, would be able to say something like Laura Loomer about any other religious community.

Again, for us, it's acceptable.

She her posts won't get taken down.

There will be no consequences for Aurora Loomer.

But here we have three adult men, beloved in their community in an incredible mosque where their neighbors love them.

There are people that have come out and spoken about them, pastors, rabbis, those that have visited this mosque and know that this mosque is a community center.

It's a it's a beloved place.

I've been there so many times, Amy.

It's so incredible.

It's one of the most diverse mosques in all of America from the African continent, from South Asia, from the Arab world, from converts in the United States of America to Latino Muslims.

They have Spanish speaking programs.

I mean, it's just an incredibly beautiful place.

They welcome the formerly incarcerated.

This is the kind of people that they are.

Imam Taha is uh one of the most incredible leaders we have in this country, and it's just despicable that we allow this kind of rhetoric, especially after horrific shooting.

Linda Sarsor, Palestinian American Muslim organizer, author of We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders.

She's also co-founder of Empower Action Fund.

Coming up a new documentary on Egene Carroll.

She successfully sued Donald Trump twice in federal court.

He was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

We'll speak with the director, Ivy Mirapol.

Stay with us.

In which she described an encounter in the 1990s when President Trump, she said, sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman.

At the time, she was a well-known advice columnist and host of her own TV show.

When President Trump denied the account, Eugene Carroll sued him and won.

A unanimous New York jury found Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Egene Carroll $5 million dollars in damages.

President Trump then denied knowing Carol and called her a whack job on CNN.

Eegene Carroll then sued him again for defamation.

A second jury, also unanimous, awarded her $83.3 million dollars, but she has yet to see a penny.

Federal courts appealed both verdicts.

But now President Trump's attorneys are asking the Supreme Court to overturn them, asserting the president has absolute immunity for comments he makes as president.

The Department of Justice has submitted a filing to the Supreme Court backing the president's argument.

Trump's attorneys have also sought to invoke a federal statute to swap the president out as defendant and have the U.S.

government take his place, which would essentially nullify the verdicts as the federal government can't be sued for defamation.

The verdict is on pause until the Supreme Court either reviews the two cases or decides to pass.

The second U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals conditioned the say on President Trump posting a bond of nearly 100 million dollars.

Well, a new documentary goes through all of this and more.

It's called Ask Eegene Carroll.

The film is directed and produced by the award-winning filmmaker Ivy Mirapal.

Her past films include Heir to an Execution, a documentary about her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed at Sing Sing in the 1950s.

In a moment, we'll be joined by Ivy Mirapol.

But first, this is the trailer for Ask Egene.

There's no such thing as destiny, dear listener.

We ourselves make our lives.

All the time I'm writing, writing, writing.

And then I write this little quiz and Esquire buys it.

I got one taste of New York.

And I thought, wow.

I was as happy a being as ever existed.

All my dreams were about becoming an advice columnist.

And that Roger Ales gave me my own TV show.

You don't really care who comments on anything because of it.

You comment on everything.

If you were concerned about being dragged through the mud, why would you choose to sue Donald Trump?

Because he called me a liar and I couldn't let it stand.

I called you right after the attack.

I was very disappointed that you wouldn't report him.

They never would have believed me.

You were more famous than he was.

Here comes this huge attorney, Robbie Kaplan.

She laid out the case.

If women could see what kind of questions their fellow woman is asked when she brings charges against a powerful man.

Were you wearing underwear?

Did you wear a bra?

Are you taking any medications of drugs?

Have you ever had acting classes?

No.

There was some darkness coming in.

We were prepping for the second trial, and Robbie said the man you have not seen in 30 years is going to be in that courtroom.

Have the gods to face him down twice.

I am thinking of getting a toaster.

The trailer for the new documentary, Ask Eegene, out this weekend at New York's IFC Center, and will be coming out in Los Angeles as well.

We're joined now by the award-winning filmmaker Ivy Mirapol from Cold Spring, New York.

Ivy, thanks so much for joining us.

It might surprise people that these, I was gonna say this case, but these cases continue and they are now sitting at the Supreme Court.

Explain this, these verdicts and the amount of money that Eegene could see, nearly $90 million from President Trump.

Well, hi, Amy.

Thanks for having me.

Um Eegene, the first in the first case, she was awarded five million dollars.

Then she was awarded the massive, you know, amount of 83.5.

And that was specifically had to do with the amount of defamation that continued to, you know, rain down on her from President Trump, but also that activated so many of his followers to um really threaten her uh, you know, violently.

So she so the eighty three million was the jury saying, you know, it has to be a very large number to make it stop.

Both of those cases are now at the doors of the Supreme Court.

I I honestly can't speculate on what's going to happen there, um, but I can say that they have it's there.

I think at this point, maybe there's been about 10 or 11 weeks, maybe more, where they could have decided at least to hear or deny cert to the first case, and they just keep kind of bumping it down the road.

And the first case, the five million dollars, explain exactly what that was about.

Well, um, so the the five million had to do with the uh sexual assault and defamation.

So what Egene was uh able to do is when the Adult Survivors Act was passed uh in in New York, it it it allowed for a one year window for um victims of sexual assault rape uh to file uh lawsuits from any time in their lives.

They could they had that year window, and Eegine was the first one to file that case.

She had already filed a de a defamatory lawsuit against Donald Trump because he uh in his first um uh term had defamed her from the White House lawn and was attacking her uh regularly.

So that had been filed, but then when the Adult Survivors Act gave her the opportunity to bring the case of sexual assault, she did so.

So that's the first case.

I want to play a clip uh from the film, which shows the start of Eugene Carroll's deposition, in which she is questioned by President Trump's personal attorney, Elena Haba.

Do you start to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Good morning, Carol.

Thank you for being here.

How do you do?

Okay.

My name is Alina Haba, I'm sure you know that.

I represent a former president Donald Trump.

Have you ever been deposed?

Never.

Okay.

So let's go over some ground rules.

First of all, you're under oath.

So that means you might testify truthfully and honestly and accurately to the best of your ability.

Are you ready to start?

Is that again?

Yes, giddy up.

If women could see what kind of questions their fellow woman is asked when she brings charges of uh rape against a powerful man, it would stop a racehorse.

It is really quite stunning.

Okay, I am going to switch into the complaint.

Do you remember what the temperature was out there?

Yes.

Queer and coolish.

So that was a clip from the deposition that's in Ivy Mirapal's film Ask Egene.

And she was being questioned by Alina Huba, President Trump's attorney.

Um she just stepped down as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey following an appeals court ruling that found she was unlawfully serving in that role, just a little background on Alina Huba.

But Egene Carroll, we heard the deposition and then a clip of an interview with her talking about what women face when they make accusations about sexual abuse today, Ivy.

Yeah, so excuse me.

Uh the so I just want to first say that this is an an incredible opportunity for audiences to see what really goes on when a woman brings a case like this, uh, especially against a powerful man, but any man, really, that if if you make it all the way to being deposed or sitting in the courtroom, you are going to be subjected to this kind of questioning.

