writing, living...

NAACP banner, NYC 1938

In the 1930s the NAACP would hang a banner from their base in NYC to let people know when a lynching had occurred. The photograph has circulated on facebook and blogs today; people are seeing the connection and recognising the need to draw a link between lynchings and Troy Davis's death last night, but also the importance of making visible these acts so that people cannot say they didn't know.

We know. Troy, we know.

“This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.” -Troy Davis



So today was a day of getting on with things... fighting for justice in my own little way: writing. I wrote a couple of thousand words today, fleshing out some ideas about Maori aesthetics and how they might relate to poems by Maori writers where someone returns home to their own marae after a period of being away. Justice sometimes comes by revolutions or quick jolts of history, but justice can also be a slow accumulation of coral, small bits growing on top of each other until eventually there is enough heft and bulk and foundation for life to flourish there.