Our Purpose

IN COMMUNITY WE TRUST

educate   advocate   organize

The most powerful words in any language, anywhere on earth, are "How can I help?" Even more than "Yes we can!", the offer to help has power to weave people together. Especially in hard times, this deceptively simple question, a reflexive expression of empathy, is the very essence of community building.

So this is the question ComFest organizers try to answer every year.

As honorees are nominated, grant applications considered, street fair vendors juried, slogans selected for volunteer T-shirts -- at every step, the question is, does this choice help sustain the community envisioned in ComFest's Statement of Principles?

One thing ComFest can do is provide an ever more popular platform for advocates of peace and social justice, along with constant appeals to get involved by volunteering at the "lend a hand" level.

ComFest prioritizes voter registration, education and mobilization. Voting is the bedrock of participatory democracy, so nurturing smarter, more committed voters is a way of helping advance all progressive causes.

Just this month, a new study by Pew Research found that a majority (62%) of young people completely agree that "It's my duty to always vote," a 14 - point increase from 2007. That's great news, as is the upswing in general volunteerism and charitable giving over the past year and a half. Voting, volunteering and sharing the burden are the first steps in moving beyond self into community-building.

"Gen Next" sees better times ahead. But reaching that better world will require more than just getting out the vote every few years. It will mean taking on a commitment to another level of activism. So ComFest put that message everywhere you look this year.

In past years, ComFest beer mugs carried slogansabout specific reforms. This year, ComFest organizers couldn't choose just one campaign. In the aftermath of the long epidemic of greed and apocalypse fever that ravaged the economy, shredding the Constitution and the safety net, the list of top-priority causes is overwhelming. So many public institutions desperately need rescue, so many lives need healing.

Re-regulation of financial markets. Meaningful access to to health care for all. Defense of workers rights. Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, prosecuting crimes against the Constitution and crimes against humanity -- those pivotal campaigns all need urgent attention, all at the same time. It is impossible to pick just one.

That's why the back of all 1,500 ComFest volunteer T-shirts, and every single ComFest beer mug, carries a simple theme:

educate   advocate   organize

The message is clear: Go raise some hell in the halls of government. Please.

Pick an issue that you can't stop obsessing about anyway. Find out what organizations are trying to level the political playing field, join one and ask: How can I help?

Ask pointed questions, demand accountability, propose constructive reforms, support real leadership. If you can't manage to get a fair hearing, sometimes a well-placed cream pie helps.

Whatever you do -- stuffing envelopes, walking door-to-door, raising funds, holding vigils -- it all helps. With every phone call, every meeting, every letter to the editor, you're sowing the seeds of change. You're planning ahead for the next harvest of ever more justice, peace and harmony and diversity. You're living every day the ComFest way.

And "that's" what we're celebrating. Happy ComFest!

--Mimi Morris

2009 ComFest Program Guide

 

 

 

Be the Change
You Wish To See in the World

    As volunteers go through their annual discussion of how best to capture the spirit of ComFest in a short statement/slogan, it's always an effort to include the linked concepts of struggle and celebration that are integral to a full life. This year (2008), no one needed to mention the obvious issues of war, economic hardship, collapsing infrastructure or a declining health care system to recognize that most people believe we're at one of those periodic tipping points when things have to be done differently, when there's a palpable need to re-assert the principle that government should serve everyone and not simply a handful of wealthy friends and business associates of those in power.

    There's a lot of talk about change this year, with politicians of all stripes selling - depending on your beliefs - fearful snake oil or pragmatic hope to the electorate.  Everyone, except for a handful of devil-take-the-hindmost free-market extremists, seems to understand that the current situation is drowning everyone except those with homes on gold-plated stilts.

   It's not that beneficial change doesn't happen, or that ingrained attitudes don't evolve. In 1968, five years before the first ComFest, over 440,000 Ohioans voted for a presidential candidate whose platform was based on racial segregation; this year, a black man is a major party candidate for the White House. Sometimes change seems to take too long; sometimes change is regressive rather than progressive. Real life ain't easy, or predictable

   When Mahatma Ghandi said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world," he reduced our desire for a better world-and who hasn't wanted this, ever? - to it's fundamental unit: the individual. It isn't enough to simply desire change; one has to make it happen. In a street sense, one has to "represent."

