01/20/2025
Today we do not bring you a heavy heart because it is too full of love to be weighed down. A heart full of love and grief and joy and hope is a kite, we send it flying. These times will test us, as they always do. This system, no matter which president “messiah” is at its helm, brings us suffering, for that is its intention. For us to forget ourselves in depression and anger and fear. We do not fear any man, we do not fear any system, our love is our defiance. We are no longer angry, our grief has evolved into an embrace of our allies and our enemies. As we rejoice for the Palestinian prisoners returned to their people, so we rejoice for the Israeli prisoners returned. There is no more separateness, we have always been one. This does not mean we don’t continue to radicalize, to protect ourselves, to be angry, to hurt. It only means that hate only exists in fullness when we give it air to breathe. We have no more breath for hate, only the deep breath of love, of readying ourselves for the next phase. We’re holding your hands, we are readying our kites, we are gathering our stories to write a new story, together. We don’t know what it will be but we are imagining it now. We hope you come with us.
Slide 1: Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Animals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Slide 2: Liberation by TenderHearted Press & Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Slide 3: Excerpt from Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Slide 4: Photo of child waving Palestinian flag from The Sanabel Team
Slide 5: bel hooks quote on MLK by savedbythebelhooks
Slide 6: Gift card donations for Black LA fire victims to DC Black-owned bookstores Sankofa Books, MahoganyBooks, & Loyalty Bookstores
Slide 7: “If I Must Die” by Refaat Alareer (rest in love & power, dear one), translated by D.P. Snyder from World Literature Today
Slide 8: Water’s ice crystallography in response to Angela María Spring’s reading of Refaat Alareer’s “If I Must Die” using ’s freezing technique. Picture is Spring’s. Do you see the kites? We see the kites. ❤️🩹❤️🔥❤️🩹
