A proclamation proclaiming the week of July 24, 2017 - July 28, 2017 as Birmingham PREVENT Violence Week in Denver, Colorado.
Communications. Madam Secretary, do we have any communications? None. Mr. President. We have one proclamation this evening. Councilwoman Ortega, will you please read Proclamation 827. Thank you. I am happy to. Proclamation 17 827 proclaiming the week of July 24th, excuse me, 2017 through July 28th, 2017, as Birmingham Prevent Violence Week in Denver, Colorado. Whereas the city and county of Denver is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all its residents and visitors. And. Whereas, the acts of violence and extreme terror are concerns locally, nationally and internationally. Whereas, the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver, otherwise known as GRID, promotes violence prevention through gang resistance, education and training. It's called the Great Program. By encouraging students and families to embrace healthy lifestyles, pledge to be good citizens and reject violence. And. Whereas, Grid has collaborated with federal agencies which are educating the citizenry about violence prevention by promoting the exchange of ideas and strategies worldwide. And. Whereas, the exchange of ideas and strategies commenced with a visit by a delegation of community leaders from Denver metro area to Birmingham, England, in May 2017, facilitated by. Cultural vistas and culminating with a similar Birmingham delegation visit to Denver July 24 through July 28th, sponsored by World Denver and the U.S. Embassy in London to promote community engagement and foster alliances as tools in the global fight against violence. And. Whereas, the PREVENT program in Birmingham complements many of the violence prevention strategies used in Denver and which the Birmingham delegations visited. Visit to the Mile High City strengthens global cooperation, builds mutual understanding of the cultural and political diversity of our great cities, while gaining an understanding of how communities promote tolerance while confronting adversity. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Council, the city and county of Denver, that in pursuit of reducing all violence and promoting peace and safety in all communities, the Council of the City and County of Denver does hereby proclaim the week of July 24th through July 28, 2017, as Birmingham Prevent Violence Week in Denver, Colorado. Section two that the Council of the City and County of Denver encourages all residents to join our friends from Birmingham, England, to prevent violence and pursue safe, peaceful communities. And Section three that the Clerk of the city and county of Denver shall affix the seal of the city and county in Denver to this proclamation and copies to be transmitted to U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer. Paul Callahan, executive director of Grid Chiefs one Sean Cone of the Denver Juvenile Probation. Jenny Press Walla of the Denver Department of Homeland Security. Shauna Martinez. Of Cultural Vistas Gurganus. Custody. Custody, Nova of World, Denver and Wicker amid of Denver of the City of Birmingham City Council. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega, your motion to adopt. I move for the adoption of Proclamation 827. It's been moved. And second, it comes with members of council. Councilwoman. Thank you. So this is a proclamation that Councilman Lopez and I were both asked to bring forward and appreciate the co-sponsors and encourage the adoption by all members of council. So I just wanted to add that. You know, some of us have been invited by DIA to go out to see the baggage systems that have been looked at for the main terminal at our airport. And Councilman Flynn and I happened to be in London the same day as a terrorist terrorist act took place. We were scheduled to stay half a block away from the parliament. We were at the airport, touring the airport, and were not able to get to our hotel because the downtown area had been blocked off. So these incidents are real. They're happening around the globe. And as much education as we can all be doing to ensure that we are looking out for our safety and that of our our family members is so critically important. We do an annual proclamation where we encourage people to take advantage of the work that is done by our Office of Homeland Security, of our Office of Emergency Management. That does. They call it surge training. It's community emergency response training. And so that's a big part of the big picture of what we all need to be doing to make sure that that we are prepared. But to have these exchanges and to be able to work with cities across the globe and look at how each other is addressing this issue is is vitally important. So I'm pleased that we are joined here tonight by some individuals from Birmingham, England, and we'll have them come up and speak to us in just a little bit. But these cultural exchanges are extremely important. You know, we're a member of a number of sister cities across the globe, and we learn a lot from them when they come here and vice versa when we have people from our community go over there. And I think it's all part of building world peace as well. And so I just want to strongly encourage you all to support this proclamation tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Ortega, Cameron Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to chime in really quickly and just say how proud I am to co-sponsor this with Councilman Ortega and just just to really welcome folks into the council council chambers who are here on this proclamation, but also to really highlight the great work of our great program. They do such an amazing job with these kids. A great job with these kids. And and you think about it, right? You think about violence in our society. You think about violence, unfortunately, in events where it was terrorism or anything about what. What what's what's. Grid doing or not grid but what's great doing it attached to this proclamation and you know, using the same, you know, phrases as homeland security and so well, everything to do with