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So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept. Stole shy glances at her between the trees at chain-up. Grass blades, salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants. Anything bigger wouldn't do. A woman, a child, a brother -- a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you chose -- not to need permission for desire -- well, now, that was freedom.

-- --Toni Morrison

Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else. We can give ourselves the unconditional love that is the grounding for sustained acceptance and affirmation. When we give this precious gift to ourselves, we are able to reach out to others from a place of fulfillment and not from a place of lack.

-- --bell hooks

my great crime wasn't in failing to represent an innocent man. my great crime was in imagining that there was some path to racial justice that did not include those we view as guilty.

-- --Michelle Alexander

I am not proposing that sexual violence and domestic violence will no longer exist. I am proposing that we create a world where so many people are walking around with the skills and knowledge to support someone that there is no longer a need for anonymous hotlines. I am proposing that we break through the shame of survivors (a result of rape culture) and the victim-blaming ideology of all of us (also a result of rape culture) so that survivors can gain support from the people already in their lives. I am proposing that we create a society where community members care enough to hold an abuser accountable so that a survivor does not have to flee their home. I am proposing that all of the folks that have been disappointed by systems work together to create alternative systems. I am proposing that we organize.

-- --Rebecca Farr, Communities Against Rape and Abuse

You are only what you are when no one is looking.

-- --Robert C. Edwards

We are challenged to develop shared strategy and principles. Power-sharing, confronting privilege, and building trust are central to this work. We are challenged to willingly participate in ongoing critique of our methodologies and outcomes—making adaptations where necessary and continuing to build upon our strengths.

-- --Kai Barrow

Whatever we do to the earth, we do to each other.

-- --Rep. John Lewis

I think because we are so used to an embattled position with folks who wield power over us, we cut corners and are sometimes less patient/more careless with each other.

-- --Moya Bailey

"Many of us talk a lot about education for liberation. In fact, it’s been a big part of my life’s work since I was a teenager. But on days like today I remember that this work as an educator is just as much about my own liberation and healing as that of my students. And maybe only together, teacher-student and student-teachers, can we get closer to liberating our hearts and minds from the horrific traumas of this oppressive system, and in turn, radically transforming it."

-- --Sonny Singh

Oftentimes when we have failed at solidarity work we retreat, struggling to convince ourselves that this is indeed the work we have been called upon to do. The fact is that there is no other work but the work of creating and re-creating ourselves within the context of community. Simply put, there is no other work. It took five hundred years, at least in this hemisphere, to solidify the division of things that belong together. It need not take us five hundred more years to move ourselves out of this existential impasse. Spirit work does not conform to the dictates of human time. But it needs our courage, revolutionary patience, and intentional shifts in consciousness allowing us to anchor the struggle for social justice within the ample space of the erotic.

-- --M. Jacqui Alexander

Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.

-- --Nikki Giovanni

I live with empty spaces where bodies should be in photos. I travel with ghosts of the unknown. I walk with blanks on the story of my conception and birth. I reconcile what only lives in my imagination, the stories I collect from someone who has memory, and the stories I construct from timelines I make, from other’s memories, stories to tell myself.

-- --Lisa Marie Rollins

Why do I expend more energy trying to make people understand rather than giving that time to the people who show up for me?

-- --Moya Bailey

Generations of white supremacy and capitalism have deeply distorted our collective understanding of “safety”. The Prison Industrial Complex teaches us that “safety” is a commodity—something that we come to believe can be given, taken away, valued, or devalued. And we internalize and embody this understanding—“you make me feel unsafe, that’s an unsafe neighborhood, we need someone to keep us safe”—as if safety is something that is done to us. We might instead think about “safety” as a self-generating process over time that is impacted by external conditions but not dictated by them. We will not look to people, spaces, policies, or institutions to “make us safe” but will instead look to the resources that rest in ourselves and our communities that can decrease our vulnerability to harm and increase our ability to make grounded choices that will foster our wellness.

-- --Morgan Bassichis

We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction.

-- --Andrea Gibson

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

-- --Lao Tzu

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."

-- --Mary Anne Radmacher

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