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sister, i am angry furious at your death upset with my own foolishness in celebrating him while you die in the streets with beatings, with violence left on your beautiful brown skin with the names, the silence, the mainstream media lies they refuse to let us ever forget that guns penetrating our backs, we are always standing at the cliff of our own mortality sister, i am in mourning lighting a candle, i read this poem into the glimmering light my poem is a prayer for you, for the others i will never have the opportunity of knowing, and for the friends who mourn your death today we will not forget. we will speak your name. you said no!, you would not let police brutality and violence against transgender women of color fade into an invisible cloud of silence you said no… and now you are gone. you are gone but we will not forget. the anger, the connection, the injustice just cuts too deep. instead we will carry your name on our tongue your bravery in our own ribcage your memory in our work we will wear red everyday remembering you and countless of others we will not forget, sister.

dear zach: love, thank you for your letter to me. in these last few weeks, i have found that having these open conversations about our bodies and our experiences with authority and capitalist industrial complexes [systems of prisons, schools, non-profit organizations that are about making money] have been completely liberating in how i view myself and how i am able to interact with others. i love you and am so thankful for your words, your honesty about wrestling with everything, your power. i feel like talking about our bodies is what made intersectionality “real” for me and not some buzzword misused by folks on the left (who use this word without ever recognizing where it came from or the power behind it). a good example of this is with the history of our bodies being owned. i strongly disagree with disabled [white, straight] people who use the word “colonize” loosely to describe their experiences with the capitalist system of medicine and science. however, recognizing that disabled people share something in common with people of color, women, and with queer people is powerful, especially when it is around our collective history of our bodies being bad and needing to be controlled. after this basic foundation is made, being able to recognize that this pain and loss of authority over what is ours is amplified when living on the intersection of multiple identities is even more powerful. mixed in with my anger and my frustration is hope and excitement for the organizing and conversations that are happening around this. you and i and many of our sisters are relearning, rewriting, recreating everything that we have been taught is true. i agree with you about people who stifle this---they are the same ones who have historically been denying what is ours. i don’t remember where i read this (it’s just scribbled down in my notebook) but alice walker once said “no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended.” i’m not sure of the context behind her words but it says so much to me. ownership of our bodies, our lives, our thinking is always about power. you are right--- our anger is righteous and constructive as a tool against injustice. i’m not sure where we go from here but am so moved by work that radical women of color are doing and the brilliance and passion of our community. the summer of our lorde project, the cyber quilting, all the writing, recording, organizing… with this work and the ways that we were (and are!) impacted by earlier generations of women of color activists, can you imagine what the future of our community will look like? love to you, zach. in community, cripchick

I feel hopeless when I’m supposed to be speaking on sexual consciousness but am feeling disconnected from my own body because I don’t look white, skinny, or able-bodied like the masses of queer people there

I feel like I’m misleading people and betraying my own when I talk about disability in a cross-disability intersectional framework and the only visual image people are getting is that disability=mobility because the only disabled people presenting (including myself) are wheelchair users

I feel home when I fly into North Carolina and am surrounded by bodies of all sizes, shapes and colors--- my, how one can miss this love/hate relationship with the South is surprising

Like this weekend, I sometimes feel invisible

Like this weekend, I sometimes feel like I talk about disability too much, but this is hard to balance when I feel like I am brought somewhere to only talk about disability

Like this weekend, I am unsure what the future holds or what community actually looks like for me

Here's to friends that remind me why I am in this, the spirit of community, and those disabled people and allies who through all this, made the sessions and trip worthwhile.