Sixteen of us gathered for an hour at the HCC Community room, feasting on chocolate cuisine and Lucy Butler’s luscious rum cupcakes. We discussed the impact of Postcard Parties & Social Time, the possibility of a 2nd monthly  event at a different time and venue, and the upcoming collaborative effort with Hendersonville Pride and PFLAG at the 2/19 event. There is strong interest to shift focus from primarily legislative suggestion sheets to more themed partnerships with special interest groups such as Moms Demand Action, Project Dignity, Safelight and others. We collected the Volunteer Opportunity sheets and are delighted to see interest in: Creating/attending a book club, help with the newsletter and graphic design, creating social circles and events, assisting with Postcard Parties, help with rallies, attending civic meetings and reporting back, working on Get Out the Vote, and fundraising.

If you were unable to attend, please fill out the Volunteer sheet, scan and email to vimik@bellsouth.net

 

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We started writing postcards in January of 2017 and have sent tens of thousands over the years. Our February 17th  Postcard Party & Social Time introduced a new and exciting model: instead of writing to legislators, we partnered with Hendersonville Pride and PFLAG to write postcards of love and support for LGBTQIA+ Hendersonville youth. We didn’t know the names, just the needs. The postcards, filled with positive messages, are being distributed and savored. We had well over 40 attendees and wrote over 150 postcards, as well as ten to local politicians. Many thanks to organizers Laura Bannister, Kim Guice and Josh Bledsoe— and to those who were moved to join us.

 

 

Most of us know the Civil RIghts anthem “We Shall Overcome”, but few of us can sing along with the Palestinian liberation song “Ya Tir Al Tayer”, the Spanish anarchist song “A Las Barricadas” or the Chilean protest song “El Pueblo Unido”. You may have a chance to learn them, however, if you are at a protest that is accompanied by the radical marching band Brass Your Heart, a community group of up to 20 members that plays at marches, rallies, and other protests to support local movement building in WNC. Andy Myers, the newest member of the PAHC leadership team, plays alto saxophone in the band.

Andy grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina with an older brother and a younger sister. In his youth, he spent a lot of time ocean swimming and surfing. He also dreamt of the million things he wanted to be when he grew up, leading him to choose UNC-Wilmington for college because it had all 17 majors he was considering at the time!

Once there, he settled on environmental studies and film studies, earning degrees in both in 2011. He was drawn to documentary films because he wanted to learn about and explore so many different issues, and this big picture aspect wasn’t available with other career directions. While in school, he also joined a campus environmental group working to make UNCW a more sustainable institution. 

“While we weren’t all that successful in making UNCW operate more sustainably during my time,” he explains, “I do think we were successful at bringing new people into organizing and providing a space where people could learn and experiment with their activism. Most of my friends during that time continue to organize with grassroots groups a decade later.”

His own activism has continued over the past 13 years in his professional life, through his position as co-director of the national nonprofit Working Films, which uses documentaries to advance social justice. While the organization doesn’t make films, they use existing films to spark change by: funding films that have potential to make an impact; offering strategy support to filmmakers as they plan their impact; training activists on how to use film screenings to move audiences to action; and curating and screening films to support groups working on police and prison abolition, immigrant justice, and environmental justice issues.

On a personal level, Andy is most passionate about prison industrial complex abolition, and exploring solutions to social and economic problems that do not include policing, prisons, or surveillance. He sees that any solutions to these problems should include dealing with harm through a transformative justice lens, which is a process of changing the conditions that allowed the harm to occur in the first place as opposed to our current system of punitive justice. Through his involvement on the leadership team of PAHC, he would like to see the group pressure local leaders to drop the county's 287(g) agreement as well as to explore local options for creating community and safety that don’t depend on the prison industrial complex.

In his spare time, in addition to playing alto sax with Brass Your Heart, he indulges in pottery, knitting, and raising chickens, rabbits, and sheep. Please welcome Andy as our newest and youngest volunteer leadership member. He inspires us all.

 

 

The PAHC core leadership group (currently Chris Berg, Nancy & Neil Brown, Sheila Clendenning, Laura Miklowitz, Andy Myers, Sara Smith, Lee Stevens and Paul Weichselbaum) working together diligently to strengthen our impact, has created mission and vision statements for the group.

Please speak to any of us if you can offer your ideas and time about the future of Henderson County.