WEBVTT

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#I\'m gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside

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[Audre Lorde] Do not let the differences pull you apart.

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Use them, examine them, go through them-­

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grow from them. That is empowerment.

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#Ain\'t gonna study war no more...

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Women, men and activist youth came to Boston

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from 23 countries to honor Audre Lorde\'s life and work.

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Audre Lorde has had a major influence on three liberation movements:

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The Black Arts Movement, Women\'s Liberation,

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and Lesbian and Gay Liberation.

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As conference organizers, we had to work quickly.

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Audre had already been living with cancer for 12 years

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We found a space, but were limited to 1000 people

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Those who attended will never forget

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Lorde\'s message or her challenge

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At the time, the US was heading into the Gulf War

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[Audre Lorde] Our earth is dying we need ourselves--

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all of who we are

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And that is the function of culture

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I am a cultural worker. I believe in poetry.

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I believe that all art makes us more powerfully who we wish to become

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and we must be all we can become,

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because we need our energy for the battle and war it is.

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One of the things that saved my life was Audre Lorde\'s work

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and really her whole philosophy

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of respecting and celebrating difference

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and seeing difference as a source of power

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I just want to connect with women from all around the world

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and share solutions to the serious problems.

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Audre Lorde is a Planetary Treasure

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[Audre Lorde] I choose the earth.

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We choose the earth and the edge of each other\'s battles.

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The war is the same.

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If we lose someday, women\'s blood will congeal on a dead planet,

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but if we win, if we win, there is no telling.

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The Edge of Each Other\'s Battles: The Vision of Audre Lorde

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[Jacqui Alexander] This cele-conference honors Audre Lorde,

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poet, visionary, lesbian, feminist, warrior, mother.

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(Applause)

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Audre Lorde\'s poetry, essays,

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her involvement with political struggles around the world

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and her wisdom have all inspired this conference.

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But in honoring Audre Lorde,

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we are also honoring ourselves, our struggles and our victories,

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for whether or not we know of Lorde\'s work, we have lived it.

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(Applause)

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The work of the next four days then

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is to connect with each other around our most pressing concerns.

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And to use Audre\'s work to come to a clearer

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and deeper understanding of ourselves and our struggles.

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The work of this conference is ultimately to continue to

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plan for a future which links together

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our various communities across the globe.

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[Audre Lorde] You know Jacqui, I was just trying to remember

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the first time I heard about this,

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And it comes with the smell of kerosene

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and the sound of wind and devastation. It was right after Hugo,

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altered our life in St. Croix forever, on a physical level

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So at the time when I heard a celebration of your work,

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the core of me...

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whew, hey, I have to dream on this,

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I have to think about this when I have a chance-­

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when the generator doesn\'t conk out.

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As you talked, this glory you talked,

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and I heard conference, celebration conference,

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I thought oh, suppose you really envisioned a conference

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that was different from any other conference you\'d ever been --

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what would you like it to be

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these are the people who are going to do it.

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[Jacqui Alexander] We wanted the conference to be 50% working class women,

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50% women of color, which was a crucial move.

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We didn\'t want it to be a conference that was predominately white.

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[Angela Bowen] We felt that if anything was going to

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come from this conference it would come from

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the push of women of color and the knowledge

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of women of color and impoverished women

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about their own lives that could work in conjunction

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with other women who could help to bring about change.

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And we raised money to make sure that that happened.

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[Audre Lorde] And my sister I ask that you forgive me.

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It was not a lack of trust or belief,

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but I just didn\'t know at that point how extensive your visions were.

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Which was a really important learning experience for me.

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You really forced me to believe the ways in which our visions meshed.

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[Angela Bowen] We had many conversations with Audre before,

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she had even allowed us to do this conference.

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She did not want to come somewhere and be honored

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and feted and bowed to and given bouquets, that wasn\'t the point.

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The point was to use her work.

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In ways that she and we all agreed was going to change society.

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#Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.

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#Facing the rising suuuuuuuuun

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Black women have particular and legitimate issues

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which affect our lives as Black women,

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and addressing those issues does not make us any less Black.