And if you when you watch the whole film, you see that it it's relentless and it goes on.

Um, so this these depositions are were private.

You know, you know.

They were not entered into evidence, uh, and so they never were made public.

And uh attorney Robbie Kaplan and Eegine uh gave them to me as it is an incredible gift for this film and for the world to see this, um, and to experience what Eegine experienced.

But the other part is and I love you know the start of it because it's just captures Eegene uh who she is so beautifully because right at the top you see she takes it very seriously that she's under oath, and then she doesn't realize that she has to speak the word yes when Alina Hava asked her the last question, and she said, Are you ready?

And Eegene just nods, and then when Aline Hobba presses her, she says, Yes, giddy up.

That's like, I mean, I love it.

It's like the mantra for for Eegene's life and for what Eegene took to this case.

I want to play a scene from your film, Ask Egene, in which Egene Carroll talks with writer Lisa Bernbeck, the first person she spoke to about Donald Trump sexually assaulting her back in 1996.

I called you right after the attack.

We were not that close of friends and met you.

You didn't like me that much, right?

No, I adored you.

See, that was the thing.

I thought you were the funniest writer I know.

And if I tell you what happened, you will laugh.

And then I will feel great.

Yeah.

And then we'll both be happy.

Right.

I think, oh, this is gonna be fun.

Right.

And you tell me this story, and I said, E, what happened to you was horrible, and you got upset that I wasn't laughing.

Yeah, that if you thought it was funny, if I called you, it would take the sting out.

I that it hadn't happened, it was just a funny thing, and instead I was shocked and said, Wow, what are we gonna do?

Please, thank you.

You know, I was very disappointed that you wouldn't report him.

But Lisa, they never would have believed me.

I would have lost my I would have been fired.

I didn't have money to get an attorney, everything I'd work for would be dissipated.

You said don't ever speak of this again, don't ever tell anyone this story as long as you live.

Do I have your word?

And you did.

And that was that.

That's writer Lisa Burnbeck, uh, the first person Eugene Carroll spoke to about uh being sexually assaulted in the department store dressing room.

Um Ivy Maripole, talk about the significance of what it means when a person has told another person contemporaneously.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so Lisa is what's called an outcry witness, um, and which which just means that she's the person that Egene called, told right after the attack.

Um Carol Martin is Egene's other outcry witness.

The two those two women were told within a day or two after uh Trump assaulted Egene at Bergdorf Goodman's.

And what's important about that is that now then 25 years later, when Egene decided to come forward with this story, she had she went to Carol and Lisa and you know, asked that they please come forward now, and lose their anonymity, which was not an easy choice to make for either of them.

Um, and they both did, and they both stood by Egene, and it's a it's a beautiful story of female friendship across the years and then coming together to fight this common battle.

I want to go to one last clip, and that is during his deposition in 2023, Trump was shown a picture of himself, Eegene Carroll, her former husband, the news anchor John Johnson, and Trump's then wife, Ivana.

He confused Eegene Carroll with his ex-wife Marla Maples.

You say Marvel's in this photo?

That's Marla.

That's it's my wife.

Which one are you pointing to?

No.

Here.

Oh shit.

The person you just pointed to was Eugene Carol.

And the person the woman on the right is your then wife.

I don't know.

This was the picture.

I assume that's John Johnson.

Is that because it's very blurry?

So this is an amazing moment, right?

This is uh Donald Trump, who said he'd never met this woman, who she was not his type.

Um, and of course, then E.

Jean Carroll writes a book, he's not my type.

Um, and he is confusing Eegene Carroll with his ex-wife Marla Maples.

Yes.

Now, you know, Amy, this was reported at the time, but I don't think people, myself included, can fully appreciate or understand what was happening here until we were able to just really play it out in the in the film, uh, yeah.

It's as you said, uh, Trump is presented with this photo that shows, you know, him meeting Eugene in a or saying hello to Egene in a receiving line, and and he gets very confused.

He is asked to identify everyone in the picture, and his wife Ivana Trump is there.

Um, and with him, but he looks at Eegine and he says, That's Marla.

That's Marla, my wife.

Now, Robbie Kaplan, so quick, she follows up with this unbelievable bombshell of a moment, and and says, Would you say that all three of your wives were your type?

Are your type?

And he says, Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.

Doesn't even, you know, it's just and we have that in the film too.

So uh I, you know, I it is it is such an important turning point in the case.

Um, and it just shows, you know, how all of his bluster about, you know, she's not my type and all of this is just more lies.

Ivy Mirapolis, we wrap up.

Can you talk about the release of this film, the theatrical release uh this weekend?

It's opening at IF uh IFC Center here in New York, going on to Los Angeles.

Have you had difficulty distributing this film?

Uh yes, yes.

Uh, it has been uh, as you can imagine, it is quite a challenge.

Uh, you know, the there is it is it is just the reality in our country right now that that the this vengeful president, and he's so powerful right now, um, back in office, that that it, you know, it has a chilling effect.

Um, so we have had a very hard time.

We know that audiences want to see this film.

We've had seen the reactions um in the film, the film festivals we've been privileged to be part of.

Um, so it took a while to get to get here, but we have partnered with Abrahama Rama, uh, an incredible uh distributor, and we are we are pushing the film out all over the country, and we can't we're really excited because it's a New York City story, and we were you know, just the IOC Center, Memorial Day weekend, big opening.

We'll be there all week, and yeah, we're I'm gonna be joined by some incredible um women to do some QA's.

Roxanne Gay will be with me.

I've got Amber Tamblin.

I so I, you know, I feel the momentum starting.

It feels like the exact right moment for this film.

Ivy Mirapal, director and producer of the award-winning documentary Ask Egene.

Her past films include Heir to an Execution about the execution of her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953.

Uh, she will be at QA's this weekend at the IFC Center here in New York.

Coming up, state officials in Minneapolis have charged an ice agent for shooting a Venezuelan immigrant than falsely reporting what happened back in 20 seconds.

Maybe he's the cara.

Que la Rosa Nova Stopa.

Maybe he's the Meadowabas.

Maybe he's the Caralinda.

Ida Cine.

Underan musician Carlata performing in our democracy now studio.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org.

I'm Amy Goodman.

And Minnesota prosecutors have filed criminal charges against an ICE officer who allegedly shot a Venezuelan immigrant in North Minneapolis during an immigration raid in January, then lied about what happened.

On Monday, the Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty announced federal agent Christian Castor will face four counts of second degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

Four counts of assault are a result of Mr.

Castro shooting through the front door of a residence with the intent to cause fear of immediate bodily harm or death to the four adults who were just inside the door.

These charges have activated a nationwide warrant for his arrest.

Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa Cela suffered a leg wound when Castor allegedly shot him through the door.

The Trump administration initially claimed that Castro fired in self-defense after accusing Sosa Celes and another man of beating an officer with a broom handle in a snow shovel.

A federal judge later dismissed those charges after video evidence clearly contradicted it.

