Workshop.
An interactive discussion of what each of us can do to build communities where people from all cultural backgrounds feel welcomed and included.
In 1635 Mary Dyer left England and came to the shores of Massachusetts Bay because her Puritan religious faith was outlawed in England.As time passed, Mary’s religious beliefs changed and she eventually became a Quaker. Massachusetts did not allow religious freedom and banned all Quakers from the colony, burned all Quaker books, and put newly arriving Quakers in jail. When Mary refused to renounce and give up her Quaker faith, she was hanged.
The people on their books covers were forced to live as slaves in this country. They were sold off like cattle, forced to live in poverty, beaten and killed if they did not obey the slave laws and the people who “owned” them.
In the 1830’s The Cherokee Nation from Georgia, the Choctaws of Mississippi, the Creeks of Alabama, the Chickasaws of Mississippi, and the Seminoles from Florida were all forced off their land so that white settlers could move in and claim ownership. The United States government broke their treaties with the Native Americans, moved them to unsettled and often inferior land, took over the property left behind, and forced the Indians to march with few provisions and clothes to a new location. Many died along the march.
This is a depiction of an anti-immigration riot that took place in Philadelphia in the early 1800’s. There has been protests and violence committed against almost every new group of immigrants who have come to the United States – the Irish, Germans, Catholics, Chinese, Jews, Italians, Poles, other Asian cultural groups and Latinos. Some people in this country did not like that the new immigrants spoke a language they couldn’t understand and were afraid that the new arrivals would take away jobs from U.S. citizens.
Different supremacy groups – people who believe they are superior and others not like them are inferior – have promoted hatred and violence against Jewish people here in the United States. They have newspapers, radio programs and websites that promote hatred and distribute brochures to get their message of intolerance out to others. They graffiti their homes, buildings, synagogues, and cemeteries and beat-up and even kill people simply because they are Jewish. Such activity happens today here in Colorado – in Boulder and Larimer Counties.
Segregation did not just happen in the South. When I was your age, these signs were in store and restaurants here in northern Colorado
“One time I was walking down the street with a woman I was tutoring. She was going to give me a ride home. These men approached us and surrounded us. They started yelling and calling us “lezzies” and dykes” and “freaks.” It was scary. It was dark. There were just the two of us. We didn’t respond to anything they had to say, and they had somewhere else to go. They just wanted to harass us. They just wanted to scare us. They thought it was funny.