All right, welcome everyone to our August meeting.

Thank you to our community members who are here, and it's a new year of Asian Affairs Commission with a new leadership, same awesome people, and we're excited to get started.

Our first agenda item is approving the June meeting minutes.

If we take a look at those, we don't have more.

Well, we can't vote on them.

So we should look at them.

We can look at them for a minute, but we cannot vote.

So I don't think to say a second.

No, no.

You can say all the fun out of it.

We have the gab on the take on the fun.

No gavel needed here.

Yeah, we need it today.

And we'll just take about a minute here before we go to our presentation.

Any initial questions or comments before you move along?

Okay.

Um I'm excited to move us to a special presentation today.

As you all may know, on July 24th, we had a tie five in the anthropology commission's retreat that Lexi put together.

And at that retreat, each commission had the chance to present something that they've been working on or that they learned that could be a benefit to the other commissions.

And so I've invited Chair France from the Human Rights Commission to share his presentation because I think it's something that would benefit the commission to hear from.

Now we've missing some members at the retreat, and we're missing some members today.

But the good news, Chair France, is you'll be on T Gun for us all to watch.

And I'm excited for your presentation, both to frame up some of the conversations we're having as a commission, and also our commission needs to vote on a new human rights commission liaison.

We'll be rolling out of that commission appointment to serve as chair.

So we will not be voting on that today, but be thinking about any questions you have about the human rights commission so we can be ready to vote on a new member in September.

With that, I'll pass it to you.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah, happy to be here.

So again, I'm Drew France.

I'm the chair of the Human Rights Commission.

I joined the commission in 21 and became a chair in January.

Um this is a great invitation because I've been doing my best to try and attend all of our committees and some of the other commissions that I get to uh sit in and attend uh Asian Affairs Commission, so it's a great opportunity to do that as well.

I feel like the Human Rights Commission is doing an umbrella of all the commissions, so your work rises up and is also our work.

So I want to have a partnership.

I want to make sure I'm understanding what you folks are talking about and your ideas to make Tulsa an even stronger community.

So this is a great way for me to uh sit in with you, hear from you, learn from you, and hopefully partner with you as we move forward.

Uh I also know what you know, which is you have a fantastic chair.

Uh I've had the pleasure of working with her uh Commissioner Bielavar for at least a year, and always very impressed at her use of data, her comfort presenting to our group, City Council, it doesn't matter.

She's uh she's a pro.

So you've got a great uh uh new chair.

I know you had a great prior chair, but I'm really excited for you under this new leadership because I know she's fantastic, and you're gonna continue uh to do great things.

And before I transition to the presentation, there's also a little bit of jealousy, and maybe it's like a new commission thing, but I'm really a little jealous in that you all have this energy and this visibility, and you have the momentum, and you had a great event, and you decided to make an even better event.

I know there's some change of foot, but you have a lot of early wins and a lot of success and a lot of real palpable sort of energy around what it is you do.

And um I think maybe my presentation sort of maybe uh dovetails in that um that's maybe the the initial energy of something new, and eventually um, I think the work gets a little harder.

So maybe this is we help them with you as you think about where do you go next.

I think as you enter this sort of longevity of being an established commission, uh, I think we can all relate in this this topic that I'm gonna discuss today, which is about this reality of beginning to maybe feel overwhelmed and not sure what to do next, uh, given all that we face.

And the reality is that all the issues our commissions face are immense at the community level, but our authority, our formal authority to actually make change is really uh pretty small.

We're at best often advisory.

There's not a lot of actual formal change that we can make.

So the question isn't can we solve all of our problems that we see?

The real question is can we create movement and we create uh progress uh you know in the capacity that we have?

So today I just want to offer a bit of a framing to help with that and to really just underscore that progress is often incremental and that it can still be tangible and meaningful.

And I think we have some examples of that from human rights that I want to share with you.

Do you want me to bring the people to the other?

Oh, yeah, whoever can look to the next slide, uh whichever works for you.

I'm happy to assist the city.

While we're transitioning, there is some tea and baklava treat during the meeting.

I like to feed people with my catches.

Yes.

Any LEGs?