Eye everyone. I hope you can hear me. I am David Sandberg and thanks for joining us for the series of american ancestors and the Historical Geological society the state labard massachusetts and Publishers Weekly 2020s bookstore of the year. On line and inperson with my limited capacity we ship and at local delivering curse at the given Virtual Events like this one. And a special pandemic newsletter and lots of other stuff so visit us at www. Porter square books. Com. A4 introducer guess the moderators i want to give you a few quick housekeeping notes about using crowd chat which some of you may have used before but many of you havent. First of all the event is recorded. If you only stay for part of tonights talk because your water was boiling or you wanted to share it with a friend will be here as well as on our facebook page. Second of all you have this lovely chat window on the bottom right of your screen were so Say Something nice, please do. Type in there and say hi and people have
Need me. Im going to go just. Because you want to welcome to the program ethiopias Northern Region has gone ahead with Regional Elections despite being told not to do so by Prime Minister to the country had been due to hold national and Regional Elections last month but the federal government postponed them indefinitely because of the coronavirus pandemic decisions into groene accused of using the situation to prolong his rule not surprise population is rated to be small its around 5 percent of ethiopias 109000000 people need those from the ethnic group dominated ethiopias politics 130 is but that ended when it came to paul in 2018. Now about 2700000. 00 people in the region are expected to verts to gray officials have warned that an intervention by the federal government would amount to a quote declaration of war. An act of defiance in ethiopias Northern Region of to cry. These people are lining up to vote in an election that the federal government says is illegal. It also says the re