Windham County Action Network (WeCAN)

"Ceremonies are important, but our gratitude has to be more than visits to the troops, and once-a-year Memorial Day ceremonies. We honor the dead best by treating the living well."
Jennifer Mulhern Granholm
Canadian-American politician, lawyer, educator, author, political commentator and member of the Democratic Party who served as the Attorney General of Michigan from 1999 to 2003 and as the 47th Governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011

Memorial Day Origins: Decoration Day (Reprinted from WeCAN's Weekly Email Update 5.27.19)
     As we observe Memorial Day this Monday, WeCAN Friends, we'd like to share with you some little known information about the origins of the first celebrated "Memorial Day", then called "Decoration Day", in May of 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina. Several towns and cities across America claim to have observed their own earlier versions of Memorial Day, or “Decoration Day”, as early as 1866, but it wasn’t until a discovery in a Harvard University archive the late 1990s that historians learned about a Memorial Day commemoration organized by a group of formerly enslaved Black people less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865.
     Back in 1996, David Blight, a professor of American History at Yale University, was researching a book on the Civil War when he had a once-in-a-career eureka moment. A curator at Harvard’s Haughton Library asked if he wanted to look through two boxes of unsorted material from Union veterans. “There was a file labeled ‘First Decoration Day' and inside on a piece of cardboard was a narrative handwritten by an old veteran, plus a date referencing an article in The New York Tribune. That narrative told the essence of the story that I ended up telling in my book, of this March on the race track in 1865," said Professor Blight. 
     The race track in question was the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club in Charleston, South Carolina. In the late stages of the Civil War, the Confederate army transformed the formerly posh country club into a makeshift prison for Union captives. More than 260 Union soldiers died from disease and exposure while being held in the race track’s open-air infield. Their bodies were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstands.

The clubhouse at the Charleston racetrack where the 1865 Memorial Day events took place.

     When Charleston fell and Confederate troops evacuated the badly damaged city, freed formerly enslaved people remained. One of the first things those emancipated men and women did was to give the fallen Union prisoners a proper burial. They exhumed the mass grave and reinterred the bodies in a new cemetery with a tall whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
     Then, on May 1st, 1865, something even more extraordinary happened. According to two reports that Blight found in The New York Tribune and The Charleston Courier, a crowd of 10,000 formerly enslaved people, with some white missionary allies, staged a parade around the race track. Three thousand Black schoolchildren carried bouquets of flowers and sang “John Brown’s Body.” Members of the famed 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments were in attendance and performed double-time marches. Black ministers recited verses from the Bible.
     Blight excitedly called the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture at the College of Charleston, looking for more information on the historic event.
     “‘I’ve never heard of it,’ they told me,” says Blight. “‘This never happened.’”
       It was clear from the newspaper reports, though, that a Memorial Day observance was organized by formerly enslaved people in Charleston at least one year before other U.S. cities recognized the day and three years before the first national observance. How had been lost to history for over a century?
     “This was a story that had really been suppressed both in the local memory and certainly the national memory,” says Blight. “But nobody who had witnessed it could ever have forgotten it.”
      Once the war was over and Charleston was rebuilt in the 1880s, the city’s White residents likely had little interest in remembering an event held by former enslaved people to celebrate the Union's dead and, in time, the old horse track and country club were torn down. Thanks to a gift from a wealthy Northern patron, the Union soldiers' graves were moved from the humble white-fenced graveyard in Charleston to the Beaufort National Cemetery. By the time Blight was rummaging through the Harvard archives in 1996, the story of the first Memorial Day had been entirely forgotten. 
     For Blight, it’s less important whether the 1865 commemoration of the “Martyrs of the Race Course” is officially recognized as the first Memorial Day. “It’s the fact that this occurred in Charleston at a cemetery site for the Union dead in a city where the Civil War had begun,” says Blight, “and that it was organized and done by African-American former slaves is what gives it such poignancy.”*+

*https://www.history.com/news/memorial-day-civil-war-slavery-charleston
+https://justseeds.org/memorial-day-and-social-justice/
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CALL TO ACTION
Contact the Governor TODAY to ask him to sign H.225 into law. We need your voice!
The Vermont legislature passed H.225 to Remove Criminal Penalties for Small Amounts Of Buprenorphine. Buprenorphine is the life saving medication for people with Opioid Use Disorder and for many reasons it is not always accessible in to all communities or in all parts of the state. This bill will save lives, but we need your help.
Please call or email the Governor TODAY and let him know that you want him to sign H.225. Let him know we need this life saving bill now.  If you have a personal story of a family member or you being helped by non prescribed buprenorphine, feel free to share that story as well. We need your voice to make sure that this bill becomes law.  https://governor.vermont.gov/contact to write. Or call 802 828 3333 to urge him to sign this harm reduction bill into law. 

