The most affecting and inspiring piece I have yet read coming out of Ferguson. Thanks to Elisa Peebles, Afropunk Contributor. We talked about the women we saw today, and about how it’s always been us that have carried the movement—the background work, the organizing, the physical front-line sacrifice (think Rosa Parks, think Fannie Lou Harmer). Just as I asked where the men were in all this, a pastor came up to us. He joined the conversation and reveled that in the neighborhood we stood in, 90% of the fathers of the local grammar school students were dead or incarcerated. The word grandfather would soon be extinct, he said. ... People are willing to die for this: for Mike Brown, for the women praising God for pizza boxes, for the grandfathers that don’t exist, for each other. Someone lit sage. We held hands. A Native American woman came up to us and said that Mike’s blood had seeped into the ground and mixed with her ancestor’s blood when he lay there for four and a half hours. The ancestors were angry. The local tribes were organizing; they stood with us. She prayed for us. We bowed heads, the pastor of the church prayed. We held hands tighter. ... Make no mistake, you will not hear about this on the news but the movement is alive in Ferguson and now it is spreading everywhere. We have all returned inspired, committed and ready for this fight. The revolution is here and Black women are leading it, and many of them are queer Black women. All of them are soldiers and Sisters ready to commit acts of radical love and righteous self-sacrifice for you and for me.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 22:45:39 +0000
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