(bright music) - [Announcer] From the studios of Maine Public, welcome to "Love Lewiston, A Maine calling Special" with Jennifer Jennifer Rooks.

- Hello, I'm Jennifer Rooks and welcome to the special edition of "Maine Calling."

We're coming to you from our studios in Lewiston, as we in Maine continue to deeply mourn those lost and injured in the massacre here in this city.

We're asking ourselves some profound questions.

How do we heal from this?

Is it even possible to heal from something like this?

As a community, as a state, how are we changed and how do we move forward?

These are some of the questions we are going to explore tonight on this program.

We have a studio audience and several incredibly thoughtful guests here to help guide us.

We're gonna start the show though, on the streets of Lewiston, where one local group is already turning ideas of support into action.

- [All] Hi.

- Welcome to Tree Street.

- Today, right outside of Tree Street, we have Love Lewiston Day.

So right outside here, we have all of our lovely volunteers that are helping us pass out ribbons for the remembrance of the 18 victims that we lost.

We are asking community members to tie them to flag poles, to telephone poles, to trees, all over the Lewiston streets, to just show and to support and to love and to try to heal this community.

- We wanted to ensure that people could also thank and encourage each other during this time.

So we have a card making happening in our gym with every supply you could imagine to make beautiful cards.

- And coming this way, we have a bunch of kids now sitting and kind of talking in the listening tent.

We have an organization called NAMI come in to teach people how to actively listen to members of the community and so once they're done that they go right over here and they get to sit and put their expertise to work.

Just decompressing, healing, hugs, whatever people need, they're getting it here.

- I'm making some cards to go to first responders, hospital workers, and people who are recovering and just saying that you know, the communities behind them.

and even more than that, everyone just thinking of them.

When everything happened in Lewiston, I mean my first thought was this feels so wrong.

This is my family's community.

This is so unlike everything I've ever thought was possible here.

So this felt like a really great opportunity to come together, something that's really important to both of us.

(volunteer speaks in foreign language) - This is my card.

It says, "You are heroes."

And it says, "I want you to know people are thinking of you when they say heroes."

And here's the back, it says, "To first responders from Abigail," me.

- [Volunteer] And the hope is that we just catalyze those type of experiences and also remind people like, that sometimes how you heal yourself is by just sowing some more love out there into the world.

- [Volunteer] I'm here today to show solidarity for my friends in Lewiston.

- It's just really a tough time for people and just trying to show that we care.

- It's a small thing, but it's meaningful.

I find that when you are encountering people who feel helpless, that the best thing you can do is to help.

- [Volunteer] We're acknowledging them and that we love them.

- So this course today is a way for us to connect with the community, talk about mental health, and talk about how we can support ourselves and other individuals in our community.

So we want to talk about the hurt.

We want people to be able to begin to process that, but we also wanna talk about what helps, who do we get help from?

What does that help look like?

How do we access that?

You are the experts in your community, but we wanna help you have the tools and be empowered to hold supportive conversations.

- My biggest thing was like he put himself in a hospital and like people need like help - And he asked for help, - And like he needed it and then he didn't get what he needed and it just, it really hurts.

So I'm just trying to have an open heart for the whole thing and be there for my friends.

- Yeah.

- "To our first responders, thank you for everything you have done and everything you will do.

We truly appreciate your sacrifice."

(bright music) - We're joined now by State Senator, Peggy Rotundo, who has served Lewiston in many capacities from school committee to state senator for a quarter century now.

Peggy, thank you so much for being here and let me start by asking you, in these last two weeks in these horrible last two weeks, what has struck you most about your community?

- Oh, what a resilient community we have and the fact that the community has come together, so beautifully to support each other, to give each other strength.

I could not be prouder of Lewiston at this point.

- Put on your legislator hat, January 3rd, you're back in the State House, how does this change your priorities?

What do you do now?

- There's already a lot of conversation about what we will do and clearly there will be discussion in action around mental health, but also around gun safety, so it will happen, it will happen and as I said, I am totally determined that we will honor the lives that have been lost by moving forward on policy areas that will prevent such tragedies again in the future.

- You say there are already conversations happening?

- Yes.

- Do you feel as though many of your colleagues are moving, that this has moved their opinion, their basic instinct about this issue?

- People have moved.

If, this experience has shaken everyone to the core, and I think you will see people in support of gun safety measures that perhaps were not there yet.

- Going back to, take off your legislator hat, go back to being Peggy Rotundo and tell me what makes you most proud of, when you walk, look around this room, when you walk around your community today, - People have reached out to each other.

People have found ways to connect with each other.

The outpouring of love has been enormous and it brings out the very best of people and that's what we've seen, that's what we've experienced and I'm just so proud of Lewiston and the people of Lewiston for coming together as we have and we're there for each other.

This is just beginning, the healing process and we will be there for each other, as we go forward, we will make sure the resources are there for people who need them at whatever point.

We are all grieving together.

We are one community, we're one Lewiston, and we will move forward.

- Long time State Senator, Peggy Rotundo.

Thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you.

- With us.

Later in the program we are gonna return to this notion of change, but before that we're going to focus on grief and healing.

Sadly, we all know that what happened in Lewiston is the latest in a long list of mass shootings in the US.

We wanted to understand how other communities have moved through the grief and towards healing.

Let's hear from the superintendent of schools in Highland Park, Illinois, where a mass shooting during last year's 4th of July parade claimed seven lives.

- I won't say that we're healed.

I'll say we're healing.

There's an immediate short-term shock and awe process.

There's the lingering few months after and then we keep moving on.

My name is Michael Lubelfeld.

I'm a school superintendent in North Shore, school district 112 in Highland Park in Highwood, Illinois, just north of Chicago.

On July 4th, 2022, my world and the world of those in my community was changed forever.

The violent critical incident, the mass shooting at the July 4th parade changed my professional life and my personal life forever.

We really didn't know much about trauma-informed practices at that point, but what we initially and immediately did is we set up counseling drop in on July 5th.

Really the most difficult aspect of being a victimized by a violent critical incident is your loss of innocence.

The shattering of the sense of security and calm is that we now no longer have a sense of safety and peace, that's been shattered and we have to deal with that and develop skills to handle that moving forward.

Unite together, focus on resiliency and the healing process.

Some people emotionally are not going to be okay when maybe you are okay, so the biggest lesson is open your heart, embrace the community, sense the love that existed before, that exists now and that will exist after and there needs to be a heightened sense of community and collective vigilance because this shouldn't happen and my heart and prayers and mind go out to the victims of everyone involved in Lewiston and the surrounding areas and everywhere else in our nation that we have to grapple with.

I'm sorry that we as a people have to deal with this.

- As Michael suggested, one of the biggest challenges right now is caring for young people in our communities and helping them to feel safe.

We have several mental health professionals here with us in the studio.

