Dear Rosie Friend,
Starting now, I will use emails or letters I have written to others as a blog, with an introduction by me.
The following is to an ally on the Rosie Movement for 15 years, Col. Ceryl Johns, in South Carolina.
The list of projects he has done with us is long and significant. He called today, April 11, 2024, and discussed our goal to work with communities to
Ceryl,
The value of our work is great – 16 years of interviews, projects, awards, photos, media coverage, know-how and show-how, music, art, speeches (including by you). The process of learning to pull together will be important far into the future, and we must start now.
The attached Collection Summary needs serious editing and updating, but it’s a start. We have envisioned that many different groups will join in, and like Rosies, each will do a piece that comes together into a greater whole (i.e., the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). The goal is the whole – a movement that does not protest but produces.
Our goal in the American Rosie Movement is to include people who will do something that fits the legacy of Rosies, which, after years of interviewing Rosies, we define as:
To pull together to do highest quality work for freedom, and to do it in a spirit of cooperation.
This means any community can do a project that memorializes Rosies, so long as they meet quality standards, share what they have done with others, and want their project/piece to be part of a national movement.
It takes leaders who collaborate.
You mentioned the Revolutionary War, I am a DAR member, and I idolize Thomas Paine, who said that it takes three things to make the needed change: First, it takes unity (numbers are there, but it’s the unity that will make the difference); second, the cause of America is the cause of the human family; third, the times have found us.
We are not positioning ourselves to be king of the mountain, we are positioning ourselves to direct a unified force of “the people” who are led by those with skills to pull a nation together through by accomplishing small projects in many places that come together into a movement. It’s about involving people not excluding them, creating not complaining.
I also attach my outdated biographical sketch. There are many more documents to share.
With the right community, we can orchestrate a national movement. The times have been ripe for years. We must find show a reason to pull together. We are wasting our freedom if we don’t.
Arm-in-ARM, we move on,
Anne