   Change is about more than who's president (although that can influence the pace and direction of change). It has a spiritual dimension, one without which all the material stuff is nothing more than another sweep of the merry-go/money-go-round that drives day-to-day life. Ultimately, real change comes from within and then manifests itself in the world.

I could have kept my head down
I might have kept my mouth shut
-REM,
"Horse to Water"
 
Keeping your head down and your mouth shut is on one hand a recipe for survival and on the other a blueprint for despair. And in the face of what the worst elements of runaway government, uncontrolled commerce or the unholy alliance of both can do to individuals, lying low and shutting up might seem to make sense. It's certainly less effort than the active alternatives.

 

    In discussing his work as a poet, William Stafford noted. "You much revise your life." He was talking about the way in which writers approach their own creations, but there is a larger wisdom in his words. If we expect the world around us to improve, we must first improve ourselves - our way of seeing, our approach to living. The desire for change - for a different, more cooperative way of interacting with others - brought the volunteers of the first ComFest together in terms of how people met basic needs: health care, housing, food, communications. And the changes those people thought possible have now become accepted as the norm.

    Legal segregation that typified substantial parts of American society only 40 years ago did not change because segregation was inherently wrong and unjust; the liberation of women from restricted social and employment roles did not occur because it denied women the freedom to fully realize their own humanity; widespread gay-bashing (literal and figurative) and socially enforced closeting of one's sexual orientation did not diminish because it denied individuals' inherent worth and dignity; wars have not been ended or prevented from starting simply because wars allow the awful unleashing of the worst in human beings.

 

   All of these changes in legal structure, social dynamics and public policy occurred because individuals changed their own perceptions of how they saw things. And as a result of that new way of seeing and thinking, they found it impossible not to act to improve the situation for themselves and/or some other element of society - that is, to make their inner change manifest. A personal and individual shift in perception had to occur before the larger shift in direction was possible.
 
And we are left to carry on
Until the day is done
- REM,
"Until the Day Is Done"
 
   It's almost amusing, yet actually profoundly sad, that in a year in which more people - young people in particular - have a belief that we can work together to change how we meet basic needs as a nation, a few sullen hipsters continue to regard ComFest simply as a "hippie festival" that should "get out of the sixties." They believe that the ideals of living in harmony with others (peace) and recognizing that we have obligations to others beyond ourselves (love) are somehow dated, as if humanity's noblest intentions come and go like last year's band-of-the-moment or fleeting trend in outsider clothing. These folks seem to believe that colorful tangibles such as tie-dye are the same as more enduring values, that symbols are more significant than substance. In the tepid swamp they inhabit, ironic detachment that trades in put-downs and one-upmanship is more meaningful than lifting a hand to ease another's pain.

 

   They want a party for the sake of a party (which is not a bad thing, but anyone can do that anytime). ComFest, which happens annually because of those willing to work to make it happen, is a Party with a Purpose. And that purpose is to showcase the ideals that most people, at some level, already hold but are afraid or unwilling to act on. ComFest says, "You can make change happen. You can be a better person. You can build a better community, a better country, a better world. And each summer, along with the thousands of other people, you can celebrate what you've accomplished." Ain't pragmatic idealism disgusting?
 
Got to get back to something
simple to save ourselves
- Van Morrison
"Keep It Simple"
 
   ComFest tries hard to keep it simple. Stick to your fundamental principles. Behave as if the rest of the universe is as important as you are. Clean up after yourself. Respect others. Take care of the weak and sick. Those with power and money are not inherently better or more deserving than anyone else. Don't be afraid to push back. Remember to laugh and dance. Don't wait to act; do it yourself, with friends, and incredible things develop. Right here, right now. We won't always get what we want, but little by little we'll all get more of what we need.

 

    In "To Be of Use," published in the year of the second ComFest, poet Marge Piercy wrote, "Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen: / reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in. / This is how we are going to live for a long time."

 

   This is your ComFest. This is your country. This is your world. Be here. Be involved. Be the change.
 
-Steve Abbott
2008 ComFest Program Guide

 

 

 

 

 
 


 
  

Purpose

Volunteering

Committees

Performances