breaking the silence

"I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.

I began to ask each time: 'What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?' Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, 'disappeared' or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, 'If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.' And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking."

~ Audre Lorde

Monsanto Morgue

Last  night:

"THE MONSANTO MORGUE
8:58 PM

This is what it must feel like to be in a conference room in the Death Star. No one has anything to do. No one is around. But those checking names at the door have to wait and wait like something might happen. Power functions with no one. Power does not need people."  (from The Stranger)

This is absurd. Kinda funny, but mostly absurd... and creepy. What? All that money and Monsanto couldn't even hire people to come to their party? Couldn't even try to make it look like their (potential) victory was legitimately based on what people want, and not based on the loads of money being poured in from out-of-state by the large corporations who use GMOs?
But really... where are all the People who actually voted "no"? And if the People voting "no" don't care enough about the issue to celebrate their victory then do they really care enough to deny other People the right to make informed choices about what we put in our bodies and where we put our money?!?

Ugh, say it again:

power does not need people