NEXT SOCIAL JUSTICE in ACTION CONCERT
December 6th
7:00-8:30 pm Eastern Standard Time
Exploring social justice in its many faces and forms, through folk tales and personal stories, we dive deeply into multiple experiences of justice.
Join the Healing Story Alliance for a special gathering to share and explore stories of social justice in action in its many faces and forms. Through folk tales and personal stories, we will dive deeply into multiple experiences of justice in action. The Storytelling concert is followed by a community conversation. A recording of the concert will be made available to all registrants.
Format: The story session opens with a concert of seasoned tellers exploring social justice in action with stories and community tellers sharing stories of how they promote social justice in their community. The second half of the event invites listeners to respond and reflect on what emerged for them listening to stories of social justice in action in these troubled times.
Purpose: We all need a little more justice and kindness in our lives. Perhaps a story can take us there.
“If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice.” Bell Hooks
About the Storytellers
Norah Dooley is a performing storyteller, educator, children’s author, and project director of StoriesLive.org. From Boston to Tokyo, and from San Francisco to Tanzania, Norah has been teaching people of all ages and stages of life the importance of knowing and telling their stories. While organizing an adjunct union at Lesley University, she also helped revitalize the Climate Justice Committee of her union local, SEIU 509, and was once arrested trying to stop construction of the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline in Boston by jumping into a trench in front of an excavator. In 2024, she was a founding member of AllAreNeighbors.com, an immigrant support group in Central Massachusetts.
Sheila Arnold has a talent for storytelling, a passion for history, and compassion for people. She provides Storytelling, Historic Characters, Christian Monologues, and Professional Development for schools, festivals, churches, and organizations nationally and internationally. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Artists Standing Strong Together (ASST), a source of inspiration, strength, and action in the storytelling and artists’ world. Sheila has been honored as a 2021 MacDowell Artist Fellow, a 2020 Mt. Vernon Research Fellow, and a 2019 Hewnoaks Artist Colony summer residence Noted Artist. Sheila lives in Hampton, VA, near her son’s family and parents.
For this Social Justice in Action Concert Sheila Arnold will present a historic character presentation based on the life of Fanny Lou Hammer!
About Fanny Lou Hamer:
Fannie Lou Hamer famously said “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired”
She was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant champion of civil rights. From her days as a sharecropper to her violent entrance into being a full-citizen in the country, her story will charge students to stand and become active in our government and the causes of those neglected and overlooked.Norah Dooley is a performing storyteller, educator, children’s author, and project director of StoriesLive.org. From Boston to Tokyo, and from San Francisco to Tanzania, Norah has been teaching people of all ages and stages of life the importance of knowing and telling their stories. While organizing an adjunct union at Lesley University, she also helped revitalize the Climate Justice Committee of her union local, SEIU 509, and was once arrested trying to stop construction of the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline in Boston by jumping into a trench in front of an excavator. In 2024, she was a founding member of AllAreNeighbors.com, an immigrant support group in Central Massachusetts
Community Tellers
Toni Matloff tells us that before these awful times, she was an animal activist and volunteered at Sunny Meadow Animal Sanctuary in Barre, MA. She was also a full-time caretaker for her mom, who lived with them for the last 8 years before her passing in July. Toni founded Compassion Corner outside the Burlington, MA ICE Detention Center. She and her co-volunteers are there five days a week to show solidarity and offer much-needed free supplies and food to the family members who try to visit and those who must report every month. Rabbi. Susan Abramson partnered with Toni in April of this year and gave Compassion Corner its official name.
Julia Jaime-Rodriguez is the Field Mobilization Coordinator at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts
Emcee
Susan O’Halloran has been seen on PBS Nightline and in the New York Times. The Chicago Reader says Susan O’Halloran “has mastered the Irish art of telling stories that are funny and heart-wrenching at the same time.” This author of 10 books has been a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival and the International Storytelling Center Residencies and has served as a National Storytelling Network keynote speaker. Sue also offers live seminars and online classes to nonprofits and corporations. In 2012, Sue produced the first-ever online storytelling festival, where 112,000 people from 52 countries participated. www.SusanOHalloran.com
PAST CONCERTS
Healing Story Alliance is a not-for-profit, educational, arts organization which provides online resources and concert, workshop, and community programming
in support of storytelling as a healing art. Please donate to help make programs like these possible.
To listen to past Kind Stories in Concert visit our archive of recordings.