By Patrick Donges
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-977380.mp3
Lenox, MA – Massachusetts Representative William "Smitty" Pignatelli and Commissioner Jamie Williamson of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination were on hand Monday night at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox for the second annual presentation of cultural competence and community stewardship awards by Berkshire Resources for the Integration of Diverse Groups and Education, or as the group is known by most, Multicultural BRIDGE.
Since 2007 BRIDGE has offered interpretation and translation services, language classes, and cultural competency training to Berkshires agencies and organizations, advocated and supported the county's growing immigrant populations and fostered collaboration across racial and ethnic lines by facilitating and encouraging community dialogue.
BRIDGE executive director Gwendolyn Hampton VanSant welcomed guests and honorees with an overview of the organization's mission.
"We have committed to the mission and vision of advocating for any individual that falls through the cracks, and while we advocate for them we teach them to advocate for themselves."
"To unlearn hundreds of years of structural and internalized oppressions and behaviors is arduous work. It also can be the most rewarding. When we help communities move their exclusive, culturally destructive atmospheres to atmospheres striving to include and integrate, we all win."
The evening's top honors were given to MaryAnn and Bob Norris, part of the founding team of BRIDGE and supporters of the group's work since its formation. Here's historical actor and storyteller Tammy Denease Richardson reading remarks honoring the couple.
"MaryAnn and Bob are seen as guardian angels to BRIDGE. They have celebrated and they have supported the mission of BRIDGE by doing what they do best and that is giving their time and their resources."
In honoring the pair, the BRIDGE awards were rebranded the MaryAnn and Bob Norris Award. Here MaryAnn Norris speaks about how she identifies with BRIDGE's goals and mission.
"When I look out into the world I see that we're all unique; molded by our experiences of our earlier lives, from cultural backgrounds, to place of origin, and birth order. We are all who we are, each on our own path, exploring life and deciding who we are not because of where we came from but because where we want to go."
Also honored for his support was Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto, who thanked the Norris family for their contribution to the things he said make the Berkshires, "the best place to live "
"Total respect from people to people, to be the most sensitive, and to serve to advance the cause of the immigrant communities that are coming to make them feel very, very, enthusiastically welcomed."
Other award recipients included Tom Daly, curator of education at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Dr. Homer "Skip" Meade, long time educator-activists Elaine Gunn and Wray Gunn (no relation), Kate Merrigan of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, and Shirley Edgerton, founder of the Berkshires Women of Color Giving Circle, Youth Alive youth step dance and music squad, and co-chair of the Lift Ev'ry Voice festival of African American heritage ongoing across the county through July. Here's Edgerton.
"I'm receiving these awards not just for myself, but absolutely in memory of my grandmother, and all the women that were in my life, all the men that were in my life when I was a child. They saw something in me and gave all that they had to give."
In addition to the awards, the event also featured presentations by guest speakers and a program of culturally diverse dance, music, and prose that included a reading by Edgerton of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, with Roberto playing the part of the inquisitive male onlooker.
"Then that little man in black over there, he said, women can't have as much rights as men because Christ wasn't a woman.' Where did you get your Christ from, hunh? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with them."
BRIDGE will facilitate a community dialogue on race as part of the Lift Ev'ry Voice festival at Pittsfield's Silvio Conte Community School July 14 from 6 to 9 p.m.