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09/25/2020 12:00 AMTwo groups that have come together with a goal to desegregate Connecticut will hold a march in Deep River in front of Town Hall at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 30. It will feature a talk by Professor Jeffrey O’Leary, an associate professor of humanities at Michell College in New London.
The event in Deep River will be the second march and “teach-in” for the Lyme-Old Lyme (LOL) Partnership for Social Justice and the Old Saybrook March for Justice.
The next one will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 7 in front of the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (The Kate) at 300 Main Street in Old Saybrook.
Reagan Brenneman, a junior at Valley Regional High School, is helping to organize the gathering in Deep River.
“I’m so happy to be involved with this because I think it’s important,” said Brenneman.
Brenneman met the lead organizer for the Old Saybrook March for Justice, Maryam Elahi, at a march in Old Saybrook in June.
Elahi is the president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut in New London. She is also an international human rights lawyer and longtime community activist.
“We need to grow our movement,” said Elahi. “The extension to Deep River is a natural tie, as it was part of the same community in the older days and we still are so…we are trying to connect with people there.”
Brenneman said that the Black Lives Matter movement is an opportunity to learn more about the history of racial injustices on a local level and understand that it’s not “just happening far away.”
David Good, who is minister emeritus of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, and has been helping Elahi in her organizing efforts, said that now is the time to contemplate social activism.
“It seems like this is a good opportunity for all of us to do some community introspection, to look at racial injustices and even slavery that were at our genesis,” said Good.
After holding several marches over the summer, the two groups came together to study where the “civil rights movement and struggle” is now, said Elahi. They connected with civil rights leaders in Connecticut and identified several areas as central to their efforts.
“We’ve been trying to identify the various manifestations of racial injustice,” said Good. “We’ve been looking at the lack of affordable housing, then taking a look at curriculum to see how students are taught racial justice principles…also as the pandemic has made apparent, the way healthcare is provided, it is fraught with all kinds of injustices for people of color.”
Good added that public art, including monuments commemorating historic figures, is also an important part of the discussion on racial justice.
O’Leary said that he will touch on this topic when he speaks on Sept. 30.
The main premise of his talk will be on the “idea of patriotic education that has been recently put forth by the President of the United States and my thoughts on what I think that is and why I think the idea of inclusivity is important when teaching history and for students who want to learn about history,” he said.
History is “complex” and teaching it from “the great white male perspective…presents an awful lot of challenges,” he added.
In terms of key take-aways, specifically for the younger generations in attendance on September 30, O’Leary said he hopes it encourages them to think “critically.”
“I really hope that those young people start to think critically about how history is presented to them and for them to think critically about why our communities…commemorate certain individuals and to ask the hard questions of why do we need statues of Christopher Columbus…not that those statues should not be there…[but] it’s up to young people to ask those questions of their teachers and their parents,” he said.
O’Leary added that he hopes the event “will continue to add to a positive dialogue that is currently taking place in the wake of the killings of African Americans in this country.”