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[Angela Bowen] When she made the statement that

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Black Feminism is not white feminism in Black Face,

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in the pages of the Black Scholar,

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she said we must bring black women to feminism

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and as they arrive we must face the agenda.

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They will bring with them class issues, welfare issues,

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labor issues, which has to do with racism,

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which has to do with confronting sexism within the Black community.

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#Two live crew, NWA

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#The violence continues the guns still blaze the knives still flash the drugs still flow

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#and finally the ultimate violence the violence of words

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#more lethal in their ability to kill

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#and to be felt over generations

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#maiming the spirit and crippling the psyche.

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#Two live crew and NWA have aimed their arsenal of words at women

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#and said it was a joke

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#I\'m not laughing I\'m not singing or dancing

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#I\'m dying

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#from these weapons of words hurled by my brothers.

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#The words you use when you refer to me have left me feeling

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#as if on the auction block naked and cold

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#robbed of my humanity

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#I feel raped once again before the world.

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#Your words have shamed me from boom boxes and Suzuki Samurai Jeeps 1800 decibels of sound

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#blaring bitch over and over as if it were my given name

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#lyrics that describe me as if I were a chicken

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#a mere collection of parts breasts, legs, thighs,

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sadly what you have done to me has reduced you to savage beasts a true cannibal.

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#You proclaim to the world that no longer am I the reflection of your mother\'s, sisters or daughters

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that you are unworthy of love or a friend only a need a receptacle for you

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to debase and wash in your offensive words.

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#Your language is of the sewer

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and its stench clings to me and to you.

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#You create dance steps to your own powerlessness and ask me to shake my butt to the beat.

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#And what should have been a moment of trust, beauty, and love or even just respect

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has been cheapened to be flushed down the toilet.

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#History is replete with its Judas\'s and Benedict Arnolds.

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#I guess 30 pieces of silver still buy crucifixion.

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#It hurts me to know that you have lined your pockets with pieces of our respective souls.

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(Applause)

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[Jacqui Alexander] This whole question of Black feminism,

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that Black women could be Black and be feminists

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which in a sense takes on the more nationalist view

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that if one were Black one didn\'t need feminism which was a white thing.

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[Angela Bowen] When she came back from Tougallo College

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to New York City after she had done an artists in residence stint there

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and Martin Luther King was assassinated,

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it was that moment when she said,

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She had known when she was in Mississippi,

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that teaching was going to be her confrontational front line,

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civil rights work, and she carried that through.

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[Jacqui] She was there on the front lines during Black liberation struggle.

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Was she any less feminist during that time.

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And when she moved in white feminist circles

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was she any less Black because she was feminist.

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[Hitaz Haziz] I have asked a sister to come up

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and give me a few minutes of attention

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cause I am having feelings come up.

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And I\'ve learned that if l have some feelings coming up

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that I need to create a safe space so that I can go on with my work.

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It is real hard for me to be here.

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It is real scary and it seems like I never get used to this.

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And it is real emotional, because I don\'t know if you can hear what I have to say.

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Cause it\'s been real hard.

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And sometimes when I come to speak on the issue

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of class and women and being raised poor

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or being an activist within the poverty

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my experience has been that sometimes you get really hurt

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because if you have not eaten,

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if you have not experienced not having food,

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if you have not experienced not have shelter,

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you don\'t hear me. How hard it\'s been for poor women.

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It\'s been hard

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It\'s hard getting to conferences.

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It\'s been really hard

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What I\'ve seen in the past is that we come to conferences

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and go to meetings and we intellectualize

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and we have our stats and our datas

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but we don\'t understand the internalization of poverty.

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That this goes across class, gender and race

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and we don\'t understand the dynamics

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of the soul murder when one lives in poverty.

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We don\'t seem to understand how it feels

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to be an activist or an unaware activist

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because all women are activist, whether they know it or not;

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to be able to make a decision an intelligent decision,

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and to at the same time be able to figure out

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how you are going to feed your children.

