What a great event — thanks to a wonderful committee, great speakers, NNOC, and endorsers.
From Judy Freiwirth to july26org members:
Wonderful event today – so much exceeded our expectations! Afterwards, we received so much positive feedback from folks that were there.
Most did not want to leave… I think I finally left by 5, and there were still many people there talking! I think we had almost 50 people in person at the Library and about 20-25 online!
I would like to express our deepest thanks to all our terrific speakers and committee members who all worked incredibly hard during these past months organizing this event. And to the help of our Co-Sponsor, NNOC, who helped in publicizing the event. And special thanks to our endorsers- MAPA, Boston DSA, May Day Coalition, Let Cuba Live in Maine, Young Communist League, Workers World Party, (great turn out by Boston DSA and YCL!). The Standout also convened in front of the library prior to the event which was terrific as well. We have many new people who came and seemed interested in participating in the Coalition’s future work and we’re hoping some will go on the May Day Brigade. We have a follow up meeting of our youth organizing committee on Mon. April 3rd, so we will be following up with folks to invite them to the meeting.
For those of you who may have missed it – our speakers were wonderful! Our deepest appreciation to Netfa Freeman, Iram Poyeaux Vazquez from ICAP, (Yamil has been recently promoted to Second Secretary to the Cuban Embassy in Ghana, so he was unable to join us, but Iram, who is also from the North American Division at ICAP was terrific!. Netfa Freeman, Willie Burnley, Mairead Skehan Gillis, Virginia Faust, and Calla Walsh were fantastic as well!! (I will be sending separate thank you’s to our speakers).
Sussen did a wonderful job in fundraising for scholarships, so we’ll keep you posted how we’re doing on that. We very much thank MAPA for allowing us to use their fundraising portal for the scholarship fundraising.
And special thanks to our whole planning committee who met almost weekly since this fall (planning for our original date and then the new date today)!
- Special thanks to Charlie and Bob for the many, many hours of planning and dealing with our very complex and complicated hybrid technology and using Google Meets!!
- To Bob who put in hours and hours of time to help me with the local and national outreach and use our new Mail Chimp system, which as been great!
- To Karen for helping to plan a great program, convene one of the large in-person break out discussions with Sussen, and all her terrific help with logistics – registration, setting up room, food- and thinking of all the important details.
- To Calla for not only being a terrific speaker, and assisting us today as our chat expert, facilitating a breakout group, but also helped conceive and support the focus on youth organizing!
- To Sussen – for her top-notch fundraising and inspiration for encouraging people to join the May Day Brigade! And helping to secure the space at the Somerville Library and arranging to have excellent Cuban history books available today at the event!
- To Mairead – for her wonderful and brilliant panel talk today, slides from the Venceremos Brigade, and adding an extremely thoughtful perspective to many of the questions!
- To Anthony for helping in facilitating the panel discussion and doing a great job facilitating the impressive young people’s break out group with some 15-20 young people!
- To Li – for bringing a critical high school perspective and doing an excellent job co-facilitating the young people’s break out group!
- To Marilyn– for bringing her very wise perspective to our meetings and facilitating the MA virtual break-out today! (we missed you in person!)
- We were sorry to miss Margaret today and Emery who have both been on our committee and have helped plan the program.
We also have a few photos, which we’ll send to post on our website and Facebook.
Thanks all!
Judy
july26.org 