This comes as Hennepin County prosecutors continue to investigate the killings of Nay Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents during the Trump administration's violent immigration enforcement campaign known as Operation Metro Surge.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also addressed reporters Monday.

I think the first one is called En-Ray Nagel.

Uh, and they and they flow from there.

For more, we're joined in our New York studio by Emilio Gonzalez Apollo.

She is executive director of Unidos and Minnesota, uh grassroots organization that builds power with Minnesota's working families to advance social, racial, and economic justice.

She's here in New York.

She just received the Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship on behalf of her group, hands off NYC, also was a recipient this year.

Melia, congratulations on the award.

As you're here, these charges are announced.

Talk about the significance of them.

It is really important to demonstrate that there are opportunities to continue to embody a functioning democracy when the crimes of people are meeting consequences, and that is what the institution of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office is trying to attempt here after several months of the federal government obstructing investigation of both the murders of Renee Good, Alex Purdy, and also the other crimes that this officer's committing during Operation Metrosarch and Operation Paris.

So talk about what it means to have state officials and what this video evidence was so that people understand.

Um officer, um, but in the case of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed, um, as they bore witness to what was happening on the ground.

Uh, Alex Pretti, the VA nurse, the mom, uh, Renee Good, um, they're having trouble, the state officials getting cooperation from the federal government who's taken the evidence.

Correct.

Since the beginning, they deployed false uh narratives, calling both Renee Good and Alex Pretty uh criminals and sendiaries, trying to polarize their identities uh for the public narrative that could benefit the federal government.

And uh they were also trying to hide the uh overreach and the violence, the vitriol in which federal agents were behaving on the ground, the amount of erosion of people's constitutional rights, uh the violations of people's constitutional rights also in during the tension and through the detention and the and the transportation of of immigrants into southern uh states for processing.

And so when we see that uh Minnesota was a place where civil society was prepared to record and bear witness, and they brought all of this activities and recordings to the light.

They they shared in the social media, they share with reporters, they shared with mainstream media, and so we had the evidence.

People, regular people had the evidence that the narrative that the federal government was putting out there was not only false, but also quite opposite to the type of um to the type of uh uh misguiding that that they were trying to uh misguide the regular Americans into believing that the Minnesotans were unruly and radical, and so now the county prosecutor has evidence from regular people, a neighbor that recorded that actually nobody used a shovel, that there was no use of force but a Venezuelan immigrant, that in fact it was an agent that shot through the door when there was a baby inside the home, several children inside the home, trying to figure out how to answer and ask if there was a warrant, if there was a judicial warrant, how to respond to the authorities.

All that was recorded by neighbors.

There were people trying to bear witness, they were eyewitnesses on the ground trying to bring these cases to light, and it was the people that equipped the county prosecutor to move the institution to embody the constitutional uh law and and in the body of the institution of Hennepin County to actually prosecute the wrongdoing of these officers, and that is that is what democracy looks like.

It looks like separation of powers and uh getting material consequences of grondoing.

Well, Emilio Gonzalez Avalos, thank you for being with us, executive director of Unidos, Minnesota, grassroots group that builds power with Minnesota's working families to advance social, racial, and economic justice.

We'll do an interview in Spanish and post it online at Democracy Now.org.

That does it for our show.

I'll be tonight at the IFC Center after the six o'clock screening of the film about democracy now.

Steal the story, please.

I'll be there with the director, Tia Lesson, and with the formerly known as Eve Ensler.

Tomorrow I'll also be there for a QA after the six o'clock screening at IFC Center with our own Democracy Now co-host Nermin Sheikh and the director, Tia Lesson, then to Boulder and Denver.

Check our website.

Welcome to Financial Fitness with the money doctor, Dr.

Francis Rayum.

You are not broken.

All right, you may be operating inside a system that isn't coordinated yet.

Okay.

And once you see that, everything begins to change.

Hi, it's Francis.

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for watching this video.

If you're catching us on YouTube, please help us help others by clicking like, subscribe, and all notifications so you don't miss any videos.

And check back for the next video.

I think you're gonna love it.

Thanks again.

For more information, you can visit us at hugyourmoney.com.

It's time for financial fitness with the money doctor, Dr.

Francis Ram.

Hi.

Hi, Jess.

How's it going?

It's going well, and we're talking well, what are we talking about this week?

Well, it's interesting.

You know, today's show is a little bit different.

I know you're always so skilled at like, here's what we're talking about, but the show is a little bit different because you know, over the years I've worked with thousands of people, and I keep seeing the same pattern, right?

I kept seeing the same pattern again and again.

And surprisingly, uh it's not what people think, it's it's not about um it's not about income.

It's not even just about debt.

Okay.

Uh it's not really about managing your money well directly.

It's something much quieter.

And I'm teasing this because it's such a fun riddle, right?

Why what are all these gonna be?

But it's quieter.

It's something much quieter, but more profound, more powerful.

And so I finally have given it a name.

I call it the quiet pressure.

Okay.

Okay.

So today I want to talk about what that actually means and why it matters more to most people, uh, than anyone seems to realize.

This is this matters to almost every household.

The quiet pressure internally, you mean with people?

Yes, internally, but um produced by an external well, number of external forces, okay.

Okay.

So until I gave it a name, it was sort of in the background, kind of like our own finances are, right?

Until we name the problem, it's just hanging around there in the background.

But here's the thing.

S in most of the people I talk to, they say something seems off even when they seem to be doing okay financially.

And they're proud of that.

And my credit score is good, I'm paying my bills on time, I'm contributing to my retirement, my kids are going to good schools.

They got the whole American dream going on.

And they will still tell me, where does the money go?

Why doesn't it feel like I'm getting anywhere?

I just have a sense that something is that not as good as it could be, that there's something better that I don't have access to in some way.

And most people I think don't actually sit down to analyze it.

And so what happens is it just keeps keeps on keeping on, and that's what I call the quiet pressure.

Okay.

Um it's a it's a uh elusive idea.

So we're gonna talk about it in little bits and pieces today, but at no point will I point my finger to one thing.

I just felt like at no point will my hands leave my wrists, right?

At no point will I point my finger to one thing and say that is the quiet pressure.

Okay.

But here's an example.

We are resigned as a society to expect our mortgage to take fifteen years, 30 years, whatever it is.

We we see our finances in very linear fashion.

Okay.

Isolated.

Okay, so we accept that a mortgage is whatever the term we got for it is.

It's five and a half percent for fifteen years.

That's our mortgage.

We accept that a car payment is you know, four years, six years, whatever it is.

We see them in isolated chunks because that's how they're presented to us.

Right.

Right.

That's lots of things.

You have to be able to afford this payment every month and then you can have this thing.

Yeah, doesn't that seem right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

None of that is coordinated in some way.

So I'm gonna use a few terms today that um that maybe I use differently.

I I've created them as a framework, a language, to describe what this quiet pressure is so that we can do something about it.

Mm-hmm.

So they're words you'll know, like coordination, right?

Right.

But I'm using them a little bit differently.

So it's not coordinated, and uh in other words, Jess, when you go to get your mortgage, sure they pull your credit report and they see what your debt to income ratio is at that moment, as a snapshot.

