30 YEARS of UNIVERSES.
Today I sat and started going through old videos. Old moments. Old rooms. Old versions of us. And I felt something wake up in me. We were just kids when we started. Kids with loud voices, big hearts, and a deep need to connect to the world. To injustice. To erasure. To the feeling of being told, in a thousand ways, that our voices did not belong everywhere. But we insisted.
UNIVERSES was born to lift and celebrate our communities. In the falling. In the rising. In the surviving. To make it through everything this country, this world throws at us, and still live to tell the stories.
30 YEARS. That number lands in my body. The last ten years, whew. They tried to take a lot out of us. Out of all of us. Collectively and individually. There were moments we were just trying to breathe. Just trying to get through. And honestly, sometimes we were tired. Sometimes we were hurt. Sometimes we were quiet. Not stopped. Just slowed. Because we are human.
Today felt like pressing play again. So many pause buttons on the past. Not to live there, but to remember. To remember our code. Our DNA. Who we have always been. There is so much unfinished business. So many stories still asking to be told. And what breaks my heart and fires me up at the same time is how much of what we made years ago is still painfully relevant. That feels like a signal. To rise. To return. To expand. To proceed.
We never stopped being UNIVERSES. And even when I forget, even when I get tired, even when life gets heavy, this work, these people, this history remind me of something simple. --- Mils
This moment was thankfully captured by Edwin Pagán around the time Steven and I were helping to found The Point CDC. We had already been at it together for years. We were babies.
I will share more from the archive as I go through it. I hope it sparks memories and re-energizes you too.
We have been on this road for 38 years now. Still here. Much work to do, my peoples! Let's do this