Maggie Cahalan, Greenbelt’s 2022 Outstanding Citizen, thought she was meeting Springhill Lake Elementary students from the Earth Squad when she headed to the opening night of the Labor Day Festival. However, she and her family have been attending the Friday night festivities for many years. “I usually check out the food booths to see what was available for my family, who are mostly vegan, and was often disappointed. I remember when Green ACES gave awards for booths that were the greenest in packaging and food,” says Cahalan.
Labor Days Past
Cahalan used to help run a Peace Committee booth during a time when nonprofits had booths for the duration of the Festival. The nonprofits with booths were required to offer either a game or food to Festival goers, recalls Cahalan, but they struggled to meet the health department’s requirements for food, she says. She fondly remembers a year when the Peace Committee succeeded and her son Joel, then in high school, and his friends organized the sale of chickpea hummus on pita bread vegan sandwiches. “They somehow managed to pass the health department’s inspection!” marvels Cahalan. Most years, though, they found a peace-equity-related quiz game to draw folks in to talk about labor and peace issues. “By the end of the four days we were all exhausted, but we did feel more of a part of the Festival and it was easier to make a connection with the concerns of workers and the labor
movement and the Festival due to the nonprofits having more of a presence,” says Cahalan.
The Announcement
When Cahalan was announced as Greenbelt’s Outstanding Citizen a song by Sy Kahn came into her head. It’s a song about a man called Clarence Kailin, who devoted his life to good though often lost causes, and who said, upon learning of the song composed in his honor, that “all songs of praise should be both modest and collective.” Cahalan said she wished there could be a collective award and that it should really go “to all the many folks in Greenbelt working together for the common good.”
“My reaction was one of overwhelming gratitude to be living in Greenbelt and the recognition that there were so many other Greenbelt folks who deserved it more than I did,” she said. The song about Clarence ends with a thanks for someone who “has raised our voices higher,” which is a goal of Cahalan. “I am hoping that the Outstanding Citizen award helps me and others to ‘raise our voices higher,’” she says. “Being affirmed by the community in this way increased my feeling of being included and made me aware of how much we depend on each other. I am very grateful for the decision we made over 40 years ago to settle in Greenbelt,” says Cahalan. She also says that the experience of being recognized has made her want to affirm and take time to express her appreciation of others, too.
The award gave Cahalan a boost in morale and determination. “I am 77 years old, and sometimes it’s hard to sustain work over a long period of time without feeling at times one’s efforts do not amount to much,” she says of volunteering and working for environmental causes over the decades. “In my personal life I know I have been lucky,” she says. “The award humbled me and made me realize this even more but things like the recent court decisions in the wider national scene against affirmative action, student debt relief and LGBTQ rights make it hard to keep carrying on sometimes. The award and the encouragement of being appreciated continue to give me some needed new energy and help me renew my commitment to the projects that are important to me.”
Cahalan also finds that the recognition has led to some recognition and greater legitimacy for the projects she works on, including CHEARS (the Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society), a nonprofit dedicated to the health of the Chesapeake watershed environment and those who share it. It’s helped garner more volunteers, for which Cahalan says she is very grateful. She has a “renewed sense of how important it is to work together with partners and appreciate the work of others ‒ each with different gifts ‒ to ‘Keep on Keeping On!,’” she says, quoting civil rights activist and composer Len Chandler’s song of the same name.
Since receiving the award last year Cahalan has continued to work on environmental issues through CHEARS, especially around food systems, climate justice and seed saving, she says. These projects include The Chesapeake Intergenerational Open Seed Quest (CHIO-SQ), started in 2019 to foster increased community engagement in seed saving of open pollinated and culturally meaningful seeds, and a related Black-led seed company, begun in 2022, dedicated to helping folks of all ethnicities in learning about and growing culturally meaningful seeds. Cahalan also works with the Earth Squad on the stream water quality monitoring of Indian Creek Tributary and three other streams in Maryland. She helps with workshops and creating computer models of the impact of sustainable agriculture and low-impact practices that foster watershed health, and supports the Great Food Transformation (to a plant-based diet) in this decade.
Keep on Keeping On!
“Work together, Keep on Keeping On, try and retry and carry it on!” says Cahalan, who imagines Greenbelt as a community creating a beautiful quilt from the pieces each works on. “Greenbelt has a special history, both of a utopian co-op community and as a white-only community of the 1930s to 1950s, representing legalized white supremacy segregation,” says Cahalan. It’s also a city with a “long tradition of trying to overcome these things,” she notes. “My advice is to keep on struggling to become an inclusive community and a community that helps rather than hinders [with] the climate and environmental crisis. Together, we can Carry It On, building on work done by those before us and if we can’t go on any longer, we can take the hand of our strong sisters and brothers ready to lead and help us!”
Nominations Due
As Cahalan notes, there are many Greenbelters who volunteer and should be recognized. If a person you wanted was nominated and not yet selected, just keep trying. Sometimes, one is not selected on the first or third nomination. Nominations are due by Monday, July 31. Get your nominations in and ask others who support your nominee to send in a nomination form or letter of support to outstandingcitizengb@gmail.com. See nomination form on page 9.