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HAPPENING TODAY, SUNDAY, MAY 30th, 2021

Weekly Community Conversation with Rep. Emilie Kornheiser
Sunday, May 30th, 2021, Online. 11am.
Please sign up in advance for this meeting and we’ll send you an email with the zoom link. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEtce-grD4rGNxo9FEE3R8zKpRSj_qBTz03
Emilie Kornheiser, State Representative for Windham 2-1, invites you to join her weekly community conversations: every Sunday at 11am. We’ll talk about what’s happening in the legislature and in our town. Open conversation format-- come for the full hour or just stop by for a few minutes to share a particular concern or question.

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Outside Windham County
Voices of Black Women in Vermont
sponsored by: The Rutland Area NAACP, Vermont ACLU, Castleton University See You, See Me
Sunday, May 30th, 2021, Online. 2pm-4pm.
Free and open to all, but pre-registration is required. Register on Zoom: https://vsc.zoom.us/.../tZ0sceigqjMqGt0xDcKqLDQ2AdIG-jxYmuAi
Please join us for a live virtual forum on Sunday, May 30, at 2:00 p.m. The event will feature the lived experiences of Black women in Vermont. Taiwanna Anderson, Celine Davis, and Lisa Ryan will discuss their experiences, moderated by the Rutland Area NAACP's Tina Cook. This conversation will take place live at Castelton University's Casella Theater and be broadcast on Zoom.
See our speaker bios at www.naacprutland.org/voices-women

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HAPPENING THIS WEEK, MONDAY, MAY 31st, 2021-SUNDAY, JUNE 6th, 2021

Everyone Eats! 
Monday, May 31st, 2021-Thursday, June 3rd, 2021 at the C.F Building (80 Flat Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301). 4pm-6pm. Masks required. PLEASE DO NOT ARRIVE EARLY.  If you have any questions visit https://www.brattleboro.com/everyoneeats/ or contact Frances Huntley [email protected]. Organizational ordering information is listed under our Free and Nutritious Food in Windham County section further along in this email. 
Everyone Eats! is a program which will distribute meals from Brattleboro restaurants to anyone in need who lives in Brattleboro, Dummerston, Guilford, Putney, or Vernon, free of charge, through December 11th. There will be 850+ meals/day available Monday through Thursday to serve our community during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pick up for individuals will be at the C.F. Church Building at 80 Flat St in Brattleboro and group/institution orders can be picked up at Mama Sezz in West Brattleboro. All meals are available Monday-Thursday between 4pm and 6pm until supplies run out.
If you have extra produce from your garden, there will be a wheelbarrow you can drop it off in on your way out of the pickup site. Participating restaurants will use the donated produce in making more meals.
The meals are free, but if you would like to make a monetary contribution to help make more meals possible for others, it will be gratefully received. The base cost of each meal is $10 but any amount will be appreciated.
Each restaurant will contribute meals two or more days a week. You will receive one individually packaged cold ready-to-eat or heat & serve dinner for each person you request a meal for. Meals will be distributed cold, so if you are driving a distance, delivering to other households, or distributing through your organization, consider bringing a cooler if you can.

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NEW DATE: Love Us Alive: Community Gathering in Grief and Healing
hosted by Susu Community Farm
Monday, May 31st, 2021 at the Retreat Farm (Farmhouse Square, Brattleboro, VT, 05301). 1pm.
commUNITY Vigil
We invite you all to join us in commUNITY (a coming together in UNITY). To grieve, cry, sing, dance, yell, scream and be held in commUNITY with each other. We recognize that this has been a difficult time for many folx in our commUNITY and globally. We have been constantly grieving many losses of people we care deeply about as we navigate the terrain of living in a white supremicst, global capitalist system that perpetuates deep harm on all people. This gathering is to honor the lives we have lost and hold space for generative healing and the resilience that comes with dreaming beyond our current circumstances as we actively begin to shift into building the culture that centers the earth and all our relations.
What you can expect:
Meet us at the commons at 1pm or whenever. We will have altars around the commons for people we have lost this year. Feel free to bring pictures of people as well and create an altar for your loved ones. We will also have a mic and a space for people to read poetry, speak, and share whatever is on their hearts in commUNITY to be witnessed to. We will also have meditative grieving space set up at the fiddlehead where people can go to reflect, cry, grieve, and leave offerings to the ancestors. We will also have wooden sign making to creatively vision and dream up a future beyond what is currently together. There will be songs and tea and commUNITY. We are also looking for folx who can bring and donate flowers so we can all make bouquets to bring to the altars or to bring home to remember lost loved ones.
Sammy Chan Tv will be here for photos and videos as well.
If you would like to donate items we are looking for:
Paint
Paint markers
Wooden boards for sign making
Tea light candles
Flowers
Alcohol for pouring libations 
People who can let us borrow a microphone and other sound equipment