Right.

There's no future coordination.

They don't check in with you every year going, Hey Jess, how's the price of groceries?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Are you still making your mortgage payment?

Okay, they don't care.

If they get their payment, they're done, right?

Right.

There's nothing that is coordinated between, let's say, the debt and the retirement.

So people decide, uh, I have to max out my 401k or I'm never gonna be able to retire.

Mm-hmm.

So let me just put as much money as I can in my 401k.

Right.

Does anybody say how's your cash flow doing?

Can you actually afford that?

Are you racking up credit card debt because there's not enough money in your take home pay?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Then you add to that things like health care.

Who talks to you about affordability and health care?

This is what it costs.

You have to have it.

Good luck.

Right, and that's another thing that's gone up so much this year that it's really hurting people.

Yeah, exactly.

So, so the first layer of this quiet pressure that we're talking about today, is that lack of coordination.

That lack of a wide lens that allows you to see your entire financial picture in any effective way.

Okay.

The closest we come to this, this was almost an epiphany to me, Jess.

I I'll explain about the book in a minute, but obviously I've written a book about this called The Quiet Pressure.

Okay.

Another book, yes.

Yes, just released, actually.

But this show really isn't about the book, it's about what inspired me to write this book.

Okay.

And what inspired me to write this book is the realization that all of the people I've been dealing with individually, work for someone or work for themselves.

They are part of a collective workforce.

Right.

Okay.

And that workforce is what keeps America running.

Mm-hmm.

Not just that's what keeps America running.

And we're not well financially.

I I could say it softer than that, but I think most people would agree that if you're in the workforce, you at some point are concerned about your finances.

Mm-hmm.

So what's fascinating about that to me, Jess, is this is not um, it's kind of like cancer.

Doesn't care who it chooses, right?

Mm-hmm.

Financial stress, even though people without much money won't believe it of people with much money, uh doesn't care about industry.

It doesn't care about income.

It doesn't care about gender or race or anything else.

It affects people in the same way, that same internal pressure, regardless of what their set of challenges are.

For some people that's food insecurity, right?

It's as basic as how am I going to feed my family?

Right.

And for others, it's uh I've saved half a million dollars, but I don't know if that's enough for me to retire and I'm really worried I won't be able to retire.

Mm-hmm.

That seems absurd to people, you know, like how can that possibly be affecting people the same way?

If I had $500,000, my problems would be gone.

Right.

But the fact of the matter is people experience things differently and everything is relative.

Yeah.

So my uh hypothesis, proven over many years, though, I'll call it a hypothesis, is that um employees carry to the job, not just their skills, not just their experience, but the financial timeline with which they live.

Right.

Uh and we we call this distraction that employees often have at work, whether anybody is logging these numbers or not, uh, there's a term for it, and I didn't make it up.

It's called presenteism.

Presenteism.

Okay.

Okay.

Not absenteeism, which can of course happen from financial stress.

It's presenteism.

It's being at work while your mind is not quite there.

Right.

Your mind is busy worrying about all those things we're talking about, okay.

I did actually end up writing a book about this, my new book, The Quiet Pressure.

How normalized financial stress is shaping today's workforce.

Yes.

Okay.

Because that's exactly the point.

How normalized financial stress is shaping today's workforce.

Not how financial crisis is causing people to stay home.

Right.

This is affecting most people at some level.

And the problem is we have normalized it.

We have accepted that your mortgage might take 15 years, that you have to make extra payments to be able to get something to be paid off faster.

That you will never be able to stick to a budget.

Um that your company offers a retirement plan, but you just can't find the money to go into it because you're not like those other people who have extra money.

We we accept these things as a given, but I think at its core, the the thing I've objected to so many times and continue to defend people about, is this inference that if you're having any kind of money stress, worries, challenge, it you are to blame for it.

Now alone.

Okay, now I'm not I'm not trying to say, look, it's nobody's fault, you know, you make all the world's worst decisions and you're you don't have any responsibility.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that it is it's not what people point the finger at, which is, you know what, Jess?

If you just made better decisions, you wouldn't have these problems.

You should be or you cut out this and this and this from your budget.

Yeah.

It so they think it's behavioral and static.

Like you said, cut this out and you'll be fine.

Financial outcomes are rarely determined in a single decision.

They're the cumulative result of thousands of small choices, uh, made under varying levels of stress, um, with the limited information we get, I guess, uh, and constraint.

Right?

We're we're in this tight little box.

I my kids are aging and I have to get them to Disney before they're too old to enjoy it.

Everything is is in this short timeline.

So if help is only offered at the company level, and it and many companies are doing this now, offering financial wellness benefits, mostly as an add-on.

Okay.

So if help is only offered at the company level at the point where breakdown happens, where crisis happens, um, then people have to get past the stigma of telling their employer they're in trouble, that's hard, or they have to say, I will reach out to one of these resources and bear my soul to a stranger.

Uh it's always hard.

And this is where I really feel empathetic and sympathetic with the workforce.

If that's what really happens, then becoming capable, the more capable a person is.

Well, and I think sometimes too, employees there might be a little trepidation about going to tell your employer you're in trouble because then you feel like it makes you vulnerable.

You can accept what they're whatever they're gonna get to you because they know you need that job.

So I think there's a fear there.

You know, there was a gentleman who was kind enough to uh come into the studio and record his thoughts about this, and he was very brave and very honest.

Um, and he said it best, I think.

When I'm at work and all I'm thinking about is how to make a car payment, how to pay my son's tuition or my daughter's future tuition.

It's incredibly distracting.

I can't really be fully present for my students.

And they see it.

I know they see it because they ask me.

These are teenagers asking me an adult if I'm okay.

And as much as I try to hide it, they know me well enough, and that also makes me feel bad because they shouldn't be taking care of me.

You know what I mean?

It's my job to take care of them.

I know, it's really bad.

And I just how do you say this to your employer?

I'm sure my employers understand.

I'm sure they know that this is going on, but I know of people who have not come to work because financial stress has made them sick.

I know people who come to work with financial stress on their mind.

So you know, I'm grateful to him for just teeing it up and saying what was really true about how do you say this to your employer?

So when we come back, let's talk more about this quiet pressure.

Okay, in the meantime, can we get your phone number?

Sure.

413 773 333.

And you can go to Hug Your Money.com and you can also get the brand new book wherever books are available if you want to hold that up again.

The quiet pressure is available on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, Kindle, and soon to be audio format.

So more financial fitness to come next on Franklin County Now.com.

Financial Fitness with the Money Doctor is underwritten by Franklin County Technical School.

We build futures.

Visit FCTS.us or call 413 863 9561.

Welcome back to Financial Fitness.

I'm Jess Tyler along with the money doctor, Dr.

Francis Ram.

Hi.

Hi, Jess.

I'm fired up.

Yeah, well, we're kind of talking about the inspiration behind your brand new book and about companies getting involved.

I do have a couple of questions, but first the name of the book.

The quiet pressure.

How normalized financial stress is shaping today's workforce.