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I want to call attention to the numbing process

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that we all experience in this country, outside of this country,

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in order to stay alive because the message says,

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if you feel the oppression you will explode

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or we will get you before you explode

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and they have shown us that they will get us,

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the question is how do we become un-numb,

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so that we can have some brilliant thinking about this oppression,

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whether we\'re raised poor, middle class or owning class

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and create an ally relationship for the nineties.

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#We\'ve come this far by strength, leaning on each other

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#Trusting in each other\'s words

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#We\'ve never failed each other yet...

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[Audre reads] For black women and white women

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to face each other\'s angers without denial or immobility

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or silence or guilt is in itself a heretical and generative idea.

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(Applause)

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[Angela Bowen] The most incredible thing to me

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was the amount of white women who would send their full amount and say,

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if I can\'t come because you are not making equity,

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keep my money and use it for someone who can,

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those were wonderful.

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On the other hand, were the people who felt like,

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I know Audre, I\'ve been using her work,

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I\'ve been doing this, I should be able to come,

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and were angry because they had theirs held up.

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[Stephanie] What happened a couple of days before the conference opened

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was that we reached our capacity for white women

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because they wanted to be at least 50% women of color.

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And I was getting calls from white women saying

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can I still attend the conference, so I would say,

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well we\'ve reached our capacity for white women

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and then I\'d sort of let them tell me,

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well I am African American or I\'m Asian American or whatever.

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[Angela Bowen] One person, a fairly young woman working in the office with me

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was totally in tears because she was so disappointed

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in the way that some of the white women were acting.

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And she\'d say \"I\'m sure you\'ll get in, it\'s not full yet,

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we are just trying to keep the numbers even\"

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and they would castigate her.

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[Stephanie] And they\'d say well,

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are you sure or is there any way I can attend or I have enough money to pay

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or I\'m a close personal friend of Audre Lorde which I got a couple of times.

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And then I\'d say things like

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well if you are close personal friend of Audre Lorde

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I\'m sure you\'ll understand our commitment to the conference being 50% women of color.

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[Angela] To see Audre stand up on stage and say,

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I don\'t know how you achieved this,

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but I have finally seen the achievement of the fifty percent women of color

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that we\'ve been talking about for years

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and we said yeah, you don\'t want to know how we achieved it, it was really hard and also very inspiring.

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(Poem) Revolutionary Blues

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#And when I say to my sisters

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#my lesbian feminist sisters

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#my angry white sisters

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#whose chains still mesh with mine

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#when I say sisters

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#help me, the noose tightens on my neck

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#I cannot breathe

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#it is because I am black

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#my sisters say, yes

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#but what has that to do with our revolution?

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#And when I say to my brothers

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#My angry black brothers with leopard Dashikis

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#whose roots entwine with mine in Africa

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#when I say brothers help me I am encircled by fire

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#the flame grows nearer; it is because I love women

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#my brothers say, yes, but what has that to do with our revolution

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#and when the revolution comes

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#and it is time for choosing sides

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#when radical lesbian feminists

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#are fighting our oppression by men

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#And when the revolution comes

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#and it is time for choosing sides

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#when militant black nationalists

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#are fighting our oppression by whites

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#I expect to be shot in the back by someone who calls me sister.

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[Barbara Schulman] The challenge that Audre poses is a challenge that includes us.

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There were so many white women who were working as volunteers in the various sub­committees in the conference

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It was definitely a place where white women had to make decisions about when to speak and when to listen

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and those kinds of tensions are very difficult to negotiate for white women,

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especially those of us who started our feminist lives in contexts which were pretty racially homogenous.

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[Stephanie] What we as white people need I think is a certain amount of humility

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and that mans that these women of color who are in this organization are going to know more than me about certain things.

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For white women it\'s very easy for us to walk away,

00:19:16.175 --> 00:19:18.400
it\'s very easy for us to leave the table,

00:19:18.425 --> 00:19:20.650
it\'s very easy for us to walk away from the problems,

00:19:20.700 --> 00:19:23.250
because we don\'t have to face the day to day racism.

