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Mabel Wadworth Center and Planned Parenthood volunteers march in Bangor's 2019 Pride Parade.
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June is a month where people in the LGBTQ+ community come together to celebrate queer pride. Flags of every color paint the city walls and streets. Flamboyant parades, spectacular drag shows, cheerful karaoke nights, and more fill up the days of this young summer month. People of all kinds, young and old, closeted and out, get the chance to gather together in spaces that finally feel their own. But don't mistake Pride for just being a colorful celebration of gender and sexuality; it is also a time of mourning, remembrance, and political action.
Pride started in 1969 with the Stonewall Riots with queer people of color at the lead, finally taking a stand against homophobic police raids that didn't want queer people to exist in public. The Stonewall Inn had been known for being a safe haven for queer people at the time, and the people in power didn't like that. Regular police raids of these bars often occurred with people being arrested for crossdressing and displays of queerness; but on June 28th the patrons of the Stonewall Inn decided to take a stand. After the police became violent toward some of the patrons, they fought back with homeless youth, butch lesbians, and queens like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson leading the way. These riots continued into the next night, and the passion with which they fought emboldened the LGBTQ+ community. These events inspired the first Pride a year later.
Pride has also been a time for us to remember those who have died of HIV/AIDS and violence against us. In the Bangor community we honor the memory of Charlie O. Howard every year, a young gay man who was murdered in 1984 by three hateful teenagers. Charlie was a light for the community in a time where it was scary and often unsafe to be out. He was known for his involvement in the Unitarian Church community and always being unapologetically himself. You can read more of his story here.
We have come far since the 60's, but there's still so much we are still fighting for: universal anti-discrimination laws, banning conversion therapy (which Maine has done, but many states have not), adoption rights, trans acceptance, and normalization of our queer identities. Even now we see regressive legislation hitting our senators' desks, banning us from sports, restricting the public goods we can utilize, and othering us in order to suppress our identities. |
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Photo Credit: Katie Liberman
Sam stands with their 2021 Bangor Wheatpaste Mural, titled "Acceptance."
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Speaking myself as an out queer person, seeing these acts of hate and experiencing homophobia and transphobia are what kept me in the closet for so long. I spent almost 26 years afraid of being who I am, trying to suppress parts of me I was taught were vile, immoral, and unnatural. But it has been through my activism within my community, my found family, and my self-expression through art that I have learned to love myself and embrace each of my identities. The spirit of Pride continues to live on in me and all the beautiful people within this rainbow. I hope one day others will see this amazing community the way I do.
- Sam Bullard
she/they
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Photo Credit: Sam Bullard
A collection of images from the "Support for Palestinian Civilians and a Call for Peace" event.
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On May 20th, Dina, Marwa, Tameem, Omar, and our friends at the Islamic Center hosted an event: "Support for Palestinian Civilians and a Call for Peace." This event was meant to protest the violence being perpetuated against the Palestinian people and bring people of all backgrounds together in solidarity. An array of powerful speakers shared their stories and came out to show our community that they are not alone in these difficult times.
Overall the gathering was powerful, unified, and peaceful. The Peace & Justice Center was happy to provide support during this event and spread the word through our community. To any of you struggling right now, we stand in solidarity with you.
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Photo Credit: Sam Bullard
An example of the food boxes provided to us by the Ecumenical Food Cupboard.
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We have been keeping busy with the eleven families we are giving our food boxes to every week. Thanks to the efforts of many, we have been able to consistently provide these families with food all month. The Ecumenical Food Cupboard has been doing the box arrangements and will continue doing so for us.
We are now reaching the end of our COVID relief grant that helped us fund this project. We plan to continue these deliveries until the end of June, and in the meantime we are working on establishing other resources and connections for the families we serve. It has been so gratifying having this opportunity to help our local community, and we plan to continue initiatives that do so in other ways.
We give a special thanks to the Ecumenical Food Cupboard for their incredible food boxes and kind collaboration with us, and to our amazing volunteers that assisted us weekly with transporting these essential resources to our participants. We also thank all of you who donated graciously to this initiative. We couldn't have done it without all this amazing community support; you are all appreciated!
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Greater Bangor Housing Coalition
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Photo Credit: Sedum Jackson
A still from one of GBHC's first meetings.
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The Greater Bangor Housing Coalition (GBHC) has been busy with negotiations with the city to push forward a temporary public bathroom plan. Public bathrooms are currently lacking within our community, and it has been one of the top complaints of our houseless community next to housing itself. The Peace & Justice Center has been a major part of these discussions and will continue to support GBHC through these negotiations with Bangor. The city also conducted a meeting last month directly with houseless community members and promise to have more of these in the future.
GBHC is also in the midst of building a list of mutual aid and community resources for residents to utilize. There is a lack of this knowledge being spread and many people don't know what resources in the Greater Bangor Area are even available to them. The group hopes that creating this map of resources and communications will strengthen our community and give members more agency over where they seek aid.
The group meets every Saturday at 1:30PM in Pickering Square, with a rain location at the Unitarian Universalist Church. If you want to be part of this vital work you are welcome to join us in person or virtually. Email us at peacectr@gmail.com if you want the link, and follow the group’s progress on their Facebook group page.
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No Penobscot County Jail Expansion
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Sketch of Scotty for his portrait by Lizzy Schule
Taken from No Penobscot County Jail Expansion Groups' Facebook Page. Scotty is one of their people featured in the PCJ Storytelling Project.
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No Penobscot County Jail Expansion (NPCJE) is planning a news conference for early June on possible events and activities during the summer.
The group is also doing a storytelling project to gather the stories of community members who have spent time in Penobscot County Jail from 2018 to the present. Each participant also has the opportunity to have their portrait painted by a Maine artist. The group will be sharing these stories and portraits in a variety of ways to help create change inside the Penobscot County Jail and in the community. To read more about the project, check out their website here.
People who have spent time in PCJ and are willing to tell their story are invited to contact storytelling project organizer Dylan Moore at zeraph.moore@gmail.com. Participants can be anonymous if desired. For more information on the project, check out this Google Doc here.
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Let's pass the Equality Act! This act would be a huge step in supporting queer rights throughout the U.S., and it has already been passed by the House.
As stated by the Human Rights Campaign, this piece of legislation would "provide consistent and explicit anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people across key areas of life, including employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces and services, federally funded programs, and jury service."
How can you help? First, if you live in Maine, Senator Susan Collins is a crucial target for this bill. You can call and email her office (or your own Senators in your state) and come to this rally on June 27th at 12PM at the Federal Building in Bangor. You can also spread the word and educate others on the bill. To learn more, check out HRC's page here. |
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Peace Vigils
Tuesdays at 12:00PM
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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!
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THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS!
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We will continue to 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. We request that anyone entering the center continues to wear a face covering.
For more information regarding community and statewide resources, please visit the links below:
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