Our new President, Amelya Black, opened the meeting by asking us to hold in our minds people who are still being oppressed by systemic racism. After leading us into our usual minute of silence in acknowledgement and support of the Black Lives Matter movement, she then turned the meeting over to the day’s Toastmaster, Norris Bass.
We had 11 members and one guest in attendance. In honor of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, Norris chose freedom as his word of the day. After leading a round of introductions in which members told what freedom means to them, Norris then moved ahead to the first speaker of the day.
Renuka Korlipara, presented her very first Icebreaker speech today. Using personal stories, Renuka told us about how her fear of dogs has affected her life. She used anecdotes from her childhood as well as her adult experiences, wrapping up with the story of how she learned to replace her fear with love. Savannah Murphy served as her evaluator, noting that Renuka’s speech was very strong, and praising her for focusing on one topic and using that to introduce herself and give us a glimpse into her life. Congratulations on completing your first Toastmasters speech, Renuka!
Alvin Powell was the second speaker and delivered a talk about the historical and present-day effects of red-lining. In his speech, Alvin used graphics to illustrate how the Federal Government’s listing of minority neighborhoods as “undesirable” in the 1950’s and the difficulty in getting home loans for those areas has led to disparities in everything from generational wealth to healthcare access. Alvin’s evaluator, Maria, thanked him for giving us a clearer understanding of how racism has traveled through time, and gave special note to his phrasing that “Jim Crow had wings.”
Karen Rhodes served as Table Topics Master, and used images of posters from women’s protests across our country as the catalysts for her topic questions.
John Doggett served as the General Evaluator, and gave a thorough review of the meeting. We had no bias flags raised today. Summer Murphy served as the Timer, and reported on times for the prepared speeches, Table Topics responses and speech evaluations. Tanuja Reddy served as Grammarian, and gave a report on the filler words and phrases she noted for each member.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 am, July 8 EST on Zoom.
The roles for that meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Amelya
Speaker 1: Dave
Speaker 2: Angela
Table Topics: Tanuja
Gen. Evaluator: Norris
Speaker 1 Eval: Summer
Speaker 2 Eval: Maria
Timer: Renuka
Grammarian: Greg
Invite someone you know to start their journey toward becoming a better communicator and a more effective leader at Sunrise Toastmasters!
