NH P.A.N.T.H.E.R.
Plymouth Area Network To Help End Racism
Who We Are
Plymouth Area Network To Help End Racism (NH PANTHER) is a small, volunteer-run, grassroots community organization. We are a collective of youth, professionals, educators, mentors, and friends standing up for the rights of all the disparaged and marginalized in our communities.
We formed in June of 2020, as a response to the murder of George Floyd and in tandem with the growing movement for social justice in the United States. Our founder, Benjamin Bacote, is a high school humanities teacher, father of three, and Black. He followed the lead of his then 13-year old son, heading to the town common to march, and answered the plea of one of his former students, a graduate who wants to ensure that the students in his wake are taught an updated curriculum.
Our mission
NH PANTHER's mission is to help end racism and systemic biases through community engagement, direct mutual aid, education and curriculum reform, youth empowerment programming, and the arts.
We stand peacefully within the Democratic principles and rights following the New England tradition of civil public discourse. We stand for representation, recognition, and education of all as we seek to correct historic and current inequities based on race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender, gender representation, ability, and age. These inequities exist systematically throughout our country and its institutions, and here, in New Hampshire. We stand with the Black Lives Matter movement sweeping our country. And, we will continue to stand until the promise of our founding words are not just memorized but also realized.
How We Do It
We are a platform and a community that seeks to showcase the peaceful youth voices of resistance. As they resist the silencing that occurs, we offer a community to counter being taken for granted, being ignored, or not being recognized as equal. We seek to show up for youth in solidarity. We seek to engage our community to reflect love and to show love by investing in the lives of the youth. Our focus is:
Youth-Centric — Equity in Education -- Civil Rights
Over the past two years, we have started to find our footing as an organization in a number of ways:
-We organized peaceful rallies, marches, and teach-ins.
-We supported the efforts of other regional groups, like the Youth Mental Health fund created by Black Lives Matter Seacoast.
-Ben spoke to crowds, had articles and op-eds published, was a guest on NHPR’s The Exchange, and NPR’s All Things Considered, and became a writer for the “3-minute Civics” column in the Concord Monitor and Stay Work Play’s “603 Life” Blog.
-We are collaborating with NH Harm Reduction Coalition and Reproductive Freedom Fund of NH to create a NH Community Resource Guide.
-NH PBS show Windows to the Wild chronicled our 2021 BEFSP fundraising initiative with Summits in Solidarity.
-We successfully gave two unrestricted community grants of $3,898 to two young people in 2021 through our Black Excellence Fund and Storytelling Project (BEFSP).
-We invested in a Screen-printing set-up and did a free, live printing event at Wrong Brain's 2021 Holiday Bizarre.
Follow our journey.
