Reading Monadnock

Last month when on route to womyn’s land in Vermont, I stopped at the Keene YMCA to work out. My ‘normal’ routine is running on the treadmill for a half hour keeping my heart rate above 120, stretching, and swimming if there’s a pool with lap swim lanes and I can convince myself to get into the water!

When I returned to my truck, which was strategically parked by the front door, I noticed an older white man staring at the “End White & Male War against Black, Brown, Muslim, Native, Asian, Immigrants, Womyn, Mother Earth” back of my truck. I approach cautiously – this is New England – but positively, greeting him with a broad smile and a “how do you like it?”

He is very enthusiastic himself and asks me if he can post the pics he’s already taken to the internet. I encourage him to do so. And I ask him about what folks are busy doing here in New Hampshire. He identifies the furor over separating babies from parents at the border as directing most of the present-day actions in Keene.

I tell him about my book and ask if he’ll set a reading up for me here. He then tells me about the Monadnock Progressive Alliance and promises to connect us – which he did a few days later!

So today I’ve returned to Keene in order to gather with about 15 or so of the mostly white, one brown man awesome activists of the Monadnock Progressive Alliance (MPA) where I’m told that Keene is the Austin of New Hampshire, and I’ve heard that Austin is the Berkeley of Texas. Hmmm.

We sit together around four large tables as we share food, past and current actions as well as future plans. Plus I get to do a shortened version of my reading!

“Get Out the Vote” (GOTV) is primary on the extensive list of work they are doing. But “Get Out the Vote” must not be the end – it sounds so final, doesn’t it? I think we need to add something to that slogan like “GOTV AND Follow Thru: Keep the Vote True” or something that indicates we’re not done by voting but we’re beginning by voting, merely beginning. It’s like the plug slipping out from a mother-to-be’s vagina, just the easy beginning, signifying the real work is about to start.

I remember Obama, during his first few weeks in office, stated that he needed to look out the white house windows and see the people present holding signs and having his back. But instead, we GOTV, elected a Black man, and then went back to our lives-as-usual counting on him to do our work fixing our country.

Activists working to save our environment were also strongly present and several upcoming dates for conferences and actions were shared. (See the MPA website http://www.monadproalliance.org/) and/or facebook page).

Immigration and ending the separation of children from their parents is also a driving force for MPA. So I had a further opportunity to exemplify the point in my book that states most of us, especially white people, do not know our real history nor how it continues today.

We can use the shock of some folks in our country when witnessing this cruel practice to uncover our real history, as this separating of children from parents of color has been practiced since white men invaded this land: grabbing children from mothers and community who had the nerve to survive genocide, and sending them far away off to “indian schools” when they were a mere 5 years old; and the practice during slavery of selling babies and children to be enslaved far away from their enslaved parents.

And how presently, even before we learned of the mass detaining of immigrant children in facilities far away from their mothers and fathers, this practice of the snatching of children and imprisonment of youth has been institutionalized in our country in the form of juvenile detention ‘centers’ or ‘halls’, ‘juvie’ prisons, once again disproportionately impacting Black and brown families; not to mention the placing of children in foster homes, the majority of Native children being placed in white homes. And now we’re hearing stories of brown babies that have been stolen from immigrant mothers and placed again into white homes.

I was able to conclude with the Salmon Sacrifice story and how when we act for justice and survival of life on Mother Earth, we are not really ‘sacrificing’ but are gaining our humanity.

Everyone trudged out to the food co-op’s parking lot, where my truck was parked, to take group photos. Plus I sold a few books!