Heat, Light, and Rebirth: On Resurrection

"Learn to accept love fully and to express love completely. Do nothing while doing everything. Self-care is paramount in self-empowerment. Remember who you are. Remember who you were. Remember what you must do. Do it!"
-a scroll from Black feminist same gender loving feminist spiritual leader and activist, Ifalade Ta'Shia Asanti

This Sunday after an epically bright Saturday full of cars overheating, corner preaching, gas station parking lots, auto part stores and street mechanics who would probably be surgeons in a different ecological manifestation...Julia spent Sunday getting resurrected with the sisters, aunties, mothers, gender queer uncles and brothers of the Shades Retreat in Pine Mountain Georgia. As a hymn that I have recently appropriated for the spiritual practice of black feminist self/collective/multiversal transformation says, "I Know I've Been Changed." So I want to testify, to the heat, the light and the tangible power of sacred space created by our love for ourselves and each other.

The recognition and faith in each others faces is the space that we would go through hell to get to . Pay for in countless paypal installments whenever we can, keep like a light in the center of our foreheads to remind us where we are going on hard days. We are the heaven we know about.
I want to testify that the presence of black feminist transformers of different ages and approaches is a sacred invitation to the revelation of the universe, a call for love to show up and show OUT!

With huge congratulations to Kat Williams and the Shades Retreat organizing crew....some quirky black dreamers if ever there were any, I want to give thanks for US. For the community that saves my life everyday. For the true context for eternal life. For our love.

In the year since the first annual Shades Retreat, Julia and I have visited and interviewed several of the amazing women that we met for the first time in an unassuming cabin in a not at all famous state park in Georgia we have been to their homes and met their communities. We have been able to act on and witness our belief that family is made out of the choice to take risks for each other, to believe in each other more than we believe what we have been taught is practical. We have become unstoppable, made it across the country and come back.

I know I've been changed. Because my soul gets renewed when you speak my name.

This year I have asked for help more times than in the rest of my lifetime added up. I have become a person who dances on purpose, and daily, and in public and without shame. I have become a person who prostrates on the floor greeting elders. I have become a chosen daughter and granddaughter over and over again. I have become a person who is emotionally available. I have become a person who actually takes days off (UNIMAGINABLE!), who can be still and present. I am now a person who is less and less afraid of being known as who I am. I have begun to expect you to love me anyway. Any way. I have begun to walk the unconditional.

I am grateful for the holy space that we create when we are together. And I am so humbled and honored to live in the sacred, divinely possible, miraculous space of your heart and your mind, and your recognition and your reflection. Loving you has invited me to love myself better than I ever woulda known to. I accept your love fully. I commit to expressing my love completely.

Oh what a joy. To wake up and be reborn. With you.

Love always and all days,
QBG Lex

P.S. QBG Updates!

Creating Sacred Transformative Space Online!

Dedicated: The Black Feminist Request Line of the Future!

Ask Sista Docta Love (aka Lex) a question or make a dedication via http://blackfeminismlives.tumblr.com/ask


Come Correct: Because Black Feminist Sex is the BEST Sex Ever!!!

http://bettacomecorrect.tumblr.com/

Submit your sexy brilliance or ask questions at Come Correct...the hottest tumblr ever if we do say so ourselves :)

And follow QBG on our new Tumblr site: http://quirkyblackgirls.tumblr.com/

And for sacred space IN PERSON save the dates for some amazing and mostly FREE chances to be together

May:
Towards an Intellectual History of Black Women: An International Conference
April 28-30th at Columbia University in New York City (Lex is speaking about blood, water, land and love between black women in the US, Haiti and South Africa on Friday morning at 11am!)
Register for free here: http://www.iraas.org/node/203

Everyday Brilliance: Resilience Practices from Black LGBTQ Elders
May 15th, 2pm Stone House 6602 Nicks Rd Mebane, North Carolina
email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com for more info
(http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/may-15-everyday-brilliance-resilience-practices-from-black-lesbian-elders/)

Rainbow Reclamations: Blue-"Once I Was Pregnant" (a discussion ritual for women of color and genderqueer people of color based on Ntozake Shange's choreopoem "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf")
May 22 in Durham, NC place to be announced
for more info email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com and see http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/lavender-rainbow-reclamations-2-love-between-us-beyond-competition-and-sacrcity/

