Starting the new year with community, hope, resistance

On Saturday afternoon, January 18th, as thousands in the nation’s capital and other cities protested Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. Presidency, 300 people packed the historic Second Congregational Church of Greenfield for an event of hope, community building and resistance.The Twice as Smart children’s choir upbeat rendition of We Shall Overcome set the mood, with many joining in the familiar song.   “We are here to resist the 2025 agenda of the incoming president who has gamed the system at every turn, aided by judges elevated by gutless Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, and aided by right wing media,” said Sunderland activist Susan Triolo in her welcome to the event.   “Our Projects for 2025, by contrast, envision a brighter world, where every person is valued, and the most vulnerable are protected; where childcare, healthcare & education are supported as critical to our general welfare.  Where our Mother Earth is finally recognized and cared for as the only planet we have.  Where immigrants neither fear deportation, nor separation from their families.  We envision today as a coalition and community-building event in an explicit response to the threat posed by the incoming administration.  We will need to support each other.  And we will.” Susan then introduced keynote speaker Rev. Kate Stevens of Charlemont, who echoed those sentiments:   “We may find ourselves in some pretty wild storms in the next few years. Find your vast network of support; Hold each other up.  If you feel alone, find at least one other person that shares your fears and your passions. What we can’t do alone; we can do together.” The sponsoring groups, including the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution (FCCPR), Western Mass CodePink, the Interfaith Council of Franklin County and Amherst Young Feminist Party welcomed four more speakers.   Great Falls resident Kaia Jackson, active with the Western Mass. Jewish Voice for Peace, presented her vision of peace. “I believe that it is our responsibility not only to keep looking and witnessing the suffering, the resilience, the unmet need, the full face of humanity in Gaza, but to become the teachers of our own humanity here and now,” they told the many assembled.”To dream bigger and deeper than we have ever done before, for ourselves, for our neighbors across the street, for the trans youth in our community, for a single displaced family in Gaza.”Breaks with inspiring songs from local musicians brought the large assembly together as well. They included: the Raging Grannies political acapella group and singer-songwriters Sarah Pirtle, Ann Ferguson and Annie Hassett. A collection was taken in collaboration with the national “Help over Hate Weekend of Service,” sponsored by the grassroots organization Indivisible, honoring the memory of Dr. King. Our own ‘beloved community’ gave $1,500. in donations to support the Stone Soup Café of Greenfield. A major concern was defense of women’s reproductive rights, ably addressed by Juliet Margola of the Amherst Young Feminist Party. A recent UMass graduate currently working at the Four Rivers Charter School, she spoke to the importance of younger women working alongside older activists in campaigning for Roe v. Wade in this new intergenerational effort to restore key rights for women and girls. A moving speech was given by Marieange LaRoche, on the staff of Jewish Family Services in Springfield working with current Haitian refugees. Marieange immigrated to the U.S. in 2002, fleeing violence in her native Haiti. Marieange and other Haitians are creating a Haitian Immigrant organization to help in situations she described of great fear and uncertainty, with the specter of deportation impossible to imagine: “They have no homes to go back to,’ she explained, “and even the airport is destroyed.” She described the terror in the whole Haitian community with the threat that even those with legal visas may have them revoked under the Trump administration.  She said it was hard for them to feel safe sending their children to school or to go to work for fear of raids by ICE agents who could indiscriminately sweep up immigrants.If things seem challenging, they certainly are when it comes to the climate and related crises, explained Wendell’s biologist-activist Bill Stubblefield. “Altogether, we face a crisis of unprecedented scale and scope that cannot be corrected with a few tweaks and band-aids; fundamental change is coming, and what we do now will echo far into the future,” he told the attentive audience.   “In view of the severity and pervasiveness of the predicament we face, it’s hardly surprising that we see efforts to minimize it, to say it’s just a band-aid situation, not an emergency-room situation, and certainly not an intensive-care situation… But this is an illusion, just another form of denialism, and the biophysical reality is that we very much need intensive care right now, intensive care for ourselves, intensive care for our institutions, and intensive care for the living world upon which we all depend.” “It’s up to us. We have to be the people that build that better future, so let’s get going!  And that’s why we’re here today.” Following the one-hour program in the church’s sanctuary, participants adjourned to the adjacent Community Room to visit long tables filled with information from 25 co-sponsoring groups, ranging widely from the well-known Greening Greenfield to Great Falls Books Through Bars, which collects and sends books to prisoners. Their exhibit featured a bulletin board filled with thank you notes and cards from incarcerated book recipients. Other groups represented reproductive justice, peace, climate and environment, political activism, mutual aid, and civil and immigration rights. A vegetarian buffet and beverages helped round out the afternoon. The event was filmed by Traprock board member Liam O’Shea and is available below. Thanks to Ann Ferguson for speaker photos.