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#monumentsEdition

Be #InvestedInUjima | #UjimaWednesdays | #monumentsEdition | Opportunities to Listen | Alternative Currency | Ujima Time Bank | How to Invest in Ujima | Appreciations | Neighborhood Econ. Study Group | Ujima is Hiring | Membership Renewal | Jobs | Upcoming Meetings 


NECESSARY SYSTEMS DAILY

Something I Can Do Today:

Donate to The Record Co's Boston Music Maker COVID-19 Fund! This fund was created to provide financial relief to music makers in the Boston area affected by lost revenue from gig cancellations resulting from public health concerns related to coronavirus. They are working to raise 25k (as of April 15, 2020). To donate visit their website: therecordco.org/covid-19


TONIGHT 6PM: 'Berkshire Bank' 

Our next Ujima Open Meeting is TONIGHT on Zoom – Wednesday, April 15th, from 6:00pm-8:30pm. We're continuing our Neighborhood Needs workshops online via Zoom, exploring the top neighborhood needs chosen by community members at our assemblies, and the theme for April is Ethical Check Cashing!

  • 6:00-7:15pm #CoLearning: Join Berkshire Bank, working for environmental justice and improved quality of life for a workshop on Ethical Check Cashing!
  • 7:15-8:30pm #CoCreation: Join the Anchor Institutions or Outreach, Investor Outreach Teams + UNESG! 

PLEASE RSVP. Thank you!

Time: Wednesday, April 15th, 6PM | Location: ZOOM

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#CoLearning Recap: Capital Good Fund

Last week, we were joined by Andy Posner from Capital Good Fund, for a workshop on Ethical Check Cashing. 

View the full notes with this link and watch the workshop recording here!


#monumentsEdition

In some corners of America, this month is Confederate History Month. In 2010, then Governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonald, signed a declaration reinstating Confederate History Month. Confederate History Month not about remembering the lessons of our past, or honoring the lost lives in the centuries of chattle slavery, or the fight for freedom. Huffington Post reported that the governor called for citizens to take time to "understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War."

Further, “McDonnell said he did not include a reference to slavery because ‘there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.’” McDonnell's taking such historical liberties shows the ease with which history can be constructed.

Yesterday, 10 years later, the current governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, signed the Confederate Monuments Bill allowing Virginia’s localities to “have the ability to remove, relocate, or contextualize the monuments in their communities as they see fit.” The signing of this legislation is the result of local organizing by Virginia residents, who sought to claim power in the construction of their ideal.

'“The signing of this landmark legislation is a monumental step in the direction of telling a fuller story of who we are. These Confederate monuments and other symbols of the Lost Cause should no longer control the narrative. No more odes to white supremacy and oppression,” says Zyahna Bryant, who in 2016 as a Charlottesville High School student started the petition to remove Confederate statues in Charlottesville’s downtown parks."

This is the latest development in an ongoing discussion centering monuments, which deal with the past, present and future of American history and has us thinking about what memories we are creating now (particularly during a time of undeniable historical significance) and what future monuments are likely to, and maybe should, emerge.

MONUMENT: 

  • a statue, building, or other structure erected to commemorate a famous or notable person or event.
  • an outstanding, enduring, and memorable example of something.
  • a statue or other structure placed by or over a grave in memory of the dead.
  • a building, structure, or site that is of historical importance or interest.

Farrah Al Qasami’s Back and Forth Disco is an exhibition of 17 photographs framed in 100 bus shelters across all five boroughs of New York City.
Installation photographs courtesy of James Ewing.

A MONUMENT TO THE FAMILIAR: FARAH AL QASIMI

When discussing monuments we immediately thought of artist Farah Al Qassimi. Farah’s work is an homage to the everyday, bringing the inside outside with a voyeuristic view of the not so distant past. Spaces that evoke collective memory and what it means to recall the past while we are in the present. Her work is guiding frontline workers home with these familiar encounters. It's a projection of sentimentality of what we too often take for granted and what could be seemingly mundane.

Right now, Al Qasimi’s work is particularly pertinent. After decades of invisibility, America’s  essential workers and small business owners are now regarded as outstanding, enduring, and worthy of celebration.

From Al Qasimi: This is a project I worked on with the Public Art Fund to display 17 photographs, all made in NYC, on 100 bus shelters in every borough. For me, a monument embodies scale and weight - both material and ideological - and I wanted to amplify and honor the city's many immigrant business owners with love and humor. These are images that, to me, celebrate the multiculturalism of New York. My mother's family are Lebanese-Americans who immigrated to Massachusetts (and later the NYC area), and many ran or worked in small businesses - and I consider these photographs monuments to them as they always have been: bearers of love, care, commitment, and principle, dedicated to redefining home for themselves and their communities.

