Greetings everyone!
First, we’d like to share that Jams for Justice, our opening summer concert and auction to send reparations, was a success!! Thank you to everyone who attended, donated, and participated in the auction. Together we raised $4,655.80. All of which went directly to Racial Equity and Justice, a Maine-based organization that does vital racial justice work and education nation-wide. We are so grateful for all of the work that they do. Please consider further support for this organization and encourage your friends to start their own reparations journey by supporting REJ or other BIPOC(Black, Indigenous, People of Color)-led organizations.
Additionally, thank you to Ethan Tischler for doing sound for us, and we are hugely grateful to all the musicians for generously donating their time and especially to Mali Obamsawin of REJ for sharing such powerful words through song and speech.
We are so happy that resources have been moved to REJ and are excited about creating more events like Jams for Justice.
To that end, here are a couple things on our radar for the coming months! Stay tuned for announcements about….
- Another event like Jams for Justice (Pies for Peace? Tortes for Transformation?) to move money to BIPOC-led organizations and projects. We hope to have a date on the calendar in the next few months.
- An Anti-Racist Training Workshop. We are in touch with a handful of leaders from a few BIPOC-led organizations and are looking forward to putting on an educational training that will be open to the public.
Anti-racist and reparations work takes all of us and it isn’t a one off event: our actions, our hearts, our gifts, our time. If you have the capacity to get involved, here are a list of groups doing this work locally:
- Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ)
Find them on Facebook or via the national SURJ website
- Rural Anti-Racist Action Group
Email ruralantiracist@gmail.com to get involved or learn more
- The Yet-To-Be-Named-Network
Learn more here or plug in through Ethan Hughes at the Possibility Alliance
- Mid-Coast Indigenous Awareness Group
- Mid-Coast Maine Reparations Collective (MCMRC) (that’s us!)
- And a group of citizens doing antiracist work with the Waldo County Sheriff’s Department
Read about them here
Mark your calendar: Folks from each of these groups will be meeting on Sunday July 18th at the Possibility Alliance from 10am-noon at 85 Edgecomb Road in Belfast to discuss forming a Midcoast-wide coalition for racial justice. If you are involved in any of these groups or become so before this date, you are welcome to join the meeting.
Above all, our goal is to support BIPOC-led organizations like Racial Equity and Justice who work to end violence against oppressed groups and create a more equitable society. We want to center that in this email so that we can bring you along with us in this journey.
We at Mid-Coast Maine Reparations Collective are leaning into anti-racist work and striving not to cause further harm, but we acknowledge that becoming anti-racist is a journey and we will make mistakes. Thus, we thrive on feedback and suggestions, so please share any that you can think of. Please reply directly to this email and we’d be thrilled to be in touch with you.
Blessings and best wishes,
All of us at the Mid-Coast Maine Reparations Collective