InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/series/active-with-the-activists/page/11)
Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace, including a year as a member of the Clamshell Alliance office collective. Officially retired since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.
Gov. Chris Sununu toured the state’s first mass vaccination site at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon Saturday where 12,000 Granite Staters are expected to receive the Johnson and Johnson vaccine between Saturday, March 6 and Monday, March 8.
Like a lot of other politics watchers, I thought at first that the Trump for President campaign was a joke, or just a publicity stunt.
“We are here to address our state’s overlapping crises: mass unemployment, racial injustice, lack of affordable housing, overly expensive health care, the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and so much more,” explained Asma Elhuni, Movement Politics Director for Rights and Democracy NH (RAD), one of the founding members of the coalition.
Alex Balcum “would count your buttons and proceed to push all of them,” recalls a homeless outreach worker, but he was “also one of the kindest souls we had the pleasure of working with.”
When Eleazar Lopez Ayala arrived at the Norris Cotton Federal Building in Manchester on Monday, his family and dozens of local supporters feared they might not see him again.
About 200 people gathered in Concord to “send a clear message that all the votes are counted nationally,” in the words of Asma Elhuni, Movement Politics Director for Rights and Democracy.
Anguish, anger, frustration, defiance and determination were in the air outside the New Hampshire Supreme Court Friday when more than 200 people, organized by the state’s Black Lives Matter groups, rallied in solidarity with Breonna Taylor and her family and called for New Hampshire residents to address issues close to home.
It almost felt like normal times at the State House this morning. With the Senate about to convene, there were a dozen members of the Kent Street Coalition, with signs and a “Sununu Veto Graveyard” depicting the 79 bills vetoed by Governor Chris Sununu in the past two years.
Two years after Martin Luther King’s birthday was first observed as a national holiday in 1986 and most other states going along, New Hampshire was a holdout.
Led by local clergy and joined by civil rights activists, the Faith March for Black Lives drew a crowd approaching 100 people for a march through downtown Manchester and a series of short rallies in Manchester Saturday evening, all aimed at supporting the growing movement to end racism.