Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde

"Every day of our lives is practice in becoming the person you want to be. No instantaneous miracle is suddenly going to occur and make you brave and courageous and true. And every day that you sit back silent, refusing to use your power, terrible things are being done in our name...

30 children die on this planet earth every minute from hunger and inadequate health care. And in each one of those minutes $1,700,000 are spent on war...

Change, personal and political does not come about in a day, nor a year. But it is the day to day decisions, the way in which we testify with our lives to those things in which we say we believe, that empower us. Your power is relative, but it is real. And if you do not learn to use it, it will be used, againist you and me and our children. Change did not begin with you and it will not end with you but what you do with your life is a vital part of that chain. The testimony of each of our daily lives is a vital missing remnant in the fabric of the future.

Every Friday, women in black gather opposite Prime Minister Shamir's home in Jerusalem. Their simple handmade posters say - "End the Occupation". Their numbers are growing, in Haifa, in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv. Despite being reviled and spat upon, cursed as traitors, they continue to testify with their living to their belief in justice.

There will always be someone begging you to isolate one piece of yourself, one segment of your identity above the others and say "Here, this is who I am". Resist that trivialisation. I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honour the complexitiy of your vision and yourselves. We learn to use each other's differences as creative tools for change by learning how to acknowledge and orchestrate the conflicting parts within ourselves, learning how to integrate the many differnet pieces of our identity into action behind our beliefs. So that at any point we can say, this is how what I am doing, or intend to do, fits into the whole - whether it is teaching mathematics, building bridges, writing books, raising children, designing spaceships or digging ditches.

There are so many parts to each of us. And there are so many of us. If we can envision the future we desire, we can work to bring it into being. we need all the different pieces of ourselves to be strong, as we need each other and each other's battles for empowerment as fuel for a liveble tomorrow.

That surge of power you feel inside you now does not belong to me. it does not belong to your parents, nor to your professors, although we have helped call it forth. That power lives inside of you. It is yours. You own it, you nourish it, and you will carry it out of this room. And whether you use it or whether you waste it, you are responsible for it. "

Audre Lorde - Black Feminis working in the US Virgin Islands.