WEBVTT

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[ <i>MUSIC...</i> ]

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Hello loved ones!

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Welcome to week 8 
of Audre Lorde Resurrection Sundays.

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I'm Sister Doctor Lex.

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I'm especially excited today because I am 
getting ready to go to Cuba very soon,

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and I am thinking so much about Audre Lorde,
who went to Cuba in January also, in 1985,

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along with a lot of other brilliant Black women writers

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like Alexis DeVeaux and Jayne Cortez,
and Mari Evans, and so many more.

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So I am excited about this video because 
I'm getting my energy up for that trip,

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I'm really excited to participate 
in a cultural exchange,

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and I'm able to go with a delegation of 
amazing people of colour who I love,

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who I'm doing work with here in the united states,

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and I'm very excited about how what we learn in Cuba 
will influence the work we do together.

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So this week I'm sharing with you 
the poem "Diapora".

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That we know of, and, um, 
biographer Alexis DeVeaux also said

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that we don't know of a place where Audre Lorde 
wrote publicly about her experience in Cuba,

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but this poem "Diapora" is about 
her transnational work more generally,

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and how she thought about the experiences 
of people all over the world,

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including folks in Lebanon, 
including people in South Africa...

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and I think that as I think about what it will mean 
to engage with other Black folks in Cuba,

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I want to have these words in mind. 
So this is "Diaspora".

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<i>Afraid is a country with no exit visas</i>

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<i>a wire of ants walking the horizon</i>

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<i>embroiders our passports at birth</i>

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<i>Johannesburg Alabama</i>

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<i>a dark girl flees the cattle prods</i>

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<i>skin hanging from her shredded nails</i>

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<i>escapes into my nightmare</i>

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<i>half an hour before the Shatila dawn</i>

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<i>wakes in the well of a borrowed Volkswagen</i>

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<i>or a rickety midnight sleeper 
out of White River Junction</i>

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<i>Washington bound again</i>

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<i>gulps carbon monoxide in a false bottomed truck</i>

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<i>fording the Braceras Grande</i>

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<i>or an up-country river</i>

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<i>grenades held in a dry calabash</i>

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<i>leaving</i>

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So for me that poem has to do with

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what is at stake for people of colour to be 
in solidarity with each other,

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and all of that means in terms of 
the conflicts that exist all around the world,

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and especially the economic violence that is part 
of systems of domination and globalization,

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that people of colour face differently
in different places.

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And I'm excited! Sometime soon, a chapter that I wrote about Audre Lorde's theories of solidarity,

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especially in relationship to majority Black 
spaces and nations in the world,

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um, will be coming out in a book that's about 
Audre Lorde's transnational impact.

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So of course if you are following the 
School of Our Lorde blog

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you will know when you will have access to that.

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And! I also wanted to make a somewhat self-serving 
assignment to you,

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in addition to thinking about your impact 
on people of colour

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in other countries than the country 
that you may be situated in right now,

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I would love it if you could make a donation 
to Witness For Peace.

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I'm so grateful to that organization for sponsoring this people of colour specific delegation to Cuba,

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and I have information on the 
School of Our Lorde site

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and also on the Doctor Alexis Pauline Gumbs site

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about how you can make a donation to that project.

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I strongly hope that you will,

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to support not just our trip

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but also the practice, the continued practice

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of people of colour delegations to be able to exchange in a particular specific and nuanced way

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around the world.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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And...

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happy Resurrection Sunday.