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The Future of Democracy with Nick Biddle, Tim Kipp and Friends
hosted by the Brattleboro Democracy Forum
Tuesday, June 1st, 2021, Online. 6:30pm. For information contact Woody Bernhard 802 258 7045.
Nick says: A recent study of 75 nations with democratic governments in 1994 found that only 15 remain democratic. The rest (60) have turned into autocracies. Does democracy have a future? 
A quadrennial report released last month by the National Intelligence Council, an advisory group to the eighteen intelligence agencies of the federal government (e.g. CIA, DEA, NSA, etc), is not optimistic. Using the report, titled “Global Trends, 2020-2040,” as a springboard, this session of the Democracy Forum will explore a prognosis for democracy’s future. Nick Biddle will open with a short presentation to which Tim Kipp will respond. General discussion will follow.
The meeting will be recorded and aired on BCTV and WVEW 107.7 FM.
For the link to join the zoom meeting go to  wecelebratedemocracycivilrightsforall.org and scroll down to Upcoming Events, or click on the link on the Zoom meeting invitation.
Woody Bernhard is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Brattleboro Democracy Forum
Time: Jun 1, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
To join the Zoom meeting copy this link into your search bar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81477904000?pwd=c3Mwcmp5UDBMNWFrSnY4eVJETVNvUT09
Meeting ID: 814 7790 4000
Passcode: 935564
One tap mobile 
+16465588656,,81477904000#,,,,*935564# US (New York)
+13017158592,,81477904000#,,,,*935564# US (Washington DC)
Dial by your location

        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)

Meeting ID: 814 7790 4000
Passcode: 935564
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kCS54DjEP

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Understanding Your Cultural Context: Crossing Cultures, Part 1, with Dr. Karen Blanchard and Jessa Harger, MA
presented by Community Asylum Seekers Project
Tuesday, June 1st, 2021, Online. 6:30pm-8:30pm.
Register HERE. Free and open to the public. You will receive a Zoom link after registration. 
To better understand what composes culture and how it plays out in relation to others, we invite you to take a dive into your own cultural context. How have your life experiences shaped your values and priorities? What is important to you above all else? Why are your values prioritized the way they are? Join us in self reflection as we unpack some of what composes culture. Once we have a sense of who we are and what matters most to us, we will be able to make sense of how culture manifests differently for others. Through this understanding we will be able to navigate cultural differences and build relationships across cultures with greater ease.

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Writer’s Night Out/In June
Tuesday, June 1st, 2021, Online. 7pm-9pm.
Registration required. Check back for sign up details soon: https://www.strawdogwriters.org/post/writers-night-out-in-june.
Our featured writer is Shanta Lee Gander.
Bio: Shanta Lee Gander’s work has been featured in many publications and is the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts and 2020 and named as Diode Editions full-length book contest winner for her debut poetry compilation, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak in Woke Tongues forthcoming in June 2021. Shanta Lee gives lectures on the life of Lucy Terry Prince as a member of the Vermont Humanities Council Speakers Bureau and is the 2020 gubernatorial appointee to their board of directors. To learn more, visit, Shantaleegander.com.

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Planting Garden Beds at Great River Terrace with Edible Brattleboro
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2021 at Great River Terrace (1354 Putney Road, Brattleboro, VT, 05301), enter via the Panda North Driveway and veer off to the Right. The garden is behind the community building. 1pm-4pm.
Join Edible Brattleboro volunteers to plant the garden beds at Great River Terrace, a low income housing community located just north of Panda North on Putney Road in Brattleboro. Come for as much time as you can offer. Bring your garden gloves and favorite tools if you wish. We will have extra tools. Time Trade or Co-op shareholder hours are available, and students can earn community service hours. 

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A Silent Vigil of Loving Kindness
Thursday, June 3rd, 2021 at Wells Fountain (298-250 VT-30, Brattleboro, VT 05301). 4:30pm-5:30pm. Please mask and observe appropriate distancing. For further information and to be on the mailing list for future vigils, please contact Tim Stevenson, [email protected].
Under a banner that reads, “Holding a Space of Loving Kindness for All Living Beings,” we conduct a silent vigil on alternating Wednesdays and Thursdays, every other week, 4:30pm-5:30pm, at Wells Fountain across from Brooks Library and the Municipal Building, in downtown Brattleboro
Our purpose is to serve as a living reminder of the inherent goodness of each of us, as well as our inextricable connection with one another.
For a few minutes or the entire hour, all are welcome to join us in extending sentiments of loving kindness to all living beings: to family and friends, neighbors and strangers, kindred spirits and adversaries, human and non-human beings, alike. And to ourselves, as well. People may choose to stand, kneel, or sit in a chair they bring (there are stone benches circling the Fountain).

