John Brown Lives! documents how federal policy changes are affecting those who live in the North Country
By David Escobar
John Brown Lives!, an Adirondack nonprofit organization focused on human rights and education, has launched a listening project to chronicle the impacts of current federal policies on communities, nonprofits and businesses across the North Country.
The organization debuted the project, called “Loving Our Country,” in February. During last weekend’s annual John Brown Day celebration, volunteers began conducting one-on-one sessions with community members at John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid.
John Brown Lives! executive director Martha Swan said her organization plans to compile individual accounts into a report that will give local leaders and politicians a better understanding of how federal policies are impacting constituents of New York’s 21st Congressional District.
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The Explorer sat down with Swan to learn more about the listening project.
The interview has been edited for space and clarity.
Q: What inspired the idea behind the “Loving Our Country” project?
I think initially it was really listening. It wasn’t long after the inauguration, and I was on a completely unrelated Zoom call with a couple of people from different organizations.
As we were doing the go around, checking in to see how everybody was doing, one of the individuals on the Zoom turned off his screen and took a few minutes to compose himself. When he came back, he shared with us that in his Hudson Valley community, people are afraid to leave their homes. Parents are frantically trying to find lawyers to help them draw up papers to provide legal guardianship in case they are rounded up by ICE or border patrol and deported or detained. That just had such a strong impact on me.
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Shortly after the Adirondack Foundation took a big leadership role in the first announcement of grant freezes, they reached out to grantees and other organizations to see if and how people were being affected in their organizations. And when I got that letter, I responded by saying, “Well, at John Brown Lives!, we’re not affected directly because we don’t receive any federal funding.”
But then a few days later, I got a letter from one of our funders telling us that a $40,000 grant that we were slated to receive for three artist residencies in three different schools this spring was indefinitely on hold. So I just started compiling this very rudimentary spreadsheet of what I was hearing.
Q: In practice, what will this project look like? How are you going to be conducting this oral history project?
We call it a listening project — a non-partisan listening project — which really focuses on our Congressional District 21. It is a very analog, old-fashioned, face-to-face, one-on-one moment to listen to what someone entrusts us to hear. How they’re being impacted, what their fears are, what the consequences are of federal cuts and this barrage of policies that are raining down on us.
We’re always listening intentionally. We’re listening as people are dropping things in conversation, and then the more intentional moments and settings where we set up a little listening station: a table, a chair and a notepad.
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We’re here to listen, and then to use what we’re gathering to find the narrative threads and to find the financial impacts in certain circumstances. We’re using this information that we’re entrusted with to compile press releases and short reports that would go out to legislators, to town supervisors, to anyone who wants to run and represent Congressional District 21 in the future.
And a really important part of this, and this is why we call it “Loving Our Country,” is the hope that through this listening, demonstration and cultivation of empathy, we will, over time, repair some of the terrible ruptures in our social fabric as a community and as a society.
Q: What kinds of stories have you heard so far? And what kind of stories do you imagine you’ll hear from the community in the future?
Maybe two months ago, a young man in his 30s came up to me and he said, “I’m on Medicaid, but I haven’t been affected yet. But if they do cut Medicaid, X, Y and Z are going to happen.”
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And he said, “But I haven’t been affected yet.” And I said, “Are you worried?” And he said yes. I said, “Well, if you’re worried, you’ve been affected. And that really stays with me — that psychological and emotional toll that this is taking on people.
A couple of weeks ago, I walked into a movie and saw a woman I hadn’t seen in about a year. She and her husband moved here from California. And I said, “Hi, Sarah, how are you?” And she said, “Great, but I’m moving back to California.” When I asked her why, she said she works for Veterans Affairs and that they’re requiring her to work out of the office. So she has to change her whole life to move back to California to do the work with and for veterans that she’s dedicated her life to.
Q: Where do you see this all fitting into the mission of John Brown Lives! and the work your organization does here at the farm? Why do you feel that this project is important?
This is one of the abiding issues of our time, right? Everything is on the line right now: what kind of country we are, what kind of country we become and what kind of a people we are. The kinds of human rights and racial justice issues that John Brown stood for, they’re at play.
When you love something, when you love someone, you’ll do everything you can, and you won’t give up. And I feel that we are at a moment when we can give up on our country, or we can love our country, perhaps for many of us, in a way that we never have before, or never knew we needed to before, proactively, ferociously, lovingly, love our country.
Q: What would you say to someone who might be hesitant to share how federal policies are impacting them?
I think just showing up to listen demonstrates more than any words could. You know that what someone has to say is valuable and it’s entirely optional and up to them.
The other thing about this project is that we couldn’t care less what someone’s political affiliation is, who they voted for or whether they voted. The range of their stories is vast.
There’s something that we’ve experienced in these encounters. They can be very emotional. I’ve been touched deeply by people as they’ve put forward their fear, and made themselves vulnerable to somebody else. Another reason why I feel this project is so important right now is that there is a war on empathy. Empathy is essential. It must be essential in our culture if we want to have any kind of future whatsoever.
Individuals interested in scheduling a listening session with John Brown Lives! staff can contact [email protected].
David Escobar is a Report For America Corps Member. He reports on diversity issues in the Adirondacks through a partnership between North Country Public Radio and Adirondack Explorer.
Keeping up with changes happening in Washington
Learn how Adirondack communities, environmental organizations, and individuals are impacted by changes in federal policies.
It’s great to see articles like this one about people and organizations bearing witness to what’s happening right now. Bearing witness is the necessary first step in organizing grass roots action in response to the effects of federal policies that affect all our lives.
Next: Turning listening into action.