“…when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” — Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was an activist who dedicated her life to confronting all manner of injustice. She made it clear in her writings and speeches that silence is the oxygen injustice breathes. Power thrives when people doubt their own eyes, when they’re told that the story they witnessed isn’t the story that occurred. And that’s why Lorde’s words feel even more urgent today. We live in a time when institutions rewrite events before the truth has even settled. When videos contradict official statements, and people holding cameras are treated like threats. When accountability is promised in press releases but avoided at all costs in practice. In moments like these, speaking out becomes more than expression. It becomes evidence.
Don
Donald Dean Kelly died on June 5th. He was my big one. We were twenty six when we met. We walked past each other in the Village late one night and both of us turned around. He was wearing a giant parka with a pulled up fur-trimmed hood. Gushing beard, big ugly 70s glasses. I only saw the tip of his nose. For me, it was love at first nose. We went to a bar and had beers and I played with the ring pulls on his pants that zipped down the front. He told me he was a conceptual artist/ live-in babysitter. He once wrote on an egg and mailed it. He slept over and in the morning, I walked him to the subway. He grabbed my arm - wait a minute . He went in an antiques store and came out and put a small kaleidoscope in my palm. And thus began our many years of promised land and civil war. Most days, he mumbled and stammered but, once in a blue moon, he landed a joke or story river stone smooth. He once found an 8 by 10 foot mirror on the street. We bled when it shattered carrying it up the marble s...
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