Community Activist with a Keen Instinct for Fairness

For Beth Ares it was a song that got her started

By John Addyman

Beth Ares of Sodus is a community activist with a keen instinct for fairness in how people deal with farm workers and migrants.

Do you remember the moment when a word, a memory or a deed changed the direction of your life?

Gave you hesitation?

Pushed you into action?

Made you assess your values?

For Beth Ares, it was a song.

“When I was a kid, I heard Woody Guthrie’s song ‘Deportee,’” she said. “I thought, ‘Wow!’ What I got from the song was that these people did all this heavy-labor farm work and when we were done with them, out they went. They had to spend all their money to get here and end up with nothing and we rely on them so much. The song was a story. People died in a plane crash. And all they would call them is ‘deportee.’ We didn’t even give them names. As a kid, that bothered me. It was always in the back of my mind.”

She heard that song in the ‘60s…and it still affects her.

Ares, 73, lives in Sodus, having moved to the wilds of Wayne County from urban living in Rochester and Albany.

She is a volunteer community liaison for Rural & Migrant Ministry for Western New York (RMM), covering an area from Buffalo to Syracuse.

She has grown to wear many hats, nurturing 22 programs centered at the 100-plus-year-old, three-building Grace Episcopal Church Complex in Lyons. She is a committee member, the treasurer and property overseer at Grace Committee, which manages the site. She supports the Youth to Jesus Bible study group, the Geneva Women’s Assembly Clothing Project, the Justice Organization for Youth (JOY), a Wednesday free sandwich program and many other community-outreach activities.

For the Rural & Migrant Ministry she is a key volunteer.

Rev. Richard Witt, the state’s executive director for RMM, remembers how Ares worked her way into indispensabilty.

“I first met Beth when she volunteered for helping to drive our young people to their programs,” he said. “It takes about an hour and a half to pick them all up in rural Wayne County and parts of Seneca and Cayuga counties. Beth volunteered to do some driving because it was so hard to get the young people here because there’s no public transportation.

“From Beth volunteering to do that, Beth volunteered to help with some administrative things, then Beth volunteered to help with some of the management of the facilities here, then Beth volunteered to help some of the women get transportation, then she volunteered to drive some of the immigrants to Buffalo for immigration court. Every time we turned around Beth was volunteering for something and every time we turned around here at the Lyons center she was fixing a window or doing some kind of repair.

“We finally felt guilty of taking so much advantage of Beth that we hired her for two hours a week, even though she was spending 15, 20-plus hours. Then she had this habit of not turning in her time sheets.”

Ares has a gift for finding an unmet need and meeting it and for deciding when something is unfair and acting to change the situation.

She’s an activist. A community pusher who rises to injustice. A friend of the friendless. She’s organized, experienced, relentless and loving.

Stand up and take action
Changing a light bulb in the ceiling turned out to be a huge project for Beth Ares and another volunteer.

Her careers began at Lawyers’ Co-Op in Rochester, where she was a proofreader.

“That’s kind of where I got my activism from because when the Equal Rights Amendment passed, we were reading the law and we were reading the court cases and the judges’ decisions. We women in the proof room were saying, ‘Wait, that’s what our company does: We have different rules for men and women, we have different pay scales for men and women, we have different job titles, jobs for men and women. This is illegal and people are winning court cases.’ I was a plaintiff — that was back in the 1970s. That’s when I learned I could stand up and take action and fight back.”

Ares went from there to Strong Hospital, where she was a dietetics clerk and ward secretary. She joined the union and became a staff member in it.

“At Lawyers Co-Op and at entry-level jobs is where I experienced a lot of sexual harassment before it had a name,” she said. “At Strong I found out that when I was in a union job there were rules and protections and somebody to stand up for you.”

That song “Deportee” comes back to her.

“I never forgot about those farm workers,” she said.

She became an investigator for the state Department of Labor and moved to Albany.

“I visited many farms, looking for compliance with farm labor laws and I visited many farm labor camps and interviewed many farm workers,” she remembered. “I wasn’t happy with what I was seeing and experiencing.”

She worked there for 21 years, then retired.

With retirement came the fulfillment of her husband’s dream — to have a house in the country where he could have a horse and other animals. The couple found just what they were looking for in Sodus. They had left the urban environments of Rochester and Albany and found paradise in Wayne County. She was now a country girl with time on her hands.

Ares attended a meeting of the Wayne Action for Racial Equality group. She found other people extremely interested in human rights at her First Universalist Church in Rochester and in RMM, where she got started by driving kids to meetings and activities in Lyons.

Rural & Migrant Ministry’s Justice Organization for Youth is particularly close to Ares’ heart.

“Most of the JOY members are born-in-the-US children of farm workers,” she said. “Most have parents from Mexico and Central America. But the program is not limited to Hispanics. Many of the kids are from Sodus, Williamson and other school districts. My role with JOY is often driving kids and coming up with ideas.”

