Minutes of April 2021 BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team business/planning meeting

 

BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team

Minutes - April 5, 2021 Business/Planning Meeting

 

The meeting, on Zoom, began at 6 pm. Present were: Murray Bennett, Lauralee Carbone, David Curley, Barbara Gilday, Amoret Heise, Tom Kirschner, Claire Lending, Cat McIntyre and Henry Ohana

 

Anti-Racism Minutes:

            April 11           Barbara  Gilday – Report on ABC

            April 18           Cat McIntyre, on Rapid Response      

            April 25           Lauralee Carbone

            May 2              Henry Ohana will find someone  

 

Remember to alert Rev. Paul on or before the Wednesday before the service where you will speak that you’re giving the anti-racism minute at that service.

 

Program Planning: 

April 12 – Activity to write letters on Resolution 1 (filibuster), and HR 40 reparations. We will state brief description of each and encourage those attending to write together to Congress people. Hank will send article on reparations. The Faith Action Network has a list of important legislation that is in the offine.  We will also discuss whether to use other means to advise congregation to write

 

May 10:  Beginning of five monthly meetings where we watch and discuss “Amend,” available on Netflix

 

Beloved Conversations 2:  

Evaluation of Beloved Conversations 1 –a short eval questionnaire sent out today to 35 people, six responses already.  Other resources, possibly local: Kim Harris, WCC, WP&JC; and the speaker at Fall 2019 How to talk to your Racist Uncle. We need to assess cost of each

 

ABC:  Lauralee, scholarship at USF, mentorship program at WWU, Erica Malllin and Barbara Gilday co-chair

 

Phone Tree.  Working well; we will request additional interest as part of April 18 anti-racism minute.  We also want to ascertain the condition/adequacy of BUF banner; the one used on April 3 is small and plain. Is there another in the SEJC closet??

 

Next Business Planning Meeting:  May 3, 6 pm

Next Program Meetings:  April 12, 7 pm and May 10, 7 pm.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Cat McIntyre, co-facilitator

BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team

Anti-Racist Moment 3/28/2021 - David Curley

Good morning. I’m David Curley, a member of the BUF Black Lives Matter ministry action team. 

Two weeks, two more mass murders. Two very troubled young men, armed and armored, play-acting violent power—power utterly absent in their actual lives.

We want to explain.

“We know racism when we see it”—Senator Raphael Warnock about targeting Asian Americans, and true in the Atlanta event, but not true of all mass murders.

“It’s a problem of toxic masculinity in American culture”—overgeneralized, perhaps true in some sectors, but not of all men. To me, this statement ignores changes that women have made in our community.

Still, across and within racial boundaries, we perform the same roles in the same grieving, horrific, and terrifying play.

Can we imagine a new play? Can we model new roles of courage?

What would self-aware soul-gardening look like? 

What would a diverse, antiracist, Beloved Community response be?

Can we sing a new song?

 

P.S. This antiracism moment took me in an unexpected direction. Comments and criticism are welcome.

More books...more videos!

 Last summer I read Michelle Obama's BECOMING. I'm now reading Barack's PROMISED LAND. Highly recommended, as well as COLOR OF LAW for judicial history of racism.

Also, on Netflix, the limited series AMEND about the 14th Amendment is excellent. I was so impressed, I even contacted them through their Facebook page to suggest another episode on how corporations, judged as persons, have coopted the 14th Amendment to their own ends.

~Lauralee

Anti-Racism Minute 3/21/2021 - Mike Betz

 Decades before Thoreau’s move to Walden, more than a dozen formerly enslaved Black residents of Concord made Walden Woods their home. With its infertile soil, Walden Woods wasn’t considered valuable land and thus became a place for the town’s outcasts to live more freely. Thoreau felt a certain kinship with this community living on the fringes of society. He devoted nearly half a chapter in Walden, titled “Former Inhabitants,” to telling their stories.

Born around 1744, Brister Freeman was one of the first known inhabitants of Walden Woods and the second Black man to own property in Concord.

Freeman fought as a soldier in the American Revolution. He spent the first 30 years of his life in Concord, enslaved by the prominent John Cuming, a doctor in Concord. He went to war on three separate tours while still legally designated as property. On his final tour in 1779, he self-emancipated by declaring his last name as “Freeman” on his military papers. This was an incredibly risky move as enslaved soldiers took the last names of their owners as a means of protection, the assumption was that there was a white person who would come to his aid as a way to protect what they viewed as their property.

Unable to prove this new freedom outside of Concord and barred from assimilating into the city itself Freeman pooled his resources with one of his Black comrades, Charlestown Edes, and bought a one-acre tract of land in Walden Woods.

He built a home for his three children and wife, Fenda. With farming and survival skills accrued from time on Cuming’s land, the Freeman’s family grew what they could in the sandy soil, fished, and gathered other foods in the woods.

Around the time Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, the community of Black Concord residents living freely in Walden Woods grew. Freeman’s sister, Zilpah White, moved into a one-room house at the edge of what would later be Thoreau’s bean field. She continued to live in the woods into her 80s.

Ultimately, few could survive on the lands of Walden Woods. Freeman’s wife and his friend Edes died of diseases related to malnutrition. Freeman is thought to have died in 1822. Over time, the other Black residents in their community left for cities with more opportunity. Many houses in Concord were stops on the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Lewis Hayden, William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown all visited and spoke there.