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Marlboro Community Food Share
hosted by the Marlboro Community Center
Thursday, June 3rd, 2021, and every Thursday, at the Marlboro Community Center (524 South Road, Marlboro, VT, 05344). 4:30pm-5:30pm.
Every Thursday from 4:30pm-5:30pm the Marlboro Community Center invites you to fill a grocery bag with non-perishables and fresh local produce. No registration or eligibility required. This weekly opportunity is available for anyone who could use an extra bag of groceries or knows someone who does.
Food will be set up in the entry-way to the Marlboro Community Center. For proper social distancing, please enter one person at a time. Bring a grocery bag or use ours. Masks are required. Deliveries will be made through Marlboro Cares for those needing assistance. Please call Marlboro Cares at 802-258-3030 in advance to arrange a delivery.
To donate food:
Leave non-perishable food in the donation box at the Marlboro Post Office. It will be collected on a weekly-basis. (Please note that this box previously supplied the Deerfield Valley Food Pantry, which is now distributing food exclusively from VT Food Pantry) 
Gardeners and farmers are welcome to donate produce. Wear masks and wash hands when harvesting and handling food. Fresh produce can be dropped off at the Community Center on Thursday between 1pm and 4pm. (Any leftover produce will be taken to FoodWorks the following morning)

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Guilford Cares Food Pantry
Thursday, June 3rd, 2021 (and every Thursday) at the Guilford Fairgrounds (163 Fairground Rd, Guilford, VT 05301). 5pm-6pm. If you have questions, concerns or would like to donate groceries or monetary gifts please contact Pat Haine 802-257-0626. For additional questions or more information call 802 579 1350 or email [email protected].
Guilford Cares Food Pantry has moved! The Pantry has moved to the First Aid building at the Guilford Fairgrounds. We will be fully stocked with all our usual grocery items.
The Fairgrounds are on Fairground Road, just off Weatherhead Hollow Road. From Guilford Center Road turn onto Weatherhead Hollow Road. Travel 1.7 miles down the road. The Fairgrounds are on the left and there will be a sign directing you up the hill for about .2 miles. The red building is on the left with a sign out in front. Please remain in your car; we’ll greet you,  and give you a shopping list as we have been doing for the past year.
If the Pantry will be closed for any unexpected reason, the closure will be announced on WKVT, WTSA, and Front Porch Forum.
If you cannot come to the Pantry due to illness or high risk, you can call also call Pat to arrange for food delivery by a volunteer.
We know that supplemental food can make such a big difference in one's budget. That is why we are stocking our shelves for our neighbors. All are welcome to come and take home fresh produce, staples, meat, dairy.
Guilford Cares welcomes anyone in need of supplemental food for themselves or their families.

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Outside Windham County
Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center Post-Covid Reopening
Starting on Saturday, June 5th, 2021, at the Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center (180 Intervale Rd, Burlington, VT 05401). 12pm.
Covid Protocols will be followed, to include social distancing and masking indoors and out, and we will take guests' temperature before groups of ten people enter the building to view the Heritage Center exhibits.  
The Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center will celebrate its "Post-Covid Reopening" at noon on June 5th, with three new museum exhibits, two new experimental horticulture plots and the first Botanical Garden plantings. Thanks to donations by the City of Burlington, the Seeds of Renewal Project and the Wôbanakik Heritage Center, many new natural and cultural materials have been distilled from modern Indigenous life and archaeological and documentary evidence for the 12,000 BP to 1970 period. We now have an assembly of Abenaki architecture, clothing, accessories, subsistence tools, transplants and seeds, cooking equipment and other arts and technologies to help the Abenaki community understand its ancestral and contemporary experience. This completes Phase One of a multi-year museum and research facility expansion that will eventually include a 42' X 120' exhibit and gathering space, and an outdoor ritual landscape enclosing craft and ceremonial areas, horticultural fields and a garden forest.
The museum exhibits opening in June include
1.) a new résumé of Vermont Prehistory, including fossils of Ice Age mammals and a comprehensive display of ancestral Vermont projectile points and pottery types,
2.) a new exhibit of historic artifacts, images and newspaper articles of the little known 1800-1970 Abenaki experience,
3.) a completely renovated "Abenaki Year" exhibit incorporating new information and photography of contemporary Abenaki ceremonies, 4.) a new exhibit focusing on experiential teaching of the Abenaki ancestral, and an updated "Abenaki Recognition and Heritage Week" display. 
New additions to the outdoor Heritage Center campus consist of the "Sagakwa Farm" and "Curtis Family" Gardens and newly planted seedlings including the fiber producing basswood and ash trees, blight resistant chestnuts and delicious plums, hazelnuts and blueberries.  These young plants are the first tentative stirrings of the long planned Olakwika Alnôbaiwi Botanical Garden.
We hope that you will be able to join us to celebrate the next stage in the evolution of Vermont's Premiere Indigenous Cultural Center.  The festivities will begin at noon with an informal outdoor welcome gathering followed by the opening of the museum exhibits, outdoor ceremonial grounds, gardens and garden forest plantings. 

