Today was the 4th Annual Boyertown Area Unity Coalition Unity Walk.
First I must give you a history of this organization and the road we have traveled to get to where we are and have yet to go.
Back in 1994 there were some incidents that had plagued our community for many years. When my family first moved to the Boyertown Area,I had no idea of what we would find. As a Hispanic woman with a husband and children I was soon to find out we were called ""'The Outsiders'. Sounds like a book title does it not?
We moved up here from Lower Bucks County Pa because ground was a lot cheaper and we wanted acreage and to build our dream home, I had a daughter that was 12,a son who was nine and a preschooler.
We bought and built our home,but due to circumstances and weather we had to move in before a permanent phone line could be put in. My husband was in Philly at the settlement of our old home and it was the first day of school for my two children, My daughter got home fairly well although she was called racial slurs,but my son was dropped off more than three miles from our bus stop and thankfully a kind farmers wife finally persuaded him t o let her bring him home as she knew where a new house was being built. This was on December 6,1976.
I went to his school the next day with a friend who had driven up to help me out,and to complain about my son being let off the bus in the dark three miles from our home only to be told by the school principal at that time, "''Well,it would not be a problem if people like you did not move into the area"". I could not believe what I was hearing.
Many years later after my daughter gotten out of school and I had become involved with the PTA,and worked my way through the ranks to be President of the PTA through two of my other children`s education in elementary school did I see what was at the underbelly of the community.Bigotry!
I had become involved in politics and had been elected a Committee Person. I had seen for many years the bigotry, but really had no idea of how imbedded it was.
I became involved with a group that was involved in promoting diversity and understanding in our school district,and had started going to all school board meetings In 1994 an incident occurred that scared me to death, at a school board meeting the son of the acting principal came running in to get his father. It seemed that a young black man was about to be lynched by a group of young men from the KKK and other groups. I had become aware that the local KKK recruited st the center of town young people to the KKK and other groups of white power. The then acting principal found it necessary to form what has become the Boyertown Area Unity Coalition. He called in a group of us who he knew and invited others from the community such as business leaders(not many of those showed up, ministers,and parents.
Around this time the school board president appointed or tried to appoint a man named Tom Blair to a committee on the board. I knew from other investigations that this man was in the higher echelon of the Arayn Nation along with a man named Mark Thomas who lived in the area. I called every media outlet from Philly to Allentown and Reading.
Hundreds of people came out but a lot were fearful of people of the area. Needless to say this man was never appointed. Not long after that came the Oklahoma City bombing.
It was later proven that Mark Thomas played a part in financing the bank robberies in the Midwest that had funded the Oklahoma City bombing. He was tried and convicted and served time for this. He went to jail,but to this day Tom Blair still lives in the area.
We of the BAUC tried getting the Boyertown Council to declare a denouncement of these activities but to this day they never have. The KKK still recruited and the Boyertown Unity Coalition formed Project Lemonade. This was a project that for every minute the KKK was at the center of town we would take pledges of people and collect money from them for every minute the Klan was there. Over a span of about four years we raised over $15,000 for groups such as the NAACP, the ADL, The Southern Poverty Law Group and other groups. It took the Klan a few years to realize the groups they hated they were raising money for. Not a really bright group ,non the less dangerous.
They went underground,but at the same time when we would talk to shop owners along the main street they would say that we, the Boyertown Unity Coalition was worse for the town than the Klan. We had people of color on Saturdays while this was going on that had to be hidden in the public library and taken out the back door.
As I said for a lot of years we were vigilant but at various times slurs were painted on public buildings and in the schools. Flyers of hatred would be put in the driveways of new developments.
Then four years ago as a direct result in a new development there was an actual cross burning of a black family who had recently moved into the area. His neighbor was able to warn the family and the man was eventually tried and convicted and died of natural causes in prison.
As a result of that incident we held a Unity Walk in December of 2004 and drew about 200 people.Not many you say,but a seed was planted,and from that today I attended the walk and sat at our BAUC table and watched as close to 3000 people walked in Unity. A large part of this is because the schools took a stand and all ten of the Boyertown Area Schools became a "'No Place For Hate School District' ".
Today I watched as people of common ground and same mind set walk together and while we still have not a large percentage of people of color we are willing to be proactive.
In 23 days the most important election of my lifetime will take place,and this is still Pa,and when James Carville talked about the T area of Pa we are right in the middle of it. He said that you have Philly to the east and Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama in between. That is still not too far from the truth.
I have been active as I have said in Western Montgomery County politics for many years as a committee person,and a former Area Leader trying to foster better relations with the lower part of the county. During the Clinton years things became better but I spent hours with other committee people and leaders trying to get MontCo not to look at this part of the county as stepchildren. Montgomery County has registered a ton of new Democrats and the area that I live in has become a bedroom community as opposed to a manufacturing one which caused a lot of the resentment. Hpwever this is the area that has drawn the rise in registered voters.
The problem is that it is still lying there in the underbelly of a lot of the people that have lived here for all of their lives.
I moved to an area which I had to become a committee person at a new polling place,and even with a watchers certificate I had to call the Board of Elections and the police to get me in for the count of the voting machines,and this for a school board election! Can you imagine what it will be like on November 4th?
Luckily the Obama campaign has arranged for lawyers to be at all polling places and the Neighbor to Neighbor site on the Obama-Biden site has been wonderful.
We have young people coming from far and wide to help and even at this stage willing to set up new offices because they realize the importance of the Philly suburbs and we have actually gone from a somewhat rural area to just that,the suburbs.We are now connected very closely to the lower area of the county as well as Berks and Lehigh county.
I see these young people charging in and tossing in their cloaks of hope and inspiration and willing to take up the fight that I have fought since the sixties. I marched then and am so grateful there is finally a new generation not born of apathy but realizing they are in charge of all of our futures
] I hear the music of Springsteen`s The Rising,and in my heart listen to my heart songs of John Lennon`s Imagine,and hopefully in 23 days all of us can join in the songs of what our future should and hopefully will become.
However we cannot let our guard down, and we need to be watchful that fear,apathy,and lies do not let Sen Obams`s destiny along with Senator Biden, and I do feel it is Senator Obama`s destiny to lead us out of the desert of greed,fear, and apathy we have lulled ourselves with for so many years.
Be vigilant with me,and know that although the days are winding down,we still have paths to travel even though the road we have fought on for so long is still there awaiting us to succeed. New paths can always be forged.
Do not let down the spirit of hope and change. BE VIGILANT. Let us all together imagine what a better future change and hope can bring us all. YES WE CAN!!
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