STRIDE HISTORY

Scituate Together for Representation, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (STRIDE) was formed in 2019, emerging out of Scituate’s Unity Council which was a school-based group active from 2016 to 2019. The Unity Council was formed to engage the community in conversations about diversity and inclusion after a series of racist and anti-Semitic incidents at Scituate High School.

Scituate’s Unity Council offered community-wide educational activities, some led by high school students.  Notable events included a workshop on having difficult conversations around the holiday table with friends and family about identity and politics; discussions of the work of James Baldwin and of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight series on race; a dinner at Charles Street AME Church in Roxbury Boston to learn about the METCO program; a community screening of “The Hate U Give;” a presentation by SHS students on their experiences in Scituate as people of color; and  a performance of Daniel Beaty’s “Mr. Joy” in Scituate’s new Center for Performing Arts, with a follow-up community conversation (in collaboration with ArtsEmerson, METCO, Inc., and the Scituate METCO Program).

Members of the Community Conversations Book Club, a recurring activity of the Unity Council, read books by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as well as authors from other under-represented communities, and discussed issues of privilege, discrimination, representation, and related topics.  Titles on the reading list included some books that had recently been challenged and removed from (or downgraded within) the SPS curriculum.  Scituate Against Censorship was formed in 2019 as a separate group to respond to ongoing challenges to books in the SPS curriculum.

In late 2019, it was decided that Scituate would be better served by having a community-based group working on the problems of racism, bias, and discrimination, and the decision was made to disband Scituate’s school-based Unity Council.  STRIDE was formed with the goal of expanding on the work of the Unity Council, including improving communication between the schools and the community at large, as well as encouraging, facilitating, and coordinating the important work of promoting representation, equity, and inclusion in the town of Scituate.

STRIDE is an all-volunteer group led by a Steering Committee and a liaison to Scituate Public Schools.