This week’s emphasis on vision and purpose (see the Combahee Survival activity here: http://combaheesurvival.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/1-vision-and-purpose/) has me very inspired.   After some crucial and helpful conversations with participants in the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind process and some wisdom from elders who are part of the MobileHomecoming Project (especially Barbara Smith, Imani Rashid, Nadya Lawson and Cessie Alfonso) I am excited to share a vision for Eternal Summer in 2011 that will celebrate and amplify the way that BLACK FEMINISM LIVES in our community as an intention and as a catalyst for us to honor our interdependence.

As many of you already know, the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind happens locally and portably through in person gatherings in Durham, North Carolina, workshops around the countries and internet engagement around the world.   Those levels of participation have been very symbiotic or helpful to each other.   All the different people who have supported the project and interact with the educational materials in different ways have been spreading the good news (that BLACK FEMINISM LIVES!) fortifying their own revolutionary spirits, and creating inspiration in the different and overlapping communities that they love.   The work that happens at the Inspiration Station in Durham gets uploaded as Inspiration to people elsewhere.  Folks as far as Berlin make donations to receive publications and help pay the energy bill at the Inspiration Station.  And this is only one energy cycle.  More importantly everyone is participating in an energy field where we get more and more excited and inspired, more grassroots, low-overhead projects are popping off in Durham, queer Yoga, free healing clinics, community supported food justice sources and every day I am inspired by the initiatives that women of color are creating online (the Revolutionary Petunias Reading Group, the Crunk Feminist Collective, the Divine Survivors free online reiki clinic) and in person gatherings where folks draw on creative genius from within their communities and the communities they politically align with are sprouting up too as organizations like the Detroit Summer mural tour, the amazing Pachamama Skillshare and more sustainable beautiful spiritual, ritualized, intellectual and politicized initiatives to align our movements with the transformative messages of the universe.   Eternal Summer is part of this energetic field and shift, all of this is interconnected and interdependent.  We are benefiting from a shared ecology where inspiration, as a process, is circulating. I love it.

There have also been some lessons learned in terms of intentionality this past year that have clarified what it takes to continue abundantly participating in the flow.  One major lesson was that while it is important to document and share the brilliance and inspiration that happens here in Durham with our wider community, and our local community who just didn’t have time to stop by….it does not work to facilitate the same curriculum simultaneously in person and online.  There are major benefits to letting the very jazz influenced, improvisatory and spiritually transformative work we do in person inform the development of shareable curriculum.  Doing it at the same time seems scattered and rushes both processes.  So in the name of INTENTIONALITY and to support the continued interdependence between the local and planetary impact of Eternal Summer it has been important to be very PRESENT to the local programming and the amazing energy that people bring as a major life source that everyone benefits from more when there is less pressure to produce a “product” for wider consumption immediately.  In other words the clarity is that keeping the in person project somewhat blurry is good! Look at these beautiful blurry people.

Similarly the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind ecology acknowledges that while Black Feminism centers the role of black women and black queer folks in transforming the world, the transformation that we are participating and the critiques and practices created in that process are necessary for all who would live holistically in a loving world.  This is why the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind has and will continue to create spaces specifically inspired by and focused on the brilliance of black women and black queer people that are open as a space of study and worship for everyone who is ready to be inspired and transformed.   I am especially excited about the merging of two favorite activities…the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist mind monthly potlucks and the Black Girls Rock series.  In the first six months of the new year every monthly potluck will be a listening party and discussion about the brilliance of artists from Abbey Lincoln to Lauryn Hill.    Also as a contination of the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School there will be biweekly poetic activities specifically for survivors of child abuse and parents intending to break cycles of violence in their families.  The work of Nadya Lawson with Holding Our Own an initiative that is intentionally 60 percent women of color and 60 percent queer reflects my vision for diverse participation in the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