One licensed Psychologist, Kelly McCann, specializes in trauma recovery.

Kelly, thank you so much for being here with us and what is your advice for anyone who's watching, anyone in this room, anyone watching, parents, teachers about how to talk to young people about what's happened?

- That's such a good question.

So the first thing I would say is really trust your guts.

You know your kiddos, you know your students and so you probably have a very natural sense of actually what they need to hear from you.

In general, what I would say is share the essential information, you know, the very basics of what they need to know and then let them know you're available.

So some kids, what we know, they wanna kind of talk about it a lot.

They have a lot of questions and some kids really don't or some kids may have no questions at first and then a lot later on and so what's really important is to, if we can as much as possible, not project too much of our own thoughts and feelings about like what healing might look like onto our kids and onto our students and to really let them be the leaders in terms of coming to us and letting us know what they need.

- What if your kid asks you a stumper and you think, I have no idea how to answer this.

Can you say, you know what, honey?

I'm gonna need to think about that and get back to you.

- Yes, I love that.

Yes, absolutely and it's really good modeling, right?

Because kids also really need to know it's okay to not always have all the answers, yeah.

- Alright, well Kelly, I understand that you think we need to talk about things, yes, but we also need to take action and teach our physical bodies how to deal with trauma and we have lovely young people with us here and they're gonna help you demonstrate maybe one technique.

- Yes.

- Okay.

Go ahead.

- That's absolutely, - Take it away.

- Okay, great.

All right, come on up.

Thank you all for being with me tonight.

I really appreciate it.

Okay, so who here knows that feeling you kind of get in your belly, that's like kind of butterflies, jittery, you get it when you're nervous or scared, you know that feeling?

- Yeah.

- Okay, yeah.

I call that the uh-oh feeling.

Okay.

- [Volunteer] Yeah.

- Who here maybe has a little bit of that uh-oh feeling right now?

Yeah, yeah, you're talking to this new person for the very first time, right?

And you're on TV, so very normal to have the uh-oh feeling, right?

So what I wanna do today is teach you some ways of working with a uh-oh feeling to help yourself feel safe, 'cause really what's happening is that uh-oh feeling comes up in our bellies when our body is kind of saying to us, there's something going on and I don't quite feel safe, right?

So we wanna help that uh-oh feeling feel safe, right?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

So the first thing we wanna do when that uh-oh feeling comes up, is we wanna just kind of take a look around to make sure there's nothing dangerous, 'cause if there's something dangerous happening, we wanna do something about it, right, right?

- Yeah.

- We wanna get ourselves safe, yeah, absolutely.

So why don't we do that right now.

Just take a look around and just get a sense of, is there anything dangerous happening here?

No, okay.

Awesome.

Alright, great.

So here's what I want you to do.

I want you to just go ahead now and just put a hand or two hands over that part in your belly that has that uh-oh feeling.

You found it there?

- Yes.

- Okay and you can even look right down there if that helps you to focus on it if that's okay and I just, in whatever way works for you, I want you to send that uh-oh feeling the message that you're paying attention to it right now and that you're gonna do a really good job of helping you feel safe.

Okay, and now what I wanna do is we're gonna send that uh-oh feeling a little extra love, okay.

So what we're gonna do is I want you to take a nice deep breath and as you breathe in, press your belly into your hands and let your belly expand as you inhale (inhales) and then as you exhale, pull your belly button back.

Good.

Let's do that a few more times.

So expand your belly when you inhale, press it into your hands, (inhales) pull your belly button back as you breathe out.

Good job.

You're all doing really great.

And now just check your body and notice if that uh-oh feeling feels a little more relaxed, a little more at ease.

You feel that?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Okay.

Great job you guys.

You did a really nice job.

Okay, high five.

Yeah, you wanna high five?

Good job.

You did great.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much, Kelly McCann and, - You're so welcome.

- Such a great tip, I appreciate it, and I wanna - Absolutely - Ask you all, did that help?

- I think so.

- You think so?

- Yeah.

Great and do you think you can remember that?

- Yes.

- Okay.

Well thank you all.

Thank you all for taking part and thank you all for being here today.

We're gonna go now to Rebecca Hoffman, who is director of Maine Health Center for Trauma, Resilience and Innovation.

Rebecca, you know, we already know that young people are in crisis.

We already know that there are these skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, suicide among our young people and I can only imagine that having this happen in your community, have this happened in your state, has got to exacerbate that.

Tell us what this news and the conversations in the hallways of the school and the conversations in the playground and on the soccer field, what these are doing to young people in Maine right now.

- It's a great question.

The thing about trauma or experiencing trauma, anxiety, depression is that, and in particular trauma is that it's cumulative and so the more you experience, the more feelings you have of anxiety, depression, trauma, it's a dose response relationship.

So those in our community that have experienced more negative things, this just adds onto that and so it does have the likelihood of exacerbating those symptoms that were already there, or even causing some to have symptoms that did not have them before.

- What do we do with that information?

What do parents do with that information?

Do you pretend this didn't happen and go about your life trying to push it away?

Do you acknowledge it and move on?

You know, walk us through a day.

- Sure.

- Walk us through breakfast.

- Sure, so what I would say is that if you try to push it away, it's gonna push back.

It's going to tell you that it's there and it's inside you and that it needs to be processed or dealt with and so my biggest advice would be, is not to push it away, not to push those feelings away, but really to lean into them and to let yourself experience them and that doesn't always feel good, but moving yourself through those negative feelings of what gets you either as a child, as an adult, as a family, as a community to the other side of them.

This is, this event is not something we can ignore.

It's going to be woven into the fabric of who we are as a community, but we also want to weave in courage.

We wanna weave in hope, we want to weave in healing into that fabric and so dealing with this as a trauma allows us to weave in those beautiful experiences of hope and healing and courage that we are also seeing right now.

- All right, I'm wondering if anybody in the audience has a question for any of our mental health professionals.

I understand that Carrie Strasburger has a question.

Carrie, come to you.

Go ahead, stand up.

What is your que, you can ask up there?

- My question has to do with the social emotional wellbeing of our children of which I'm very concerned.

They've had a very rough several years with COVID and not being allowed to be in their schools, having shelter in place drills, and now this horrific event in a state where many of them, felt they were almost untouchable.

I'm just very concerned about if you've seen a difference in the social and emotional health of our children.

Thank you.

- [Jennifer] Thank you.

- Absolutely, I think we will be learning for years to come what the impact of the pandemic has been on social emotional development and I think one of the things that we may see is that kids felt unsafe, right?

The only place that they were safe was their home during the pandemic and then there was a time when we said, okay, it's safe out there, let's all go back out in the community and an event like this happens and it's another message of, that the world may feel unsafe and so it does, both events cumulatively affect social emotional development.