THE 6th Annual Gemini Jam: Friday May 27th in Atlanta, GA (memorial day weekend) Celebrate with some of your favorite Queerky Black Geminis AND listen to our beloved QBG hip hip duo The Lost Bois!!!!!! We are so excited! Save the date and be in the place!
Place to be confirmed soon, to get more info or to put your name on the reminder list email quirkyblackgirls@gmail.com

June

Indigo Days: A Gathering for Black Warrior Healers (June 9-15 in Durham, NC) a free grassroots gathering, housing, childcare and food provided! For more details see: www.indigodays.wordpress.com


Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Revival Summer (Every Thursday in June at 6pm at 204 Rigsbee St. in Durham, NC) F0r 5 Thursdays in Lucille Clifton’s birth month of June we will gather as survivors of child sexual and physical abuse and sexual violence and parents and caretakers committed to ending cycles of abuse in our families and communities to do writing activities based on Lucille Clifton’s poetry and the ShapeShifter Survivor Rebirth Broadcast video series.
For more info see: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/announcing-lucille-clifton-shapeshifter-survival-school-summer-session-2012/
or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

The Allied Media Conference June 23-26th at Wayne State University, Detroit Michigan! Quirky Black Convergence. Enjoy the Women of Color Skillshare, the Mobilehomecoming Elders Track and SO much more!!!! For more info and to register (see alliedmedia.org)

August
Educators save the date for the Juneteenth Freedom Academy Summer Intensive: Rituals for Classroom Presence. This is a week-long gathering especially for transformative educators. August 15-19th in Durham, NC!!!!!! email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for more info!!!!

May 15: Everyday Brilliance: Resilience Practices from Black Lesbian Elders

brought to you by the MobileHomecoming Project (mobilehomecoming.org)

amplifying generations of black feminist LGBTQ brilliance!

2pm-6pm Sunday, May 15 2011

Stone House

6602 Nicks Rd.

Mebane, NC

Join us for a day of immersive wisdom where black lesbian elders in North Carolina share the practices that have kept them awake and amazing for decades in an interactive, intergenerational, skillshare and dialogue!!!

Invited featured speakers include:

Dr. Anjail Ahmad

Mandy Carter

Ed Swan

C. C. Wiggins

Janice Vaughn

Carolyn Grey

Harriet Alston

Bring a dish to share and be prepared to be inspired everyday from now on!

email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com for more info!

Indigo Days: June 9-15th, Durham, NC

Indigo Days is a resource for black warrior healers remembering ourselves and reclaiming our traditions of magic, love and transformation. Inspired by the black girl healer folklorist, revolutionary character Indigo in Ntozake Shange's 1982 novel Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, Indigo Days is a context for every day as sacred space for the sacred task of healing our planetary selves and deepening the meaning of life.

Get everyday wisdom here: blueblackblessing.tumblr.com

or submit your own wisdom at blueblackblessing.tumblr.com/submit

Indigo Days (June 9-15, 2011) will be a week of celebration, learning and healing specifically centered on the power of black women and black genderqueer people to be healers, spiritual leaders and transformative warriors in our communities and on the planet. For more info on the event visit indigodays.wordpress.com

The week will include:

A Blues Porch Concert

Workshops on black healing traditions

Herb Walks

Blues Woman Bible Study (blues as sacred texts in the tradition of black feminist healing)

Sharing family remedies and herbal wisdom

A Blue Lights in the Basement House Party

Film Screenings

The gathering is FREE and all participants will be provided with food and housing for the week. Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for more details, and to confirm your participation.

To donate food, various materials, time, money or other resources check the contribution page: http://indigodays.wordpress.com/contribute/ or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or donate via paypal here:

Educational Materials:

Art Supplies of All Kinds

small notebooks/journals

photocopies

Transportation:

borrowable cars

driving help

Housing:

Couch, futon or guest room space for out of town participants

Airmattresses

Sleeping bags

Food:

Gift cards to Whole Foods, Kroger, Food Lion or Harris Teeter

Healthy vegetarian-friendly and protein-rich dishes

Assorted Items:

Stones

rosewater

birtwort leaves

magnolia incense

lady's fern

candles

flowers from your garden

mint

honey

roses

damiana leaves

cubeb berries

cloth

rasberry tea

cinnamon

vanilla

laurel leaves

wild hyssop

white water lilies

red sunflower

strawberries

mandrake berries

squaw weed

ginger/wild ginger

clay

chammomile

angelica

lemon tea

silk

ribbons

caraway seeds

bowls

linen

Dedicated: Request Line of the Black Feminist Future!!!!

