On Memorial Day we honor and mourn all who gave their lives in service in the United States Armed Forces. Though it is common to celebrate Memorial Day as the start of the summer season with picnics and parades, at its core this holiday is a solemn remembrance of those lost and of the Gold Star families who survived them.
Ridgefield Allies thanks members of our community for joining the Twilight Vigil in Ballard Park on the evening of May 25, 2021. May your participation and sharing inspire friends, neighbors, and acquaintances across our lovely town.
Please join us for a twilight vigil at the Ballard Park gazebo on May 25 at 8 pm (start time approximate after the RHS concert has ended).
An “ally” opposes institutional or systemic injustice in every form, and supports and advocates for members of every community that suffer such injustice. Today and everyday we are in solidarity with transgender individuals against injustices they face.
On Tuesday night (March 16, 2021) a man with a gun shot and killed eight people, including six young Asian women. According to the New York Times, Asian Americans were targeted in nearly 3,800 hate incidents in the past year. Words cannot fully express the senselessness of this violence, nor can they fully measure the amount of pain and suffering that will endure long after last night’s carnage. And that is why we say that words alone are simply not enough.
In a Ridgefield Allies video exclusive to celebrate Black History Month and to illustrate how parents can and should begin educating their children to be antiracist as early as possible, Ridgefield native Lily Robinson reads the children’s book Antiracist Baby, by Ibram X. Kendi. Ridgefield Allies urge parents to view this video with their children and to make this and similar children’s books regular volumes they read to and with their very young children. As the book explains, antiracist babies (and the toddlers, teens, and adults they grow into) are made through learning. Let us all take steps to advance such learning. For additional antiracism resources, including resources aimed at young children, please visit our Resources page.
February is Black History Month in America. Alongside the celebratory recognitions, there are – inevitably – dueling questions/objections:
Today we commemorate the life, work, and meaning of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Unfortunately, too many in pop culture and in our community will celebrate a faux Dr. King, an ersatz posthumous version drained of his righteous moral power, erudite learned wisdom, and unyielding bravery, a domesticated Stuart Smalley-esque construction that does not challenge us to be more than simply superficially “nice” to one another. That is not the Dr King who existed nor to whom we owe so much. This artifice is as a blasphemy to Dr. King’s teachings and to the multitudes of lesser known and wholly unknown collaborators who worked and toiled with him over the two decades of his publicly-visible activism and in the over five decades since. Millions of black women and men, most without Dr. King’s immense oratorical and intellectual gifts, but who nonetheless took up the power and righteousness of their shared mission, and who still toil today, are insulted and demeaned by such impotent depictions.
