Monday, November 03, 2008

For My People: Freedom in Durham

Hey loved ones,
So because I live in Durham I get to be inspired all the time by the brilliance and creativity of people. Not all the brilliant and creative people in the United States live in Durham, it just feels that way sometimes. Like today when a black woman who is a doctor and a mother of 6 came to speak to the Durham School Board and the Durham Public School administration about why students should be able to choose educational alternatives. Or like right now when Durham's Youth Noise Network is broadcasting a voice recording of June Jordan's "On the Night of November 3rd 1992" about the end of the (first) Bush era and speaking about their views on electoral politics.

So I write about Durham...as often as possible...because people act like they don't know about the resilient, resourceful miraculous people living, working and loving here. I wanted to share two examples with you all that are in cyber and book form right now.
First..check out an article I wrote called "The Life of A Poem: Audre Lorde's 'A Litany for Survival' in Post-Lacrosse Durham" for an online journal called Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service Learning and Community Literacy. It's in blog format so you can post comments..I hope you do!!!!
And THEN....(I am even more excited about this one) get/find/borrow a copy of Abolition Now!: 10 Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex just out from AK Press!!! This is a book collaboratively edited by the awesome publications committee of Critical Resistance and it features a chapter I wrote called "Freedom Seeds: Growing Abolition in Durham, North Carolina."

I'm so lucky that I get to live here and be inspired by you!!!!!!
love,
lex

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