Two new co-sponsors have recently joined up with the Coalition to Change the Massachusetts Flag and Seal, and thanks to Andrew Grant, our new website volunteer, we can finally include them on our homepage, with a live link to each organization’s own site!
If you would like your organization to get involved and help us to change the Mass Flag and Seal, get in touch (daviddetmold@gmail.com) and become a co-sponsor!
Manos Unidas Multicultural Educational Cooperative
Manos Unidas is a multicultural cooperatively based organization that strives to unearth the common strengths and innate skills of our underheard community through shared bilingual resources, empowerment ventures, living arts, cross cultural organizing, and cooperative economy initiatives. They aim to use popular education to create a network of mutual aid while encouraging civic engagement and workforce readiness in Western Massachusetts. Working alongside low income, immigrant, youth, and differently-abled community citizens, they are unfolding a culture of “Beloved Community” (MLK Jr.) while crossing borders of race, class, culture, language, ability and belief, hand in hand. To learn more about their work, and to find out details about their upcoming Four Kings event (traditional Three Kings gift giving for children plus honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King) in Pittsfield, write to: manosunidasorg@gmail.com
Upstander Project
Upstanderproject.org/
Upstander Project helps bystanders become upstanders through compelling documentary films and learning resources. They serve mass and targeted audiences by challenging indifference to injustice and raising awareness of the need for upstanders, especially among teachers and their students. Upstander Project’s most recent films focus on genocide against Indigenous Peoples in the US: First Light (2015), Dawnland (2018), Dear Georgina (2019), Bounty (2020). First Light and Dawnland examine the Maine Wabanaki truth and reconciliation commission and the history of forced removal and coerced assimilation of Native children in the U.S.; In Dear Georgina viewers learn more about the journey of a Passamaquoddy elder into an unclear past to better understand herself and her cultural heritage. The film features Georgina Sappier-Richardson, who shared portions of her harrowing story of surviving foster care in First Light and Dawnland. Bounty centers the stories of Penobscot parents and their children who celebrate their survival by reading and reacting to a 1755 bounty proclamation signed in the Old State House in Boston that promised large sums of money for colonial settlers to hunt, scalp, and murder their Penobscot ancestors. Each film is accompanied by learning and viewing resources: First Light Learning Resources, Dawnland Teacher’s Guide, Dawnland Viewer’s Guide, and forthcoming, Dear Georgina Viewer’s Guide, and Bounty Teacher’s Guide.