Greetings loved ones!

Because black feminist bass is the unstoppable heartbeat of the universe transforming. Because I revise every song I hear to praise your name. Because a movement is only a movement if it moves...I am excited to announce that my inner internet DJ (Sista-Docta Lex on the ones and zeroes!!) is finally launching a project to amplify black feminist healing and love all over your airwaves!!!!!

Yay!!!! Welcome to Dedicated: The Request Line of the Black Feminist Future! Here is how it works:

ask:

Ask for some advice about love, life, the practical or impractical pursuit of black feminism, foolishness at work, self-care, dilemmas or anything that might be on your mind. Typing a rant about a situation in need of healing in your life followed by the words "help a sista out" counts as reaching out for help and support.

You can reach out to me at

blackfeminismlives.tumblr.com/ask

or formspring.me/blackfeminism

Whether you leave your name or reach out anonymously you will get a song dedication towards your healing, affirmation and transformation of whatever situation inspired you to reach out with much much love from me!

listen:

You can listen to songs dedicated to you and everyone else at

blip.fm/blackfeministbass

or see the links at blackfeminismlives.tumblr.com

@alexispauline on twitter

I will also periodically be making podcasts with song dedications that fall into themes. You can subscribe to BrokenBeautiful Press for free on itunes to make sure that you get the newest podcasts when they come out. (Just search BrokenBeautiful Press in the itunes store)

collaborate:

You can also dedicate a song or affirmation to someone you want to affirm or to an ancestor you want to honor! Just go to the "ask" site above and type in your dedication and the name and artist of the song you want to dedicate and I'll amplify it on out.

We will also be having planetary release parties when the themed podcasts come out where people can share digitized mp3 mixed tapes with their own take on the theme of the podcast. Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com if you'd like to host release parties in your town!!

And if you are creating awesome black feminist music that affirms us all email me at brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to send me links to your music so I can put it out too!

Yay!!!! And as always if this inspires you and you are able....donate!

love always,

Sista Docta Lex about to bring Black Feminist Flava to ya Ear!!!! :)

Announcing Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School Summer Session 2011

In honor of the great poet Lucille Clifton, who was also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, a mother, an artist and self-identified Amazon warrior through her poetry, the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School is especially designed for families that are committed to ending childhood sexual abuse and all forms of gendered violence. Informed by Generation 5 and the regional plan of the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative, the ShapeShifter Survival School is part of a holistic process of ending child sexual abuse by creating healing community.

Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer

2011

F0r 5 Thursdays in Lucille Clifton's birth month of June we will gather as survivors of child sexual and physical abuse and sexual violence and parents and caretakers committed to ending cycles of abuse in our families and communities to do writing activities based on Lucille Clifton's poetry and the ShapeShifter Survivor Rebirth Broadcast video series. (See videos here: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/category/shapeshifting/). Participants in the series will also receive digital mixes of the music we work with to create a sacred space of memory. We can use the digital music mixes at home to activate memories of safety from the group writing space.

Rebirth Summer Thursdays:

Thursday. June 2

Unapologetic: Reclaiming Our Memories and Voices

Thursday, June 9

Bright: On Clarity and Power

Thursday, June 16

Gentle: On Cultivating Self-Love

Thursday, June 23

Futuristic: Towards the World that We Deserve

Thursday, June 30th

Planetary: The Depth and Urgency of Our Healing

Our intention is that after this summer month of Rebirth the Shapeshifter Survivor writing group will continue on a monthly basis hosted by participants as an ongoing source of support and healing drawing on work by Lucille Clifton and other writers.

For more information or to add your name to the reminder list email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

to donate click here:

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Spring Reading!

Hey family! Stop by tomorrow (Sunday 4/10) between 1pm-6pm to pick up these books and more...or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to pick up any of these books on an afternoon next week!

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind

Lending and Reference Library

Spring Reading Recommendations!

Spring into Action!

*Sisters in the Struggle : African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement

*Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days

* June Jordan’s Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union

*This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (several copies available!)