That being said, just as our wonderful demonstrator showed us with children, we have to give kids cues of safety all the time and we have to teach them ways and skills and tools in their toolkit to feel safe and to be able to identify when they are safe versus when they aren't safe and to be able to learn to calm their bodies in the community when they maybe don't feel safe and so our community, our state, really needs to work to embed those lessons and those tools in the places where we're seeing kids, in schools, in afterschool programs, in sports, in church, or other places of worship.

All these places are where kids can learn the tools that they need to have healthy social emotional development.

- Thank you for a good question and thank you so much Rebecca.

With us now, you can stand up too is, Katie, Kate Vita, I'm sorry to call you Katie, a leader with Kieve Wavus Education, which is nonprofit, which works with more than a thousand Maine kids every year.

Kate, I understand that you and your team were in the Lewiston schools the day that the schools reopened.

What was that experience like?

- Yeah, so it was a bit of a coincidence that our team was able to aid in the recovery with Lewiston schools.

So we actually had the leadership school, we do residential and outreach programs and we had scheduled to be working with Lewiston Middle School on that Monday and Tuesday and what we teach, our teachers teach the experiential approach to social and emotional learning and so we kind of just had to scratch our original plans for that day and collaborate with the school district to meet their needs best and what we determined that was, was to split our team of about 20 teachers up into all seven schools in the Lewiston School District and just go in as support and so our teachers went in, not as grief counselors, not as trauma experts, but as empathetic, kind, caring adults and role models who are experts at connecting with students and helping students connect with one another and that's what we did, so for some of us that was, you know, walking the hallway, smiling at students, making small conversations.

It was sitting with students at lunch and just showing them that we were here and we were ready to listen to whatever they wanted to talk about and for others it was playing silly fun games with them in their classes just to bring the community together and make them feel safe and excited to be back at school and back with their friends.

- We've already heard from the others.

What would you add to what they've said that you would give as advice for the rest of us?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

So I think from our unique perspective where we are teachers, but we're not teaching the students in the classroom and having them full-time and we're not clinicians and so what we did that day when we were at the schools was, our only goal that day was to help kids smile and give them a little bit of fun in the midst of everything that was going on and so when they come, when they have this information, that's really heavy and weighing them down and if they wanna talk about that, to talk about it, to validate what they're feeling, not push it down, but also remember that they're kids and they deserve to smile and have fun as well.

So providing opportunities for that is really important.

- Kate Vita with Kieve Wavus thank you so much for being with us.

During dark times, counselors encourage us to remember the good things in our lives, as we just heard from Kate, so we asked our community members what they're grateful for.

We're gonna start with a local farmer and legislator.

- My name is Craig Hickman.

I'm an organic farmer and a state senator right here in Maine.

This is Liberty.

We are all my farm in Winthrop, Maine and I am most grateful that we have this land, this organic farm, that we're able to produce food and not just any food but healthy, nutritious, nourishing food that sustains both the body and the soul and the spirit.

We've been hit really hard by the massacre in Lewiston.

Lewiston is our city and that is why so many of us were there bowling on the night that this tragedy happened.

We lost a father and a son and we have come together and we will come together, continually to hold each other up, to have each other's backs, to make sure that we love one another, that we always keep faith with one another, and that we take care of our blessings, never take them for granted.

Always treat people with kindness.

My dreams for this community are that we remember how important it is for us to continue to come together around food and fellowship.

This is a place that has had gumbo and barbecue festivals, fried chicken dinners, chili and chowder throwdowns and I dream that this community will always build on its strength in coming together as we take care of each other in good times and in bad.

We are all in this together and we will heal and we will recover and we will be better than we were before and for that, I am most grateful.

Right, Liberty?

- A group that's deeply grieving right now is Maine's deaf and hard of hearing community.

Four of those killed were deaf.

They were at a bar with a big group of friends.

We're here with Kevin Bohlin, one of the leaders in that community and Kevin, I just wanna start by asking you, how you're doing.

- [Kevin's Interpreter] I'm doing as good as I can, day by day, just being with my community, with my family really has been very helpful.

- I can only imagine how horrifying this was for everybody, but for those who are hard of hearing and perhaps didn't even hear the bullets and the confusion about what was going on, and then others who have survived, but remember that chaos and remember that trauma, how do you move your community to a place of feeling safe again, given that?

- [Kevin's Interpreter] For many, many years the word access has been a huge issue.

So with that initial reaction about the tragedy in Lewiston that Wednesday night, some of the deaf community did not understand what was going on, because captioning was not clear on the televisions.

That next morning some of us woke up and honestly we made this connection that there was the possibility that members of our deaf community had been there in Lewiston and been a part of this situation.

So the deaf community came together, we were texting one another, we were on our video phones on social media as well, just trying to communicate and share as much information as possible.

At that point, the news recordings were not clear.

Information had been cut off, the interpreter was not on screen.

Later on that day, on Thursday, there was a deaf interpreter on the television and that was very powerful.

That gave us a lot of access and information.

We finally could see what was going on.

- So it was very confusing for all of us in the beginning, but even more confusing for members of the deaf community, - Yes, but at the same time, I wouldn't say worse, I wouldn't use that term.

This situation was confusing for everyone involved.

The wonderings of why did this situation happen?

Where was the shooter?

People were confused, where was everyone going?

Loved ones friends, family, were they in the hospitals?

Were they in the morgue?

Those were our questions.

So I think that a lot of the communication that we experienced was from one another and we had barriers to the official information.

Now for the deaf community, it was about access.

That was a frustrating piece for us.

- Do you feel as though this tragedy has helped others understand the deaf community and why access is so important better than people did before?

- [Kevin's Interpreter] That's an excellent question.

It's been about two weeks now since Lewiston and we've had conversations throughout our community and it's gotten to the point where this conversation is not just happening within our deaf community, but it's also happening in political forums - At the state and federal level.

- Kevin, thank you.

- [Volunteer] Thank you.

- We spoke to someone who is dear to you, Kevin, about what he is grateful for.

Let's hear what he said.

- [Hunter's Interpreter] So I'm Hunter and I'm 14 and I'm grateful for my two dads.

You know, when I was growing up, I didn't have much of a family and everyone was hearing and nobody signed with me and then I moved into this house and both of my dads are deaf, one of them is Tommy, and my other dad is Kevin and with the two guys, you know, living here, when I moved in I realized, wow, this is what it should be and it really changed my life and just feel like moving into this house and being here and feeling really safe, being able to learn more and get out more and be a part of a community and not feeling so alone, 'cause when you're alone, you don't get to communicate.

You don't feel connected with other people and I feel like my life had been kind of topsy-turvy, and now it feels really good.

Yeah, I've got the best dads, you know, I feel like things are so much better now.

They are teaching me how to be a better person and stuff and live in this great house and I also now have a really big family, which is super cool.

Probably feels really big and heavy and stuff right now and the world feels kind of crazy but please, everyone just come out, be a part of the community.

