Hopkinton Hotline: 774-278-4455

Freedom through unity in the community.

Hopkinton Freedom Team is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established in January of 2022. Your help and support will help us tremendously as our initial seed funding. A small amount goes a long way!

hopkinton is "lit" = Love, Inclusion & trust

Please join us for our Artful Connections events for November and December!

Amanda Maffei: Music has been Amanda’s constant companion her whole life. From creating her first song, ‘The Ant and the Elephant’ on piano, to recording her CD of originals (except for the title song, Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’) with a producer, director, and a band of professional studio players.

Amanda goes where her muse leads (or, at least, has best intentions to). For Amanda, her life’s journey gets played out in singing and playing, writing songs and stories, dancing, teaching, and crafting – it’s all there for the living and the making and the sharing. Please come join Amanda in one stop along her journey. Maybe you’ll find some camaraderie along yours. Learn more at amandamaffeimusic@gmail.com.

Carla Schwartz is a poet-citizen of the world. She writes of the natural world, the political world, the familial world, the worlds of love, death and grief. She's a long-distance pond swimmer, a paddle boarder, cyclist, hiker, gardener, reader and nordic skier.

Poetry uses language to evoke revelation and/or emotion in a reader or listener, so that both poet and listener learn something new about themselves and the world. Audiences find Carla's poems to be moving and accessible, and she has enjoyed sharing her work at a variety of venues. Recently, Carla has written and shared a number of haibun, which is a hybrid blend of text, title and haiku.

Carla Schwartz’s poems have appeared in The Practicing Poet and in her collections Signs of Marriage, Mother, One More Thing, and Intimacy with the Wind. She received the 2023 New England Poetry Club E.E. Cummings Prize. Learn more at https://carlapoet.com, or on all social media @cb99videos.

To hear the latest from jamele adams, creator of the Freedom Team concept, listen to this 15-minute Tedx Natick Talk, November 2023, by clicking on the title: You Are Amazing, Believe In Yourself

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

POETRY and HAIKU from our APRIL 26TH EVENT that participants paired up and created together on the spot in a minute or less with prompts from our guest Jamele Adams:

Unite in harmony Voice is my paintbrush

Uplift one another The whole world is my canvas

Everyone has a voice Erase pain with love

The universal call and response of love. I will not be silenced.

Stronger together, Thinking together we are stronger,

The din is deafening Thinking apart we are diminished.

Each make up that mighty roar All is possible.

Vibrating higher with uplifting voices Depends on what we choose.

Each one, pulling up another

We can rise above the fray,

if we just believe in the person next to us My voice is with me

Strangers are only strangers until they Loud and quiet it can be

become teammates. Don't let it stop.

Who am I? My big voice is strong

I am strength and love It wants to say many things

My voice carries me proudly Let me speak right now

Loud is not a sin The time for change is now.

My voice speaks for others

As well as myself. Unified Voices

Where do I begin? Don't hold back in silence to be eloquently mean

I search for community Lift and raise for a world yet unseen

And I speak my truth Where each of us will rise above from everywhere

Existing in the truth of others. that we have been

Weave the tapestry of unity

Create a world of serenity.

Here in the city

The crowd and the streets are so loud I speak for the possible

But I will be heard The hope love and all there is

Surrounded by men. Come say YES with me.

Where to begin with unified voices One Heart of Love group poem:

We have done this before We are all one

But I forgot how I made it happen One heart, one soul of longing

We are running out of time to figure it out... We wanted to stay,

We are out of space We wanted to run

Out of our minds But we stayed - even tho' we didn't feel comfortable

We are full of doubt. We were anxious, insecure, afraid, overwhelmed, at risk

And yet I stayed, he stayed, she stayed, they stayed...

We stayed as one heart of knowing,

Love, peace, personal growth, justice and possibilities.

We stayed because we needed to hear what Jamele was

begging us to do.

To be.

To stand in our light, be the light, spread the light.

Make a difference by who we are

Don't hide.

Stand proud in you and spread your love all around.

Give ourselves a voice.

We needed someone to remind us of how much love

and wisdom we have to share.

Thank you.

DONATE HERE

PeACE DAY 9/21/2022

The HFT and the HHS Diversity Club paired together at Polyarts and Family Day for peace in our world. Visitors stopped by to decorate cut out hands that are now on display at the HHS above Hopkinton artist Michael Alfano's sculpture.

AT THE HIGH SCHOOL

Inspired by Sadako and the One Thousand Paper Cranes as told by Eleanor Coerr, the HHS Diversity Club and HFT members, along with other community members, made origami cranes for health and world peace at Polyarts and Family Day, September 2022.

Past Events

Want to know about our past events and projects? Go to our Blog

CALLS TO ACTION: What can you do today to learn, elevate and spread LIT (Love, Inclusion, Trust) in our Community?

Photo Credit: John Cardillo, Hopkinton Independent

DONATE TODAY in our mission to CREATE Unity in our Community through Love, Inclusion and Trust!

Donate Online

Mail a check to:

Hopkinton Freedom Team

P.O. Box 60, Hopkinton MA 01748

Our Mission

The mission of the Hopkinton Freedom Team is to create unity in the community by fostering inclusion, solidarity and compassion for all people. The Freedom Team is focused on moving beyond tolerance to embracing, sharing and celebrating our community’s diversity. We offer various avenues for dialogue, support and programming to community members with a goal of promoting love, inclusion and trust (“LIT”).

The Freedom Team also offers a safe and respectful space to discuss incidents involving harassment or discrimination related to race, color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability or class using restorative justice practices. This model offers opportunities for conversation and reconciliation to help repair experiences of misunderstanding or harm. Individuals may access this opportunity to talk by calling the hotline number at 774-278-4455 if they have experienced or witnessed bias-motivated threats, harassment or violence.

The first Freedom Team formed in 2016 in Natick through the inspiration of jamele adams; the Hopkinton Freedom Team formed in 2020.

#HopChalkAboutChange 9/3/20

Hopkinton Freedom Team Membership

Your membership starts with a pledge to promote love, inclusion and trust within our community.

Every year our town of Hopkinton becomes world-renowned as a place of world-wide unity and common ground for thousands of people who come here from all over the world to run in The Boston Marathon. In a way, this is the same intention of The Freedom Team. Our wish is to promote this same sense of being a welcoming town to all its residents as well as visitors by growing more inclusive-minded and welcoming as a community for all people. Our ultimate dream goal is to have every resident of our town sign up for general membership to the Freedom Team and its mission to promote love, inclusion and trust within our community.

You are invited to sign up for general membership to The Freedom Team by submitting a pledge form below and sharing what you have done to bring more unity, peace and acceptance to Hopkinton and beyond.

Take me to the Pledge

call town of hopkinton HOTLINE at 774-278-4455 to report bias-motivated threats, harassment and violence.

More information on Hopkinton Hotline

Google Sites

Report abuse