Upstate Girls Rainbow Family Road Trip across USA

Summer is an essential and formative time for young people. A season when life-sustaining memories are made, limits and identity are tested. A family road trip with hours in the back seat of a car watching landscape whiz by and nothing to do but think, are where ideas beyond ourselves happen and a sense of belonging can enter our hearts. Summer is when we learn to be travelers among other humans and develop the capacity to become invested in ourselves and one another. A basic American troupe like the summer road trip is one of the things that many folks living in the USA took for granted before Covid Quarantine 2020.

Since 2004, The Upstate Girls Collaborative Documentary Project has been preserving personal stories of families from historically low wealth communities, to understand collective trauma as a barrier to social, cultural, and financial inclusion among our most vulnerable young people and their families. The social anxieties, the stress of grinding scarcity, fear, violence, freight or flight reflex, and the physical isolation of disadvantage make a simple, yet life-changing road trip almost impossible. THAT IS WHY WE ARE DOING IT!!!

As we continue to tell stories that look at the roots of social marginalization, it has become a moral imperative that we show POSSIBILITY. The road and expanse of our trip will be a visual inspiration for the opportunity we all must seize to open our hearts and share knowledge, experience, resources, magic and joy!! I know these kids have given me all of those and more!! This trip is not only ours but can be America’s rite of passage. What seemed like an impossible journey; from applying for ID cards to board the plane to Albuquerque New Mexico, tomorrow: July 8th, 2021, to getting proper suitcases and socks, not to mention, a driver, a film crew, a big school bus, food and lodging is becoming a reality. Six teens, a mom (Dana Marie), a grandma (that’s me!!) A wonderful driver who was sent from Heaven (and Indeed) and my rad road dog Rafael of Ny Times At Hungers Edge fame, will fly (many for the first time ever) to New Mexico where I bought our bus named The Silver Lining, We will meet Tim and the bus, and our 4 to 6 week journey will begin. I have been blessed by my editors at The NY Times Magazine with freelance work enough to purchase the Bus, Insurance, honorariums for the crew, and some gas money. Gas is expensive, but the social cost of not doing trips like these is infinite... So we are hoping you see our journey as an investment in our future and help us stay safe on the road.. one road emergency could wipe us out and we plan to camp as much as we can, however, the heat may be prohibitive in many places, so that will be a budget buster. Food can be a slippery slope and I have a dozen mouths to feed. We have a book to put together upon our return and if there were some funds after I pull the bus back into Troy I could eat while editing. Of course, folks find a way, I’ve used a credit card for plane fares etc. And borrowed what I didn’t have, so whatever you contribute it will go back into the payback column of this cause. I'm all in and the first 30k is on me. It’s got us this far. Thanks so much, we are bringing you with us as you follow our trip @alittlecreativeclass on Instagram… Love. Brenda K.