All right.

Question for you from what we were talking about with employers offering financial services.

If I'm an employer listening, and I know you and I have talked about this before, so I know the answer, but if I'm an employer listening to us right now, and I'm saying I don't want to get involved in my employees' finances, that's their business, that's their problem.

Tell everyone why it benefits the employer as well.

Well, it certainly does benefit the employer, but first let me just say they don't need to be involved in your finances.

And in fact, uh keeping your privacy is not uh an option, it's paramount.

It should be structural.

And the structural is the reason that it matters to employers.

So I'll give you an example.

Uh we talked about presenteism.

Your people are coming to work, their mind is somewhere else, whatever.

In in severe cases, it bothers their health, all of that.

But when I say it's structural, let me use this in as an example, and I do use this in the book.

If you're a company, you don't ask your employees if they'd like to opt into health care.

It's put in as infrastructure because it's too risky for you to have employees with catastrophic illnesses that aren't covered.

You won't have a workforce left.

People get sick, right?

Yeah.

You also integrate something for cybersecurity as infrastructure.

You don't pick up cybersecurity once you've been attacked.

You don't say, hey, we got a problem, let's call the cybersecurity people.

Right.

You put it in as infrastructure because it's too risky not to have it, even though you might not need it ever.

Right.

You might not need it for a year, what it's insurance.

Okay.

So in this case, if you know that your workforce has to deal with money, and pretty much every workforce has to deal with money, then you can pretty much assume that they are worried about it at some time at some level for almost everyone in your company.

Now, the question is what is that costing you?

I can tell you that the data says between two to four hours per week per employee is lost on this stuff.

Yeah.

Wow.

No, yeah, nobody will believe that, but if you're the problem is it's so hard to see.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you can ask your employees, are they stressed out about money?

And what are they gonna say?

They're not gonna tell you if they're stressed out about money unless they're really at crisis, right?

Yeah.

So what happens is employers put these plans in place, these financial wellness add-ons.

You know, here's a bank of calculators, here's a referral to somebody.

Here's this a webinar.

But they are judged by things that companies can see.

They're judged by how many people enrolled, how many people showed up, how many people utilize this stuff, and based on those things, that's how they judge whether it's effective or not.

I'm here to say that financial wellness at this level, when we're talking about coordination and sequencing, which we haven't even gotten into yet, but when you when you apply what I'm talking about in the quiet pressure, as infrastructure, then your way of understanding whether it is working or not as an employer, isn't about how many people click the button.

It's about what is changing.

Are people less distracted at work?

Are your are your timelines, you know, are they able to see out into the future more when really what they've been doing is asking a lot of questions about a short-term project.

Because they're thinking in those terms.

You know, people under financial stress don't think about the future in a rosy way.

They think about now.

Right.

And that translates it all carries with these people into work, no matter how skillful somebody is, how committed, how loyal, uh, how capable.

They are carrying this quiet pressure and it is affecting the workforce.

And it turns out that it's very affordable.

I mean, really inexpensive for companies to do this.

In fact, in some cases, companies don't pay for it, they just offer it to their employees.

So it's free for a company to do it, right?

I want to be very clear about this.

I'm not saying, look, throw out all those benefits you're paying for and and you know, get the hug plan.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is the problem is in the uncoordination and the lack of sequencing.

Okay.

So if you can apply something like what we're talking about in the quiet pressure, to coordinate the benefits you've already got and apply sequencing, which I'm just going to talk about now, to apply sequencing in a way that is um scalable, then you then you really start to address something.

So let's talk about sequencing.

Sequencing is the order in which these decisions get made, right?

You could say, my financial wellness benefits are coordinated, I get them all through my EAP.

They're all, you know, they coordinate that.

I don't care about that.

But it's really unlikely that sequencing at all is involved.

In other words, think of it like levers.

Okay.

If I pull this lever to my budget, this lever over here changes, right?

Right.

Sequencing cares about that.

Typical benefits don't.

So if you pull the budget lever, your retirement account doesn't care.

You know, suddenly gas prices have gone up.

Do you change your retirement contributions?

Not likely, not until it becomes a crisis.

So what I'm talking about is something that you put in place, um, like health care, like uh cybersecurity, as infrastructure, because it is so important to your workforce, but it requires this is tough because it requires an employer, a CEO, uh an HR team, somebody in the C suite level, with some vision and some empathy.

I don't want to say those who don't do it don't care about their people, but you have to care about your workforce, at least at the level of, hey, if my fork workforce was better, felt better, felt happier, you know, they'd come to work and my I would my bottom line would be increased.

It's not a morale initiative, it's not a pep talk.

We're talking about giving people that for 18 or 19 years, I've been hearing in almost every appointment.

Why didn't I know about this?

How come nobody teaches about this?

I've got some stuff through work, I go to a webinar, but I can't apply it.

Right.

So that's an important point.

Financial wellness benefits that are out there are great.

I'm glad that they're there.

What I'm talking about is the missing piece.

Okay.

So let me let me um say this because we're talking about levers.

You can go to a financial wellness webinar that teaches you about compound interest rates at work.

That doesn't change the fact that you your debt is still taking you forever to pay.

Right.

You understand compound interest rates, but nothing changed on your side.

That kind of thing adds to the pressure.

Because now you feel like, geez, I not only was doing everything right in the beginning, I'm gathering as much knowledge as I can, I'm trying to apply this stuff, and I still can't do it.

Hmm.

Or I'm still failing at it.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I hate that word, failing, yeah.

So I just think that, you know, people really do need to understand.

If you're feeling like you're doing everything right, and you're still not getting ahead.

If there's one takeaway from this, you are not broken.

All right.

You may be operating inside a system that isn't coordinated yet.

Okay.

And once you see that, everything begins to change.

Mm-hmm.

And you know, I could go into a lot of history and we don't have time to do it, but I will just say that there has been a major shift in the responsibility individuals have about their money.

From a time in the mid-century where companies had pensions and people worked for one company for a long time.

They got their pension.

That was it.

They cared about, you know, raising their kids and doing their their ledger sheet was a lot simpler.

Household budget was simpler.

Way simpler.

We used to get a little book and write down what you, you know, your 10 things you had to pay that month, okay.

But once we started to get rid of pensions and shift into 401ks and 403Bs and 457 plans.

And put the burden of health insurance and disability and other things, dental insurance, everything on the employee.

We didn't give people any education about this, Jess.

We just said, hey, we're not doing this anymore.

It's up to you.

Right.

And so we've we've done this in a way that the system has become very fragmented.

And we expect of people that they now have to do their own sequencing, which is the order and which decisions are made.

Now they have to do their own sequencing, their own coordination, and their own uh implementing of these plans, with very little uh experience or resources.

And all I'm saying is it doesn't have to be that way.

There's a there is a way to do it.

I've written 300 pages about it, right?

Right.

I mean, if you're an employer and you're listening to this, you know, download the Kindle version if you don't want to buy the hardcover.

That's fine, but but take a look at this because it could really it might be the highest ROI benefit you add this year.

Okay.

