Connie Hogarth — “The Arc of Justice”

I first met Connie Hogarth on a warm summer day in 2017 at her home in Beacon, and she told me she was finally ready to reflect back on the entirety of her life. We sat at her table looking out over the Hudson River week after week, and as she shared her memories, she also explored her deep and complex feelings about them—how she felt at the time and what they meant to her in the present. I cannot express how intimate this was, being with her as she contemplated the whole of her existence. We became good friends.

A courageous and loving person with a lifelong commitment to justice, Connie passed on February 11, 2022. As her “New York Times” obituary put it, she was a “relentless social activist,” arrested more than 20 times for local and national protests. Equal to her fire and outrage was her innate capacity for joy and delight, along with a whole-hearted love of people. A rare combination, indeed.

Connie’s song was part of the “Carrying the Torch: Songs and Stories of Remarkable Women” concert, celebrating the lives of eight women in New York’s Hudson Valley.

  • © Kelleigh McKenzie with Connie Hogarth

    Memories of Brighton Beach
    Roll in like the tide
    The fair-haired daughter and union father
    On the picket line
    Wearing grandma's schmata rags
    Moving year after year
    Watching as my feisty mama
    Made friends with the ones others feared

    Take the chances, loss will bring new pathways
    Love the dance and all the people
    And the arc of justice carries on

    Launching out on every wave
    A strong, curious heart
    Deciphering the human body
    Through medicine and art
    See the blacklist bruise and scar
    The Rosenbergs would die
    Understand my purpose
    Put my body on the line

    Take the chances, loss will bring new pathways
    Love the dance and all the people
    And the arc of justice carries on

    End the nightmare of a nuclear winter
    —We the women, women strike for peace
    Stand together, black, white, brown and red and yellow
    —In Jesse's rainbow, fight for equality
    I'm not free while any woman is unfree
    —With choice and privacy we can be free

    Making trouble in Pleasantville
    Porch full of kids painting signs
    Protests, arrests, friendships and fests
    Singing cantatas till they're mine
    Living full for 20 years
    My boys into men have grown
    The current pulls my stormy husband
    And I sail out on my own

    Take the chances, loss will bring new pathways
    Love the dance and all the people
    And the arc of justice carries on

    End the brutal enslavement of apartheid
    —With Mamazane and Numazizi, liberate
    Leonard Peltier must not die in prison
    —Defy the FBI and demonstrate
    Stop training the colonial death squads
    —In coalition, watch the SOA
    Don't dehumanize and poison farm workers
    —With Dolores boycott and make them pay
    Protect the water, we'll find a way
    —Me and Pete and Toshi, find a way

    Floating in the bay in Wellfleet
    My love finally found
    We never failed each other
    To the struggle we were bound
    Bittersweet salt kisses
    In my arms your dying breath
    We climbed the fence together
    In the Hudson together we'll rest

    Take the chances, loss will bring new pathways
    Love the dance and all the people
    And the arc of justice carries me on
    In this one infinite moment we belong