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Outside Windham County
Free Palestine Rally
hosted by the New Hampshire Youth Movement: Keene
Saturday, June 5th, 2021, on Railroad Street (Keene, NH, 03431). 1pm-2:30pm. Please wear masks, bring signs, and follow distancing guidelines.
*LOCATION SWITCH* The event will now be at Railroad Square, right next to Local Burger in Keene.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Vermont Food Bank’s Veggie Van Go Upcoming Schedule
The First and Third Mondays of Every Month in the parking lot across the street from the main entrance to Brattleboro Union High School (131 Fairground Road, Brattleboro, VT, 05301). 10am-11:30am. 
Veggie Van Go is a program through the Vermont Foodbank that gives out free produce and local food for people to take home.
Monday, June 7th, 2021
Monday, June 21st, 2021
Important information:

• Drive through model- please stay in your vehicles
• If you are walking there: see a Vermont Foodbank associate but please make sure to stay 6 feet back.
• There are no income requirements, registration or paperwork to participate
• You do not need to be present to get food: you may ask someone to pick up on your family's behalf.

For questions, please contact the WSESU VVG Program Coordinator:
Kira Sawyer-Hartigan, WSESU
53 Green Street
Brattleboro, VT 
[email protected]
(802)254-3730

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Parenting for Liberation Virtual Chat Series
hosted by Parenting 4 Racial Justice
Tuesday, June 15th, 2021
Tuesday, June 29th, 2021
Tuesday, July 6th, 2021, Online. 7pm-8:30pm.
You can reserve your spot in the series by signing up for the event at https://www.eventbrite.com/.../parenting-for-liberation-a...
Join Amber and Angela and a group of parents to share joys and challenges of parenting for social and healing justice. We'll hold space for grief, laughter, ideas and resource sharing, begin to practice somatic embodied skills, and heal together. We are all carrying so much, let's support each other in making the load lighter and building the resilience and resources necessary to parent in a way that aligns our actions with our embodied values.
We recommend coming to all three sessions, but welcome people to sign up if they can come to at least two sessions. 
Our cost is $0-$100 per week, sliding scale. To choose what you will pay please see our sliding scale guide (https://docs.google.com/.../1apg7.../edit...). We value EVERYTHING each person brings to the workshop, not just financial support. AND: we gotta get paid to keep putting on workshops. We do a lot of unpaid racial justice and healing work, and facilitating these workshops is our paid work. We charge using a sliding scale. It isn’t a perfect way to correct for the unfair, harmful economic system we live in, but it’s a start.
This chat series is limited to 20 participants. Register today at https://www.eventbrite.com/.../parenting-for-liberation-a...
We hope to see you at this chat series. If you are interested, and can't make it to these dates, let us know so we can get another series scheduled soon.
For justice! For healing! For liberation!

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Abenaki Heritage Weekend
co-hosted by Vermont Abenaki Artists Association and Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, with support from: New England Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts Vermont Humanities Council
Wednesday, June 16th, 2021-Sunday, June 20th, 2021, Online. 7pm-8:30pm.
More details coming soon. We invite you to contact us with specific questions and comments. Email [email protected] or call 802-579-0049 after 5pm.
A 5-day FREE virtual celebration of Abenaki heritage. Meet Abenaki culture bearers and gain a richer experience and understanding of the Abenaki contribution to life in the Champlain Valley. Enjoy conversations and demonstrations with artists from participating tribes who invite you to share their indigenous arts, traditions, stories, language, and more.
Register in advance for Zoom sessions that will be announced shortly.
Sessions themed for all ages, with special programs for young audiences Pre-K to Grade 2, Grades 4 and up.
June 16, 7 pm - Wampum Reading
June 17, 7 pm - Abenaki Pottery
June 18, 7 pm - TBA
June 19, 1 pm- Abenaki Games
June 20, 1 pm - Abenaki Music and Crafts

