Need: Ending Violence Against Women of Color NOW!

We Are Not Wrong

by nadia via www.nosnowhere.wordpress.com

I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
myself

I wore red because I am not wrong.

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life

Red, not pink, like the red painted on Desiree Ali-Fairooz’s hands when she confronted Condoleeza Rice. Like a symbol for the anger of all the Arab women who wish we could ask her to her face, “How does it feel to facilitate our destruction? To kill our babies?” (and yet we are always expected to show civility to those who sit in board rooms, debating how slowly or quickly to kill us)

I wore red because WE ARE WORTH IT.

Because we love a sister in WVA, a baby sister in Arizona, 7 sisters in New York , sisters crossing the “border”and sisters we do not know yet

We love them as we wear our own skin

We love them as queens and sisters

WITH NO QUALIFICATIONS

NO LIMITATIONS

AND NEEDING NO JUSTIFICATION

Today I wore red as public testimony to private trauma, to reduce the space between public and private, as a performative demonstration that we are worth fighting for.

And I will never stop fighting.

I wore red today, but this campaign of remembrance, of opening our mouths and speaking our truths, does not end today.