Let's get together, let's support each other, stay positive, come back out together again.

We're a part of a bigger community.

Love you.

See you later.

- I thank you so much for that.

We've been changed by this tragedy in many different ways and probably we'll continue to be.

Here to explore this idea of change, we have three guests.

Rand Maker is Deputy chief of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department.

Jim Handy is an educator who is also a former legislator and Elgin physic, basketball coach at Lewiston High School, and a former member of the Lewiston School Committee, but before we have our conversation with them, we want to give you an example of someone who has changed.

That's second district representative Jared Golden.

Here's part of Golden's statement at a news conference two weeks ago.

- At a time like this, a leader is forced to grapple with things that are far greater than his or herself.

Humility is called for as accountability is sought by the victims of a tragedy such as this one, because of a false confidence that our community was above this and that we could be in full control among many other misjudgments, I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war, like the assault rifle used to carry out this crime.

The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine.

For the good of my community, I'll work with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.

To the people of Lewiston, my constituents throughout the second district, to the families who lost loved ones, and to those who have been harmed, I ask for forgiveness and support as I seek to put an end to these terrible shootings.

In the days to come, I will give everything I have to support this community's recovery.

Thank you, - Deputy Chief Maker, I'm gonna start with you.

I can only imagine that for every law enforcement officer in this state, this is gonna forever change, not only themselves personally, but also how they think about their career and I'm wondering if you agree, do you think that there's gonna be policing before October 25th and after?

- Well, I think every law enforcement officer in the state of Maine was at least preparing for this event and hoping it never would happen and much and when it did happen, it was far worse than probably they prepared for, so the answer to that is yes.

I think internally every department's gonna look to see what could we do differently?

What changes can we make?

What could we do and be better at?

And hopefully to prevent a tragedy like this happening again.

- Have you been having a lot of conversations in the last two weeks that are different than the conversations you had before?

- Well, even with, you know, my neighbors and friends and colleagues, certainly, you know, a lot of questions about, you know, a lot of information that we really don't know the details yet and we will eventually, but certainly that's the topic, right?

People who know you're in law enforcement, they ask you about it, they ask you what your thoughts are and your feelings and what you would do.

- Yeah and that must be frustrating because you don't have the answers yet.

We know that the governor has ordered a report, we know dribs and drabs from the news, but it hasn't all been put together and there really at this point are more questions than answers.

- Exactly and that's the only thing I would ask the public to be patient as we look to find those facts, right.

Don't jump to conclusions or judgments.

What I am confident is the officers that night and before were doing the very best job they could do in the circumstances that they had.

- Hmm.

I wanna turn to both of you as educators.

I'll start with you, Elgin.

Does this change how you do, your interactions with kids?

Do you approach the basketball court differently?

- I think we do.

I mean, in terms of, you know, dealing with youth and then dealing with kind of all the things that they already deal with, the challenge they deal with in the community as already, and then now you throw this on top of it so it starts with what we really, just gotta build relationships with kids.

That's one thing that our program's really big on is building relationships with kids, guiding them in the right direction.

You know, they can call us at any time.

That's one of the things that I think we have to do as, you know, someone that's part of, you know, in the school system.

I'm a big fan of we act accordingly and, 'cause wherever we go and we travel all over the state, people see Lewiston, we have that label of, you know, of a small microscopic things that take place in our community and that doesn't represent us.

What represents us is the thing we do, things hard work, good sportsmanship, acting selves accordingly.

When we're sitting in the bleaches, the JV of freshmen, we're not running around knocking like fools because we are judged, you know, we are looked at because we're from Lewiston, but the Lewiston that I know, that I've lived here for 19 years is the positive of Lewiston.

- How do you think people on other teams look at Lewiston?

- Maybe not certain from other teams, but again, when you go into other home gyms and they see Lewiston, you know, we have a stereotype again, we have challenges in our community.

Again, there's a nickname called Dirty Lew that people say all over the state, but one thing that you know, and that's everywhere we go, no matter where we're gonna go, people are gonna judge us.

- Jim Handy.

Do you feel what Elgin feels?

- Well, I do, especially with this term that was coined back in the eighties, the Dirty Lew, you know, this event has now, no longer in our backyard, it's in our front yard and I think this is a transformational opportunity to put aside the Dirty Lew and show how our community has come together with a lot of grace, humility, and love for one another and that is our task right now, is to move ahead by fostering that kindness and love.

- As you've seen the response from throughout the state in the last two weeks, are you feeling as though maybe all along that Dirty Lew was just a few people and not everybody?

- Well, it certainly was a few people, but it had a resonance that even our own folks here in Lewiston use the term.

I say, let's put aside that, let's look at Lewiston as what it is.

A wonderful close-knit community that has most everybody's interests at mind.

We may come at a different, in a different way or a different approach, but I think now this transformational time has given us an opportunity to build ourselves to a point where that term is no longer used and that we can forward, like the coach said, the kind of image that we want to do based on our teams, our musical programs, our theater programs, who travel throughout the state and say, this is who we are.

We're not that anymore.

- I'll put you on the spot.

Do you have a new nickname in mind?

- You know, it's the title of your program.

Love Lewiston.

- Anything else that you would like to add?

- You know, I see the word Lewiston strong and I really believe that we're gonna be not strong, but also gonna be stronger because of this incident, like I said, we have a lot of challenges in our community and I see all the love and all the people coming together for this and I'm hoping our elected officials, you know, really see the love and really attack the challenges that we have in our community together and to really, you know, because a lot of times what happens is everyone is not together and the stronger we are is when we're together.

- Hi, I'm Sarah Tetho and I am a proud Lewiston homeowner at a University of Maine Orono, Graduate Black Bear class in 99.

I came for employment but I stayed for the heart of the city.

The people here in Lewiston are really, really hardworking, really resilient.

I found tremendous heart, tremendous resilience, tremendous beautiful, comforting, beautiful people.

We're here in the Bates Mill area where textiles and shoes were made and this is the history of our beautiful city.

It is a really tremendous place to live.

We have the great Androscoggin River and all of our lakes and our mountains and our beautiful communities.

So now here we are and unfortunately the strategy has hit our community and I am really, really, really grateful for this community and the sense of dedication and determination and resiliency and the unification that is coming together in the last week alone and now the world is focused in on us.

I'm so grateful for the outpouring support, both within our community, to our first responders, to our hospital CMMC and St. Mary's and all of our healthcare workers.

We have our motto, D+rigo, which means I lead or dare I go, is actually how it's pronounced.

We are the mighty moxie Lou and we are a lot bigger and stronger and better and we will be stronger after this and through this.

- Another important perspective of course is that of Maines healthcare professionals and what they have been through in this last couple weeks after Covid and everything else, Dr.