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Hearing to Rename Negro Brook
Thursday, June 17th, 2021, Online. 10am-12pm.
Zoom Links and Agenda will be published in the future and found here: https://libraries.vermont.gov/about_us/board
The second hearing for our petition to rename Negro Brook to Susanna Toby Brook.
Learn a bit about Susanna nee Toby Huzzy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1oPvMd2jcI&t=12s

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Official GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA Book Launch with Shanta Lee Gander
hosted by Antidote Books
Friday, June 18th, 2021 at Antidote Books (120 Main Street, Putney, VT). Time TBD. 
Outdoor Event with Safe Social Distancing. Please check https://www.shantaleegander.com/ghettoclaustrophobia soon for timing and more details. 

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Dancing-Blue-Wolf Shares Songs with Little Ones
presented by VT Abenaki Artists Association, Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, and Abenaki Arts and Education Center
Saturday, June 19th 2021-Sunday, June 20th, 2021, Online. Starting at 11am.
Free. Register HERE.
Dancing-Blue-Wolf will drum and share songs with the children, inviting them to join her in singing them. She will often give a little information about the song and why it is sung. Dancing Blue Wolf invites children to bring rattles and drums. The program is prerecorded and includes stopping points between songs.
Fill out registration form to receive an invitation to view this session from June 19 to 20, 2021.

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Putney Anti-Racism Book Group: Caste
hosted by the Putney Central School Leadership Council and the Putney Public Library
Sunday, June 20th, 2021, Online. 7pm-9pm.
For Zoom info to join or for more information, contact [email protected] or 603.504.2906 -- you can also send a message through FB messenger.
Please join the Putney Central School Leadership Council and the Putney Public Library for a continuation of an anti-racism book group for all Putney families and community members.
Join us for a discussion of Caste-The Origins of Our Discontents, written by Isabel Wilkerson.

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Northshire Live: A Poetry Reading with Shanta Lee Gander and Bianca Stone
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021, Online. 6pm.
Tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/154455479497/. If you have questions about this or any Northshire event, please e-mail us at [email protected].
Join us for a poetry reading in celebration of Shanta Lee Gander’s debut full-length collection Ghettoclaustrophobia.
To celebrate the publication of Shanta Lee Gander’s debut full-length collection Ghettoclaustrophobia, Northshire Bookstore is hosting a special virtual reading with Shanta and Northshire staff favorite Bianca Stone.
“Shanta Lee’s poems are adamant and stirring. They have incredible force and intimacy, the sound hit every part of me. ‘Some sounds invite eavesdropping to all / the befores. Before all the gates of / never return, before tongues couldn’t / be trained in what they no longer are’ she writes in the poem ‘Black Book of Creation,’ which mimics the experience of reading this book. This is an incredible book. A complex multiverse of language, nightmares, visions, history, the forgotten, the painful—but also that incredibleness of human resilience and togetherness. In this book there is conversation with both the reader, with history, with family, the very stars themselves. I feel the presence of the mother, the mother’s mothers, and on and on—all the way back to the first mother, the first stardust. And because of that, this is a book I will return to again and again.” —Bianca Stone, author of Gertrude and The Mobius Strip Club of Grief

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Vermont Food Bank Food Drop
hosted by the Putney Foodshelf
Thursday, June 24th, 2021 at Putney Meadows (17 Carol Brown Way, Putney, VT 05346). 9:30am-10:15am. Everyone is welcome. No questions asked!
The Vermont Foodbank will be bringing food to Putney. There will be lots of produce along with other nonperishable food. The Vermont Foodbank truck will park on the side of the road in the big U (Alice Holway Drive).
Drivers: Shoppers will stay in their cars until called. Until further notice, shoppers can pick up for no more than two households.
Walkers: Stay tuned for instructions.
If you have never participated in this before, volunteers will be available to explain how it works!

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Critical Mass Bicycle Ride
hosted by 350 Brattleboro, VBike, and 350 Vermont
Friday, June 25th, 2021, at The Brattleboro Common (Park Place and Route 30, Brattleboro, VT, 05301). 5pm-6pm.
Questions? Email [email protected]
We're continuing with Critical Mass Rides on the last Friday of every month! We will adhere to physical distancing recommendations and masks are recommended.
Kids and families welcome! Critical (and "Kidical") Mass rides have a unique way of energizing folks around bike mobility, transportation solutions, and amplifying our collective ability and power to begin reclaiming our streets and communities. We need this, and we need YOU!
Agenda:
5pm: We'll be starting at the Brattleboro Common. We'll get organized, decorate bikes, and go over our route.
5:15pm: Begin Critical Mass ride. This is a high-visibility downtown route!
5:45pm: Join Solidarity Fridays rally at Pliny Park or continue back to the Common. [Visit Solidarity Fridays event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/370889857598308/ ]
Image credit: Hugh D'Andrade

