ORGANIZERS for the Nine Conversations
REN DAVIDSON SEWARD, multimedia artist, created A Memorial Field to advocate for policy shifts in policing in America. She did not anticipate that writing evidence-based narratives (8-13 words) about the last minutes in an unarmed Black American’s life to carry in a local Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020 would grow to a four-year project and a field of over 100 plaques targeting police violence at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid, NY.
ANNA FORSMAN is Arts & Cultural Programming Director for John Brown Lives! and founder of The People’s Chorus, thriving on authenticity, deep connection, and her sincere love for bringing people together through song. Her meticulous note taking during the nine conversations on equity and justice made it possible to respond to participant’s request to publish an advocacy tool for community-wide conversation that included the recommendations and lessons touched on.
AFTERWORD
At the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, we acknowledge that we come together on the traditional homelands stolen from the Mohawk Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Six Nations of the Iroquois.
I bow my head in deep gratitude for the unwavering support for A Memorial Field and “Nine Conversations on Equity and Justice,” especially the gentle guidance of Martha Swan, Director of John Brown Lives!; the encouragement of Stephanie Ratcliffe, Director of The Wild Center; and the participation of Ellen Bettmann, formerly the national director of Training and Resources at the Anti-defamation League. Ellen hosts monthly “Difficult Conversations” in her New Hampshire community.
We shared an open invitation to the general public to join us. We enlisted seasoned, generous, and dedicated facilitators to lead groups of several dozen participants through civil discourse, creating a forum to discuss topics easily avoided in social situations. The nourishing and devoted practices of our facilitators enriched us all. Practicing conversation developed new and meaningful relationships. Each one of us became better prepared to initiate difficult dialogue. A number of participants treated the summer series as a seminar, attending all nine sessions.
Mike Bishop was in the last phase of his doctoral work on community engagement, collecting genesis stories of activists. He led a pool of potential facilitators to professionally connect. Shawndel N. Fraser, co-facilitator of the first conversation, returned to the Adirondacks from NYC for five of the nine conversations. Her contagious enthusiasm to be in dialogue with me and others, to share her trauma-informed and spiritual approach to engagement, and her practice of promoting self-care, continues to ripple out in the North Country.
Financial support heightens one’s sense of purpose and focus. For this we thank Creatives Rebuild New York. CRNY’s Artist Employment Project (AEP) funded collaborations between 300 artists, culture bearers, and culture makers (artists) with dozens of community-based organizations across New York State for two years. My collaborator: John Brown Lives!, a 25-year-old group that promotes social justice and human rights through reflection and activism, awareness and exploration, kinship and individual action.
Additional support came from New York Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and from the Statewide Community Regrants Program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts; and the staff at the John Brown Farm: Brendan Mills, site manager; John O’Neil, groundskeeper; and Cheryl Craft and Patrick Hamilton-Bruen, historic site interpreters. Thank you all for your responsiveness and respect during the conversations.
By applying one’s skillset for good, with sincerity of purpose, we engaged courageous people in acts of the heart. The conversations were a profoundly moving experience.
—Ren Davidson Seward 11/22/24