She said JOY presses leadership development with the kids.

“A couple of years ago when I realized the Sodus School Board was considering banning certain books, I spoke with the RMM director who runs the JOY program and JOY members came to the school board meeting and for the first time these kids spoke to the school board and learned through this that there are ways to speak out in the community and it can be done. People will listen. They since have shown up at other community events. I love working with young people,” she said.

Rev. Witt expanded on that thought.

“There’s something that is just an inherent part of Beth that’s about serving others and welcoming those who are easily marginalized. It’s in her DNA,” said Rev. Witt. “She thinks: ‘Somebody is in need, you respond. Somebody’s being treated unfairly; you stand with them and speak up.’ There are a lot of wonderful volunteers who give of their time and talents in some charitable efforts or social service efforts. Beth does that, but she also adds the components of honoring the humanity of the others by seeking a relationship with them. She doesn’t just drive the young people from their home to the program, she gets to know them and she thinks of opportunities for them. For instance, ‘There’s a scholarship you might want to take advantage of, or there’s a mentor you might want to meet.’ Beth is taking those extra steps.

“Beth can also get really upset if she thinks members of this community are being unfairly treated. Next thing you know she wants to put together a sign that says ‘We welcome farm workers’ or ‘It’s Important to Love Your Neighbor,’ or she’ll be at the board of education meeting or she’ll be at the courthouse. Beth really follows a situation to try to find a permanent solution rather than just a Band-Aid solution.”

The next generation
The Guest bedroom is ready in the rectory building on the Grace Episcopal Church Complex in Lyons. It has been used for ministers and teachers who come to deliver programs, and has housed families for short periods while their living arrangements stabilize.

As with any volunteer organization, success depends on the number, quality and enthusiasm of the people who step forward to help. And like many volunteer organizations today, the average age of the folks filling the ranks is skewed toward those who have seen a good number of winters.

But Ares is hopeful. Young, fresh-faced volunteers from Hobart & William Smith Colleges have shown up in surprising numbers. That’s one sign. She hopes another will appear.

“We retirees are part of the baby boomers. There are tons and tons and tons of people my age with a social conscience from the Vietnam War era and from the beginning of Earth Day, which frankly we blew: we were there for the first Earth Day and look what our generation has done to the earth since,” she said. “I do not despair that there aren’t more young people because they’re working full time, raising families; some are also doing adult education or stuff.”

On the other hand, she thinks that when people see what she does and how she does it — as busy as she is, “where it’s possible I’ll ask for help with a specific thing from a specific person.”

Many people will step forward and contribute something, if they’re asked.

She believes that fellow baby boomers still have the juice to help, if they’ll think about it.

Rev. Witt echoed a sentiment that many who do volunteer understand.

“I think Beth gets saddened that others don’t see what she sees, which is the benefits and opportunity of volunteering and being present. We truly believe that someone volunteering creates an opportunity for them to deepen and broaden their understanding and perspective about life in their community. It’s getting that foot in the door.

“Most people feel they have very busy schedules and very busy lives. I think volunteering can work for folks. We’re looking for someone who is open to change, open to relationships, open to learning from the people,” Witt said. “Part of our difficulty is that we’re working with a wide group of people who are often different from what many others might see…an immigrant, someone older or younger, someone who speaks Spanish, all those different things.

“The people RMM works with have some really wonderful wisdom and experiences about living life that I think are beneficial to others. Somebody who’s willing to be open to learning and connecting and somebody who’s hopeful that they can make a difference in our community, in our society…that’s who we’re looking for.”

Rural & Migrant Ministry serves so many needs of people who are mostly invisible in our communities, but play an important role in giving all of us the lives we lead.

RMM helps these people navigate the paths of hope, justice and empowerment.

And for Ares, the signs are so positive.

“Beth is amazing,” said Connie Valk, who is a member of the RMM regional council. “We have a two-week day camp for children of farmworkers on the campus each summer and she volunteers to help with that. She volunteers with the teen group JOY. They are amazing. They had a performance of ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ as a part of the Fringe Festival last year. In the spring she helps coordinate a volunteer spring clean-up day with Hobart William Smith college students.

“She also acts as a volunteer driver for farmworkers and kids. The farms are so spread out and farmworkers have a real need for transportation.”

That’s a lot.

“I am motivated to do this volunteer work because I can see that my efforts make a difference to others,” Ares said. “And I remain energized by the people around me who share our values and celebrate our successes, which could only have been achieved through group effort.”

Rev. Witt added: “I think Beth just oozes hopefulness. Deep down, she’s one of the most hopeful people you’ll run into. We have this beautiful old Episcopal Church we’re trying to convert and Beth is devoting all these hours to this process because we don’t have the resources. There she was this morning working with 30 Hobart and William Smith College students on the building. Beth is a very hopeful person.”