Beth El Antiracism Working Group: 2024 in review

We started off the year with Cantor Vera giving the invocation at the Greater Framingham Community Church’s 37th Annual Martin Luther King Jr Day Breakfast. More information.

Throughout the year, we volunteered biweekly in service to Greater Framingham Community Church’s grocery ministry. Together with members of the largest predominantly African-American church in the Metrowest area, we packed food for families who might be on food stamps or need a little extra food assistance. 

We promoted a community conversation about gun violence by facilitating small group discussions at a 2/25/24 screening of the documentary film, Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence. The program was sponsored by the Presbyterian Church in Sudbury and co-sponsored by the Beth El Antiracism Working Group and other local faith and civic organizations. More information

We explored the connections and complexities of Black music in Jewish synagogue spaces in a 3/9/24 workshop, “Wade in the Water: The Possibilities of Black Music in the Synagogue” with multidisciplinary musician, singer, and artist Anthony Russell. More information.

We brought a racial justice lens to the Passover Seder in a 4/10/24 workshop, “Go Down Moses”: Bringing a Racial Justice Lens to the Seder, with Cantor Vera, exploring questions such as: How do we sing and talk about slavery and liberation during our Passover seders? How does the legacy of African-American enslavement show up at our Seder tables as we recount the Exodus story? More information.

We organized nonpartisan Get Out the Vote postcarding events four times between June and October. A total of more than 40 people from three synagogues gathered at Beth El to write postcards to empower voters of color in voter-suppression Southern states. Together, we wrote more than 800 postcards.

We uplifted the stories of incarcerated Black and Brown women through a 11/17/24 workshop,

The Injustices of the Criminal Legal System: A Conversation with Stacey Borden.” Together with Cantor Vera and JLOFT (Jewish Learning Opportunities for Teens), we organized this program for adults and high school students featuring Stacey Borden, founder and executive director of New Beginnings Reentry Services. Ms. Borden, previously incarcerated herself, spoke about how Black and Brown women disproportionately end up in prison, how the criminal legal system fails them, and why she is an advocate for healing over imprisonment. 

 

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