Several readers of A Little Beacon Blog have written in, asking “Where is the protest in Beacon? Where can I go to express? How do I get a permit for a protest? I can’t stay quiet on this one!”

Well friends - you are in luck. The 3rd Annual Chalk Art Protest created and produced by Moraya Seeger DeGeare, MA, LMFT is this Monday, July 4th, at Pete and Toshi Seeger Riverfront Park from 10am-12pm. Did you just see that last name, Seeger, twice? You did. Moraya is a marriage and relationship therapist with BFF Therapy; she’s a relationship and sex columnist for Refinery29; she’s a parent of two young children in the Beacon City School District; and she’s a granddaughter of Pete and Toshi Seeger, the musical and poetic activists who were crucial in the civil rights movement and restoring climate justice to the Hudson Valley.

About The July 4th Chalk-In Protest

In this riverside protest, Moraya will be leading a chalk-based therapy protest in a way most likely none of you have experienced in a protest before. This chalk-in is about getting in touch with yourself to find your message, and most importantly to speak it loudly (or at all). Moraya, a human of multi-races (her grandmother is half Japanese and half from the USA’s South, her father is Black, and her mother and grandfather are White), maintains a very special lens for viewing the world. Her mission is to share it with you so that you can experience your surroundings more broadly.

“While you may be coming to this chalk-in protest for abortion-rights rage, you will be leaving with racial injustice rage that you should also be speaking about. Oppression is everywhere, and one person’s oppression that is unique to them cannot be ignored for another person’s oppression just because someone hasn’t experienced it. ”

— ALBB

One of her specialties is spotting intersectional morphisms. According to Wikipedia: “Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage.”

While you may be coming to this chalk-in protest for abortion-rights rage, you will be leaving with racial injustice rage that you should also be speaking about. Oppression is everywhere, and one person’s oppression that is unique to them cannot be ignored for another person’s oppression just because someone hasn’t experienced it. If you feel an ounce of it here, recognize an ounce of it there. Respect it and do something.

This chalk-in can be an outlet for the rage anyone is feeling right now with the latest Supreme Court ruling that strips birthing people of the rights and independence to their bodies, as well as upcoming rulings the Supreme Court has reached out on (voting rights, redistricting, climate justice). Says Moraya about the chalk-in: “Identity work is understanding all the different parts of self. My persional view is that it builds from the values in your childhood home along with your location in the world aka culture and society. Sexual, race, gender, age, it’s constantly evolving.”

Kids Are Welcome & Encouraged To Attend

Part of Moraya’s mission in this is to encourage conversation between parents and caregivers with their children. But also with their own inner child. From her website of the movement:

“The heart of this project is to have deeper conversations about systemic issues with children so that they can grow up having language and confidence to continue to talk about racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, sexism, climate change and the list goes on. One of the main things I experienced in 2020 was the number of White people in my life who reached out with emails, texts, people from decades ago sliding into my DMs, and leaving outrageously long apology voicemails saying they had no idea that Black people have been navigating so much racism.

“I’ll be honest, each time someone who I have known for years said those words it nearly hurt worse than watching the news and seeing another Black person murdered. After talking to my Black friends, it turns out I was getting a particularly high number of these messages – I am talking hundreds of them in the spring of 2020. Even my 1st-grade teacher reached out with a story that only centered on her White experience as a teacher to me, her only Black student.

“I didn’t need to hear about how she learned so much from me, a 6-year-old, as I dealt with racism in her class. I needed her to say: ‘I am so sorry for not protecting you. For creating an environment you felt safe to learn in.’

“I got off the phone with her, I was 9 months pregnant, doing remote school with my kindergartener who also was struggling to learn to read, and I just cried. I wept for 6-year-old Moraya who was in all-White education environments her whole childhood.

“I cried for my own children, who are now living in a pandemic and civil unrest. My Black son just hugged me and said ‘let’s go garden and pick some tomatoes mom.’ I looked at him and thought, I have taught you to love the earth, to have a voice, to know that your birthright is to feel joy. A radical act for Black children in America. But I cannot keep you safe once you leave this little house in the woods, with our streams and waterfalls. I can’t protect you from other kids saying your skin is too dark to play their games.

“All of these moments fueled me. It told me that I need to do something to help folks understand that these conversations can and need to happen from a young age. If my kids can experience racism since birth, with their Black mother almost dying in the hospital, yours can certainly talk about it.

“This year’s project is focusing on the idea that if ALL of us are doing our own identity work, we will have deeper empathy and curiosity in ourselves, to hopefully have a deeper desire to understand and connect others who are navigating complex and marginalized identities.”