GREENSBORO – My name is Mateo Kehler, I founded Jasper Hill with my brother Andy. Together with our incredible team we have the privilege of milking 200 cows and stewarding 1,600 acres of grass land in our community. I have the privilege of calling Greensboro home. Before we begin tonight, I want to acknowledge that we’re gathered on native land, land that was stewarded long before any of us arrived, and that carries the weight of Abenaki history still. We hold that truth with respect as we come together tonight. Because that’s really what tonight is about: who gets to belong, and who gets to call a place home.
We are a country of immigrants. Every single one of us, whether our family arrived last year or eight generations ago, we are here because someone before us was seeking something better. A safer life, a fairer shot, a future for their children that they themselves might never live to see. That search doesn’t end. It’s happening right now, in this country, to our neighbors, and it’s why we’re here tonight, to stand with Migrant Justice and the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project in the belief that dignity isn’t something you earn by filing paperwork. It’s something you’re born with.
Folk music has always known this. Long before it was background music, it was the sound of people refusing to be erased, sung on picket lines, at sit-ins, on the road with nothing but a guitar and a reason to keep going.
Folk music is what people sing when the world tells them to be quiet. It’s the sound of resistance against fascism, and the forces that tell us whose life matters and whose doesn’t.
I love my country, but wow, it really has a way of disappointing me. But here’s the thing about democracy: it isn’t renewed in comfortable times.
It’s renewed in exactly the moments like this one, when it’s being tested.
It was tested under Jim Crow, when ordinary people decided that “separate but equal” was a lie they would no longer live inside of.
It was tested in the civil rights movement, on bridges and buses and lunch counters, by people who had every reason to believe the country wasn’t going to change, and who changed it anyway.
It was tested by women who marched and organized for the simple right to be treated as full and equal citizens and human beings.
It was tested at Stonewall, and in every fight since for LGBTQ+ people to live and love openly, without apology.
And it’s being tested right now, as families are torn apart by ICE raids, as fear is used as a tool of control, as the same old darkness puts on a new face and calls itself law and order.
Every time, it’s the same answer: struggle, and solidarity. People showing up for people who aren’t their blood, because dignity was never supposed to be conditional.
That’s the lineage we’re standing in tonight.
So tonight isn’t just a concert. It’s an act of remembering that democracy only works when it’s built on human dignity: all of it, for everyone, no exceptions.
We are here tonight to support two organizations doing incredible work to support and defend one of the most vulnerable communities in Vermont: Migrant workers Vermont Asylum Assistance Project exists to provide noncitizens, including migrant farmworkers, with critical
access to information about the U.S. immigration process and with legal help and support.
I want to acknowledge and thank Jae Basiliere and Seth Lipschutz from Vermont Asylum Assistance who are here tonight. And Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based organization that
provides information, education and advocacy and material support to the migrant farmworker community.
These two organizations are doing incredible work. Please consider volunteering, getting involved in their clients lives and opening your checkbooks to support their efforts.
I also want to thank David Kelley for his deep commitment to social justice in this complicated time and the tireless work of the HCA team who pulled this event together.
And now it’s my pleasure to introduce Christine Malcom to kick us off.
Thank you for being here. Let’s make some noise for justice.
Kehler’s comments were made at the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro, July 18, at the “Songs of Resistance, Solidarity and Hope” event.
