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Hi my name is Marcus Harcus, I am with the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability
and am the coalition organizer for Hire Minnesota.
This is my first Session Line Up and I am enjoying it.
One thing that I am concerned about is job creation.
The government and legislature say that job creation is their top priority.
Well, this past summer the Economic Policy Institute in Washington DC
wrote the Twin Cities as having the worst economic disparities by race in the nation.
That’s not a list we want to top.
So I asked one of the republican leaders today if their caucus, if the majority, will
apply racial equity lines when they analyze the budget and decide on cuts
so that they can try to reduce or avoid the consequences of increasing racial disparities.
So that’s what I am concerned about. I hope that when they talk about jobs, that they’ll
include equity in the discussion. I would love to see targeted job creation.
Hello, my name is Teika Pakalns (interpreted by Cara Christopherson from Signature Communications)
and I am from the Commission of Deaf, Deaf Blind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans.
One of our number one priorities for this current legislative session
is we want to maintain all of our current programs that allow us to help ourselves.
We want to be able to improve.
For example, we want to continue having communication access, communication services,
whether that’s sign language interpreters, the assistant hearing programs
and also we would like to have fully functioning citizens. We want them to be able to get an education,
have them access employment, funds and also to be able to pay our taxes. Thank you so much.
Hi my name is Sarah Clyne and I am the executive director for Joyce Bilingual Preschool in south Minneapolis.
This morning’s legislative line up was really interesting
in hearing different perspectives about particularly the budget deficit that we are facing as a state.
We really think that it’s important that we come up with new and innovative ways to address the problem.
It can’t be just in budget cuts but we have to look at new ways of generating revenue for
the state and for very many important programs that are supporting citizens across the state.
For us as a bilingual preschool, we are very interested in the upcoming issues around
quality rating and standards for early learning.
And one of the things we want to be sure of is that they’re
addressing the needs of the immigrant community that we serve.
That standards and ratings are responsive culturally and linguistically to
not only Latinos in our preschool but just across the metro area in particular where
there are lots of young children who are coming from immigrant families.
I’m Rick Cardenas and I am co-director at Advocating Change Together, ACT.
Hearing them talk today it sounds like we really have to do a lot of work
to ensure that persons with developmental disabilities and other disabilities
are able to not lose their fair share but to gain their fair share of the budget,
be a part of the budget when it comes through
We will be speaking with the governor,
we will be speaking with our legislator and we are actually helping people to understand
what it means if we lose those funds.
Self advocacy is important thing for many persons with developmental disabilities and
that’s a part of the program that we direct and
we have to ensure that individuals with developmental disabilities are going to continue to be a part of the community
and not again be positioned in such a way that they do not participate in
the benefits of this society despite the fact that we are going to have such a hard short fall. We just want to be a part of the whole thing.
Advocating Change Together will be up here on the 25th of January
participating in the day of the capitol for persons with disabilities.
That is going to be a great time. We will introduce our legislators to the issues that we all be bringing forward.
Hi my name is Josh Winters, I am the executive director of the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group.
This legislative session we have three major priorities.
The first is to make sure we don’t see cuts to higher education particularly the state grant program and the University of Minnesota system,
but higher education across the board. Making sure we hold steady on our investments in higher education.
We’d also really like to make sure we see chemical policy reform.
Making sure we do the next part of phasing out toxins in children’s products. Making sure that is done across the board.
Lastly, making sure we have better transit choices in the metropolitan area and prevent cuts to transit.
It’s a heavy lift and we understand that there may be challenges
but we do hope that we can at least stave off some of the worst cuts that would severely impact
young students and higher education but also those that are transit dependent.