Task Force Against Discrimination talks grants, Select Board and Holocaust Remembrance Day

Photo by Temple Emanu-El

The Marblehead Task Force Against Discrimination (TFAD) met on Jan. 12 to discuss Select Board funding, Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant and events related to Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Co-Chair Diane Gora announced she applied for the Task Force to receive a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

“We were supposed to here by January 17 but I got an email last week and they were pleased to announce that they awarded us the $1,000 grant,” Gora said.

The grant money will be put towards the group’s 2023 Juneteenth celebration.

Also at the meeting, member John Whipple discussed a letter he and fellow member Candice Sliney sent to the Select Board on behalf of the Task Force. In the letter, which Whipple read at the meeting, asks for the Task Force to be considered in the town’s budget.

“We are a subcommittee pursuing town funding to support our community work. Each year TFAD organizes programs, and cooperates with others, to celebrate occasions aligned to our mission to help create a more inclusive community,” Whipple read from the letter. “The members of the task force recognize the importance of our work and its great potential if it were to have consistent funding.”

The group would need $5,000 to fund their programming, he read.

“This small amount covers the basics for these town related activities, such as printing programs, printing flyers to advertise events, acquiring audio paying for professionals. This budget would help us maintain the status quo so that our work can be focused on the ideas and less on finding ways to pay for these events,” Whipple read.

The Task Force has previously relied on donations from individuals and businesses. But the letter noted that, given TFAD’s initiatives on behalf of the Town, it’s “really not appropriate to rely on private funding.”

The letter was sent on Jan. 6 and as of Jan. 12 the group had not heard back from the Select Board.

At the meeting, the group also discussed Holocaust Remembrance day which is on Jan. 27. Co-Chair Helaine Hazlett said there will be two events that day.

“It’s going to be great. Moses Grader, chairman of the Select Board, has been very, very accommodating. He’s got to doa program at noon on the 27th … they’re going to have a candle lighting ceremony,” Hazlett said. “And the evening at six o’clock at Temple Emanu-El at their regular scheduled Friday night service Moses Grader is an invited guest to speak on Holocaust Remembrance Day.”

The candle lighting ceremony will be at Abbot Hall.