More about Back and Forth Disco

 

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THAT WHICH CANNOT BE VERIFIED

We know that there are histories that have not been recorded or valued, and so have been obscured. Traditional archives, by design, present many barriers to access of information. Often, what is easiest to find in an archive reinforces the dominant narratives of history. Monuments, history, and the archive, are a two way street. Institutional archives generate access to their collections by taking an inventory of items; this is done by describing them. What we see in archives is a knowledge gap on what has value beyond a traditional lens. The impact being that archival systems are hard to navigate and POC and LGBTQIA histories are often overlooked by those who describe these materials.

As an example, as stated by Jackie Dean, Archivist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the following 1930 description of William Laurence Saunders, an important figure in North Carolina’s history “...does not acknowledge the well known white supremacy of manuscript collection creators. For example, the biographical note for the William Laurence Saunders Papers does not mention that he was chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in Chapel Hill, N.C. Legacy description: William Laurence Saunders (1835-1891) of North Carolina was a lawyer; colonel of the 46th North Carolina Regiment, Confederate States of America; editor of the Colonial Records of North Carolina; secretary-treasurer of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina; and secretary of state of North Carolina, 1879-1891.”

We ask that archives take action and be cognizant of the impacts of this erasure and develop structures to dismantle this practice. A good place to start is with University of North Carolina’s Conscious Editing Initiative, “We aspire to re-envision our descriptive practice so that whiteness is no longer the presumed default, language in description is inclusive and accessible, and description does not obscure collection material that documents the lives of enslaved people... We recognize that we will not develop an effective way forward without working together with colleagues inside and outside the profession and with the communities we hope to center in these descriptions.”

We are inspired by historian and theorist Saidiya Hartman and embrace her concept of “critical fabulation,” or using our imaginations to fill the gaps of history, as a directive.

More from Hartman: “The effort to ‘brush history against the grain’”[...] “requires excavation at the margins of monumental history in order that the ruins of the dismembered past be retrieved, turning to forms of knowledge and practices not generally considered legitimate objects of historical inquiry.”

Activate your own archive: We are vessels of history

  • Be curious. Indulge your curiosity
  • Value your personal histories
  • Take charge and record your histories:
    • Start a journal
    • Organize your photos into boxes or an album
    • Document your chosen or blood family
    • Start an oral history project and interview people in your network

Active documentation of our time now is critical to us: we are future ancestors, after all.

 

 

PUBLIC MEMORY

The true power of monuments are the victories, gaps or losses they represent. Contemporarily fraught, the monument or memorial can be best understood in the context of public negotiation: between historical distortion and ever-growing historical expansion; between past and present and future; a figure to (quite literally) look up to or a symbolic violence?

Is it the past, as some people suggest, and thus able to skirt contemporary sensibilities through the argument that it was “a different time.” Or does the memorial/monument inherently refuse time? And if it refuses linear time, we must take up the responsibility of public memory care/fully. Care in the concept, creation, and when appropriate, contextualization.

Boston has its own story of examining history and recreating stories and monuments anew. In 2017, the Department of Conservation and Recreation moved Boston’s only Confederate monument into storage. Journalist Louise Kennedy writes, “The stone, the only Confederate monument in Massachusetts, has been boarded up since June while the state figures out what to do with it — a question that has new urgency in the wake of last weekend's violence in Charlottesville.”

So we’ve found ourselves asking, can the past stay put? Or are we still living in the aftermath of historical inaccuracy and trauma? Christine Sharpe invites us to trouble the notion of time, and objectivity. In her 2016 book of essays, In the Wake, Sharpe asks, “how do we memorialize an event that is still ongoing?”

Further, she states, “museums and memorials materialize a kind of [repair] and enact their own pedagogies as they position visitors to have a particular experience or set of experiences about an event that is seen to be past [...] how does one memorialize [...] [what is] unfolding still? How does one, in the words so often used by such institutions, “come to terms with” (which usually means move past) ongoing?”

Whose memories do we want to preserve for our current times?


Opportunities to Listen


UPDATE on Common Good

Our pilot with Common Good has ended with Dudley Cafe, and they are not currently accepting the card. We will be launching a new pilot with additional establishments later this year and will update this section with updates when we know more. Thank you to everyone who has participated and please reach out with thtoughts or feedback!


Join the Ujima Time Bank!

Speaking of alternative currency... The Ujima Time Bank is another way to save money and create community connections while creating a new economy in Boston!

What is a time bank?

A Timebank is a system of exchange where the unit of value is person-hours. When a member of a timebank performs one hour of service for another member, they are awarded one hour of credit in the Timebank, which can then be redeemed for one hour of service from another member. For example: Samantha can fix Jess’s blinds, and then Jess can teach Freddie Spanish, then Freddie later gives Samantha a ride, and the Timebank keeps track so it’s fair.

