Dear Baileyblog readers,
I hope you are doing well and continuing to stay safe. It’s been over a year and maybe you too are feeling pandemic fatigue. We are all tired. We are all longing to see one another again in a normal pre-pandemic way. It seems like a long time since we got together with loved ones without fear. And we have had losses. These losses have been very hard to bear….yet we soldier on because we must. Where there is life, there is hope and if you are reading this, then you are alive and I hope you will lean into that life for all it’s worth. That does not mean we will forget those we lost. I certainly can’t and won’t, but if there is anything that this year has done, it has helped me to appreciate precious moments.
One such moment took place this past weekend. As you know, I work on a college campus, Binghamton University, where I have been teaching for the last fifteen years. This year, however, was like no other. Many of us are working remotely(which in and of itself I recognize as a privilege) but the campus is fairly quiet. Yet on Saturday, hundreds of us were gathered at a rally sponsored by the Binghamton Pan-Asian Leaders Council to speak out against the recent (and sadly historical) spate of violence against Asians in America. It was such an important moment for our campus to acknowledge that these things are taking place all over the country and to say that we will not accept this as normal. We will not be silent while our brothers and sisters feel scared or vulnerable. We stand beside them in their quest for justice, peace, and the right to be left alone to live their lives as anyone else and to continue to contribute to society in all the many ways they do on a regular basis.
So here I am speaking for myself and Baileyblog but happily, my colleague, Cynthia Marasigan, also wrote this great piece on behalf of the Harriet Tubman Center to underscore our solidarity with this cause. Please read it and consider becoming a friend of the Center which is meant to represent all. Consider too attending our upcoming Speaker Series via zoom.
We welcome one and all.
Statement in response to Anti-Asian violence
https://www.binghamton.edu/centers/harriet-tubman/index.html
Upcoming Speaker Series
https://www.binghamton.edu/centers/harriet-tubman/events.html
Anne C. Bailey, author of The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Find Anne C. Bailey's non-fiction book : 