In addition to these ongoing programs that acknowledge the pricelessness of a Black Feminist approach for all people, there will be at least two programs that honor the intentionality and value of space that is more specifically and intentionally aligned.   Based on the belief and the historical reality that spaces where black women and gender-defiant  folks engage each other deeply and specifically open a space for radical healing and invite a powerful spirit of transformation into our communities.  The historical example of the Black Feminist Retreats, which we learned more about last week from Barbara Smith and Cessie Alfonso and the contemporary brilliance of the Gumbo Yaya 12 week session on Sistering, Mothering and Daughtering here in Durham are more than proof of the value of intentional loving spaces for Black women as a gift for our whole communities.   In that spirit I am excited to announce, far in advance  Indigo Days a week of healing, building and visioning for black women (trans and cis) and genderqueer black healers to share their magic and affirm each other which will take place May 20-26th here in Durham.   All of our diverse allies here in Durham are exuberantly invited to offer food, childcare and housing to make this event happen!

Another specific priority of Black feminism historically and need for our communities in the contemporary moment is space for diverse women and genderqueer people of color to build relationships with each other across shared oppression and important differences.  This was the energy behind last year’s Love Harder session and is part of the reason that this January’s MotherOurselves Bootcamp (January 7-9), based on Audre Lorde’s theory of learning to mother ourselves by addressing internalized oppression as it impacts our own spiritual expression and our relationships to other oppressed people, will be specifically for women (trans and cis) and genderqueer people of color.  Again we will need and want the support of our diverse community in making sure we can have accessible space, food, childcare and housing so that all the women and genderqueer people of color who want to participate will be able to feel fully supported to attend.

And of course you are ALWAYS ALWAYS welcome to donate towards these experiences being free and freedom-producing for everyone!

Donate one time:

or become an Eternal Summerian by donating monthly!

I am so excited about the coming year and the ongoing ETERNAL energy of transformation that we get to participate in together in this little piece of the world we want to see.

Infinite love and inspiration,

Lex

p.s. so this is my clarified vision…what’s yours?  Participate in the activity here: http://combaheesurvival.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/1-vision-and-purpose/

A visioning page for organizations, crews and projects.   Can your group answer these questions?
In 1977 the Combahee River Collective said “The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrate systems of analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.”

How would you answer these questions about a project or group that you are involved in?

“The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be….”

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

“and (we) see as our particular task….”

_____________________________________________

____________________________________________________

For example:

Julia Wallace,  founding director of Queer Renaissance responds this way:

“The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be….

Queer Renaissance works to end poverty and oppression within the local communities it inhabits through alternative & cooperative economics; education; and multimedia & new media technology.

Queer Renaissance creates media and local social networks that galvanize a progressive community to create change. There are four divisions of QRR that work to this end – Media Arts & Entertainment, News & Education, Community & Event Promotion, and the Marketplace. QRR seeks to awaken an appreciation for arts & artists, activists & educators, entrepreneurs & revolutionaries, meaning & media-makers by supporting  existing and creating physical and virtual communities.

It’s really all in the name.

When I use the term Queer I am speaking not only of people who identify as Transgender, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Gender Queer, Same or Both Gender Loving, MSM (Men who have Sex with Men), etc. but also to all people for whom the rigid binary gender and sexuality constructs are not life giving.

When I use the term Renaissance I am talking about a myriad of ways that I envision the reconnection of people to themselves and the gifts of life, love, and creation that are seemingly stripped at birth by cultural norms, gifts that I see being recovered. This return includes but is not limited to:

1. The revival of sexuality that is non-normative and/or fluid; revived for the full expression and exploration of a responsible and life giving boundless human sexuality.

2. The reawakening of the ability to and reality that people exist in all kinds of romantic and familial relationships from monogamous to polyamorous, from co-parenting to surrogate family creations, from single individuals to serial monogamists; and so on.

3. The resurrection of the fact that people are born with a range of genitalia, physiology, chromosomes, biology, spirits, body parts, and abilities. We want to affirm that all bodies are right, good, and normal. We want to assert that all bodies should be appreciated and allowed to participate and flourish in freedom love and live responsibly in the world.

Queer Renaissance seeks to recognize & revitalize these realities in our society, local communities, and artistic & cultural products through the creation and sharing of products, services, media and information.

To watch a video of Julia Wallace explaining the HotSpot technology that she is developing for Queer Renaissance see below!