Crystal Alvarez was in the emergency room, in the emergency department, we say now, right?

The night of the massacre and I understand you're not an emergency room doctor, what do you do usually?

- Well, I wear a couple different hats and all of my partners do too.

We all take care of trauma patients and general surgery patients and then other types of surgical patients too.

- All right.

- So, we're in the ER a lot.

- You are in the ER a lot.

Okay.

And tell me what the night of October 25th was like.

Did you treat any of the people who were shot?

- I did, I did.

Along with several other of my colleagues.

We operated on several different patients that came into the emergency department.

We still have some of them with us and it'll be a long road for a lot of people.

- [Jennifer] Hmm.

- Hmm.

- How would you characterize that night for you?

- Organized chaos I think is one of the best descriptors we would all say.

You prepare for this type of thing, hoping that it's never gonna happen and we know as healthcare providers that there's more and more mass casualties every year and so as healthcare providers, we are now part of this and we all hope that we are not going to be treating people in this kind of situation and it is a little surreal to now be part of that group of providers who has been in this situation.

- How do you think this changed Central Maine Medical Center and did it change you?

- I think it certainly changes us as a healthcare system because as we know, Lewiston is a small community and Maine is a small community and there's so many connections between people and certainly all of the team members that we work with, they have connections to the community and the people who are affected and so everybody's grieving and coping with loss in their own way, in addition to caring for all the patients.

So one thing I've seen, which is really great, is just the comradery that we've had.

So many people are necessary to take care of these patients and you know, there were just so many people from all departments who responded to the call immediately and showed up and did what they could and stepped outta their boundaries and it was just really impressive and I'm so proud to work there.

- So maybe the change isn't as much a systemic change as just a change in the self-confidence, that people know that we, this small hospital in this small city, we can handle this, we can do this.

- Exactly and we mentioned the hardships of the last few years for healthcare workers, Covid, and all the struggles that healthcare systems have dealt with and this kind of situation really brings everybody together as a team and to be supportive and to get support from the community.

For us, the messages, the cards, the food, the flowers, it's really special and we're very grateful.

- Dr.

Crystal Alvarez, thanks so much for telling your story.

- Thank you.

- I know it's not easy to tell.

- Thank you.

- The deaf community is pushing for changes in the way Maine responds to emergencies.

Tommy Minch is helping lead that effort and Tommy, you join me.

What changes are you seeing already?

- [Tommy's Interpreter] This situation has been awful.

20% of the victims were deaf, so this has become a community effort.

We've become stronger.

The Maine association for the deaf has been involved in this process, creating a website since day one, sharing of resources, community has come together.

We've made some interpreter requests with three different agencies, the three agencies collaborating together.

So we're seeing the impact to the deaf community and our greater community.

During Covid, we were very limited with our gatherings.

We were spread out and now that this has happened, we feel fortunate to be back together again.

We can see those connections to become more strong.

Again communication access will always be a challenge, but we're gonna continue to push policy change and that the Maine association of the deaf, we are going to be working in collaboration with the White House to make sure that they are pushing for policy change.

Once that happens, I feel like our community can heal.

- And just to be clear, when you talk about access, I know that you're talking about someone to do American sign language at every important event.

What else?

- For instance, if you go to a hospital or a doctor's appointment, you wanna make sure that you have access there and that there are options onsite, possibly for an interpreter so that the deaf and hard of hearing community can be there, that they have an interpreter rather than a video relay interpreter.

That direct communication is important as a key for us to gather information and for us to heal and I know that a lot of people in their homes, who are questioning do we have enough interpreters?

And you know, we do have a very small interpreting community and with the number of requests and the needs that are within our community, we wanna make sure that we're taking care of, not only the victim's families, but also our general community at the same time.

- Sounds like we need more places for people to learn American sign language.

- [Tommy's Interpreter] Yes, we do have many resources available and so those are being shared.

- Tommy, thank you very much.

- [Tommy's Interpreter] Yes, thank you.

- I understand we have a question from the audience for the panel.

I'm gonna come over here.

Your name is Frank?

- Strasburger.

- Okay, what is your question for the audience?

- Jennifer, I'm 78 years old.

I grew up in a big city and despite that I never had to fear gun violence.

There were no mass shootings in America.

So what's changed?

Some people wanna blame the human heart, but the human heart hasn't changed.

What's changed is 300 million guns owned by 130 million Americans.

Now we all know that Jared Golden and people like him are gonna face a lot of resistance, but if we don't do anything about guns, how do we have any confidence that what happened here two weeks ago won't happen again and again and again?

Do we really care more about our guns than we do our neighbors and our kids?

- Thank you.

Frank.

I think many, many people have that same question.

I suspect no one sitting here today actually has the answers, kind of the unanswerable question, but does anybody have something they'd like to say?

- The gentleman's correct.

That's the only thing that has changed and we do need common sense gun safety.

I've been a long time advocate for that and it goes beyond banning assault weapons.

It goes back to limiting the size of magazines, it goes to background checks, it goes to increasing our mental health workers so that they can be along with law enforcement and deal with those kinds of situations as they arise.

This is not yesterday anymore.

It's today.

- Is anyone else on the panel, have something you'd like to say?

- I'd agree that mental health is a huge problem in the state of Maine.

It's underfunded.

It's not, these people who are having an illness aren't treated with the same respect that somebody with a broken arm does.

The time they sit in emergency rooms waiting for treatment, waiting for placement, some of those things need to change.

The workers in the community need to increase.

This isn't a job for law enforcement, you know, it's a job that community social workers can manage, but we don't have enough of them.

The issue with weapons, I think it's an issue that we've gotta find consensus, we've gotta find compromise.

If we go to each one of our silos, we're not gonna solve this problem and we'll be back here again.

- So, I so appreciate what you said about lack of mental health resources and although that isn't the cause of a mass shooting, there certainly is a lack of mental health resources in the state.

We are lacking in psychiatry training programs.

We're lacking in loan subsidy or loan repayment for mental health workers.

We really need to work to increase capacity for mental health and there's certainly legislation that's out there right now that is looking to solve some of those issues and if we can get increased access to mental health services, we can allow, not only to serve people that are in desperate need of treatment for let's say a serious mental illness, but we can also help our communities to heal from this, because that's what we're going to need.

It's, right now people are in a stage of shock.

They'll go into exchange of anger and then after that is when grief sets in.

It's when the casserole stop being delivered to doorsteps.

That's the time that Lewiston's going to need the love is when the people sort of walk away, leave, go back to their setting and grief sets in for what happened and that's when mental health resources and quality mental health resources are going to be so important in this community.

- And for our next expression of gratitude, we turn to someone you might recognize, he's the founder of the Dempsey Center, Patrick Dempsey.

- Well, I'm certainly grateful to have been born and bred in Maine you know, in the values that are here and with each passing day and year and certainly with what's happened in the last few weeks, even more so, because there is a strong sense of community and amazing resiliency in Lewiston-Auburn.