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Red Cross Blood Drive at the Winston Prouty Campus
Saturday, June 26th, 2021
Saturday, July 24th, 2021
Saturday, August 28th, 2021
Saturday, September 25th, 2021
Saturday, October 23rd, 2021
Saturday, November 27th, 2021
Saturday, December 18th, 2021 at the Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development (Austine Drive, Brattleboro, VT, 05301). 9am-3pm. To help make these events possible by volunteering, please contact Lisa Whitney at [email protected].
Winston Prouty and the American Red Cross are hosting monthly blood drives throughout 2021.The Red Cross has over 135 years of experience providing humanitarian aid including more than 75 years of supplying blood to those in need. Each pint of blood we collect can help save up to three lives and will touch the lives of so many more. What a great way to pay it forward and make an impact on people in our community and across the country.
You can participate by donating blood or by volunteering to help support the event (set-up/clean-up, registration, parking, etc).
Sign up to DONATE blood here:
https://www.redcrossblood.org/give.html/drive-results?zipSponsor=

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People’s Hearing on the Right to Healthcare
hosted by the VT Workers’ Center
Wednesday, June 30th, 2021, Online. 6pm-8pm.
Free. Click here to register and receive the Zoom link: https://www.workerscenter.org/.../peoples-hearing-on-the...
Do you have a healthcare story? You’re not alone!
Join us on June 30th for a virtual “People’s Hearing on the Right to Healthcare” to share your story as we build a mandate to make healthcare a human right.
Right now, thousands of people in Vermont are unable to get the healthcare we need -- and yet drug and health insurance companies are reporting massive profits, enabled by policy decisions that elevate profit over human life. We’re in a fight for our survival, and it’s time to ask Vermont’s elected officials “Which side are you on?”
Come to share your experience or to listen to others’ stories, as we share the effects of the healthcare crisis on our families and communities and talk about what we need from our healthcare system.
We’ll be inviting elected officials, including members of the new Healthcare Affordability Task Force, to attend and hear directly from people impacted by this crisis.

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Poetry + Film Weekend!
Friday, July 16th, 2021 at Epsilon Spires (190 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301). 7pm-10pm.
Tickets: $20. You can purchase tickets here: https://www.epsilonspires.org/event-info/poetry-film-weekend.
Epsilon Spires presents a special Backlot Cinema event featuring artist Shanta Lee Gander in addition to cinematic treats, Hey Little Black Girl and The Fits.
A Celebration of Black Girlhood with Poetry, Film, Food & Chocolate in our Outdoor Cinema! Featuring the films Hey Little Black Girl and The Fits, and poetry read by Shanta Lee Gander from her new debut book, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues. 
Shanta Lee will be doing a short reading prior to each of these features throughout the weekend from her debut poetry book, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues (Diode Editions June 2021). The range of art forms paired together share an exploration of self, time, and what it means to take space within Black girlhood and womanhood in America.
As a part of this celebratory event for Shanta Lee’s book launch, special dishes and treats inspired by the poems within GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA will be a part of this special experience.

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COMMUNITY SUPPORT OPPORTUNITIES

Full Plates VT Announcement
The USDA has announced that May will be the final month of the Farmers to Families program. However, the Vermont Foodbank is excited to announce the launch of Full Plates VT. Full Plates VT will distribute food boxes at drive-thru style distributions throughout all fourteen counties in Vermont. The program is currently scheduled to run from June – September, 2021.
To keep wait times to a minimum, reservations will be required for the distributions. Registration will go live on May 24th and new dates will be added to the registration website every two weeks. To register and see the dates and locations, please visit vtfoodbank.org/gethelp or call 833-670-2254 for assistance. 
Each reservation will receive fresh produce along with other fresh and self-stable products.
Each household must register for their own food box and self-certify that they meet the income guidelines. You will not be asked for proof of income.
If you are unable to attend the event in person, you may register for a food box and designate another person to pick it up from the distribution. https://www.vtfoodbank.org/coronavirus-services-for...