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How would you describe the vision and purpose of your group!?

Send us your visions at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com, or leave a comment here!

finding the truth is a poetic act of faith

An old espionage trick was taking a message and hiding it in another message and using a special decoder to figure out the secret message. Cut out the shape below and place it on the paragraph above. We believe that finding the poetry, the queer push of words towards a vision of change hidden in the dominant narrative is a radical act.  Find the hidden line from the Combahee river collective.  (Or scroll down and cheat.)

Use this decoder (or create your own) to create your own secret message of hope and transformation. Where would you use spy poetry as a tool for social justice?

Remember how we used to ride bikes everywhere? I find myself reflecting on our youth these days.  Dreaming about the origins of that dinosaur game we used to play because in the way my memories replay in mind i think you weren’t really into historical stuff. That may not have been the reality. But i’ve been thinking of going back home to where those afro-american folks used to live across the street from us. Remember how they had women’s clubs meetings and they’d give us left over sandwiches? What continuous good times then. Who knew that life and death would come to mark our future so. We’ve seen a struggle or two right? For instance how we were worried about the survival of our garden that summer of the drought? And what about that harsh winter and our liberation that spring when the skies opened up.

(use your highlighter)

Remember how we used to ride bikes everywhere? I find myself reflecting on our youth these days.  Dreaming about the origins of that dinosaur game we used to play because in the way my memories replay in mind i think you weren’t really into historical stuff. That may not have been the reality. But i’ve been thinking of going back home to where those afro-american folks used to live across the street from us. Remember how they had women’s clubs meetings and they’d give us left over sandwiches? What continuous good times then. Who knew that life and death would come to mark our future so. We’ve seen a struggle or two right? For instance how we were worried about the survival of our garden that summer of the drought? And what about that harsh winter and our liberation that spring when the skies opened up.

highlight again below:

“We find

our origins

in the historical

reality

of Afro-American

women’s continuous

life-and-death

struggle

for survival

and liberation.”

Get the idea? Now make your own spy poetry!  Can you make a narrative the holds the words of the Combahee River Collective or some other words that you cherish deep on it’s inside?  Use it as an activity in your community, classroom or home…and let us know how it goes!

brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

slips in meaning

Always. Like the word between love and your name in a love letter. Always. Like the pastel plastic promise that your period can become cute. Always. Like an ahistorical historicization. Like the production of eternity without witnesses. Like a recurring nightmare of hoping you exist.

The word “always” can be used to create a history where there was nothing but disbelief. It can also be used to make it seem like something is natural, just because it happens to have been going on for a long time. The Combahee River Collective Statement uses the word “always” to establish a tradition of black feminism that predates the work of the women in the collective, AND some folks have found fault with these statements about what black women have “always” been doing, because it seems to suggest that there is some sort of natural standard for black women’s behavior.

How do you (want to) use the word “always” in your movement work?
Use the space below to make 5 sentences that use the word “always” (or don’t) to describe the tradition and vision of your work as honestly as you can. You may notice that the word “always” has different meaning every time.

see http://thatlittleblackbook.blogspot.com/2006/07/always-queerness-of-reproductive-frame.html

for more!

A Reflection from Noah Blose:

Pauli Murray is from Durham North Carolina

Michelle L. told me that Pauli Murray was trans.  S/he was a founder of
the National Organization for Women.  How do we know when to name/claim
our own, and why do we or don’t we do it?  How and why do we rewrite
histories to see ourselves there?

Download this activity as a (double-sided) worksheet here!

What does this look like?  Here’s what we think:

Here is an example from Lenelle Moise:

Here is a collage by Lex

Send us your visions and illustrations as .jpgs at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com.

Who is (not) at the table?

“Both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation.”

The Combahee River Collective made space for black feminists to describe the ways their work in a larger movement was hidden and disrespected. What are some of the things that “obscure” (literally darken) or hide the labor of certain groups within our contemporary movements for social justice and transformation?

