The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival
The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival will take place online on Cork Community Television from Thursday 25th November 2021 until Sunday 28th November 2021. There will be live events, including Q&A’s with the interviewees as well as some live music at the Maldron Hotel in Shandon, Cork, Ireland during the course of the Festival. These are subject strictly to the Covid 19 regulations specified at the time and the attendance will be limited.
Please join us for any of the online and hybrid events happening this week!
Programme of online events on Cork Community Television
For the 2021 Tenth Anniversary Festival Launch, CEE Original Caretakers Senior Fellow, Mona Polacca, joined Spirit of Mother Jones Festival Committee organizer Dr. John Barimo for a special online event. See “Restoring Our Connection to Nature” with Mona Polacca below or on the Mother Jones site here.
This invitation was inspired by the outpouring of support from the Irish people to the Hopi and Navajo Covid-19 Relief Fund. Donations came with heartfelt messages:
“We will never forget your kindness to us when we had less than nothing… in Solidarity from Ireland.”
“In times of great suffering like now, if we could all stand together and support each other… It will make a difference. The generosity shown to the Irish during our famine did that. I want to honour that gesture and help now.”
“In thanks for our fellow Indigenous people’s, the Choctaw Nation, aid during the Great Hunger in Ireland.”
The fund has raised over 7.5 million dollars in support of Hopi and Navajo Nations.
This online interview with Mona Polacca of Hopi, Tewa and Havasupai traditions, took place at the launch of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival, 14th October 2021. We were gratefully joined by two University College Cork (UCC) students from the Choctaw Nation, Claire Young and Austin West. A good meeting was had by all.
The discussion was held as part of UCC Community Week in a collaboration between the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival with the UCC Department of Civic and Community Engagement and the Center for Earth Ethics in New York City.
This special launch event was coordinated by UCC’s Dr John Barimo and CEE’s Shannon MD Smith. Many thanks to Mr. Ger O’Mahony, Coordinator and Co-Founder of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival for inviting us to participate in such a meaningful way and for keeping the spirit of Mother Jones, the spirit of justice alive for people and the Earth.
The exchange between the Choctaw and Irish during the Great Famine is memorialized by the ‘Kindred Spirits’ memorial in Cork and in the etchings on the NYC Hunger Memorial.