If you follow Springfield news and politics with more than a passing interest, you probably know who Michaelann Bewsee is, at least as she's represented in the sound bites of the evening news and the newspaper.
Bewsee is the public face of Arise for Social Justice, the activist group she helped found 22 years ago. And, by extension, she's come to serve as the public face of the city's least understood population: its hungry and homeless, not to mention its many residents who live on the precipice, one paycheck or public subsidy or personal crisis away from catastrophe.
Bewsee's work is dedicated to the simple premise and staggering task of trying to make the world a just place. She's intelligent and thoughtful, and I consider her one of the most intellectually honest people I've encountered in my work, free of the ego and pretense that characterize so many public figures. I suspect that Bewsee's not especially comfortable with being identified as "the face" of Arise. Arise focuses on individual empowerment, on working collaboratively while respecting each person's ability to advocate for herself. Arise works for dramatic social change, whether it's a needle exchange program or ward representation in city government. Underlying that work is an insistence on the dignity of each person, even—especially—the ones too often dismissed as "bums" or "criminals."
I know I'm far from alone in my admiration for Bewsee. But in the keyed-up, combative world of Springfield public discourse, she is also often vilified, along with the people she's come to represent. Take what happens when Bewsee tries to engage in online discussion forums. "Every now and then I'll post something on MassLive and get a thoughtful response," she says. "But I'm much more likely to get one of these anonymous 'Get a job' kind of responses than anything else."
That's partly what inspired Bewsee this spring to join the growing ranks of Springfield bloggers. Mostly, though, she started her blog (http://michaelannland.blogspot.com) for personal reasons: she'd recently started a new job, as an organizer with the Mass. Senior Action Council, which took her away from the day-to-day happenings at Arise. "I started this blog as a way to keep thinking through political issues… and to be able to keep in touch with Arise and Arise issues," Bewsee said. "I'd have to say I started blogging for myself, just to be able to articulate some of what I've learned in the last 25 years of community organizing."
Much of Michaelannland has focused on Bewsee's frustration with Springfield's homelessness situation, both the day-to-day developments—the closure of the Warming Place shelter, the transfer of a government homeless contract from Open Pantry to Friends of the Homeless, which she describes as the city's "pet" agency—and the deeper problems that make it such a divisive issue. "At the heart of all of this, of course, is class prejudice and self-interest, manifesting as the need to control those deemed lesser than you who are also perceived as a threat to your wellbeing," she wrote in one entry.
Ultimately, Bewsee's work is about getting people to stop misdirecting blame and start tackling the larger issues that affect all of us. "I drove home through Springfield's South End today and felt very sad," she wrote in one entry. "Housing is run-down, businesses are struggling or absent, trash blows in the streets. I can imagine that many Italians with deep roots in the South End have looked around, remembered the past, and asked themselves, 'What's different?'—and then decided, 'It's the Puerto Ricans!'— because Puerto Ricans are what they can see. Much harder for people to see is what isn't there: the factories, stores and area farms that used to provide decent jobs for hard-working people, the tax base that's been stolen by the higher-ups. Even harder are concepts like globalization and the military-industrial complex, let alone being able to understand how they affect their neighborhood."
Writing the blog gives Bewsee an opportunity to wrestle with what she calls her own "moral challenge": "realizing everybody is a human being, everybody is doing the best they can. Nobody sees themselves as the villain, and yet they may do things that are very, very hurtful to other people," she says. "I don't think I've crossed the line in making any personal attacks. But I'm certainly going to be honest about what I think their impact is on the city."
—mturner@valleyadvocate.com
