April 25th is the one month anniversary of Solidarity at Six, the Geneva community’s daily expression of appreciation for essential workers. Every day during the past month, people have been going to their porches and windows to make music or clang pots and pans for five minutes at 6:00 pm as a way of saying thank you to the nurses, doctors, cleaners, gas station workers, farm workers, drivers, restaurant and bar workers, grocery and pharmacy workers, and everyone else who is serving the community during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Solidarity at Six was inspired by similar actions taking place all over the world as people are under orders to stay at home to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Geneva’s community action has inspired similar ones throughout the Finger Lakes, with new ones popping up across the lake, in Newark, and in Ithaca.
Churches have joined in by ringing their bells. Musical households perform mini concerts. Some community members drive around honking their horns. At Pultney Park music blasts from a loudspeaker for a five minute socially-distanced dance party. Dominga Gonzalez Tejada says “It is so great to have that time to thank so many heroes for all they do for us.”
Bart Darrow regularly appears outside Geneva General Hospital. He believes “that Solidarity at Six is important because it gives people an opportunity to thank nurses who are on the front lines, so to speak, of this help crisis, helping others at great risk to their own health.” When Solidarity at Six started, there were only a handful of COVID-19 cases in Ontario County. Now there are close to a hundred.
Six-year old Felicity Crow looks forward to Solidarity at Six every day. “We get to go outside, we get to see our neighbors, we get to make lots and lots of noise, we say thank you to Dr. Scott, Liza’s mom, Jason from the dive shop, and all nurses and doctors.”
Five minutes of music and noise might seem like a strange way to say thank you. But Gabriela Quintanilla, an organizer with Rural and Migrant Ministries, explains that it’s important as “an act of consciousness. Farmworkers in the fields of the Finger Lakes continue to work arduously for all of us to have food at our tables, and don’t have another option. My hope is for solidarity to continue for years to come, and we use it to demand that essential workers benefit from financial relief, better working conditions, and a living wage.”
The Geneva Women’s Assembly, organizers of Solidarity at Six, encourages everyone to make April 25th, the one month mark, louder and more enthusiastic than ever. “We need to stand up and thank the people who are showing up for us,” said Jodi Dean from the Geneva Women’s Assembly. “It also feels good to let off some steam every day,” added Penny Hankins, also from the Geneva Women’s Assembly.