Last night a hopeful, anxious, heavy, urgent, connected, inspired group of artists, writers, scholars and teachers gathered to collectively tap into the legacy of June Jordan and Audre Lorde as we respond to police violence in this moment.
We called in our folks, lifted up our communities of accountabilities, honored our feelings, learned about the specific ways that June Jordan and Audre Lorde were impacted by and worked to respond to police violence, looked at the complex ways we are connected to police violence and our communities of accountability, recommitted to and recontextualized our daily creative praxis, activated the Lorde Concordance Oracle, held each other in process, shared our fears, hopes and lessons and created poetry together.
We chose the letter b (for brave for #blacklivesmatter for the bold act of listening our intuition) and we were blessed and broken open by the Lorde Concordance offering from the poem “Power” that spoke so directly to our process in the moment. We reached for ways to ground our actions and decision making in legacy, ancestral guidance and profound purpose instead of reaction, scarcity, ego and panic. The poems below are in the tradition of June Jordan’s “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan” and her “Poem About Police Violence.” We place them here in honor of the communities we love and towards the world we deserve.
P.S. If you are interested in going deeper into this process of drawing on ancestral depth for this time of urgent change check out our upcoming 3-day intensive Breathe Underwater: A Baptismal Intensive for Ancestor Accountable Artists, Activists and Intellectuals. And if you are interested in applying the wisdom of June Jordan and Audre Lorde to your work of solidarity against police violence, in support of transnational liberation movements, as and with precarious intellectual workers in the adjunct movement, as students and faculty of color confronting anti-blackness in the Ivory Tower consider coming to the in-person Brilliance Remastered Retreat Nobody Mean More in Durham, NC this September.
Nobody Mean More to Us
a roll call poem by the participants in Nobody Mean More
Nobody mean more to me than black & brown folks, black queer folks, haitian folks, young folks.
Nobody mean more to me than Black mothers
Nobody mean more to me than elders and ancestors
Nobody mean more to me than brilliant black women
who refuse to give up or go unheard
Nobody mean more to me than black mothers and babies
birthing and living free
Nobody mean more to me than queer youth of color
breaking through to love
Nobody mean more to me than sick disabled injured queer trans brown black broke and healing friends
Nobody mean more to me than black elders
Nobody mean more to me than my invisibly disabled community
Nobody mean more to me than black and brown folks
not only surviving but thriving
Nobody mean more to me than crip queer poc
sick and surviving still
Nobody mean more to me than babies
bringing light and blackness
Nobody mean more to me than all of the students of color at our school
and all of their communities and loves
Nobody mean more to me than students
who refuse to belong
Nobody mean more to me than anyone
willing to learn
Nobody mean more to me than poor folks
hustling daily
Nobody mean more to me than crip brown & black youth
teaching us
Nobody mean more to me than young people
who bring energy and passion to their despair and confusion
Nobody mean more to me than all people of color
excluded from home yet still resist
Nobody mean more to me than Black diasporic GNC Queers
coming up from nothing and claiming a right to their ancestors and culture
Nobody mean more to me than Black disabled femme folks
who can’t get out of bed sometimes
Nobody mean more to me than God
the orisha, ancestors and the lukumi community
Nobody mean more to me than us
Black and Brown folks
who hold us close and set us straight
and remember us on the days and nights we might forget us
every time
by the participants in Nobody Mean More: Artists, Intellectuals, Educators Responding to Police Violence
“Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then will kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower
subsequently?”
-June Jordan, “Poem about Police Violence”
what if every time was the last
what if every time
we killed the part of us that did this
what if every time
the dead returned to reckon with us
what if every time
we outsmarted our fear
what if every time
every one else had to hold and feel the pain of the mother for one day
what if every time
we were believed
what if every time
whiteness choked on its own violence
what if every time
the sun went out
what if every time
the water turned to blood
and we couldn’t drink one drop without tasting it
what if every time
all of the tears shed were collected in a vessel
and transformed into the power to dismantle institutions
what if everytime had already happened
and this was a question for historians
what if every time
we rush the road with 10,000 beating hearts
running perpendicular to the Mississippi
what if every time
videos of black bodies being murdered
were not played on a loop
what if every time
the TRUTH was broadcast far and wide
and false media messages were laughed at and discarded
what if every time
we dislodged the cold stone in our throat so we could speak
what if every time we loved each other more
what if every time
we admitted how hopeless we actually are
what if every time
we chose to continue to have hope in spaces of collectivity
what if every time
we knew there would be justice.
what if every time
we were allowed to grieve without any shame
what if every time I asked for one day when I do not have to think about being Black
but just being human
I got a day
what if every time
we had a national day of mourning
what if everytime police sacrificed black life
white people just went out and sat all over every police car in the whole country so they couldn’t drive out get out of the car for a day a week
what if every time
the “good” police officers
stood up en masse denouncing their colleagues
what if every time the police murder someone
a week’s pay of every police employee is withheld
what if every time
a politician chosen at random lost their position
what if every time a black body is shattered
a thousand more were loved into existence
bathed in joy, shown the power of our own wings
what if every time
we were allowed to feel Black Joy
what if every time
we could feel free to stop proving our right to exist
and get to the business of feeling the joy our existence
what if every time
we intentionally breathed into our bellies
what if every time we were afraid
we danced
what if every time
we allowed ourselves the space to cry outside
what if everytime
we put a bowl of water under the bed and ask our ancestors to dream us a way
what if every time
we were raptured away to a new dimension
to start again
what if every time
no one had electricity
and our news was our talk between stoops
what if every time
we read all day aloud while standing on corners
what if every time
we lost the language
and had to make a new one from scratch
what if every time
we would communicate without words
but make sounds from deep down
what if every time they kill black folk
everyone lays down in a grave
everyone
and rises up with dirt to do
what if every time
we planted a garden
what if every time we must create hashtags
we open the borders for ten days and allow 1000 refugees places to stay
what if every time
we gave a scholarship to a student of color
what if every time
we put a love poem into the pocket of every black child we know
what if every time
we made space to be gentle to each other
what if every time
we stole our days back
what if every time
we took a broomstick to the stained glass
what if every time
we centered in our dignity
what if every time
we allowed ourselves to be
what if every time
we remember how resilient we are
what if every time
we dreamed
we created new worlds with new possibilities
what if every time we hurt
we gain direct access to healing ancestors
with remedies to soothe our pain
what if this time
police were disarmed
and trained as midwives and doulas
and the midwives and doulas
became the keepers of safety
you think the “accident” rate would lower
subsequently?
Last night a trans-atlantic group of self-identified black woman, femme and/or gender-non conforming survivors gathered digitally for My Name is My Own, a resilience and renewal session.
Last week as everyone was reminded again of the urgen
brokenbeautiful press 