Reading in the Park

*Sacred Cows...and Other Edibles by Nikki Giovanni

*Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros

*The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson

*Miss Muriel and Other Stories by Ann Petry

*Dreaming in Cuban : a novel Christina Garcia (she went to Barnard…like me, my sister, Zora Neale Hurston, June Jordan and Ntozake Shange!)

*The used world : a novel by Haven Kimmel (she's from Durham)

*Some things I never thought I'd do by Pearl Cleage

*Not without laughter by Langston Hughes

Twisted (like a Spring)

*Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience by Jill Nelson

*Sally Hemmings. a Novel by Barbara Chase-Riboud

*Passing by Nella Larsen

*Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor

*Venus by Suzan Lori-Parks

*Soul on ice by Eldridge Cleaver

Books That Help Us Grow!

*The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker

*Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall

*Sisters of the yam : black women and self-recovery by bell hooks

*Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise by Michelle Cliff

Especially for Youth

*Words By Heart by Ouida Sebestyen

*Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred Taylor (one of June Jordan’s favorites!)

*Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Puffin Modern Classics) by Mildred Taylor

*Crick Crack, Monkey by Merle Hodge

*What Your Mama Never Told You: True Stories About Sex and Love (featuring a piece by our very own Shirlette Ammons!!!)

Clarity: On Clarence Thomas and the Worth of Black Life

Yesterday my dad sent me an article from Slate Magazine about a Supreme Court decision written by Clarence Thomas that effectively argued that a black man, John Thompson wrongfully convicted because of evidence suppressed by 5 Louisiana prosecutors does not deserve the 14 million dollars that he was awarded as damages for his 14 years on death row for a crime he did not commit and 18 years served in prison unjustly even by the meager standards of prison justice we deal with in the contemporary US. (And yes, it matters to me that John Thompson, like my father and like Clarence Thomas is a black man in the United States.) I want to be as surprised as I am outraged that of all the conservative Supreme Court "Justices" to write this decision it would be Clarence Thomas, but that would be ridiculous.

I cannot forget that years ago my father told me that he considered it a "cruel joke" and an "insult" when he first heard the announcement that on the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, genius for justice and civil rights hero, a mediocre sellout Reagan appointee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission named Clarence Thomas was named by Bush One as the person to succeed Marshall and become the second ever African American supreme court justice. I was only 11 years old when the national government blatantly showed in hearings (which I was mostly not allowed to watch) that black men who would disrespect and lie about and betray black women would be rewarded by white men who could more quietly continue to do the same thing, when Thomas somehow claimed to be lynched by a fellow conservative and black female lawyer Anita Hill who spoke out against his practice of sexual harassment. And as psychologist and psychotherapist Dr. Alvin Wyman Walker says in The Conundrum of Clarence Thomas: An Attempt at a Psychodymanic Understanding "What can you say about a man who savages his sister?" (In reference to an instance when (In)Justice Thomas called his sister dependent and pathological for receiving a welfare check...which come to find out she was using during a short time to support their sick relatives who Thomas had abandoned-not that it should actually matter why she was receiving a welfare check anyway.) Indeed, what CAN you say about a man who savages his sister? You can say that he will certainly not feel accountable to any of us, brethren included, that he will turn against anyone, and especially anyone black if given the slightest opportunity. And now Thomas has taken his opportunity to justify a an attempted lynching (John Thompson narrowly escaped the electric chair 7 times during his years on death row.)

It is not a surprise that the Supreme Court would want to invalidate a decision that a black man who is wrongfully convicted in Louisiana deserves 14 million dollars for the cruelty that he has experienced. Imagine if ALL of the people of color wrongfully convicted with shady evidence received a million dollars for every year they have unjustly spent in prison....

To read the rest of the article visit The Feminist Wire

Lavender: "Love Between Us": Beyond Competition and Scarcity (Rainbow Reclamations #2)

By popular demand and with infinite love WE CONTINUE a seven month process called Rainbowed Reclamation, a colorful women of color juicy poetry and food-filled space of sacred discussions that reclaim our bodies, collectivize our spiritual energy and the brilliant choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

These monthly discussion/rituals are love in practice towards creating a spiritually aligned, intimately interconnected, queer affirming and self loving community of women of color and genderqueer people of color ready to support each other in transforming the world.

