Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Roderick Brereton. With me is my business partner, Farley Flex.
Traditionally when we think of hate, we think of the swastikas, the Confederate flags and the N-word scrawled on lockers. Although these are definite, vile symbols that represent hatred, there are also contemporary symbols, and even though they're not in your face as they were in past days, they're now on different platforms—for instance, on the Zoom platform.
Ironically enough, we're on this very high-security Zoom platform right now, but a lot of times when Black organizations are conducting Zooms, we've been bombed by white supremacists who are able to manipulate the technology and flood our Zoom chats with visuals to give grand gestures of extreme oppression and racism. We want to acknowledge that the hatred and the symbols have evolved, just like everything else in society.
I'll pass this on to Farley and then I'll come back on and speak again.