Maynard, along with over 1,600 other locations across the country, held a Good Trouble Lives On rally in Memorial Park on July 17th on the one year anniversary of the passing of Congressman John Lewis. Lewis used the term, Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble, when he urged people to get involved through peaceful, nonviolent means to combat injustice and support positive change.

David Behrstock, one of the local organizers, said, “I felt the event went really well. Many Maynardians are excited to organize, get to know each other and push back against repression. People seem to be responding positively to two related threads: people are enthusiastic to stand up for our constitution, and say “no” to all the ways that the Trump administration is destroying the constitutional basis of our democracy by eroding due process, equal protection and the separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government.  

“Equally encouraging to me is people recognizing that in order to push back against this attempted authoritarian takeover of our country, it’s vital that we build a greater sense of community in our town — this means knowing and trusting more of our neighbors and it means creating more ways that we help each other. This way we are ready to withstand challenges and to take action when needed,” said David.

During the rally, Ellie Behrstock, David’s wife and another of the organizers, asked everyone to write on a paper leaf what they would like to see happen in Maynard or something they have to offer to the community.  “The idea came from an understanding that for communities to be resilient in the face of challenges and effective in responding to political repression requires strong community cohesion and trust,” Ellie commented.

“We were delighted by the positive response we got from the crowd and in writing,” Ellie said. “People are hungry for that sense of community. We plan to collate the ideas from the community and put it back out as a poll. We then plan to organize one or more of those activities sometime in the late summer or early fall. People put forward a range of ideas including food drives, free art classes for kids, community garden, mutual help with repairs, rides for seniors, support for immigrants and much more. There really are too many great ideas to name them all, and it will take some time to sift through them all.”

Other speakers at the event were state Senator Jamie Eldridge, Aimee Ledwell did a land blessing and talked about justice for indigenous people, Kelly Buttiglieri spoke about the ADA, Jared Berezin spoke about immigration and Bearing Witness, and

Ellie Coolidge-Behrstock introduced the Leaf Activity.  David Behrstock was the MC.

“Currently we are working on scheduling our first public meeting in September,” David said. “We also are focused on ways to strengthen community and mutual aid networks in Maynard and surrounding towns in order to be ready for the challenges to come. We’re thinking in terms of two types of challenges: 1. To be able to help people in need as the federal government withdraws resources from things like health care and Food aid, as well as to support those harmed by the ICE crackdown. 2. We also need strong networks and lines of communication to better implement strategies of non-violent, non-cooperation with the authoritarian policies of the current administration. 

“We have gotten a strong, positive response from the community so far. We are also receiving generous advice and support in getting started from Indivisible National, the Indivisible Massachusetts Coalition and the Indivisible Acton Area. It’s clear that even people who supported Trump at one time are realizing that they didn’t vote for the kind of overreach we are seeing — specifically the lack of due process by ICE, their pursuit of productive members of our community who have no criminal record and the cutting of Medicaid and SNAP,” according to David.

Maynard’s Steering committee at present is: David and Ellie Behrstock, Dawn and Kieth Olcott, Jay and Tina Crawford, Melissa Stein, and George Mandler. To find out more about their activities, please email [email protected].