Welcome to Democracy Day.

This is a public hearing that will examine the impact of political contributions of corporations, unions, PACs, and super PACs on the city, as well as other issues that arise from the Supreme Court's decisions to give corporations the rights of real persons.

I'll ask Mr.

Tony Salagi to come up and get us started.

Um everyone will have three to five minutes to speak, and we're excited to have everyone here today.

Appreciate members of City Council.

The first was the Powell memo, which was written in nineteen seventy-one by Lewis Powell.

The memo's title was Attack on the Free Enterprise System.

The memo was a rallying cry towards businesses and corporations to defend itself against social and progressive movements.

So where is this lettuce?

Our voting rights fear free and fair elections are threatened.

Political power and influence is now for sale to the highest bidder from anywhere anywhere on the earth.

Crony capitalism is peddled from the White House, where a walking corporation sits as commander in chief.

He's bombing Iran without a declaration of war.

There's no debate in Congress.

There's no public debate.

Other recent presidents have unofficially declared war as well, killed people without permission of Congress or the people.

Cynicism, rules in the corporate media.

We can no longer count on the media to deliver the news truthfully about events.

This is all about money and class warfare.

It's all about denying people the right to health care so that profit continues to go up the funnel to the oligarchs.

And of course, we get to trickle down.

It's all about not having an equated public because an educated public is a threat to the oligarchs and politicians.

It's about not having health care for all because that diminishes profits.

We had it, we had and have a civil rights movement and legislation that was passed, but yet minorities are well aware that the promises of the legislation and other initiatives have not come to fruition.

I began talking about the Powell memo and the fear of socialism.

Martin Luther King knew that we cannot have a civil rights, we cannot have civil rights and social justice unless we have economic justice, which means as a start, health care for all, free college education, along with a strong social safety internet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

And our clerk Julie Gibbons, she's gonna go get the sign is she.

Anyone who wants to speak and sign in?

I think I was second.

You were second.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh to the City Council and to those who sponsor Democracy Day.

Thank you, Tony, and all your supporters.

So each year, I usually at the end of my presentation, I mentioned that it's going to be Edward Drummond Libby Day celebration of his birth, April 17th.

This year it's April 18th at the Libby House.

It's a free open house from 11 to 3.

Um this is the tenth year we've celebrated it.

But the reason I mentioned this, it was begun to honor Mr.

Libby when the school was destroyed.

And that was the purpose.

And so when it was open in 2019 23, there were 25,000 people at the open house to honor Mr.

Libby.

Its absence has been made a dip deep cut in the South Side areas of low-income families, and the community still is recovering from that lot those losses.

My particular part, Southside uh lost Libby, Jones, and Newberry.

And this is they have been working all those areas to rebuild for the last 14 years.

I was very involved with the schools for success program back in the day when they were uh make making the changes with the budget and the aftermath when citizens questioned how the budget was being spent.

I spent four years attending their the Toledo Public School Performance Audit Panel as the only city who uh citizen who voluntarily uh went to that meeting.

So now the Toledo Public Schools have a sixty-eight million dollar deficit.

And the reason I'm speaking early versus usually the last person is I intend to go to Scott High School for the final uh community meeting from 5 to 6.30.

I think it's that important considering uh my experience of what happened before to see how this all plays out.

And those changes need to be decided by April 5 April 15th.

So it's just in a matter of weeks.

Unfortunately, no major effect has been made in those last two years when I mentioned the issue at TPS regarding the uh edge choice issue.

So I'm looking for at when we talk up here or when people have ideas, we need actionable steps of what to do next.