The DIRE committee is seeking to fill three open positions on the seven-person body as it enters its second year of existence. It was created after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin as a reckoning on racial justice gripped the nation in 2020. Candidates to join the committee gave presentations at Monday night’s select board meeting.
Williamstowner Luana Maroja, who moved to the United States from Brazil in 2001, said the committee she now seeks to join made her feel comfortable participating in town conversations for the first time in years.
“I have a lot of experience with diverse communities," she told the select board. "I myself come from a very diverse background. My ancestors include all kinds of people from Amazonian indigenous people to immigrants from Italy. Those are my mother and father group, as well as Portuguese immigrants that are everywhere in Brazil. The colonists. We also had enslaved people as ancestors as well in my father's family.”
Maroja holds a PhD from Cornell University and teaches biology at Williams College.
“I have been volunteering to teach our underserved girls in Pittsfield for the past 10 years," she said. "I do that every semester. In fact, I just did it this week. I teach them science with the Flying Cloud Institute. I volunteer very often, almost every month, to translate things for BIC, the Berkshire Immigration Center, for people who cannot afford translators.”
Candidate Huff Templeton is one of the co-authors of two citizen’s petitions passed at town meeting 2020 calling for Williamstown to enshrine equity and inclusion efforts in its official mission.
“We need to center Black voices in the community in a way that hasn't been done before," he told the select board. "And I think that we've also need to center the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican community.”
Carrie Greene pointed to her experience on the Mount Greylock Regional School District school committee and time served on area boards in her pitch to join the DIRE committee.
“Over the years, I have tackled issues of equity and exclusion, discrimination and access, leadership and accountability," said Greene. "I've grown to appreciate the importance of sound policies and protocols, and I've come to understand both the nuances and complexities of municipal work. As director of commencement and academic events at Williams College, I've worked with a wide array of departments in providing diversity centered programming to the college and the community at large.”
Williams graduate Nat Romano cited her experience working in AmeriCorps’ VISTA program that targets issues around poverty as well as her time spent living in Europe and Asia.
“I also share a kind of multicultural perspective and a global perspective on a number of issues such as policing, race relations, cultural relations, immigration, and have seen a lot of different systems at work, which I think it's very useful as we tried to kind of reevaluate where we're at and kind of where we want to go as a community," said Romano. "I'm also a working class person, a person of color, a person on the LGBTQ etc. spectrum.”
Mother of two Shana Dixon said her experience working with groups like Western Mass Labor Action has prepared her for contributing to the DIRE committee.
“I grew up in Gardner, Mass, which is a predominantly white town. And being one of the only Black families in the town that I grew up in I think has taught me so much," said Dixon. "And then moving to the Berkshires, and it being total opposite as far as having to deal with racial situations and inequality. Because I do have a son here at Mount Greylock who is gay and biracial. There's just so many things I've been through and having to deal with which I've never had to before.”
Williamstowners Tamir Novotny and Deborah Rothschild also expressed their interest in joining the body.
Due to an outpouring of community interest in joining the DIRE committee, the select board pushed the application deadline to Friday and will decide on appointments at a later meeting.