For example:

Sister Warrior Fabiola Sandoval who works with LA INCITE among other radical collaborations says:

Who is missing from many of the social justice organizing tables in the communities I belong in:
Older monolingual immigrant women, young mothers, young women of color from local high schools, and young children. For the most part it is those of us that are very well versed in social justice circles and predominantly college educated are the actively present attempting to make changes, dialogue, and in community heal when we do gather. Then, those of us that do what we do for the love of change and healing and are privileged to be equipped with the language navigating these communities pretty comfortably are doing so tired from over extending ourselves collaborating in many other projects. And I wonder and ask myself how can we bring light these obscure communities we don’t reach thriving from our own obscure exhaustion?

Silent collaborations:
At the SisterFire L.A. event Amaya and I sat in the crowd observing the artists at Mount St. Mary’s College, my alma mater. A Catholic women’s college that did not allow for queer groups to form and also didn’t dispense birth control information when I was student over five years ago. It was powerful and reaffirming to be among many queer women of color artists gulping the fierceness surrounding our sexuality and autonomy at my traditional alma mater, with Amaya by my side.   Filmmakers, poets, spoken word artists, comedians and singers beheld that tiny auditorium.

Around that corner is my day job and many immigrant women that live in the Figueroa Corridor community that could never even make the time to gather around the arts in the way I was.  Yet, in my bag were my own writings that are mostly for my own sanity and not to showcase to the world, not the face-to-face world at least.  The few writings that have had the privilege to be brought to life in writing.  Most words ferment getting stuck in my mind and tongue never making life because of insecurity, day-to-day full-time work, motherhood, and activism.

As I swallowed the energy around me, Amaya decided to take off her overall dress and remain with her undertights and blouse walking around even more confidently.  She brought smiles to many faces around us. Her fearlessness juxtaposed by my inhibitions with my own words was humbling. A couple women around me shared their admiration for Amaya’s “outrageous” prancing in undertights. The youngest person in that room did a grandiose thing, that only a couple of us captured. Unintentional inquisitiveness sparked a giggle, a lesson for me, and admiration. In this very safe and healing circle, beauty is embedded in each corner, child, and surrounding communities. We have to look with such keeness to capture these obscurities.

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Noemi Martinez founder of Hermana Resist offers the following guidelines for creating inclusive community:

Noemi Martinez is a writer, and organizer and a single mom.

How to Build a Community

that involves single parents, or steps to take so that I won’t be part of your community

first, what is your definition of a community?

• realize that parents are people. Realize that parents are people. Realize that parents are the same people you knew before.
• realize that parents can be activists, but they are also parents. They have different things on their mind. Single parents often have things such as food, rent, money, health on their mind. Unlike the single person, they are usually thinking of their child(ren) when they think about these things. Sometimes a single parent (take me for example) cannot concentrate on the latest protest, though important as it may be, because I may be thinking of what will my next job be, and the addition of subtraction of money in my head.
• to build a community, parents and children should be welcome and not feel they can’t attend a meeting/event because of their baby(ies).

• don’t roll your eyes when someone brings up childcare.
• realize the different situations of a single parent and a family that has 2 parents. If you don’t realize the difference, start asking questions.
• since when does your community involvement only concern the childless, or those that can leave their kids with someone else, the other parent, a spouse/ or friend. Yes, in theory, the children can be left with babysitters. Who need to be paid.
• ever think why parents stop being involved in community events and meetings?
• if single parents don’t feel you or the community cares about what it means to be a parent, a single parent, they won’t seek you out for help. This is not community. This is not a welcomed community.
• parenting and being a role model to kids in your community is important because they will be the activists of tomorrow.
• ask yourself why access to cultural events, planning and meetings for single parents is not important enough for you to have thought of before.
• why is motherhood and heavens forbid, single parenthood a step back in the eyes of activists and feminists? If the choice to terminate a pregnancy is radical, why isn’t the choice in being a mother radical?
• why don’t single parents attend your conferences, trainings, meetings, skill shares? Do you care that single parents don’t attend your events? Are you really thankful that snotty, bratty kids are not around to ruin your Utopian experience?
• don’t you want the next generation to care about the same things you care about? When will this happen?
• radical SINGLE parenting, heck, single parenting is so so fucking DIFFERENT than a family with 2 parents. SO SO DIFFERENT.
  
