We hope you all are safe and have access to critical resources and healthcare during these trying times.
Steering committee members have continued to meet via video chat to develop ideas and programs to be implemented in the near future.
We will monitor the State of Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and use them to inform our decisions on meetings, gatherings, and any and all safety matters or measures that pertain to the reopening of the Peace & Justice Center.
For more information regarding community and statewide resources, please visit the links below:
Photo Credit: Firefly's Facebook Page.
Firefly performs for the Peace & Justice Center's General Assembly. A hyper creative, Firefly’s artistry involves powerful vocals, eye popping visuals and cutting edge costumes created by his team.
On Saturday, December 12th from 10AM-12PM we hosted our Virtual General Assembly. This assembly was broadcasted on Facebook Live and Zoom, and about 16 people participated in the Zoom call.
We kicked off the meeting with a beautiful performance by Firefly, a musician from the Penobscot Tribe who is deeply influenced by the traditions of his people. You can watch his performance here.
The agenda that was used for the General Assembly.
After the performance the Zoom audience, committee members, and new staff introduced themselves. Co-Program Directors Anthony Jackson and Sam Bullard gave an update on the center's ongoings and their goals for our organization in the coming year. Some of their main focuses include but aren't limited to: mobilizing our food pantry, supporting initiatives to help the homeless community in the Greater Bangor area, and continuing to prioritize equity, inclusion, racial justice, and diversity in our organization. The committees also talked briefly of their activities, and the newest members of the Steering Committee were ratified.
During the discussion of boundaries and expectations, the Co-Program Directors emphasized the importance of good, consistent communication between the committees and staff. It was also suggested that the committees write their own mission statements. Sam and Anthony gave a description of their responsibilities, and a summary of this can be found on our website here.
Finally in our open discussion, we talked about the future of the food pantry and our initiatives focused on the homeless community. We also briefly discussed there being many open positions on all committees, and welcomed any volunteers who were interested in getting involved. If you want to join a committee or volunteer, reach out to us at peacectr@gmail.com.
If you happened to miss the General Assembly but want to know more, you're in luck! We have the meeting recorded here on Zoom and here on Facebook Live. Thank you to all of you who attended, and we look forward to hearing from more of you in the future. Working as a community is the heart of our Peace & Justice Center, and we appreciate all of you.
Food Pantry
We are officially taking nominations for our food pantry! We are looking to sponsor ~20 local families in need to deliver food weekly to, and we hope to do so for at least half the year. You can anonymously nominate a family (including your own) here on our Google Form here.
We are also accepting food donations and monetary donations to go to our efforts for this food pantry. For food donations, contact us at peacectr@gmail.com to arrange a drop-off time. Please be sure the food isn't expired and is nonperishable. You can also donate to us by writing a check or giving to our Donorbox.
Photo Credit: Desiree Vargas and Sam Bullard.
Steering Member Desiree Vargas and Co-Program Director Sam Bullard spent some time food prepping and organizing our most recent food donations.
As shown above, Desiree and Sam recently did some food prepping with our recent donation of fresh produce. We have been using some of our food pantry to feed our homeless community in Bangor every Saturday at the Greater Bangor Housing Coalition meetings. This is an effort many of us are passionate about, and we are happy to be serving our community in this way. We also acquired a freezer with our grant funds to help preserve food donations that aren't shelf stable.
We will be sharing more information about this project on our website and all of our media platforms. For more information or to find out how you can support our community food pantry, you can email us at: peacectr@gmail.com
Thanks for your support, and please be sure to share our form so we can help out our community!
Open Committee Positions
No Penobscot County Jail Expansion
The No Penobscot County Jail Expansion group continues to meet virtually every few weeks to address a variety of problems in the criminal legal system. These meetings are open to all who believe the criminal legal system needs reform, and they happily welcome newcomers.
Food AND Medicine is hosting their annual meeting Saturday, January 23rd from 9-11AM. Come learn more about their organization and even consider joining as a member in 2021.
Needlepoint Sanctuary
Basic Income Security
One of our members, Michael Howard, has been working with the Maine Legislature's Committee to Study the Feasibility of Creating Basic Income Security to push Maine towards accepting basic income for all. If you want to read about his work and learn more about the idea of basic income, check out this short PDF he wrote here. You can find a report of their committee here.
Peace Vigils Tuesdays at 12:00PM
Looking to get involved again in a safe, socially distanced way? Kevin continues to meet every Tuesday at noon with other activists for the weekly Peace Vigil. The group meets across the street from the Peace & Justice Center on the corner of Harlow and Central Street. We hope to see you there masked up and ready to demonstrate!
