Tue 9/22 @ 7PM
The Salem Witch Trials were a dark time in American history when hatred and fear of women ended up having lethal consequences and causing the deaths of innocent women who didn’t adhere to conventional standards of the time (1692).
Local author Donna M. Shimko, who is also a witch and an activist, particular on behalf of reproductive rights, visited Salem, Massachusetts in 2024, to study the history of this tragic time.
“I was deeply moved by the Memorial Ledges, a solemn and stark tribute to each person who was unjustly executed in the shameful season of 1692,” she says. “I saw myself in the places of the victims, deeply moved by their sparse and painful chronicles. I wrote my Salem Victims Tribute ’zine to give a voice to each of those persecuted people — ordinary citizens who were silenced or deleted by the oppressors then in charge of Salem.”
“None of the people accused, tried, imprisoned, murdered and otherwise persecuted at Salem were witches,” she adds.
Learn more when Shimko presents a program about the Salem Witch Trails at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Old Brooklyn. There will also be a candle ceremony honoring the more than two dozen people who were persecuted in Salem, with 25 dying. “The ceremony will also pay tribute to all those — past and present — who suffer persecution unjustly,” says Shimko. There is no shortage of such victims today!
Admission is $15; go HERE to register. All proceeds from the event and sale of the zine will go to Cleveland’s reproductive care clinic Preterm. You can donate to Preterm HERE.