• racism almost always comes into play for single mothers of color.
  
• what new skills and influences will single parents give their children if the community doesn’t think it’s important for them to be involved? Luckily for me, I am awesome in all respects and will/am teaching my kids all about alternative media; non gendered play; violence in cartoons; baking vegan goodies; single mom awesomeness who uses a hammer are always the hero; that we will survive; writing; sewing; crafts… and so forth.

These questions and concerns, I believe, will never be resolved. But these are some of the reasons the single parents in your communities might not be receptive to your call for actions. Retreat, re-access, prioritize is the common measures taken by single parents when they see the resistance to others caring about their concerns.
Noemi Martinez
http://www.hermanaresist.com

Stacey Milbern is a poet and a disability rights organizer.

Stacey Milbern responded to this prompt with an open letter:

Hey sister,

Thank you for your letter. I am in constant amazement of how every word that drips from your pen is poetically prophetic and so real to your experience… but you already knew I was a fangirl, right? : )

Dancing is a central part of how you see the world and interact with your body. Since I didn’t think I interacted with my body in the way that you do with yours, I was really curious to how movement/dance related to your experience as a disabled queer woman of color, let alone all the other stories, identities, communities that shape you…like how did you take something we are told everyday is ugly and shameful and reclaim it as yours, let alone get in a place where you can be so unabashedly beautiful?

It has been quite an experience to learn to love my body in a way that’s not just political, but on the personal level, too. It’s so hard talking about this because I feel like mainstream media has branded any kind of conversation like this to be about white teenage girls’ self-esteem…it sucks out experiences of colonization and oppression, it turns conversations about community liberation into ones about just liking yourself, and completely ignores their [dominant culture media] role in all this. Talking about bodies also makes me angry, because like you said, there are whole disciplines, campaigns and movements that are supposed to be about us but then completely miss how our bodies are central to our experiences. If they only knew how much my body plays a role in the way I navigate the world, in my activism, in my love…but maybe they never can? The fact that they can even overlook or completely miss something so powerful as the body is evidence of how our movements and our studies mirror mainstream society and not the experiences of people living on/at the intersections of complex identities and experiences with various overlapping, intersecting –isms?

Part of me is glad though. Maybe this is meant for only us to know. Maybe this is too powerful for them. Maybe it would lose its value if everyone knew it, if dominant culture or assimilationist social movements had the opportunity to co-opt and appropriate it. Right now the way we interact with our bodies is a secret to be shared in letters, between the flexes of arms, legs, and spins in your dances, and in deep connection to the foremothers. What do you think?

Anyways. I love you so much. So thankful to be connected to you.

With you always.

Stacey Milbern

So how do we make sure our events, meetings, gatherings are accessible to everyone we are accountable to?  Click here to see an ongoing list of strategies for accessibility.

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What about you? Who is missing from the table you are dismantling?

What are some of the forces within and outside of our movements that make this happen?

From www.iwannalive.wordpress.com

What do we think about these concepts of craziness and consciousness in our movements?  Do we move from craziness to consciousness?  Does our consciousness lead us to to new levels of crazy? Is the point of our organizing to feel un-crazy?  Who says what crazy means anyway?  How did you feel before gaining some of the tools and words that we use as organizers?  How do you feel inside your movement(s)?  What are some of the political analyses and practices that you use to struggle against oppression and create clarity in your organizing?

Check out I Wanna Live the radical self-care site created by women of color in Washington DC (including the brilliant Kismet who commented below)!  I wanna live features visual meditations on what self-care means for women of color, sparked by a redefined relationship to anger members of INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence in DC created during the Summer of Our Lorde.   Reflect on the image above in honor of the young, gifted, queer and black Lorraine Hansberry.

Add your comment here or send us a response at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

What draws your group together? OR What draws you to to the people you organize with?
What are some of the main issues and audiences you address yourselves to?  Use the space below to start a love letter to the movement or movements you are committed to building.  Be sure to let us know who your letter is addressed to!!!