Take a deep lavender infused breath and....
If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere near Durham...COME! If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere in the world email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to find out how to host your own event. If you are an ally spread the word!!!!

Sunday April, 17th

5pm-8pm

La Casita De Amor (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for directions)



*****Please wear LAVENDER and bring some food to share if you can!
Childcare will be provided and I hear there will be delicious lavender infused cookies by Kukia in the place!!!! *******

Here is the schedule for the rest of the series (FYI):

In Blue : "Once I Was Pregnant" :Circles of Rebirth: Sharing and holding stories of abortion, miscarriage and healing (Sunday May 22nd, 5pm---special Indigo Days session)
In Green: For Sechita: Sex Work and Solidarity (Sunday June 19th, 5pm preferably outdoors!)
In Yellow: Graduation Nite: A Sex Positive Queer Inclusive Intergenerational Conversation about SEX (full of juicy and complicated stories about "the first time") (Sunday July, 25th, 5pm)
In Red: "Keep Your Sorry": Break-Up Poetics: On letting go, rituals of release and positive relationship transitions (Sunday August 28th, 5pm)
In Orange:(Sunday Sept 18th, 5pm) Butterflies and Bad Girl Legacies: Sex, Survival, Revenge and Healing

4/10 Library Day #1: Eternal Summer Lending and Reference Library Grand Opening

At long last the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Lending and Reference Library is open, mostly cataloged and ready for circulation! Come and celebrate! Check out a book! Scan a digital copy of a rare article. Make an appointment to read in the reading room. Get a spring spirit cleaning reading prescription from sista-docta Lex!

For a preview of the available books look here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BlackFeministMind

Join us at the Inspiration Station (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for details)

1pm-6pm Sunday April 10th 2011

Yay!
There will be cake!

And if you live far away email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com about how you can donate a book OR click here to donate through paypal:

Or push the button to sign up to be a monthly sustainer (the big blue number is how much you'll be donating each month automatically)!

What to Do When God Hates You: A Lordeian Intervention into the Westboro Case

Yesterday the US Supreme Court voted 8-1 in favor of a definition of free speech that includes hate speech on what the court considers "moral and political" issues in the case of Westboro Baptist Church, a small organization that uses the funerals of military and public figures as a platform to express their belief that certain deaths are evidence of God's punishment of the United States for its so-called tolerance of homosexuality.

Most people were not surprised yesterday at the results of the case. Most scholars of free speech statutes know that this is nothing new. This is certainly not the first case of its kind with a similar result. Anyone who is schocked might have a misunderstanding of the function of the state. The state is not convened to prevent hate. The state is not a medium through which we are trained or encouraged to love each other. The state, particularly the form of the state that we are surviving here in the United States in late capitalism, is in fact invested in moderating love as a more dangerous social factor for hate. Hate, an individual and systemized behavior based on a profound belief in the separation of people across multiple lines of difference, can actually be quite useful in a capitalist society in which it must somehow make sense for people to abandon each other into exploitation, to enjoy rights and access at the expense of other people. Love on the other hand, that force, that possibility that would require us to look at each other eye to eye, to refuse any exploitation or violence against any being, that powerful force that could make us indivisible is dangerous to the status quo. And love cannot be legislated.


As a student of the Lorde (Audre Lorde) I think it is important to remember in a mundane moment, where hate has renewed and relegitimized its normative role in US social behavior that we have precedent for a response that goes beyond the apathy of the law. When I see the images of the sensationalist signs of the Westboro baptist church, I find them apalling, but not original. In 1983 in her groundbreaking essay "Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger" Audre Lorde recounts a remarkably similar pre-Westboro demonstration of hate in the name of God:

"The bicentennial, in Washington, D.C. Two ample black women stand guard over household belongings piled haphazardly onto a sidewalk in front of a house. Furniture, toys, bundles of clothes. One woman absently rocks a toy horse with the toe of her shoe, back and forth. Across the street on the side of a building opposite is a sign painted in story-high black letters, GOD HATES YOU."


("Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger," in Audre Lorde Sister Outsider, 151.)

In the face of this particular instance characterized by Westboro Baptist Church, a particular family and the outrage of another family, the bereaved relatives of Marine Matthew Snyder we need black feminist memory. We need to remember that hatred is not only instance, but also institution in the United States. We have to see the connections between the emotional and economic reality implied by a God who can hate.