When there is a crisis, people really pull together and that's an amazing thing to see.

A lot of people have had great memories with their families here in the summer.

It's holiday here, you know, things like that.

So you're embraced immediately with a smile or like, you know, I've heard a lot about Maine, I need to go there.

I hear it's great.

So there is this wonderful barrier that is removed when you mention that you're from Maine.

So that I'm grateful for.

Well, I think the real tragedy here is that, you know, this can happen anywhere right now in the world that we are in.

So it's not a question of if, but when it could happen in your community with the way we're going, people are so resilient and so hardy because of the elements that you are tough, that you have to get, you know, up off the ground and get out there and shovel in March when you don't want to, when you put the shovels away.

So there is a real sense of strength in our state and in our communities of overcoming these obstacles and getting on with life.

That real sense of community is even more important now moving forward, where we need to take care of each other.

We need to look out for each other and we are one and that's the thing that we have to remember.

- We've learned that part of the healing process is embracing change.

That's so that we can move forward and so now to help us with this profound question of moving forward, we have more guests, the Right Reverend Thomas Brown, he's the Episcopal Bishop of Maine, Shanna Cox, executive director of the Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Rachel Ferrante, executive director of the Maine Mill History Museum, but before we speak to them, there is no doubt that finding a way forward can be hard.

Here is some practical advice from one of the nation's leading authorities.

- The first thing that I urge people to think about is that it's okay to be afraid.

You're not in a new normal, you know, situation, yet.

You're gonna have a new normal, but right now you're afraid and that's okay.

There is no right way to accept what has happened to your family or your friends or your community.

My name is Katherine Schweit, I'm a retired FBI agent who initiated the FBI's Active Shooter program after the Sandy Hook shooting.

So I think your power comes in understanding that you will recover.

Everybody recovers and they just recover in their own way and in their own time and none of that is wrong.

When it comes to gun violence, this is less than one 10th of 1% of the shootings in the United States.

The idea that every school is at risk, every synagogue is at risk, every church is at risk, every grocery store is at risk, is not really true.

Everybody should have stop the bleed training that is training that teaches us how to put on tourniquets and how to stop bleeding and sometimes when people are involved in a tragedy like this, what they take away from it is I can feel more empowered, because I find something to do in my community or for my neighborhood.

The best way is to deal with today and understand that the way you might respond, whether it's anger or laughter or frustration or quietness, is the way you are responding this hour or this moment.

Parents need to be less paranoid about scaring their kids.

We're gonna take care of you, you follow our directions and you're gonna be okay.

- Shannon, Catherine said a way forward is to do something and oh boy, have you been doing something?

You have been at this center, you have been the hub of all the people who are offering support, who need support.

I know that your office has just been nonstop for a while now.

I don't know how much sleep you've gotten.

I'm sure it's not much, (Sharon laughs) but I'm wondering as you, well, I was going to say, if you've had a chance to reflect, I'm gonna hope that you've had a few seconds to reflect.

How has what you've experienced the last two weeks been an illustration about how to move forward?

- I love that question.

I think part of what your previous speaker just noted is that for so many of us there's this moment of kind of pausing and I have had a chance to reflect.

The vigil was for me, I think the first real opportunity, four days in to pause and we couldn't have done that without the strength and the willingness of so many people to step forward, to take a small action or what seemed like a small action for them.

Everybody did what they could and what they did best.

Baker's baked for our law enforcement, my AV guy put on a vigil and put up a 20 foot LED wall.

I had restaurants who were preparing to throw away food, because they're shut down feeding people who were staying at a hotel who aren't getting deliveries.

I think what you saw is people responded with what was natural and what was authentic for them and that part of what was I think amazing and continues I think to help propel us forward, 'cause there's, there's no getting over this.

We're getting through this.

That's what moving forward looks like for any individual, for any organization that's been impacted, and for any community and we do that by drawing on our strengths and lifting each other up and there is no opportunity for everyone to be strong the entire time.

I've had two just absolute moments of breaking and they made me grateful for the strength that others have shown and for the support of others around me, so that I could draw on their strengths to move forward from that moment and I think that cyclical ebb and flow is what we'll continue to do as we find our footing.

(bright music) - So as artists, our job is to make things, but it's also to understand the world around us and to document and process and then regurgitate out so the rest of the community, the world can understand.

So when the shootings happened, I knew that I needed to go out as soon as the lockdown was lifted and go and see how my community responded and to document that and then when I saw these beautiful paper hearts that were lining Lisbon Street, I knew that we needed to start an archive of the materials that were collected during the mourning period.

I am collecting things that look like they're gonna get destroyed in the rain or snow, I'm trying to organize artists to help preserve things and to help make more art about this.

My favorite pumpkins are the ones that reference the whole state of Maine, because it has affected us all and you can see there's a state of Maine here.

I also like the ones that referenced Lewiston and Auburn.

Some have area code 207, which is awesome.

Looking at these things, preserving them is incredibly important to the healing process and all the research that I've done on how to ethically preserve these things, you wanna preserve them for history, so that you make sure that this never happens again.

- I like it on the ground, like, yeah, and just over a little bit.

- [Kevin] This mass shooting event reminds the community of itself.

It's hard to fathom, it's hard to get your head around.

- I like it.

- This is an important piece of history for us.

The balloon is something that's generally associated with happiness, with good things and the other symbols, the rising sun, and then all of the names of all of the victims.

It's like a memorial piece.

It's not sad.

It's full of joy for these people.

Our lives are reflected in their lives.

They were us.

Whenever a place has a disaster, there is a refreshing that happens after that disaster, because people get knocked out of their daily routines and they kind of wake up and look around them and they become conscious of their lives and they will invigorate everybody.

Not that there won't be sadness, but there'll be an invigoration that happens because, well, you have to, you don't really have a choice.

You have to wake up and get going.

- Rachel Ferrante, you know the history of Lewiston as well as anyone.

How does Lewiston's history and character inform how this city is gonna move forward?

- This community has a rich history of immigration and identity and strength of character and place of purpose and of a community resilience and bonding together in the face of whatever is happening here.

That has always been true and that's on display I think now for the nation.

- Reverend Brown, so many people have a hole in their heart and let's be real, that hole's not gonna just get filled up and healed.

Given that, given that we're, and everyone in this community is really the walking wounded, how do we move forward?

- I think one of the ways that we move forward is to do what we're doing tonight and for Maine Public to gather us as a statewide community, to be talking and listening to each other is the first step in that.

I'm so grateful to the deaf community, particularly for raising consciousness for so many of us, including myself.

One of the things that's happening right now is that the Maine council of churches are raising money so that there are paid ASL people helping give the very access that we've heard tonight is so needed at every level, including in our faith communities.

