“I saw the words ‘Lift Our Voices Together to Sing Against Hate’ and that’s what I believe. We return love for hate,” said Catherine Consiglieri, a Santa Clara resident since 1987.

Consiglieri was one of about 50 attendees at Santa Clara Central Park Library on Oct. 23, 4 p.m. – 5 p.m., for a community sing-along sponsored by the library for United Against Hate Week, founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2017.

“This lifts my spirit,” said Consiglieri, a San Francisco native who grew up in an Italian, Irish and German section of the city. “My people come from Genoa, Italy.”

“I believe I’m with sisters and brothers here, and it reinforces my belief that we’re all in this beautiful world together,” she said.

Consiglieri and her new community of brothers and sisters sang a selection of folk, peace and inspirational songs—from Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” and The Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends” to Joan Baez’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”

Consiglieri, who graduated from San Francisco State University in 1968, recalled singing some of the same songs in the summers of her college years while working as a camp counselor at Yosemite National Park.

“We’d sit around the campfire at night and sing those songs,” she said.

She would play the guitar.

“How could I work at Yosemite and not play the guitar?”

Santa Clara City Manager Jovan Grogan welcomed the community to the sing-along, which was organized by Youth Services Librarian Anne Lee and Youth Services Supervisor Rachel Schmidt.

“I’m so excited about this program,” said Schmidt. “We’re trying to do something that spreads the feeling of love, positivity, and hope.”

Lee recruited her friend Misato Weber as piano accompanist and introduced each song. Lee noted that the world still needs to hear the enduring messages of the songs selected, which date from 1900 through the 1970s.

“We get messages through music that we don’t get any other way,” said Lee. “I expect everyone to have fun and don’t worry if you sing off key!”

After the last song of the Voices United Against Hate sing-along, Consiglieri raised her hand with a question.

“Could we do this again? Maybe every quarter?” she asked Lee.

As the room emptied, Consiglieri and Lee chatted. They posed for a photo, holding up “Santa Clara Stands UNITED Against Hate” flyers.

The library also provided a handout of 21 concrete ways (in addition to signing together!) to build community, compiled by author, podcaster and Duke University professor Kate Bowler.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor is a column where we casually interview people we meet in Silicon Valley. The Won’t You Be My Neighbor column hopes to highlight what makes Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and the rest of the South Bay special — the people who live, work and play here.