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Health Equity and BI&POC Vaccine Clinics in Vermont 

The Vermont Professionals of Color Network created this amazing website to promote Health Equity and BI&POC vaccine clinics in Vermont. Their new site offers upcoming events, latest press, demonstrates their collaborative work, and even has a playlist of clinic jams to celebrate life preserving vaccine! Check it out at https://www.vermonthealthequity.org/
Vermont Health Equity Initiative -VHEI

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Covid 19 Pop-Up Testing

Testing is available for all. 
If you need testing, there are a variety of options available to you: your primary care provider, pop-up test sites and pharmacies. The Test Site Finder below can help you find other testing near you.
HEALTH DEPARTMENT POP-UP TESTING LOCATIONS
Here are the steps to set up a testing appointment at a pop-up testing site:

• Register to get an account
• Receive an email with your patient ID and use that to confirm your account (check your spam folder if you don't see the email)
• Log in with your patient ID
• Set up an appointment

Register for Pop-Up Testing Here

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FREE HEALTHY AND NUTRITIOUS FOOD IN WINDHAM COUNTY

Brigid’s Kitchen, St. Michael’s Church, 47 Walnut Street, Brattleboro 802-254-6800 or 802-558-6072 
Grab-and-go lunches and fruit/nuts on Mon, Weds, Thus, and Sat, 11:30am-12:20pm.

Loaves and Fishes, Centre Congregational Church 193 Main Street, Brattleboro (802) 254-4730
Grab-and-go lunches on Tuesdays and Fridays at 12pm.

VT Foodbank and Veggie Van Go will be at Brattleboro Union High School (Fairground Ave, Brattleboro, VT, 05301), in the parking lot, on the 1st and 3rd Monday of the month, from 10am-11:30am. Drive up, touchless pickup. Walkers welcome, too. Call VT 211 for more information. 

Foodworks, the food shelf program of the Groundworks Collaborative https://groundworksvt.org (802) 490-2412, [email protected] 
Households in need of food are asked to call or email to coordinate delivery. There is an urgent need for volunteers, and Foodworks has set up protocols to keep staff, volunteers, and clients as safe as possible. Please email us at [email protected] if you are able to help.

Guilford Food Pantry 
Every Thursday at the Guilford Fairgrounds. 5pm-6pm.
We know that supplemental food can make such a big difference in one's budget. That is why we are stocking our shelves for our neighbors. All are welcome to come and take home fresh produce, staples, meat, dairy. Guilford Cares welcomes anyone in need of supplemental food for themselves or their families.

Everyone Eats! at the C.F Building (80 Flat Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301). 4pm-6pm. Masks required. PLEASE DO NOT ARRIVE EARLY.  If you have any questions visit https://www.brattleboro.com/everyoneeats/ or contact Frances Huntley [email protected]. Organizational ordering information is listed under our Free and Nutritious Food in Windham County section further along in this email. 
Everyone Eats! is a program which will distribute meals from Brattleboro restaurants to anyone in need who lives in Brattleboro, Dummerston, Guilford, Putney, or Vernon, free of charge, Monday-Thursday through June 2021. 
Pick up for individuals will be at the C.F. Church Building at 80 Flat St in Brattleboro and group/institution orders can be picked up at Mama Sezz in West Brattleboro. All meals are available Monday-Thursday between 4pm and 6pm until supplies run out.
If you have extra produce from your garden, there will be a wheelbarrow you can drop it off in on your way out of the pickup site. Participating restaurants will use the donated produce in making more meals.
The meals are free, but if you would like to make a monetary contribution to help make more meals possible for others, it will be gratefully received. The base cost of each meal is $10 but any amount will be appreciated.
Each restaurant will contribute meals two or more days a week. You will receive one individually packaged cold ready-to-eat or heat & serve dinner for each person you request a meal for. Meals will be distributed cold, so if you are driving a distance, delivering to other households, or distributing through your organization, consider bringing a cooler if you can.

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ADDITIONAL COVID 19 RESOURCES CAN BE FOUND AT THEIR PERMANENT HOME ON OUR WEBSITE, HERE: https://www.wecantogether.net/covid19_resources

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RESOURCE FOR WeCAN

Rapid Response Text Alert System

When WeCAN began, Song & Solidarity set up a Rapid Response Text Alert System for WeCAN Groups. Directions for signing up are on WeCAN's website, here: https://www.wecantogether.net/rapid_response. We are grateful to Song and Solidarity for providing this service.

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ONGOING EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING 

Indigo Radio
Sundays at 12pm on Brattleboro Community Radio 107.7FM. To stream live, visit: www.wvew.org 
Indigo Radio, deepening understanding and making connections! IndigoRadio is a group of area educators seeking to learn through engaging with others in our community and throughout the world. We will be talking about educational and social issues both globally and locally and connecting them to our lives and Brattleboro community. Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/indigoradiowvew/. For archive recordings of past shows: https://soundcloud.com/user-654648353. 

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    Enjoy your week, WeCAN Friends! We look forward to seeing you at an event or lecture soo