Finally, I would say that we have to talk about the power of forgiveness and that some of us may not yet be there, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be talking about it.

Every spiritual and religious tradition in the world has resources for this, and that's a powerful way, not for the hole in our hearts to be repaired immediately, but for it to begin.

- When you say forgiveness, what do you mean?

- I mean, trusting that holding onto anger or hate or a sense of why is, not gonna be helpful to us in the long term to move forward.

So letting go, trusting that there is a higher power.

Some of us refer to that higher power as God.

Those of us who are Christian, we'll speak about Jesus.

That regardless of the path that we walk or the path that we don't walk, I think that there's great power in trusting that together we can let go of this pain and move forward.

- Now for an expression of gratitude from a Lewiston-Auburn resident who has personally experienced positive changes in the community.

- My name is Fatuma Hussein.

I am a resident of Lewiston, Auburn in the state of Maine.

I came to the United States 30 years ago as a refugee with nothing.

Came to Maine searching for dreams.

I came to Maine to seek for a better place.

I came to Maine because Maine welcomed us.

They embraced us.

They gave us opportunities that we would never dream of and because of that, I have kids who are going to the most prestigious schools that you can ever imagine.

They have given us opportunities of employment, school, education, businesses, entrepreneurship, civic engagement.

The people of Maine may not necessarily know this, but have given us a livelihood, a future, opportunities.

(Fatuma speaks in foreign language) Maine also ingrained us into its fabric and today when you come to Maine, Maine has all this diversity that you would never think of and that is what Maine stands for, the way life should be.

- Fatuma, thank you so much for that.

I wanna ask you, if you wouldn't mind standing up, your perspective, and it is the perspective of so many people in Lewiston having come here from a place where there's war, where there's insecurity, coming to a city that you believed was safe and has been safe for your family.

As you listen to this conversation, what are you thinking?

- I am thinking, how come?

How can this happen in Lewiston?

Many of us from my community are coming from war-torn countries and what we see is trauma after trauma after trauma and my country has been at war for 30 plus years.

Other African countries are still at war.

Yet, you don't see, you know, we have terrorism, we have people bombing, but we don't necessarily see someone coming with guns and just killing people carelessly like that and so the things that we are struggling with as a community is, first of all, it brings that trauma back for us, but also in a country that has laws and a sense of peace, how does it happen?

And what can be done?

'Cause I am feeling like maybe this is not the place that you are seeking for safety, yet I know Lewiston is resilient and Lewiston is a community that bounces back.

This is not gonna go away for a long time, but we are going to heal together and we are going to work together and at the end of the day, we are one large family and that's what Lewiston stands for.

- Important perspective from Fatuma Hussein, I'm gonna send it back to you, Reverend Brown, as you hear what Fatuma says about how, even though her country was at war, it wasn't one person with access to a very powerful gun and no apparent motive, killing many people.

- Yeah.

One of the things that I think is also true to move forward is to take action and we heard Frank ask us a really pointed question about what we might do in this state and the response of course is complicated, we all know that, but if it's anything, it seems to me that responding and addressing this very fact that we are a nation who experiences this, many of us tonight said that as difficult as it was to experience that Wednesday night, that we weren't terribly surprised, that every community, in some sense across the country knows that this could happen.

So there's got to be some action steps around mental health and around care, but also around sensible legislation that will limit our access to this kind of violence.

- Fatuma, thank you and thank you Reverend Brown.

Who else here has a comment or a question?

What's your name?

- My name is Grace Levitt.

And I just wanna say that certainly my greatest fear has happened.

This mass shooting has happened at our beautiful state and now my greatest fear is that it will fade into the background like Columbine going way back then, or Sandy Hook or Parkland or any of the other places and that nothing will change and so I'm glad to hear others calling for change that will make a difference, that will help to make it less likely that this could happen here again or anywhere in this country.

Our children deserve a better, a better environment in which to learn.

Our educators need to know that they're in a safe place in order to teach our kids and we need to be sure we're moving forward and making a positive change that will make a difference.

Thank you.

- Thank you Grace.

Rachel Ferrante, how do we keep this from fading into the background?

- Yeah, I was going to say, we're not going to let it fade into the background.

This is a part of who we are now, and the response is equally, if not more important and so this community coming together in all of the amazing ways that you've heard tonight and that the people of Lewiston-Auburn have experienced is a part of that, never letting it fade into the background.

We're going to grow and heal and find strength and resilience together.

At the museum, we are collecting those memories and those stories.

We're doing it with the chamber and with the city of Lewiston, so that there's always a memory of the victims and also a memory of how this community came together in the face of such horrible tragedy.

- Come on up.

- So I just wanted to echo, I'm so sorry, what was your name?

- Grace.

- Grace.

I just wanted to echo what Grace said.

Mass shootings are also my greatest fear, especially as an educator.

The fact that mass shootings are so common in the United States, that even before this tragedy took place, I'm always thinking of a backup plan every time I walk into the classroom, unfortunately.

- [Jennifer] So you're a teacher?

- Yes.

Yes, I am an educator at Central Maine Community College.

It's just not the world that we should be living in and you wonder why so many young people are anxious and I get really frustrated, frankly, when people say, wow, kids nowadays are so soft.

Well, gee, I wonder why?

There's just so much happening that's frightening and it's not something that should be normal and something we should forget either.

It's not a blip.

It certainly shouldn't be a blip.

- Mackenzie, thank you.

Thank you for speaking for teachers and.

- [Attendee] I'm okay.

Thank you.

- Do you have a response?

Rebecca, you wanted to say something?

- We do know that kids have more anxiety these days than they've ever had, and they are facing things that are very, very scary as our educators.

It's a collective trauma in our country.

It's a collective trauma in our community now and healing is collective too and there are ways to heal that we know work.

We call them evidence-based, we know they work in schools, we know they work in counseling offices, in communities, and we need to make those available because we don't want kids and educators walking around feeling terrified every day and if we really think about it, every day, we expect our kids to go to school and come home safely.

I expect that, so when that doesn't happen, it's a trauma in and of itself, in our trust in the world.

We've lost trust in the world and so there needs to be a building back of that trust and part of that is remembering that just like the FBI agent said in the video, 99.999% of the time, our kids are gonna go to school and come home safely.

That the fear for us is so big right now and the actuality that will happen is so much less than the fear and so how do we work with that fear and anxiety while also working on legislation and other things that may reduce the likelihood of the problem, but just remembering in our heads how safe we really are in this country and reminding our kids how safe they really are as well.

- Jennifer, come on up.

- Hi.

Hi, I'm Jennifer.

I'm with Rogue Life Maine.

I'm here representing our business and I had a question because with the type of fundraising that we've been doing for our community, we've really been able to like be with the community.

I can't tell you how many people that have been through our doors in the last couple of weeks and so we've really been able to connect with them and talk to them.