The logic of the decision of all but one Supreme Court Justice to decide that Matthew Snyder's father's claim of being personally harmed by the Westboro protests at his son's funeral was ungrounded is based on their determination that the protests were about moral and political issues and were therefore not a personal attack, but an engagement in admittedly offensive and hurtful free speech in the public realm. The one dissenting Justice's main basis for disagreement is based on the the counter-belief that in fact the funeral protest did constitute a personal attack against the Marine's father.

In other words, the words of the Supreme Court majority, to Mr. Snyder could be summarized as: "don't take it personal." But as black feminists we believe that the personal is political and that the political is personal. And not only is it obvious that the bereaved family would take actions like this personally, as a queer black woman hundreds of miles away, I take it personally myself. The fact that the protesters were a thousand feet from the church door and the fact that the story Lorde recounted happened decades ago can't numb a breathing person. I am impacted personally by the implication of a human insistence on a God who hates. I am angry about the consequences of such a profound separation. I am not content to respond to separation with more separation. I take it personally.

So what are the politics that this implies? In "The Uses of Anger: Women Against Racism," Audre Lorde explains that anger and hatred are not the same thing and that "anger is a justified response to racism" and other forms of systemized hatred. I think the Westboro brings home the fact that anger is indeed justified as a radical form of intimacy and investment, and the distance and discipline of the court system is useless in an engagement like this. In fact, the Westboro Baptist Church, which claims to have no donors or outside institutional supporters actually gets most of its money from court fees. Every time someone channels the hurt they feel when the Westboro Baptist Church shows up full of hate at a funeral into a civil suit, Westboro wins on the grounds of free speech and the money goes into their bank account, supplying that many more florescent posterboards of hate. It seems then, that civility, at least in the legal sense, is not an adequate response to hatred.

Let us take this moment to see the signs. Literal and implied. Let us take a moment to remember what we all know, especially as people of color and queer people overwhemingly targetted and locked down by the state, the US court system is not a place of love and transformation, no matter the decorations of lady justice on the wall, it is not a place of balance because it is not a place where we can engage each other eye to eye. The revolution will not be legislated. There are those of us who believe in transformative justice, accountability beyond punishment also known as prison abolitionists, who are spending our days and nights imagining and practicing what it would look like, what it would look like to create a world free from harm, and systems in the mean-time that actually address the root causes of harm instead of settling for a economy of punishments that separate us further.

If we believe that this is not all about money, that the bereaved father is not trying to protect his million dollar lawsuit victory in smaller court against the Westboro church, or above that is making a claim, like Antigone, that the dead must be respected, that he and his family deserve a sanctuary in their grief, that compassion is not optional but necessary in these times.... If we believe that the Westboro stunts are not just a strategy to bait people into unsuccessfully suing them but the expression of so much fear and desperation that they must invent a God who hates, that they must project the separation and disconnection that they feel from the other people in the United States onto their idea of God (i too have sometimes imagined a wrathful Lorde and briefly wished that she would obliterate those who oppress and violate my people through capitalist greed and racist hatred), if we can see that they have truly stopped believing in love as an option, that they are trapped in the short-term and toxic refuge of their hatred...then as Jamaican theorist Sylvia Wynter says, "the ceremony must be found," to transform the situation and it won't be found in a courtroom in the United States.

What is the ceremony that heals us from needing, wanting, inventing a God who hates? What is the form of engagement and accountability that could make the unimaginable behavior of the Westboro crew actually unimaginable, useless and ridiculous to the haters themselves? If we follow the words of the (Audre) Lorde, liberal ideas of self-expression as neutral sides of a political discussion are not enough. Audre Lorde says we have to face each other, in our commonality and our difference, eye to eye.



Thus saith the ever-loving Lorde:

"America's measurement of me has lain like a barrier across the realization of my own powers." (147)

And the ceremony happens here in every encounter if we affirm challenge of our very existence together: "I am...acting on you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself." (147)

This week, that measurement could be an understanding of law that channels us into supposedly equally hateable equally forgettable masses of flesh. For those of us who know that none of these things are equal and that all of our lives are unforgettable manifestations of the infinite, I'll see you, not in court but in that intimate place where a ceremony is happening that is more powerful than a God who hates.

In the name of the Lorde, who loves,
Alexis Pauline Gumbs