This is a newsletter for all those interested in the work of the Mid-Coast Maine Reparations Collective (we call ourselves MMRC). Our intention as a group is to follow the leadership of BIPOC-led organizations in Mid-Coast Maine and support their work by returning stolen resources, promoting truth-telling education, and fostering a culture of repair.
Our goals include educating ourselves and others and participating in reparations in many of its forms: land return, giving of our skills and time, moving resources, showing up when invited and helping to dismantle the systemic structures of colonization and white supremacy in ourselves, our towns, our state and country.
July – December: Where We’ve Been
Since our last email in July where we told you about our event in Belfast called Jams for Justice which raised $5,000 for Racial Equity and Justice (REJ), we’ve started to branch out to serve and uplift various BIPOC-led projects.
- Wicuhkemtultine Kinship Community and Learning Center is a Wabanaki-led project located on 200-plus acres in Monroe. We showed up many times in 2021 at work parties to help prune apple trees, plant berries, raise a yurt, put up a garden fence and build a deck.
- Ummah Farm is an 11-acre Black owned homestead which is becoming a food hub and healing space for BIPOC communities in central Maine. Along with our friends from SURJ and Land in Common, we’ve participated in multiple work parties to restore a barn, build fencing for the goat pastures, cut firewood, install insulation, and share music and meals.
We’ve also been following Migrant Justice’s Milk With Dignity Campaign on Hannaford in Maine. The campaign builds a movement of farmworkers and allies calling on dairy companies to ensure respect for human rights in their supply chains by joining the worker-driven campaign. Many of us attended, made signs, and volunteered as safety marshalls at the 300-person march in Portland in November. The march, and subsequent actions at Hannaford across Maine called on Hannaford and Hood Dairy Plant to join Milk With Dignity.
Read and watch the video about the march, and call on Hannaford to take action.
We’ve also shown up to learn. In October, many of us attended the all day Anti-Racist Organizing in Maine virtual conference hosted by Atlantic Black Box and Community Change, Inc.
This fall, we continued the practice of personal reparations by moving resources to BIPOC projects every time we met. From our own pockets we have moved:
- $300 to Wabanaki Alliance
- $300 to Eastern Woodland Rematriation
- $304 to Red Lake Camp (Line 3 Resistance)
- $300 to Nuevo Esperanza in El Salvador
- $300 to Land Peace Foundation (Kinship Community)
- over $1500 to BIPOC leaders in Maine.
Widening our Net
The Mid-Coast Coalition for Justice
We are in great company in Maine when it comes to people dedicated to decolonizing and undoing white supremacy. In late Summer, some of those groups came together to form the Mid-Coast Coalition for Justice. It includes members from Mid-Coast SURJ, The Rural Anti-Racist Action Group, Mid-Coast Reparations Collective, Mid-Coast Peace and Justice and others helping the Waldo County Sheriff’s department deepen their anti-racist work and educating youth in the school system.
follow our joint calendar on the MMRC website to stay updated on upcoming events like MLK Jr. Day, rallies, training, and more.
Join MMRC
Are you looking for more community or ways to get involved in repairing the harm? Consider joining MMRC. We meet 2 times per month (usually in person in Belfast on Sunday afternoons) and offer various levels of commitment allowing people to lean in as much or as little as they are able.
email us at midcoast.maine.reparations@gmail.com if you are interested in learning about our onboarding structure.
Join the Movement to Undo Systems of Oppression
Whether you join our collective or not, we invite you to the daily practice of undoing systems of oppression. The little acts add up: read BIPOC authors, bring up issues at work, at home and with friends, call your local representatives to voice support on important issues (get your reps to support LD1626 for instance, a key bill honoring Wabanaki sovereignty. Call Governor Janet Mills at 207-287-3531 and tell her to pass it. She has vetoed previous efforts even when the House and Senate passed these initiatives). MMRC is trying to commit to the small and large acts that move us forward towards a world that works for all life.
May the winter solstice and all your holidays be meaningful and joyful. The team at MMRC is wishing you strength, courage, joy and peace in 2022. Please share this update with friends and invite them to our email list. For any questions, ideas or thoughts, please contact us at midcoast.maine.reparations@gmail.com or call us at (207) 573-0678.
Stay tuned for what’s ahead in 2022.
Sincerely,
The Mid-Coast Maine Reparations Collective
P.S. Here is our recommended winter reading list
- Sacred Instructions by Sherri Mitchell
- An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
- The MMRC Reparations Reader