You know, we've heard their stories, we've heard their questions, you know, they're asking us, looking for answers for things.

One of the questions that kind of has hit me personally, and I'm kind of curious about, what happens when we aren't in the limelight anymore, what happens to these families, these victims, these people?

You know, some of these people that are left behind are wives now without husbands, so half their income is completely gone and like, yeah, the fundraising is happening today, but what happens when somebody needs a mortgage paid 10 years from now?

What happens to these little kids that they've been hurt, because they were out bowling with their family, you know, they don't need help just today.

They're gonna need help when they're 20 and when they're 30, possibly with counseling, with, you know, whatever it is, you know, so there's a lot of people left behind.

There's a lot of, you know, unknowns there.

Like, what's our solution there?

What are we thinking about doing, you know, long term to help all of these people?

- Shanna, I'm gonna turn to you.

- Yeah.

(all laughing) - Thanks Jen.

- [Jennifer] Thanks Shanna.

- Yeah and would love to talk to you about where you're putting your almost $200,000.

Congratulations.

- We're killing it, we're killing it.

- Go ahead and clap.

She deserves that.

(attendees clapping) - [Jennifer] No we couldn't have done it, we couldn't have done it without all the support.

We could have done- - Here, repeat that.

- We couldn't have done it without the support from the community and our community is now not just Maine guys, we have shipped all over the United States and then probably beyond that I don't even know about, but the love for Lewiston is there and it's here, it is here in Lewiston and it's beautiful and take that away guys, take that away for sure.

- Yeah.

I so appreciate this question in part because I think the complexity of the philanthropic response is much more significant than I think people realize.

and I think I've spent from 24 hours in until four o'clock today, having this as an ongoing conversation and there's a couple of things I think that are really important for people to know.

Most of the dollars that are being raised right now, particularly if you're donating to a fund that says explicitly it's for a victim, first of all, I think a lot of people don't understand what we mean when we talk about a victim and I think that's a really important distinction.

Victims are those who are deceased, those who are injured, and those who are present but not injured and the list of those individuals is more than 150 people.

I think that's really impactful when I learned that.

It certainly shifted my thinking about what action looks like in this time.

I think the other thing that's really important is that there's two needs.

There's the one that Jen, you're stating, right, which is the long-term need.

How do we ensure that the dollars that have been raised in many different funds and the funds that I'm currently working with, you know, this is an active conversation, myself, the heads of the bank, the heads of the city, the heads of the Maine community foundation, the heads of United Way.

We're having this conversation about what the best practices are, about what the best way to ensure equitable distribution, which is not equal distribution and so how do we center philanthropy and how these funds are used on the victims and allow the victims to lead that and what you'll see is that that is the best practice.

There's victims first, which is a national fund that pretty immediately set up a Lewiston-Auburn fund and then the Maine community foundation is working with another kind of victim-led philanthropic response and both of those are informing the philanthropy community.

The main philanthropy center is seminating this information, convening funders across the state.

When you follow these best practices, that takes time.

It'll take a number of months for the majority of the funds to be thoughtfully distributed.

If you think about someone who's a victim today, think about your ability to have that conversation right now.

Your ability to advocate for your child, your future self, your needs, your long-term sustainability.

We need time for folks to be ready for that.

We are working with those philanthropy partners to kind of be nimble in the short term response while following these best practices and making this kind of collaborative commitment for this mid and long term, but the reality is that there's a continuum of recovery, and I think it's a lot more complex than people know.

I think it's also really important to know that all of the funds that we've been working with, there is a full commitment to ethical use, to transparency and to integrity and I think part of what you'll see in the coming weeks even is really clear what's been raised, how it's being used.

We know that we're tracking that information, we're preparing to make that information public in a sensitive way and to be accountable to the victims themselves and that's just a vital part of what it is.

People want to give and we want those funds to be used appropriately and to be stewarded well and for those who they are intended for to determine how they're used and a piece of that takes some time.

- Thank you, Shanna.

As we wrap up our conversation tonight, I wanted to turn to someone on the front lines, Lewiston School superintendent, Jake Langlais.

Jake, thanks for being here.

I know you get up early.

(both laughing) What have you seen or heard tonight that you'll take with you back into the schools tomorrow or Monday?

- I think everything.

I think there's so many things to think about and what we've tried to focus on is pacing this return and hearing beautiful things like kids saying, "I wanna see if my teacher's okay," is really humbling.

Knowing that pacing ourselves to take care of those who are taking care of our kids is critically important.

That last question about what do we do in the long term?

We have to think about the educators that we work with every day.

You know, I'm fortunate to work with great people, but they're taking care of our children every day and they're try to take care of themselves as well and so I think, you know, pacing that is critically important in the work that we do, but know that our kids coming back to school and bringing that energy back is really healthy and getting back to those routines and establishing that environment of, you know, we're safe here.

We can go back to doing some of the things we're doing before and knowing that there's a new normal and I think a lot of what I heard tonight was really around this new normal and changing how we have to look at the future, but also embracing each other and I think one of the best quotes I heard tonight was about being stronger, coming out of this, this terrible, awful event, planted seeds and we're not saying hello to each other anymore, we're hugging each other and I think that's where humanity should be and so it's really feeling a lot better.

We're getting stronger, we're growing closer, and we're really in this together and I think when people say one Lewiston or Lewiston Strong, it's all of those pieces.

I'm really proud to be a part of this community, to live here, I'm humble to have the opportunity that I have, but we work with amazing people and the people in this room are the fabric of our community and we love it here.

We really do.

- I think you've said it.

Thank you Superintendent Langlais.

We're gonna leave you tonight with one more gratitude.

- Hi, I'm Raylynn and I live in a shelter in Lewiston, Maine and today I am grateful for the fact that even though I live in the shelter, I don't have a lot, but I do have everything that I need to live and just thrive with my life.

I also am very, very grateful for living in a place where I have the support system I need.

I have a dream that they're helping me accomplish, which is to become a doctor.

They push me really hard to go the right direction and take the right steps to accomplish that goal, because I can't do it on my own.

I wanna go to pediatrics for kids.

My goal is to be a support for those kids, for their physical health and mental health and like teach them that even though people may try to break you down and everything like that and tell you that you're not good enough, that shouldn't matter because you are and I wanna be, I guess like a role model to them.

Hey, like nothing's wrong with you.

Like there's nothing wrong with you.

Like you're a perfect person.

The one message that I have to tell everyone else is that no matter what you have, no matter what you struggle with, just be grateful for what you have.

- Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us for "Love Lewiston, A Maine calling special."

We're proud we were able to bring you this program and hope it was meaningful for you.

Of course, my colleagues in the Maine public newsroom will continue to follow this story and I hope you'll join us every day, every weekday for "Maine Calling," live at 11 in rebroadcast at seven.

Thank you and goodnight.

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