WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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This crisis has really exposed the
challenges we face as a state and the

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nation.
Everything from access to good public

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health, to goods and services, internet

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connection.
Let's really expose some of the equity

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challenges that we knew
already that our students face. You

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stepped up to help one another
during these hard times and many of you

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have answered the call
and joined the front lines in response

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to COVID-19.
Our community colleges have been right

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there in just about every community up
and down the state

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working side by side not only to support
the response in terms of the nurses, the

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EMTs, the firefighters
but also opening up the doors of their

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campuses.
During this time we must double

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our commitment to equity or communities of color

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and low-income Californians will fall
even

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further behind. It's about closing that
gap,

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it's about dealing with the systemic
issues that have been

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sort of ignored or certainly allowed to
happen over time and say

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now let's use this opportunity to
get some real change.

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To those students who are facing
hardships and maybe questioning whether

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or not they want to continue their
education,

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I want you to know that you're going to
overcome these challenges and that we're

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here to help you.
The support structure is amazing. My

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faculty, reaching out to me seeing if i'm okay.

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Access to community colleges alone
is already a beacon of hope in

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California because community colleges have the

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capacity to get
so many students and so many people

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low-cost
degrees, the life lessons and kind of the

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life skills that you were taught at
community colleges

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will translate into the workforce. I
really want to applaud the community

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colleges for continuing the conversation.
It is so easy to say

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let's set this aside it's important but
we got to deal with the emergency

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but we can't forget the path that we are
treading on

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that says we need to address these
inequalities. The inconsistencies and the

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inequalities don't go away
because there's a pandemic. History tells

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us that there is some institutionalized

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racism and practices that have been
prevalent

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in our system for a long time. It is
because

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that we have been denied
equal access to a system that's probably

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most important and that's education
which

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has always been the pathway to success. The nationwide protest demanding justice

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for black men and women
who have lost their lives to police

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violence remind
us we face not one but many crises

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made worse by deeply rooted racism. It's
our shared responsibility to say Black

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lives matter
through our actions and to put the will

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behind better serving Black and African
American students.

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My office and the college leadership are
finding ways that we can support

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real change at every level from access
to culture and our curriculum. Everyone

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has jumped in and that's what makes me so proud of the

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California community colleges. We are
really part of every community

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and our faculty, our staff, and our
students do everything possible

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to support their community in times of
crisis. I applaud the community colleges

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again in the midst of this pandemic to
stay the course,

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uh to keep it top and front and then
we'll get through it and we'll be better on the other side.

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[music]

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