For example queer black New Jersey based scholar, educator and community organizer Darnell Moore says:

to my beloved community of radical radicals: [those who have been colored by race, kept bound by sex/gender normativity, trapped in systems of economic inequality, rendered alien]:

i scribble my judgments/my feelings/my love/my rage/my life: on paper.

i locate my “self” in the dis-located spaces that seek to confine me: on paper

i refuse to be bound, i’m a refugee on a journey constantly scuffling with violent metonyms (it’s hard being a “faggot”) and authoritarian ideals: on paper

if i don’t, then those behind me won’t feel the residual heat of my incensed voice: on paper.

so i write.

i write to produce a perpetual fire that will set ablaze new understandings.

my desire: to watch racist/sexist/classist/ethno-centrist/neo-imperialist/capitalist ideologies and apparatuses go up in flames as if they were hit by a smart bomb, a moronic product of the military state’s own design

i write words that are arbiters and catalysts; they are birthed to produce action, resistance and confrontation.

they are attentively designed to raze structures of power that consign hes, shes, hirs and zhes to marginalized interstices.

so, i write

to demolish inequities and disharmony.

i write to hearten and galvanize a community on the verge of revolution.

i chose not to write for you as if I have perfected the art of masculinist story telling (and I don’t want to), so i write in solidarity with you.

yet, i chose to not only write with you, but also:

to stand beside you…

to be your co-conspirator in the struggle for justice…

to carry you when your have been weakened by rhetoric, invectives and state-sanctioned regulations…

and if your blood is spilled by war/abuse,

body destroyed by poverty/neglect

or if your voice is silent because of fear/laws then i will write ever the more.

i will stand until my black knees begin to weaken,

fight injustice, beside you, until humanity’s sin is banished to the background of a new global agenda

and i will be: existing in unity so that we may disrupt “power.”

Post your letters as comments here or send them to us at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com!

by Jerry Currier

“Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy.”
Complete the poem:

above

sprang             shared

liberation

need

Post your poems below or email us at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

For example:   Alexis Charles who says she usually does NOT write poetry contributed this beautiful elaboration:

1. Not from ABOVE

But from within.

You gave life to words.

That gave me life.

Words that

SPRANG  from our  SHARED oppressions, fears, dreams and joys.

Calling for our LIBERATION.

Illuminating our NEED.

2. When I had lost faith in everything ABOVE.
What SPRANG from the depths of your hearts.
Let me know my pain was SHARED.
The not so quiet call for LIBERATION
Those words
“black women are inherently valuable”
Held me softly, tenderly, gently,
Quieted the dull aching NEED
Wrapped me in love and solidarity

3.

we
ABOVE
Where do   exist?
below
I
Your words

S
P
R
A
iNto motion a well-spring of truth, knowledge and love gushing from the valleys of your thoughts,
G through the canyons of your silences, over the cliffs of your screams.

I SHARED my fears and dreams with you and I realized I’m not the only one

MyLIfeisnotanisolatedabBERATION

In moments of NEED you
answer.’

Cynthia bringing the light!

Cynthia Oka, radical mama and feminist indigenous rights organizer in Vancouver wrote:

Write a poem for someone you love using at least 4 of the words in the above passage.

Post your poems as comments below or email us at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com!

For example radical anti-racist educator Tema Okun wrote the following poem for her students:

Tema Okun

-Tema Okun November 2008

Aiden Riley Graham

And radical archivist and trans-activist Aiden Riley Graham wrote this amazing poem for his comrade Noah Blose:

Why we’re so important to me…

When I feel unseen by the rest of the world, you see me

A mirror to find myself in

Walks toward liberation found in our talks

Simple-complex conversations

Grounding me in love and compassion,

Shaking me from everyday painful reactions

Learning to love myself, through loving you

Replacing individual failed expectations

With dreams of collective possibility,

Painful shared rememberings

Bring our communal struggle into relief

Standing “Eye to Eye” in the spirit of Audre

We’re everything we need to be

The only ones

And only one of many

A transformative justice we forge

Daily, weekly, monthly

They’re just phone conversations

And oh so much more

- Aiden Graham to Noah Blose