The Gathering

As a community journalist in Waterbury for 24 years I have covered dozens of small ethnic festivals in the neighborhoods around the city. I quickly realized that almost everyone at a particular festival was from the same ethnic background at the group staging the event. It was all Portuguese at one festival, and all Lebanese, Guyanese, Greek, Puerto Rican or Albanian at the next. No one was enjoying the cultures and traditions of their neighbors, and in a city of 100,000, that created a strong racial and ethnic divide. I came up with the idea to invite all the groups to come together at one place and time for one massive celebration of cultural diversity and the City of Waterbury liked the idea, and partnered with my small community newspaper, The Waterbury Observer, to stage the event. The slogan I came up with was, "We all came from somewhere, now it's time to come together." In four years the The Gathering has become the most culturally diverse festival in New England.