When Thoreau arrived in 1845, all the Black residents had moved on. He was intentional about building his cabin within these original homesteads. As he began piecing together the stories of the inhabitants who’d come before him, he was very much inserting himself into that community.

Thoreau was staunchly and vocally opposed to slavery. He made it clear that he had admiration for not only their independence, but their ability to withstand a constant onslaught of racist harrassment.

Black Lives Matter Program on Reparations - March 8 at 7 pm

 

You are invited to a dialogue on reparations and H.R. 40 with Seattle group, GRACE (Grandmothers for Race and Class Equality). Here is your zoom link. 

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/96917727292?pwd=TWViVldQNDBnLzVwL1dNWUZDckFHZz09

 

Meeting ID: 969 1772 7292

Passcode: BUF

One tap mobile

+12532158782,,96917727292# US (Tacoma)

+13462487799,,96917727292# US (Houston)

 

Dial by your location

        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)

        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)

        +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)

        +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)

        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)

        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

Meeting ID: 969 1772 7292

Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/adAKUSo33d

Minutes of March 1, 2021 Business/Planning Meeting

                                     BUF Black Lives Matter Ministry Action Team

Minutes of March 1, 2021 Business/Planning Meeting

 

The meeting, on Zoom, began at 6 pm. Present were: Mike Betz, David Curley, Barbara Gilday, Tom Kirschner, Cat McIntyre and Henry Ohana.

 

Anti-Racism Minutes:

            March 7          Henry Ohana

            March 14        Cat McIntyre   

            March 21        Mike Betz

            March 28        David Curley OR someone from Covenant of Beloved Community

                                   (Forum meeting to be held Thursday, March 4)

 

Program Planning:

March 8 - Reparations.  The GRACE group plan 45 minutes of presentation on HR 40 followed by 45 minutes of Q&A.  The Seattle group asked whether they can invite other interested parties from Bainbridge Island and Mukilteo. We agreed this is fine.

 

April 12 – Henry volunteered to coordinate a program on Rev. William Barber. David will assist.

 

Other future program ideas:  Rebecca Parker, a well-known author. David may coordinate.

 

Beloved Conversations 2:  The Board has assigned $1000 for anti-racism training. They have questioned whether the Beloved Conversations in same format is the best. Inside evaluations of Beloved Conversations 1 were completed by each BC group and sent to Fahs Collaborative. Each group also met at the end of the program to evaluate their group experience. Finally, all the groups met together to create a “to do” list, which is now part of the Covenant of Beloved Community tentative action plan.  One item on the Beloved Conversation 1 “to do” list was passage of the 8^th Principle, which has been successfully achieved.  We will assemble some of the evaluative materials already mention to form an evaluation of Beloved Conversations 1.

 

Cat suggested we might also explore local resources for anti-racism and ally-ship training from BIPOC.  An example is Kim Harris, Distinctive Voice Consulting. All of us will do some research on her group, including references from previous groups she trained, and report at the April business meeting.

 

Phone Tree.  Cat sent out a request to the primary callers asking them to test their list and inform us of any revisions needed. Only one person has responded, Judy Fruhbauer. Others will make sure they do their part.

 

Next Business Planning Meeting:  April 7, 6 pm

Next Program Meetings:  March 8, 7 pm and April 12, 7 pm.

 

Respectfully submitted

Cat McIntyre, co-facilitator

 

Eracism Minute 1/31/21 Barbara Gilday

 

In the Eracism moment today, I’ll reflect on both of those realities. In the other panel, you see my friend, James Kainyiah, in Ghana. His big laugh is like a baby’s that takes over his whole being and invites everyone to join in. James and I worked on several projects in Ghana over a period of several years. It was like that, with James. We worked and we laughed. It was natural. I looked forward to our weekly conversations and our visits to our projects.

I have a couple of African American friends here with whom I feel comfortable doing this kind of banter and joking. But for the most part, I feel I have to be careful what I say and how I say it, because there are so many people of color in this country with justifiable generational pain, that I can’t be sure how they will interpret my humor until I know them well. This tension is a great loss for all of us.

Today marks the 400^th anniversary of the first slaves arriving in America from West Africa. It’s been a long time that many people in this country have worked on institutional and generational racism. I feel, and I really do believe we are about to turn this giant earth ship in new directions on the issue of racism.

Last summer’s shocking, but not unusual racial killings followed by race demonstrations and the pandemic have taught us that thinking small and within our self-centered, close circles is not the answer to a healthy and happy society for all. It is time to dream big, together– not be dragged down and dispirited by the failures of the past. Not to drown in the bad news and dire predictions repeated hourly and daily from the news. And to remember what immense societal sacrifices we have made and dollars the government has found– for what we thought would be a month and has turned into a year, so far, fighting this pandemic. Huge change CAN HAPPEN! Consider this: every unjust social institution in history seemed permanent until it was imagined otherwise.

This is the moment to declare what is obsolete, what can be reformed and what must be reimagined. Our thoughts become our actions and our actions become our reality. We need to imagine and dream big, together. We are the people to do it, joining our various gifts together to turn the great wheel of Destiny. We all have so much to gain by creating equity, justice and peace for all.

There are many steps to be taken before we can safely and joyfully come to the point of general societal, and racial trust. But let’s hold this thought to draw us forward into the emergence of a new world.

May we imagine and work for the day when our joint laughter – all peoples of all colors and cultures, evoke a wave of trust and joy that infuses and enlivens creation all around the world.