After the call to order by CLOUT Co-Presidents Tom Gardner (St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church) and Jonathan Berkley (Centennial Olivet Baptist Church), the assembly was provided with background and instructions from Fr. Bill Burks (St. Lawrence Catholic Church).

Then the assembly joined in silent prayer as the officials were ushered into the room.

As the assembly sat in silent prayer, Mayor Craig Greenberg, Police Chief Jackie Villaroel, and other officials are ushered into the Assembly to take their seats.

Once the officials were seated, Rabbi Bob Slosberg (Congregation Adath Jeshurun) shared with them that, just like in the biblical story of Nehemiah, we were gathered seeking commitments from our public leaders on several critical community problems under the overall theme of “From Childhood Through Adulthood: Building a City of Justice.” He ended with a quote from theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Every moment is an opportunity for greatness” — saying to our officials present, “Tonight is your opportunity for greatness.”

After delays caused by COVID, we were pleased to finally announce the launch later this spring of the “Louisville Village,” which will provide area seniors with the services and social opportunities they need in order to age in their own homes, rather than having to enter an institution.
 
Kathy Westerfield, Executive Director of the Louisville Village, made commitments to ensure that the Louisville Village follows all national best practices, and that it will be open to all eligible Louisville residents, regardless of income level. It will be open for membership by June 1, at first to persons who live or worship in Zip Codes 40202, 40203, 40218, and 40220, and then will be opening to other areas of the community within the next year. CLOUT urges congregations and community groups in those Zip Codes who are interested in getting involved to reach out to the Louisville Village office, at 502-576-3369.

At our Nehemiah Action Assembly last year, we launched our new issue campaign to address gun violence in our community. We asked the leadership of Louisville Metro’s Office for Safe & Healthy Neighborhoods and UofL’s Dept. of Criminal Justice to co-convene a new effort to bring together all of the groups working on the problem. Our research had revealed that, while there are a number of ongoing efforts to address the problem, there has been a lack of collaboration and coordination, which has limited the impact of those efforts. What we have needed is a coordinated effort, with groups communicating and collaborating together.

Our work last year resulted in the creation of the “Louisville Alliance for Sustainable Gun Violence Reduction.” The first work of the Alliance was to conduct a “social network & gap analysis” in order to identify which groups are doing what, and what might be missing.

At our Nehemiah Assembly on Mar. 27, Mayor Greenberg committed to meet with CLOUT and the other stakeholders within 30 days to review the results of the analysis and to plan for next steps. Of course, this work has been made all the more urgent by the tragic mass shooting on April 10.

Stay tuned for more information about the work of the Alliance.

Following the killing of Breonna Taylor and the resulting community outcry in 2020, we launched our effort to address issues of community safety and equity. Our research confirmed what many in our membership have experienced, that various parts of our criminal justice system—police, courts, prosecutors, corrections—do not provide justice for all citizens. Many people have been victimized by these systems, and some have lost their lives. We decided that we need a different kind of policing, a different kind of criminal justice system, and different interventions with people in crisis.

So, in 2021 we were successful in getting the Metro Council to allocate funds to contract with the National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC) to come to Louisville to lead in what we named, and the city is now calling, the “Truth & Transformation” process. The purpose of the process is to improve police-community relations, and to address racial inequities in our criminal justice system.

During the last mayoral administration, the initiative was delayed. So we knew we needed the support of Mayor Greenberg and LMPD Chief Villaroel to get the initiative back on track and completed successfully.

Therefore, at our Nehemiah Action on March 27, we secured commitments from Mayor Greenberg to follow through on three important steps to completing the process: first, to hire an outside researcher to conduct a “fact-finding” research process on the history of policing in Louisville; second, to conduct a community listening process (to take place in CLOUT congregations and elsewhere) to gather personal stories from the past and present about police-community relations, and; third, and to work with CLOUT to develop specific policy and procedural changes coming out of the Truth & Transformation process.

CLOUT worked with Mayor Greenberg and Chief Villaroel for several weeks leading up to our Assembly to encourage them to make strong "acknowledgment of harm" statements at the Assembly. This is a step that was not taken by the previous mayoral administration, but we knew it would be a key to the Truth & Transformation initiative being a success.

Therefore, at the Assembly, Committee Co-Chair Carissa Jury (St. John Paul II Catholic Church) presented to our gathered membership the research that we have done. She outlined our concerns about the Superintendent’s proposed plan to implement a new reading programs in all elementary and middle schools in the fall of 2023 as being "too much, too quick." She also explained our concerns about the lack of research behind the particular curriculum that is being considered and the difficulties that teachers have reported, both locally and nationally, in using the program. She also stated our concern that a failure could result in the move to phonics being rejected by teachers and others. It was also explained that our research nationally has revealed information that we believe would be helpful to the district’s process as they finalize their decision on the new curriculum, and that we will continue to seek to work with Dr. Pollio and his staff on the process.

We also heard a moving testimony from Kendahl Jury (St. John Paul II Catholic Church) about how she struggled with learning to read in JCPS, due to a lack of phonics instruction, but how she was able to go to a private school for several years where she finally learned to read through the use of phonics. She shared how she eventually returned to JCPS to become the valedictorian of her high school class, and has gone on to be an elementary school teacher.

We also heard a strong statement of support from Brent McKim, President of the Jefferson County Teachers Association, who expressed his organization’s support for CLOUT’s work to help bring about improvements in the reading performance of our public schools.

He said, "We have a lot in common between JCTA and CLOUT. For example, one thing that we all agree on is that many students absolutely need phonics instruction in order to be able to learn to read. We also agree that teachers therefore must have the skillset and the capacity to be able to teach in a phonics-based way that's effective, and they need the resources to be able to do that. So I am here to share with you that the Teachers Association is committed to working with CLOUT to see that all of the teachers have the resources, support, and training they need to be able to effectively teach phonics."

And finally, Karen Williams (Centennial Olivet Baptist Church) shared with the Assembly the solutions and questions of commitment that we had planned to present to Dr. Pollio, had he kept his commitment to attend the Assembly. Basically the solutions were to pause the district-wide implementation of the new curriculum being proposed, and instead to continue its use in the schools currently using it, but to also test in a set of schools another evidence-based approach to reading instruction that CLOUT had researched for its effectiveness, and perhaps even a third approach that we had researched, and then compare and contrast to see which works best. Since Dr. Pollio was absent from the Assembly, and had communicated to us that his answers would be "no" to those solutions, we went ahead and marked them as "no's" so our membership and the broader community would be clear on where things stood.

Since the Assembly, we have asked Dr. Pollio for a follow-up meeting to continue our discussions. Stay tuned for future action steps on this critical campaign for our children!

Rev. Cindy Weber (Jeff St. Baptist Community) closed out the Assembly with an inspiring summary of what we had accomplished. She reminded the Assembly: “We have brought together tonight what the Book of Nehemiah calls a 'great assembly,' of 1,000 people. Nehemiah had been told that his people '...were in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem was broken down, and its gates had been burned with fire. Nehemiah said, 'When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.'

And then, he began his work for his people, which is what we have done. In our Listening Process this past fall, we shared our pain with one another, and then at our Community Problems Assembly, we voted and committed ourselves to what we would work on together.
 
Nehemiah and his people, as they demanded to be able to build a wall, were fighting for safety, were fighting for justice, were fighting for the care of their people, and we are, too.  And like Nehemiah and his people, we have heard 'Yeses' from our officials tonight!”