Yeah.

Uh initially.

Well, when you're talking two to four hours per person per week, you know, even if you have ten employees, there's a whole 40 hour week done.

Yes.

I I mean we could talk about this forever, but when you said even if you have ten employees, it comes to mind that uh I was recently talking to a small veterinarian clinic, and she said to me, Oh, I would give this to my employees because you know what?

Most of the time they have to go to Tufts or they want to go to Tufts or someplace because of the pay, and I can't compete.

But our average person just applying this coordination and sequencing, the average person saves a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Wow.

It's a benefit, it's a real benefit.

So, yeah.

You know, it's really uh I would encourage anybody who who has an interest if this resonates with anybody.

Um, of course I go much deeper in the book, and I I just hope that that it a great employer hears it, uh, says, You know what?

I've been seeing that at my own Yeah, I've been seeing it at my own company.

Uh I feel like I'm doing everything right, and yet, you know, my bottom line isn't c increasing.

My company isn't growing at the rate I expected it to.

I can't see it on the page.

What is going on?

You know what?

It's structural.

Look at your workforce.

Well, on a side note, congratulations on book two is no easy feat writing a book, and how are you feeling after after getting it done?

I know that that's a lot of uh it's a lot of hard work.

Thank you.

Actually it's book three.

Oh, book three, okay.

Book three.

Well, general live and then you revised that.

I did.

So it's really two and a half, I would say.

Yes.

Uh thank you.

It's it's feels good to have it done.

Um I made jokes about it as I was doing it, uh, because it was uh an intense book to write, and I wanted it to be a light enough read for people, but still make the point.

So I was referring it to a my own quiet pressure.

Yeah.

It was my own quiet pressure.

So yeah, it feels great to have it out and available.

Um, and people can get it on Amazon.com, uh, or they can call us and we'll get them a copy.

Yeah.

Alright.

And what is the phone number to call you?

Sure.

413 773 333.

And you can go to Hug Your Money dot com.

All right, thank you so much.

Thank you.

I just want to add for employers when you go to Hug Your Money dot com slash groups.

Perfect.

Easy.

Thank you.

We'll have more financial fitness next week on Franklin County Now.com.

Have you ever seen the show Severance?

No.

Okay, so there's the show Severance on Apple, um, with Adam Scott is in it.

But basically, it's and I can't remember the details of what exactly they do, but they put it some kind of chip or something in people so that when you get to work, you have no memories of your outside life.

So you just focus on work, and then when you leave work, it switches you back to so you have no memory of work, and it's employers are the employers in this sci-fi show are doing this because of what you're talking about, where people are so distracted at work by relationships and money and all these other things.

They want them just focused on their work like bots almost.

And so it's this it's a really good show.

Wow, that's great.

Yeah, it's really right up the alley of what you're talking about.

But employer like employers don't get any ideas, all right.

Um, but it's really really kind of scary when you think about it, because every employer would love to do that.

Yeah, you know.

Well, could be easier than that.

But yes.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Thank you, Jess.

So interesting.

Of course.

Well, it's good to see your face.

Thanks, you two.

Financial fitness with the money doctor is underwritten by Hug Your Money.

Permission granted, chase your dream.

Will you help us spread the word about financial fitness?

Please like, subscribe, and choose all.

Thank you.

Francis Rahum.

Five point eight billion dollars has been lost to fraud.

And that was more than a 70, 7.0, Jess, percent increase from 2020.

Because the systems are designed to catch you off guard.

It's not a failure of intelligence, it's an engineered moment.

Hi, it's Francis.

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for watching this video.

If you're catching us on YouTube, please help us help others by clicking like, subscribe, and all notifications so you don't miss any videos and check back for the next video.

I think you're gonna love it.

Thanks again.

For more information, you can visit us at hugyourmoney.com.

It's Jess, and it's time for financial fitness with the money doctor, Dr.

Francis Ram.

Hello.

Hello, Jess.

How are you?

I am doing good.

And today we're talking about a topic very near and dear to me because I think I get, I don't know, three or four of these a day.

Talking basically scams or scam emails, right?

All kinds of scams, uh, actually.

And the reason we're talking about it, and believe me, I don't want to come on the air and talk about scams anymore.

I would love to talk about something more interesting.

But uh, well, let me put it this way.

Here's how bad they've gotten, okay.

First of all, they are slicker than ever, and they're using real uh email addresses, all the things I've told you about in the past, like hey, don't click the link, watch the email, you know.

Right, it might be one letter off, all that.

Oh my gosh.

Now they're legit.

They're getting harder and harder to tell apart, even in voice.

And so I'm going to give you a three-step process that you can use every time to protect yourself from this as we go through it.

And I'll repeat it a couple of times so that you folks will get it.

Um but just to just to put this into perspective.

Um, I've always said, you know, after you discover one of these scams, you should report it to the Federal Trade Commission.

You should still do that, but you should not expect a response because they are so overloaded that in fact the data we're getting is so old.

It is 2026 when we're filming this, right?

Yeah.

From 2021 that says five point eight billion dollars has been lost to fraud.

And that was more than a 70 7-0% increase from 2020.

So when I come on the air and I'm saying, you know, we're talking about scams.

I am not talking to people who are um technologically unsavvy or people who are undisciplined or people who are sloppy or people who panic easily.

I'm talking to everybody.

Just this morning, I got a serious message from my assistant saying, Hey, Francis, there's an email in your inbox from Microsoft.

Uh, there's been an attempt, you need to you need to go and check on it.

But now they're legitimate email addresses.

So you can't even say, Hey, uh, is this address real?

If you stop watching the show at this point, I want you to walk away with one thing.

Okay.

Do not click the link.

Can I just do a little sidebar here for a second?

Yes.

This to me, anyway, is so frustrating because we're all doing a million things.

When I get an email, the fact that you've got to turn into Nancy Drew.

Yes.

Figure out whether it's real or not.

And and the other thing is then if there really was an important email coming through, we're so prone to not believe it that and that just gets so frustrating.

Because they these folks all do the same thing.

They send something that if you don't act on it could cause you a problem.

So they are designed for you to react to them, not to make a decision, to react.

That's their job is to get you to react.

And if they can to get you to react under pressure, right?

Yeah.

So that irritates me to begin with.

And then I worry from a business standpoint that we are sending legitimate emails to people who have asked us questions or to people who are in our system who need to know about something important.

And I'm I'm afraid that they won't open it.

Right.

I mean, it's really this is really bad.

And everybody is walking around saying, geez, with AI now we don't know what is real and what is not real.

We're gonna go into that more.

Uh, but that's getting scarier too.

I'll tell you that I've had two scam attempts come to me in the last two days, and it's why I'm on on top of this.

One of them came inbound from a friend of mine.

He's somebody who comes to hear our band often, and he feels friendly, and so he reached out to me and said, Francis, I discovered this great financial thing you should know about.

Oh boy, yeah, parts of pennies.

Now, remember the movie um office space?

I don't know if you ever saw it.

Okay, I did.

Yeah, this is always shows up in movies.

