Radical Love in Mississippi
We were very excited to award the Emerging Volunteer of the Year award to Elizabeth Hegwood. Late last year, Elizabeth stepped up to reboot a chapter in Biloxi that had shuttered its doors in 2016. Within six months, she has built over 90 regular attendees, has had her group show up in videos on “The Rachel Maddow Show” twice, and runs multiple service projects and fundraisers focusing on serving the trans and immigrant population in their region.
She created a petition to help start more Mississippi chapters and has built partnerships with other local nonprofits like American Descendants of Slavery’s Mississippi Chapter, Vote Your Pride, Mississippi Veterans for Peace, The T.R.A.N.S. Program, Mississippi Rising, and a mutual aid group. She is an active voice in the Discord community, a teacher, and a shining example of what is possible, even in the hardest of places, to make such things real.
The person who knows her best, her husband Jared, had this to say about the work she is doing:
“Elizabeth has been a fierce advocate for and representative of the non-believing people in our area. After starting the first Mississippi secular homeschooling group, one that now has hundreds of members, her revival of this area’s previously defunct humanist chapter has been so, so much more successful than what I had hoped. But what I think is most impressive is that she has done so in an entirely inclusive way, leading from the heart and doing so not just to name, but to build bridges that bring real results to our community. Too many American atheists can be self-righteous or bomb-throwers in Mississippi, whose reputation precedes itself. It is hard to not fall into either one of those modes. Not Liz. She cares about people, all people. I may have introduced her to humanism, but she has taught me how one actually lives as a humanist.”
So we are proud to give this award and our support to Elizabeth Hegwood of the Gulf Coast Humanists.
ELIZABETH HEGWOOD: You are all so kind and wonderful. Thank you. In a moment you are going to hear me say a phrase, ‘radical love.’ I would like to tell you what I mean by that. What I mean by that is, if you are familiar with bell hooks, the feminist and great thinker, she says that love is a combination of six ingredients: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust. She believes that love is a foundation for social justice, and I agree with that. I think that all of you here would too.
(Names have been changed here to protect people’s privacy.) I gratefully and humbly accept this award on behalf of my friend Amy and her transgender daughter, Bella. She is a teenager. Her health care has been taken from her because we live in Mississippi. Bella attempted suicide at age 15 due to gender dysphoria. Her family faces food insecurity, but despite this, they still have to find a way to get to California for her to have her health care.
I also accept this award on behalf of the 17 families that we are serving whose breadwinners have been detained or deported by ICE raids, all of whom have children in the home. Those are just the ones we know about, but we are in contact with 17 of those families. We have been doing food drives to help support those families because many of those kids do not eat again after their afternoon snack of the day.
I accept this award on behalf of Claudia, Daniel and Edward, the members of my chapter who are afraid if they reveal they’re atheist or if they publicly share their political beliefs, they will be fired, ostracized, or even attacked.
I accept this award on behalf of my fellow mutual aid volunteers, the ones who demonstrate radical love. My peers are my teachers, and they should be standing here with me. I salute their bravery, their honesty, their vulnerability, and their compassion.
I accept this award on behalf of everyday Mississippians, especially our many communities of marginalized people. My home state has always failed and continues to fail to keep its own citizens healthy, educated, and safe. I accept this award on behalf of every scared and brave Mississippian who has found their voice anyway, and the children in Mississippi who will one day find theirs if we show them how. Thank you.