And because every single person whose voice I've featured in quotations today is a white middle-class male*--like me--while the voices we most desperately need to hear today as a human community, if we want a bright future for all of us, are the voices of women, and of people from the socioeconomic and racial margins of society, here's a video with one of the most powerful and humane voices of the 20th century. A video featuring a woman of color who happens to be a lesbian. This is Audre Lorde reading her poem "1984" in Berlin not long before her death from cancer later in 1992.
The new civil rights movement we need so desperately at this point in history to continue the brave work of Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in the 20th century has, in my view, not only to include but to provide leadership roles to people like Audre Lorde. And people like James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin.
Not to mention Chelsea Manning.
*And gay, I now realize, as I look at the biography of Scott Tucker.
The new civil rights movement we need so desperately at this point in history to continue the brave work of Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in the 20th century has, in my view, not only to include but to provide leadership roles to people like Audre Lorde. And people like James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin.
Not to mention Chelsea Manning.
*And gay, I now realize, as I look at the biography of Scott Tucker.
No comments:
Post a Comment