*Featured Offer: "Physics / Science" Never Expiries

"I am available for one-on-one or group tutoring in the following subjects:

Middle School Science (All Subjects)

High School Science (Physics, Astronomy, Physical Science)

Undergraduate Science (Physics, Astronomy)"

*Featured Request: "Fitness / Wellbeing Advice" Never Expires

"I'd like to meet with someone knowledgeable in exercise/yoga/fitness, to recommend a regimen to get back in shape! I'm hoping to focus on general wellbeing and de-stressing on top of the fitness aspect. " 

Join the time bank to respond and see more! Anyone who lives in Boston can join the Time Bank at www.ujimaboston.com/timebank!


How to Become a Co-Investor in the Ujima Fund

Another Boston Is Happening. Now You Can Invest in It.

www.ujimaboston.com/invest

  1. Read Ujima's Offering Memorandum. This document describes the risks, regulations, and background of the fund. The Offering Memorandum should be read in it's entirety, with careful attention to the Risk Factors (page 11), Description of Notes (39), and Subordination Agreement (77).
  2. Consult the personal finance worksheet if you are unsure of how much to invest.
  3. Invest online (multiple payment options available):
    1. Choose the option next to the type of investment you are making.
    2. Complete and sign all forms via Docusign (Investment Agreement, W-9, and Demographic Information).
    3. After submitting, select your payment option. (You will see instructions on how to send a check if that is your preferred payment.)
  4. OR: Invest via mail:
    1. Choose the option next to the type of investment you are making.
    2. Select the print option on Docusign.
    3. Complete and sign all forms manually (Investment Agreement, W-9, and Demographic Information).
    4. Write a check, payable to the Fund, for the amount you wish to invest in the applicable Notes.
    5. Send the Investment Agreement and your check to the Fund [PO BOX 180310 Boston MA 02118].
  5. Email invest@ujimaboston.com or call 617-446-3863 with any questions

Please contact invest@ujimaboston.com with any questions or issues that arise!


#UjimAppreciations

Thank you to...

  • All of our new members who have joined Ujima!
    • Karl
  • All of the members who have renewed their Ujima memberships!
    • Sergio
    • Jax
    • Christopher
    • Ruby
    • Sara
    • Erin
    • Jessica
  • Andy Posner, of Capital Good Fund, for a captivating discussion on his online ethical microloan platform for this month's Feasibility Study Topic: Ethical Check Cashing! 
  • Emblem Strategic for inviting Ujima to share its #necessarySystemsDaily campaign
  • Our #necessarySystemsDaily partners!
    • The Collier Connection
    • Black Economic Council of Massachusetts (BECMA)
    • Emblem Strategic
    • Tikkun Central at Temple Israel

To Peers, Partners, and Community Members who are doing their part to keep us informed, informed, safe, and loved during this time. 


Ujima Neighborhood Economics Study Group

We are excited that the Ujima Neighborhood Economics Study Group is underway, continuing to explore the feasibility of projects that address our community-wide needs. The group meets every 3 weeks, and the next meeting is tonight, April 15th. This study group is co-coordinated by Ujima members and staff. Some participants will focus on a specific area of study and some writ-large. The group will build on the learnings from the exploration that Ujima members have already done, and will carry this research forward to get even closer to implementation and investment in projects that meet our needs.

The topics include:

  • Community Land Trust
  • Community Owned Internet
  • Community Owned Energy
  • Urban Farming
  • Creative Economic Placemaking (Black Market)
  • Community Space
  • Arts/Cultural Organizing Space
  • Childcare

There is also space for members to coordinate study groups on additional topics of interest. Please email pampi@ujimaboston.com if you are interested in getting involved or want more information!


Internship Opportunities

We need your help to find great interns to grow our team. Ujima is offering these internship opportunities on an ongoing basis. Please share widely!

To apply, email nia@ujimaboston.com to express interest and get further information. 


Ujima Membership

Help us reach our goal of growing our membership to 600! Join Ujima today and help spread the word about our network and activities!


Jobs in the Ujima Network


Upcoming Ujima Meetings

We hold Open Meetings every Wednesday at 6pm, on ZOOM! Check out our April Calendar below!

 #UjimaWednesdays are always held and recorded online via Zoom in addition to being held in person. We've always provided a Zoom option to accommodate community members who are not able to join us in person for any reason.

Following the guidance and best practices as advised by the CDC, we will hold #UjimaWednesdays completely on Zoom until May 9th, 2020. As this is a fluid situation we will make sure to update you if this changes.

The Zoom link for Ujima Wednesday meetings is: tinyurl.com/ujimabostonzoom 

6:00-7:15 - Community Building + Financial and Political Education.
7:15-8:30 - Member Team Meetings (Based on rotating schedule; See calendar above)

www.ujimaboston.com

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