it. Violence is a it's a sickness. It's a it's a lack of communication. It's a breakdown of communication, a lack of understanding, a lack of respect for one and for one another. And that's how it ends up manifesting. And it's terrible. And it's terrible in a playground. It's terrible on our streets. And it's terrible when nations engage in warfare. When when you see terrorism, it's a terrible thing. And the one thing that we always try to really promote is that age old adage that, you know, have. You know. Think globally, act locally. Well, that's one of the things that grid does are not grid grid as well, too. But a great, great gets out there in in our elementary schools and our middle schools in our various communities. And that's where this is. I mean, that's where this has manifested. And, you know, it's a good proclamation. It's something that we wholeheartedly believe in. If if kids in our neighborhood can do it. What's to stop adults from doing the same thing? Right. And so and it begins with with listening. So a great proclamation. Great program. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega, for your your sponsorship and your lead on this. Thank you. You just. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. See no other comments been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary. Rocco Ortega. By. Sussman, by Black Clark by Espinosa. Flynn. Hi, Gilmore. Hi, Herndon, I Cashman. All right, can each. Mr. President. I will please close the voting and announce the results. Hey. Sorry. 1/2. 13 eyes. 13 eyes. Proclamation 827 has been adopted. Congratulations, Council. Councilwoman, is there anyone you'd like to bring up? There is. I'd like to invite Paul Kilian with the grid program. And also Mr. Walker, a man who is a councilman with Birmingham, England. So if you will both come forward. Good evening, President Berk Brooks. Councilwoman Ortega, Councilman Lopez and the rest of the Council. My name is Paul Cowan and I am the director of Denver's Gang Reduction Initiative. It's an honor to stand here tonight and accept this proclamation on behalf of all of our partners in grade, city and county that will be spending the next week with our friends from Birmingham discussing and exchanging ideas on ways that we can better develop prevention programs in our city and across the country and across the world as well, too. It was our privilege a few months ago to send one of our partners over to to England to see how our programs are developed and put in place over there. And now it's our privilege to host our delegation from Birmingham, and I just want to welcome them. And I speak on behalf of all the other Department of Safety agencies and our city agencies that will be spending the week along side our friends here. So thank you. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to thank the city of Denver for a incredibly warm welcome. This is our first day here, and we've been overawed by the incredible welcome that we've received, the people of Denver that we've met as we walked through the city and some of the people we've met this morning. We look forward to a very, very good week ahead. I think this proclamation humbles us slightly. I think this is an incredibly important issue for both our countries and indeed both our cities. The prevention of violence, the prevention of extremism in all its forms is a challenge of our age, actually. And it requires prevention strategies such as great and great to be successful, to be working with our communities. And we look forward to not just sharing our lessons, but also learning from yourselves and how we can move forward as two cities and as a start of an information sharing process that will hopefully work to keep our community safe. I'd just like to invite our Cabinet member from Birmingham City Council who has Cabinet responsibilities for this area, who may want to say a few words. Thank you and thank you for the Council for adopting this proclamation. It's incredibly important. This work we do around global cooperation between our cities, I think is very welcome. And it's been, as I can say, it's been a great honor to visit the city of Denver. It's been aptly fascinating. It's a great pleasure to visit your great baseball team, the Rockies. Great to see them win of the day. As a fellow support of a maybe historically struggling team of Aston Villa. It's brilliant to see the Rockies doing so well, so crazy. I was also struck me as a city councilor, we have 120 members. So it's quite it's interesting to see the lower of the 13 members want to know how you manage the workload, quite honestly. But it's great to be here and thank you so much the welcome. And on behalf of the city of Birmingham, the people of Birmingham, I'd like to present you with this. This shared as a token of our goodwill. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. To the secretary. Please give them a hand. I have to ask the member of City Council. Can you please come to the person? How in the world do you deal with 120 city council folks. Even though we don't have the First Amendment? I think it's incredibly challenging, but I think we work very, very closely between the Office of Core and the Council Membership Core. And it's incredibly important for our city where we have lots of challenges and we just do the job, I suppose. Well, from us to you, we just want to thank you for being here. We recognize that, you know, countries talk to each others, but really cities do. It's cities that make things move. And so we want to be in cooperation with our global partners all over. As Councilman Ortega said, we have 12 sister cities. We've named them after our parks and we hope that we can keep a great relationship with you. Councilman Lopez. I was just going to say, it's not the size of the city council that matters. It's the size. It's us. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. And once again, we want to give you a round of applause for coming all this way. All right. Thank you. And thank you, Councilwoman Ortega, for for bringing that forward. All right. That concludes our proclamations for this evening.