AMHERST — All 13 members of the Amherst Town Council are expected to participate in a weekend-long anti-racism training workshop to help them better serve the community’s diverse racial and ethnic populations.
Proposed by District 5 Councilor Shalini Bahl-Milne and District 2 Councilor Pat DeAngelis, the virtual training, likely to take place this spring, is supposed to help build trust with the town’s Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities that don’t have representation on the council. Aside from Bahl-Milne, who immigrated from India in 2001, there are no councilors of color.
“Unless we make undoing racism a priority and take deliberate steps, we’re perpetuating systems of racism,” Bahl-Milne said. The training, she said, will help establish conditions for all people to flourish in the community.
“This is a commitment that would help us move miles in terms of creating bridges with the BIPOC community and building trust with the BIPOC community,” DeAngelis said.
The 2½-day workshop is called Undoing Racism and is led by the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond.
Bahl-Milne said at the council’s Jan. 25 council meeting that the training, which she has previously taken, would be an opportunity to develop common language, understand racism and work with constituents with more sensitivity.
“I feel if like if we’re going to become an anti-racist town that is a desire of every council member and the staff, then we need to do the work, and it is personal work,” DeAngelis said.
DeAngelis said biases are often unconscious, councilors have limited knowledge of structural racism and white supremacy, and there is a need to develop how councilors listen with understanding.
“We are really a council with a limited racial and socioeconomic diversity and we are not representative of the larger Amherst community,” DeAngelis said.
“We have an opportunity to come together to look at ourselves in an environment where we trust one another,” DeAngelis said.
All councilors appeared supportive of the initiative.
District 4 Councilor Steve Schreiber said the training seems like an amazing opportunity, one that councilors, perhaps, should take when they are seated every other January.
“This is incredibly useful,” Schreiber said.
District 4 Councilor Evan Ross, who said he appreciates the training, cautioned that the precedent of training will be time-consuming, and might give a perception to residents that serving on Town Council is a full-time job.
All of the seats on the council — three representing the town at large and 10 representing Amherst’s five districts, are up for election in November.
At Large Councilor Alisa Brewer said the training schedule could be daunting, but she understands the reasoning of doing it intensively as a full council.
Town Manager Paul Bockelman said the training will cost $350 per person. The council’s budget has enough money to cover the expenses, because there were no travel costs associated with the Massachusetts Municipal Association annual conference, held virtually this month.
Bockelman and Athene O’Keeffe, the clerk to the Town Council, may also be asked to participate in the training.