Parts of pennies have been have been scaled off the top, scraped off the top, and they're being stored somewhere and they add up to lots of money.

Okay, so of course, it's he's got a video on this that seems seems government related.

And you know, you all you have to do to get your parts of pennies is go to this website, put in your information, and see how much money is being held for you.

In his case, he came back to me and he said, It's two thousand dollars.

Oh, that sounds exciting.

Wouldn't you like that?

Yeah, so let me just say that everything is not a scam.

If you're listening to this show or watching the show right now, there is a legitimate site in every state that you can go to and find missing money that is actually yours.

Oh, right, yes.

It doesn't come from parts of a penny that the government set off to the side somewhere waiting for you to claim it.

That does not happen.

Just usually some account you've forgotten about or some interest in something, right?

That's somebody left you money, they couldn't find you.

You move too often, they can't find your address.

Those are legitimate things.

I have found money for people like that many times, uh, relatives and and whatnot.

So you can always do that now.

Now just look in your state, but make sure it's a dot gov address.

Uh, I think it's in Massachusetts.

Uh, don't quote me on this, but I think it's find mass money.gov, I think.

Okay.

Uh, but just Google it to make it.

Double check.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's not always a scam, but when you combine hope with urgency, oh boy, you got a magic combination there.

So the two scam attempts.

So this guy sends me the thing and it's got a video, and it says he's got two thousand dollars, and he's already put in his social security number.

Oh no.

Well, keep watching because I will tell you that that's not the end of the world.

There are things you can do to protect yourself, even if you've clicked the link or given up your information.

Okay.

Okay.

But for right now, let's just talk about the scams for a moment.

So he gets this, and I send him back a message with all the little red flags that I think this might be a scam because.

And thankfully, it stops him in his track before he gives anybody any money to get his money back.

Another scam we've talked about recently where somebody says you have to be at a certain level in order to get your money out of your account.

And so if you add more money to it, you'll be able to get your money out.

Never happens.

When I'm saying this, it sounds like I'm being judgmental or like uh nobody would ever fall for this.

But evidently it isn't true.

I mean Yeah, no, I mean you do all the time.

And the ones that I've been getting lately, um, it gives you like a little bit of hope, like it'll be I just got one from ATT yesterday that said I want an iPad, and I'm like, Well, I've been a very good customer for years.

I deserve an iPad, but I knew the chances of that being true are are slim to none and it was none.

It's true, but you know, imagine now couple that.

This is how these things happen, Jess, and it's a very good point.

Couple that with the fact that you might have just been at a website looking for an iPad, and there might have even been an ad off to the side that said something like, register to win an iPad.

There's some there are reasons that these things come together in a way that a totally responsible, reasonable, intelligent, careful person still gets scammed.

Or Jess.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

That's you're too self-effacing.

But yeah, I think, you know, you can't just look at somebody who who was taken by a scam and think they got duped because they're an idiot.

They are not an idiot.

The scams are getting more and more clever because they're looking for higher net worth individuals with professional jobs who are very busy who will just have somebody else do that.

Mm-hmm.

If my assistant did not contact me this morning and say, because she's been taught to do this, right, and say there's a an email in your inbox that you'll have to go and do this.

It said it was from Pakistan.

Maybe I'll even put the email up.

It said it was from Pakistan.

Uh it said it was an unusual access attempt, and that if I did not respond, then they would continue to allow access from this person or these this company.

Now that's not quite scamish like it used to be in the past, where it would say, if you don't respond, we're gonna close your account right away.

Yeah.

You you could spot that a mile away.

Microsoft is not gonna close your account if you don't respond to an email.

That was kind of silly.

Now they're sending it from a legitimate email address, and they're saying if you don't respond, that's okay, but we're gonna let this Pakistan person continue to access your um account.

Your account.

And so that creates a sense of urgency, especially on a morning when I'm getting ready to be on the air, and my assistant Sherry is busy trying to go through emails.

It would have been so easy to say, did you check the email address?

Yeah, it was legit.

Okay, click it and do it.

Right.

Thankfully, I just stopped.

It just it just seemed to me that Pakistan was a little too on the nose.

You know, and I was like, okay, you know that somebody is attempting to access my account from Pakistan.

Okay.

So anyway, all I'm saying is there's no judgment here.

You should not feel embarrassed.

You should not feel ashamed to say something.

If you don't, you're only helping the next person get scammed.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

We don't start fighting back against this.

These are just gonna get worse and worse and worse.

And I think sometimes some of these hackers or people that are doing this count on that.

They count on the pe the fact that people will be embarrassed and not spread the word about it.

And then they can keep doing it.

They d they do.

Now, I will tell you that this email was rather interesting to me because uh because it allowed you to go, you know, I looked it up on on the web and I said, Is this a legitimate address?

Yes, it is, but of course, I wasn't gonna click the link.

So I then I went, I had to find my way, which was not easy, I have to say, to this specific Microsoft area where I could find out whether my account had been accessed or not, my recent activity.

And when I put the email in that they sent in the email to me, they said your email address such and such has been accessed.

When I put that email address in, even though it was one of our old email addresses, it wasn't in the Microsoft recent activity thing.

So you really, I'm totally with you.

I hate that you have to keep doing this to, you know, save yourself.

And in the case of this gentleman who sent me the video, you know, he spent time doing this.

He was excited about it.

He was going to get $2,000 of his own money.

And you know, what's interesting about that is that he wasn't sending it to you to say, is this a scam?

He really believed it, right?

Uh you know, he was helping me out.

Francis, look at this great financial thing you should see.

And you know, he was so sweet.

When I wrote back to him, I said, I hope I'm not overstepping, but here's what I think.

Um, you know, he came back to me thanking me for saving him, and you know, all of that nice stuff that that kind people do, but I just was like, boy, I I don't know how many times I've talked about these, but they just keep evolving, they just keep getting more and more sophisticated, and I'm getting really concerned that people who would never have fallen for anything, top, top-level people who are, you know, managing all the plates in the air all the time, are because they are not touching everything themselves, their companies, their people, they're all gonna get scammed because somebody else is gonna click the link or do whatever.

I mean, the amount of training you have to do to keep up on these things is absurd.

And they're hitting you from all angles, it's not just email.

Like, I get texts all the time, like saying I owe tolls.

You know, you just get those kinds of from every direction, yeah.

Yep, and it'll be a place that I lived before, but haven't been in years.

That's right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, other things from even where I haven't lived.

So I know we have to go to break, but I just want to say um, so I leave people with these three things that they can do every time.

So, you know, you don't need to be careless anymore, you just need to be human, and I think we all are.

So I'm gonna give you a three-step process you can use in every single case, a filter.

I call it save SAV.

There's no E on it.

You can execute for E if you want to, but I recommend S for stop, separate from the message.

Don't click that link, right?

Just separate from the message.

Okay, A is for assess or ask yourself.

Ask yourself, what am I feeling right now?

Am I feeling a sense of urgency?

Do I feel walk away?

Calm down about it, okay?

And then the last one is V S A V Save, verify, check, check inside from inside your account, not from the email.

