BLM Task Force practices activism through art

The Colby Democrats is one of the largest student organizations on campus, boasting over 400 members, and is continuing to grow. During the onset of nationwide protests this year, a new subset was formed: the Maine College Democrats Black Lives Matter Task Force.

Co-President of the Colby Dems Lutie Brown ’22 told The Colby Echo:

“Our original intention in creating the Task Force was trying to illuminate the intersection between activism, politics, protest, and actual institutional change, and voting, and how they go hand in hand . . . We knew that across our different chapters, it was mostly privileged white kids who were parts of the different college Dems groups because those were the ones who felt valued and heard. The other students did not feel like their college Dems group was a safe space, and like they would advocate for them, so we wanted to change that.”

Though in its infancy, the Task Force has hit the ground running. This past weekend, they partnered with SPB to facilitate an outdoor screening of the film If Beale Street Could Talk. Brown told The Colby Echo:

“If Beale Street Could Talk [the novel] was written by James Baldwin, a really incredible [black] artist, so we’re trying to highlight different voices that Democrats don’t tend to center [on].”

The movie follows the fictional story of a young black woman named Tish living in New York City, whose long-term partner is falsely accused of a crime and subsequently imprisoned just as their child is born.

 Azalea Yunus, another BLM Task Force member, explained the significance of the story:

“[It’s] compelling, I think, where you see this couple, and they’re in love and this child [is] alone . . . I think that’s a pretty universal relatable issue that people want to see--you want to see the couple overcome [their adversity] . . . In terms of what the movie is telling us subconsciously about specifically them being a black couple, and their families facing injustice at the hands of law enforcement, how do we unpack that?”

The Task Force told The Colby Echo that one of their prime goals is to start conversations that have not occurred in any significant magnitude on Colby’s campus. Colby, like other comparable institutions, is not without regular incidents of bias, and there is a strong sentiment among much of the student body that Colby is not transparent about such incidents. Yunus had this to say:

“There’s a lot of history that the college intentionally doesn’t really talk about. How long did it take for them to talk about frats at orientation? . . . You can’t solve a problem if you don’t talk about it, so if we’re not being really specific and concrete with the issues that we need to work on as a campus, it’s really hard to get any work done on those issues . . . If Colby wants to preach transparency, then there are steps to achieve that, particularly around issues of racism on campus.”

This BLM-sponsored outdoor screening was the first in a succession of screenings to come. The Task Force told The Colby Echo that they plan on conducting future screenings over Zoom, allowing other Maine chapters of BLM and Dems to tune in as well. This intersection between art and activism has seen recent growth on Colby’s campus, and artists and advocates alike can look forward to future presentations by the Colby BLM Task Force. Through their work, Lutie Brown hopes to enact some tangible change:

“We [Colby] still have our problems, and we cannot ignore them, so that’s why we’re here: to illuminate them and bring them to light.”

~Milo Lani-Caputo `23