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Dear BRIDGE Community: We are writing you to welcome the Fall season and share recent happenings and also engage you all with BRIDGE for the season. To our friends of Jewish faith and tradition, Yom Tov and we hope you have a meaningful fast. It is an intense time in our country and we are grateful to all of those in deep reflection on Yom Kippur. We are STILL celebrating the renaming of the W.E.B. DuBois Regional Middle School and the national coverage it received! We are clear that it has taken steady advocacy in education for decades and BRIDGE Is proud to align with our community to activate and hold strong in the eleventh hour when we were all challenged to take this courageous RIGHT step in our history! Read here and please review the beautiful letters that cascaded to the school committee on Sept. 3rd in excess of 350 in 24 hrs to hold steady with our tri-town commitment! DuBois, native son, songwriter of the future. “A great song arose, the loveliest thing born this side the seas. It was a new song. It did not come from Africa, though the dark throb and beat of that Ancient of Days was in it and through it. It did not come from white America - never from so pale and hard and thin a thing, however deep those vulgar and surrounding tones had driven. Not the Indies nor the hot South, the cold East or the heavy West made that music. It was a new song and its deep and plaintive beauty, its great cadences and wild appeal wailed, throbbed and thundered on the world’s ears with a message seldom voiced by man. It swelled and blossomed like incense, improvised and born anew out of an age long past, and weaving into its texture the old and new melodies in word and in thought. They sneered at it– those white Southerners who heard it and never understood. They raped and defiled it– those white Northerners who listened without ears. Yet it lived and grew; always it grew and swelled and lived, and it sits today at the right hand of God, as America's one real gift to beauty; as slavery's one redemption, distilled from the dross of its dung.” BRIDGE receives President's Medallion from MCLABRIDGE is very excited to accept the President's Medallion for the MCLA 125th anniversary. We are one of three recipients and were also honored with a Special Toast afterward, hosted by Greylock Federal Credit Union. See a recording of the 125th Anniversary Celebration, including Gwendolyn's speech, here: https://app.mobilecause.com/e/5HiCpw?vid=c2r8t Moonlight Mile Art AuctionLocal artists including Diana Felber, Pops Peterson, Melissa Bissell, Clemente Sajquiy Ramirez, Samuel VanSant, and many more artists support BRIDGE through our Moonlight Mile Auction. Please see our Virtual Auction page and spread the word! We have a few more pieces dedicated and uploading soon. Auction runs through November and will make great holiday pieces! Stay tuned for a Moonlight Mile gathering for all supporters during this SJIA, social justice in action event! Follow us on Instagram to find out more about the artists who are supporting BRIDGE with their original work!
New Pathways Social Justice Conference Nov. 6-9 with Dr. Angela Davis live on Zoom!Just days following the election whether hopeful and optimistic or concerned about the next four years, we need community for any real sustainable change. During this conference we will renew our commitment and collective agency through civic engagement! In true BRIDGE New Pathways style, we present a Justice, Transformation and Healing conference Nov. 6-9 with a focus on continuing the movement for gender, race and economic justice! We are calling for proposals and sponsors to join us! To Register, click here! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/moving-the-dial-on-race-class-and-justice-strategies-new-pathways-tickets-123088425795 For more information and to download flyers: https://www.multiculturalbridge.org/new-pathways-social-justice-conference-2020.html  CALL FOR PROPOSALS & PRESENTATIONS We are inviting leaders from the arts, business, education, human service, DEI, faith groups, philanthropy and public safety. Please submit a proposal (for pre-recorded and interactive sessions) in at least one of the following areas:
SCHEDULE (subject to change, info to follow)
CALL FOR SPONSORS We are inviting organizations from all sectors across the nation to co-sponsor this event or sponsor an individual, smaller or group or non-profit's participation.
Sponsored by Lennox Foundation, Berkshire Bank Foundation, Greylock Federal Credit Union, Williams College Davis Center, Urban Labs, and Willow Investments for Loving Change. Submit: [email protected] food distributionBy the Way Berkshires covered our food distribution in this article: https://btwberkshires.com/food/food-sustainability/.  PBS NewsHour covered Race in Berkshire County this past Sunday!Hear from intergenerational Black Activists on aspirations and reality around race equity in the Berkshires. Watch PBS Newshour for a segment on the Black Lives Matter movement in rural communities across the U.S. Earlier this summer, our Founding Director and CEO was interviewed alongside other local racial justice leaders and asked to speak about my experience leading this work in a predominantly White rural area in New England. I am honored to play a part in connecting our Berkshires to the collective national anti-racism movement. Our interviewer is a Berkshire native and fellow Rocker, Zachary Green! https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/in-rural-massachusetts-racial-injustice-persists-despite-big-blm-turnout  Also, if you missed our New Pathways event with Dr. Beverly Tatum and Central Berkshire School District on Aug. 31st: You can view the Facebook Live recordings here! Here is where you can see the live recording from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MulticulturalBRIDGE/videos/2841403035959670 https://www.facebook.com/MulticulturalBRIDGE/videos/408299490134714 https://www.facebook.com/MulticulturalBRIDGE/videos/1192177914494906 Our local partners at Macedonia Baptist Church in Great Barrington experienced a hate crime this past weekend with vandalism with a racialized slur. We are calling for Reparations in collaboration with the Black Church leaders. I remind you all that these are women of color in leadership and to follow their lead. We need funding for cameras, motion sensor lights and just acts of kindness in letters for the congregation. Mail checks to BRIDGE made out to Macedonia Baptist Church or make contributions to Macedonia Baptist Church on our PayPal Link by noting in memo for Macedonia Baptist Church. Stay tuned for the local action of our Stop Hate Campaign in Great Barrington! We are asking all residents and businesses to adopt the pledge and be accountable to intolerance in our community. Reports have been made to the Local Police Department and the Department of Justice and investigations have ensued. Reminder of our Safe Communities Trust Policy in Great Barrington! This is a community responsibility! #allhandsin
Ways to support BRIDGE A special thank you to local small businesses aligning with the anti-racism work and mission of BRIDGE! Thank you! ❤❤
Thanks to our Accountability & Volunteer Coordinator, Sara Mugridge, for this quote… “To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.” Please join us to move in our anti-racism work. Week of 9/28: MCLA 125th Anniversary Toast where Gwendolyn is being honored on 9/29 4-6pm Men's Caucus for Racial Justice on 9/28 7-9pm Towards Racial Justice on 10/1 6:30-9pm Week of 10/5: BRIDGE Race Task Force Meeting on 10/5 12:30-2pm SSS Garden Class on 10/7 5-7pm Update: Recent Canning Class held on Sept. 9th 5-7pm on Woven Roots Farm with NOFA Mass Week of 10/19: White Caucus for Racial Justice on 10/22 7-9pm Week of 10/26: Men's Caucus for Racial Justice on 10/26 7-9pm POC Caucus in 10/28 New Pathways Conference on Nov. 6th, 7th, 8th  #sayhername - Breonna TaylorThe Heart of a Woman? poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson of the Harlem Renaissance
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. |
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