Good morning,
I’m Lauralee Carbone and I’m a member of the BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team. We meet for business on the 1st Monday of each month and for our programming on the 2nd Monday of each month via zoom, and we’d love to see you log on! Together, we will listen to and discuss, “The Vanishing of Harry Pace,” a RadioLab podcast. The Vanishing of Harry Pace is a series about the phenomenal but forgotten man who changed America. Harry Pace founded Black Swan Records, in 1920. It was Motown before Motown; it launched the career of Ethel Waters, inadvertently invented the term rock n roll, inspired Ebony and Jet magazines, and helped desegregate the South Side of Chicago in an epic Supreme Court battle. Then, Harry Pace disappeared.
In addition to providing these AntiRacism Moments each week to raise the consciousness of our congregation, our charter also reminds us to reach out to the community at large to raise Bellingham and beyond’s consciousness. We did this recently when we gathered funds and bought 10 copies of Heather McGhee’s book, THE SUM OF US, to make a book kit at our local library. What struck me most about this book is its emphasis on the economic impact of the entire economy, not just black lives, when racism prevails. She illustrates with example after example the core dysfunction of our democracy and the moral crises that grip us all. It’s a story of how public goods in this country--from parks and pools to schools--have become private luxuries. She talks of the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. She analyzes how when we are divided we are self-destructive, materially rich but spiritually starved and vastly unequal, through humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, leaving us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.
Thank you,
