You are invited to participate in an educational Zoom forum and community discussion on the role of Allegheny County Executive, on Thursday Feb 16th from 6:30-8pm. The forum will begin with a presentation by Dr. Jamil Bey and Dr. Noble Maseru on the broad range of powers of the County Executive to shape local policy, funding, development, and appointments to boards, commissions, and authorities. Participants will then have an opportunity to learn more and to share their experiences of how the institutional powers of the County Executive have affected their lives, their organizational missions and/or areas of advocacy in the following breakout rooms.

• Environmental justice, health, clean air and water: Co-facilitators: Environmental and health care justice activist and psychiatrist  Dr. Claire Cohen, Breathe Project Director Matthew Mehalik, and Dr. Tina Ndoh, Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health in the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health.

Development, housing, transit, and food sovereignty: Co-facilitators: City of Bridges Stewardship and Engagement Manager Crystal Jennings, Casa San Jose Director Monica Ruiz, Pittsburghers for Public Transit Director Laura Chu Wiens, and former Pittsburgh Food Policy Council Director Dawn Plummer.

Policing, justice systems, and incarceration: Brandi Fisher, founder and CEO of the Alliance for Police Accountability, Director of Reimagine Reentry Richard Garland,  and Rev Rod Tate, Program Director of the Colorful Backgrounds Expo program.

All participants will be invited to share their questions for candidates and main priorities for constructive action by a new County Executive. Forum organizers will afterwards group these questions and priorities by issue and select a representative sample of which will be presented to County Executive candidates to respond to at a second forum on March 9, from 6:30-8pm. Please register here to receive a Zoom link for the forums: https://bit.ly/ACEforums.

Organizational co-sponsors include: The Alliance for Police Accountability, the Breathe Project, Casa San Jose, the Hill District Consensus Group, the Human Rights City Alliance, the Izaak Walton League, Just Harvest, the Pittsburgh Green New Deal, the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council, Pittsburghers for Public Transit, Pittsburgh United, Unite, UrbanKind, and Women for a Healthier Environment.