Just go to a direct link and check.

So SAV.

Okay, excellent.

Let's get your phone number.

Sure, it's 413 773 3333.

You can go to Hug Your Money.com.

We'll be back with more from the money doctor, Dr.

Francis Ram on Financial Fitness.

Financial fitness with the money doctor is underwritten by Franklin County Technical School.

We build futures.

Visit FCTS.us or call 413 863 9561.

Welcome back to Financial Fitness.

I'm Jess along with the money doctor, Dr.

Francis Ram.

Hi.

Hi, Jess.

And we're talking about spending money on discovering whether these emails or texts are real or not.

Yeah, we're talking about losing money to scams and how sophisticated uh they've gotten.

And I was just saying that this morning I got one that was from a legitimate email address.

And so even if you check it and it looks legitimate, which is what we used to say, don't click the link if the email isn't legitimate, even if it's legitimate now, you gotta go check it.

So uh I am giving a three-step process for people so that they can use this as a filter in every single case, and we call it save S-A-V.

S is for just stop, separate from the email.

A is assess.

Ask yourself how am I feeling?

Am I feeling nervous?

Am I feeling like there's a sense of urgency?

If you are, step away, okay.

And then V is to verify it.

Never ever, ever click the link.

Copy it, paste it, research it, do whatever you gotta do, unless you know, like you get an email from us and you asked us a question and we sent you a link.

Okay, you're gonna be fine clicking that.

Right.

But if you don't know the person sending you the email, you go to the web and verify it inside your own account.

Okay.

There are three places to go for help on this, and I'll give these again at the end.

But FTC.gov, the Federal Trade Commission has a report fraud uh um place on their website that's perfect for this.

There's an identity theft resource center.

These are all free that I'm telling you about.

ID ITRC, identity theft resource center, and that's at ID theft Center.org.

Okay.

Does a free thing as well.

Uh they have a fraud watch network, which is great for real-time alerts and things.

So FTC, the uh Identity Theft Resource Center and AARP are good places to go for free support on this stuff, and to educate yourself about it.

So let's talk about what's actually happening out there right now and what the most common scams are and why they are working so well.

So, you know, if you know what to look for, this becomes much easier.

But we need to walk through a few of the big things.

So, like the ones I received, right?

The one of the things you see is there's been an unusual login attempt.

Right, red flag, unusual login attempt.

It might be a legitimate unusual login attempt.

That's why people can scam you.

They hide in the truth, right?

Or someone accessed your account.

Right, I got that too.

And it was opened uh from another country.

So those three things were all at work in the one email I got this morning, or that Sherry got.

Um, and it will always say click here immediately, right?

Because these three things are the things that you're having.

So there's a s a sense of authority, there's a sense of urgency, and there's always a sense of fear.

Right.

Like someone's gonna keep using your account if you don't do this right now.

Yeah, you shouldn't be getting an email from anybody that causes you to feel urgency and fear, especially if they're in a position of authority.

Okay, so as soon as you feel your emotions, you know, bubble up and you're thinking, oh, I have to act immediately, close the lid, walk away from the computer, stop the phone, whatever.

Okay.

Now money waiting for you is one of the scams.

Like the ones we were talking about in an earlier segment.

One money is waiting for you.

Somewhere there, somebody has died and left you money, uh, they've scraped pen parts of pennies off and they're waiting on the side.

You just forgot that you won the lottery, you won something of value, whatever it is, if there is money waiting for you, uh, you you probably know about it already.

So what you're saying is the Nigerian Prince does not want to gift me millions.

As old as that is, it is still the same premise.

It's still the same premise.

Yeah.

Uh yeah.

If you deposit, if you let us deposit money into your account, and then we'll clear it from your account, but we're only gonna take part of it, and what's left is yours, right?

Scam, scam, scam all the way.

Okay.

So you have money waiting, you have a refund, you have an overpayment, you have unclaimed funds.

All of those are scams.

Unless you're able to research it separately.

You call your local bank.

Do I really have money in my account?

You check with your broker.

Is this really true?

Right?

Check with someone you know in person.

And while I'm thinking of it, that's another good way to um protect yourself, is to use a second source.

Like if some if you get a text from somebody and you're worried if it's a scam, call them up.

Send them an email, don't do it through the same thread.

So double up on your your ways that you're responding to people.

Um, and here's a really subtle part.

It doesn't feel like a scam for those money things because it feels like a pleasant surprise.

Right.

Yeah.

So, you know, there's hope and curiosity together, is a majorly dangerous thing, right?

I hope this is gonna work, and I'm curious.

And what I really detest about that is that we often hear about hug your money that people are very hopeful, and that they were just curious.

They went in and filled out the form and saw the numbers.

I don't want those two things squashed for people or quashed for people, right?

Those are good things to have, hope and curiosity get me up in the morning, right?

Those are the two things to have.

So this is why I really think scams are far more dangerous than just the money that people lose.

Is that I feel like we're losing part of our um our human edge because we're being taken advantage of so so often like this.

So anyway, that's just an incredibly powerful combination.

Now there's another thing that is happening a lot now called smishing.

Have you heard this term?

Smishing.

Is it a combination of fishing and something else?

It is very good.

It's a combination of fishing, which by the way is PH, fishing, which came from, you know, we're gonna throw a line in the water and cast some things, but it actually came little history lesson actually actually came from freaking, P-H-R-E-A-K-I-N-G.

Freaking was an old term when they were scamming on the telephone, believe it or not.

Oh, okay.

I had heard that.

Telecom stuff, that's where fishing came from.

Started out as freaking, went to fishing, and now we have smishing, which is SMS, which is short messaging, short message service.

That's what SMS stands for.

Short message service, and the end of of fishing, the ishing part, mashed together, right?

So now we have another fun term, smishing.

Smis sorry, smishing.

It's hard to say.

Anyway, smishing is exactly that.

It's short message, it's texting scams.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it's a different delivery, it's the exact same hook.

And they'll switch numbers on you too.

I don't know if you've noticed this.

Like, I'll do stop, and then it'll say, Can you report junk and I hit report junk?

And then you see a number that's like one number off calling again.

So they don't give up.

They don't give up.

I mean, even now, here's how things have evolved.

It used to be that they spoofed numbers.

They would send you a message from a number that you knew so that you believe it was a person.

They don't even bother doing that anymore.

They just keep here's a no number, a new number, a new because there's no regulation stopping them.

You can't find these people.

So you have to be on your diligence game here.

Um, here's one I get all the time.

Your package couldn't be delivered because your bank needs verification.

Click here.

Uh they they do these things that are so dangerous because in texts, the really dangerous thing is we trust text more than we trust email.

Because we think somebody got our personal number and we don't normally give that out.

Just like, and we all have like that email address where if you're signing up to get a 15% code, you all put that email address in.

Um, but you don't normally do that for your phone.

No, that's absolutely true.

And and that's exactly the the strange combination, it feels personal and it feels immediate.

Now, here's the big, really, really, really creepy one that I think we're in for it on this.

Okay.