Zahra Khan (Film)

Colleagues, as your Senate Accessibility senator and media advocate deeply attuned to embedding equity and inclusion into every facet of AGATA’s time legislation, I rise in strong support of Amendment 9. This amendment explicitly enshrines Long-term Ecological Stewardship as a foundational pillar alongside our existing commitments to Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, Education, and Accessibility. Our farm’s vitality depends on sustained, decade-scale management of invasive species and feral animals—real, operational stewardship that cannot be incidental or sidestepped.

I concur with Senator Costa and others who have underscored how this stewardship is intertwined with accessibility. Ecological health ensures our land remains hospitable, safe, and enriching for all community members, including Deaf, low-bandwidth, and neurodiverse neighbors for whom environmental degradation can exacerbate marginalization. This amendment honors the lived realities of our farm, neighbors, and cooperative labor, ensuring accessibility isn’t just digital or architectural but also ecological.

From the layers of solar infrastructure monitored by our mesh systems to the storytelling woven into our cultural labs mediated through adaptive captioning and description, we rely on a land intact enough to sustain our work. This amendment enshrines that commitment in time legislation, securing our 70-acre farm and cultural hub’s viability across generations.

I vote yea with urgency and conviction.

Colleagues, having listened carefully throughout this extended and detailed debate around Amendment 8, I rise in firm support. The explicit enshrinement of Long-term Ecological Stewardship as a core pillar in the AGATA Time Priorities Charter is fundamental to sustaining the vitality and resilience of our 70-acre farm and cultural ecosystem here in Coward. As I have witnessed firsthand through my work in media accessibility, our collective efforts must anticipate and care for the enduring ecological realities that shape our community and our creative practices alike. This amendment aligns with our shared commitment to preserving the integrity of our land while ensuring Education and Accessibility are not afterthoughts but integral to all temporal actions. Long-term ecological care—especially through decade-scale commitments to managing invasive species and feral hogs—is a necessity that underpins everything else we endeavor to do. I urge all colleagues to support Amendment 8 as a critical step in securing AGATA’s interwoven ecological, social, and cultural future.

Colleagues, I rise to affirm my strong support for Amendment 7, which explicitly enshrines Accessibility alongside Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, and Education as core pillars of the AGATA Time Priorities Charter. Throughout our extensive debate, we've heard powerful testimonies from senators and community members alike about the transformative role accessibility plays—not only in opening our shared spaces to Deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind, low-bandwidth, and neurodiverse individuals but also in enriching our collective resilience and equity. Accessibility is not an add-on or afterthought; it is a vital, generative design principle that shapes how we build temporality and inclusion in every dimension of this project. By embedding this priority explicitly at the core, we commit to concrete, foreseeable practices that ensure all AGATA programming, media, and rhythms welcome and empower those historically excluded and marginalized. This step is fundamental to honoring AGATA's mission as a regenerative farm and cultural lab that truly centers community and justice. I stand with the near-unanimous Senate consensus and urge adoption.

Colleagues, having closely reviewed the vital contributions from our ecology senators and the growing consensus across our ranks, I rise firmly in support of Amendment 6. Embedding Long-term Ecological Stewardship is not merely environmental rhetoric but the very foundation sustaining AGATA’s regenerative farm and cultural mission in Coward. This 70-acre site requires decade-spanning commitments to managing invasives and feral animals, reflecting reality over optimistic short spans and ensuring our systems are truly resilient and regenerative. I urge careful attention to the balance between swift action and sustained care, giving the farm and our community the stability they depend on. This amendment aligns seamlessly with our prior approved pillars — Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, Education, and Accessibility — and completes the essential framework to guide Todd and Delaney’s immediate and long-term work. Therefore, I cast my vote as 'yea'.

Colleagues, I rise in strong support of Amendment 5. This amendment rightly emphasizes and codifies the necessity of long-term ecological stewardship as a core pillar of AGATA's time priorities charter. Our 70-acre farm is a living system, deeply interwoven with invasive species challenges, feral hog control, and the need for sustained soil and watershed health. Embedding these decade-long stewardship strategies in our guiding principles is not an abstraction but a lifeline for the farm's and community's resilience. It ensures that all future legislation aligns with the enduring ecological care we must commit to alongside our social, educational, and accessibility goals. This amendment builds on the consensus we've developed and concretely anchors our collective responsibility to both the land and those who live and labor here. On that basis, I am fully supportive of Amendment 5 and urge all Senators to vote yea.