maia medicine
 
co-written by mai'a williams and alexis gumbs:

because we struggle to be free

because we have been here

because we still are here

because we struggle together

to be free

Because we are supposed to forget.  Because we see our faces reflected in the spilled blood on our hands.  Because have been standing here screaming.  Because we are supposed to consent.  Because our bodies are riddled with resistance.  Because our reaching can only asymptoptically approach accountability.  Because we are reaching anyway.

Because we are supposed to live in denial.  Because we were not supposed to survive.  Because we are not supposed to be aware, to be whole and human.  Because we are supposed to be destroyed by the violence or live in constant fear.  Because we are supposed to be afraid to speak about what we see, and have seen, and our ancestresses have seen.
Because we are not supposed to be (here).  Because we still are.  Because we still are here.  Anyway.

We created the site Because We Still Are Here (becausewestillarehere.wordpress.com) in response to Israel’s escalating bombing of Gaza in the winter of 2008-09.  We felt that there needed to be a record that women of color refuse to be silent in the face of such violence, especially those of us whose tax dollars are directly aiding and abetting the destruction of Palestinian lives and communities.  We know too well the significance of US economic and military power on imprisoned populations.  Gaza is the world’s largest outdoor prison, and our communities have been and continue to be imprisoned inside jails, prisons, ghettos, plantations, concentration camps, and reservations.

We have found and received statements of solidarity from women all over the country and the world.  We have learned that like us, women of color all over the world feel the impact of the bombing of Gaza in their bodies and are responding with hoarse voices at protests, on blogs, on t-shirts, with tears.

We call the site “because we still are here” because survival is possible.  The powers that be cannot destroy us.  As Audre Lorde says, “we were never meant to survive.”  And yet we do.  And we evolve passed their intentions for us into a world and a vision in which we create ourselves out of the bones of our ancestresses.  Because we still are here, we cannot be silent.  We cannot be compliant.  By the very fact that we are still here, in our myriad bodies and selves, may this fact provide one more imaginary space within the Palestinian communities of what survival looks like.  It is a celebration of our lives, women of color and Palestinian women and men.

Women of color in the US have been crying out against the Israeli occupation of Palestine for decades.  We honor ancestors like June Jordan by adding our voices to this dirge.
We insist that this violence, which has outlived our ancestors will not live past us. Borders are a form of violence that we resist with words and action.

12/15/2010 09:11:57 am


Nice!I learn a little bit more every week about what being a SAHD means.

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12/15/2010 11:51:48 am

Time keeping is essential to dream weaving

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