RETROSPECTACLE
by Ed Pazanese & Jen Kiok
Femke Rosenbaum believes that bringing people together through festival traditions is a powerful way of organizing people and addressing social concerns.  She also believes it critical to link schools to communities.  Rosenbaum, a Dutch born educator, calls herself an idealist- a person with ideas.  Over the past 30+ years, she has mobilized people to believe that there are solutions to social problems and to act to transform their communities.

Rosenbaum recalls when she moved to JP with her husband Peter.  “The area was depressed, we had moved into the neighborhood, and I was struck by the hopelessness I encountered while knocking on doors.  There was a negative attitude toward the neighborhood.  People were blaming the children.  It was unfair.”  In response to this sense of hopelessness, Rosenbaum began to organize.  Her goal was to bring people together from diverse cultural communities to build a common respect for the community and for the earth.  Community art was her organizing tool.

A black and white photograph, titled Foxy Lady (1980), shows Rosenbaum in a home-made fox costume leading a parade of revelers down Centre Street in one of the first Wake Up The Earth parades.  Bringing people together across lines of age, race and class, the Festival fostered a sense of community stewardship and pride that can be felt as strongly today as 30 years ago.  The photo is part of a Retrospective photography exhibit by Read Brugger, which depicts the origins of Spontaneous Celebrations & The Wake Up The Earth Festival.  The exhibit is on display at Spontaneous Celebrations through June 8th.

Working in coalition with other organizers, parents, artists, and gardeners Rosenbaum became a key player in the movement to keep the neighborhood intact.  Stopping the extension first of I-95 and then a major arterial road through Jamaica Plain, this community led movement eventually succeeded in creating what we now know as The Southwest Corridor Park.  The first Wake Up The Earth Festival was held in 1979 to celebrate this victory.  To learn more about this important chapter in JP history, come to the June 5th closing event of the photo exhibit at Spontaneous Celebrations and see the interactive “Retrospectacle” performance, featuring a lighthearted re-enactment of these events.

In the words of Norma-Rey-Alicia, whose mother Clementina Acebedo-Rey was one of the organizers who worked with Rosenbaum 30 years ago, “The term community organizer falls short in describing Femke’s leadership.  She is a creative, powerful, tireless humanitarian.  She has taught me and others that being a progressive is a lifestyle, not a philosophy; that we have the responsibility to take care of the earth the way it takes care of us; that building community is first about inspiring individuals to build up themselves; and that every single human-being-regardless of age- has the need to celebrate and be celebrated.  What attracts so many people to JP-its proud diversity its artistic flair, its social consciousness- we have Femke to thank for that.  She is the ‘mother’ of Spontaneous Celebrations, and in many ways, of JP.”
 RETROSPECTACLE CLOSING EVENT: Thursday, June 5th 7:30 pm at Spontaneous Celebrations, 45 Danforth Street  Donations Welcome

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