00:19:23.250 --> 00:19:27.075
The worst thing that we can do is stop talking to each other all together.

00:19:27.175 --> 00:19:30.525
[Audre Lorde] What this conference showed me

00:19:31.225 --> 00:19:35.050
in listening to the women who came up and spoke to me,

00:19:35.050 --> 00:19:36.350
it was almost like a poem,

00:19:37.225 --> 00:19:41.675
woven out of the voices and the emotions and the responses,

00:19:42.050 --> 00:19:43.575
some of them were really different,

00:19:43.600 --> 00:19:45.750
I couldn\'t have predicted many of them,

00:19:46.600 --> 00:19:55.000
well I learned the different ways in which my vision could have arms could have meat could have,

00:19:55.425 --> 00:19:58.700
you know, substance beyond my wildest dreams,

00:19:58.700 --> 00:20:00.425
and of course that\'s what vision is,

00:20:00.425 --> 00:20:02.800
you can\'t- I can\'t do it all, I need,

00:20:03.175 --> 00:20:07.550
you know, we need each other, we all need each other.

00:20:07.725 --> 00:20:12.900
That is where is rooted the concept of difference we need

00:20:12.925 --> 00:20:19.100
what is different to advance beyond even our most possible boundaries.

00:20:21.875 --> 00:20:25.300
Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless

00:20:25.350 --> 00:20:29.850
so it can be thought the farthest horizons of our hopes

00:20:29.850 --> 00:20:36.650
and fears are cobbled by our poems carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

00:20:36.900 --> 00:20:38.425
[Jacqui] The woman was a poet.

00:20:38.450 --> 00:20:46.300
She believed fundamentally that nothing transforms in the same way as emotion,

00:20:46.400 --> 00:20:49.900
that poetry is important in that transformation.

00:20:49.975 --> 00:20:54.100
So how do we have poetry throughout this entire celebration of her?

00:20:54.125 --> 00:20:56.825
So we had poetry readings, there were cultural events,

00:20:56.825 --> 00:20:59.275
people could come and share their poetry,

00:20:59.325 --> 00:21:01.700
there were open spaces where that to happen.

00:21:01.725 --> 00:21:07.231
(Poem: How I Spent My Birthday) #This first poem I am about to read is how I spent my birthday last year

00:21:08.625 --> 00:21:12.150
#I was assaulted at Bensonhurst on Halloween.

00:21:12.325 --> 00:21:15.150
#And I spent my birthday reminding myself

00:21:15.800 --> 00:21:17.575
#and the detectives in the car

00:21:18.600 --> 00:21:21.550
#of how five white boys called me nigger

00:21:23.450 --> 00:21:26.525
#and I spent my birthday reminding myself

00:21:26.900 --> 00:21:28.725
#and the detectives in the car

00:21:29.350 --> 00:21:31.950
#of how five white boys had the power

00:21:31.950 --> 00:21:33.075
#to call me nigger

00:21:34.950 --> 00:21:36.700
#and I spent my birthday

00:21:36.700 --> 00:21:38.025
#reminding myself

00:21:38.475 --> 00:21:40.150
#and the detectives in the car

00:21:40.900 --> 00:21:43.600
#of how five pale glow-in-the dark boys

00:21:43.600 --> 00:21:45.450
#had the power to call me nigger

00:21:45.450 --> 00:21:50.675
(Applause)

00:21:50.725 --> 00:21:52.925
#and I spent my birthday in jail

00:21:53.450 --> 00:21:55.500
#with white boy blood on my hands

00:21:55.850 --> 00:21:59.525
#reminding myself, I am not a nigger.

00:21:59.825 --> 00:22:04.325
(Applause)

00:22:04.350 --> 00:22:09.625
[Audre Lorde] I am a poet. when I write prose, I am a poet writing prose.

00:22:10.625 --> 00:22:13.550
When I say I poet, I am speaking of a whole way

00:22:13.550 --> 00:22:21.125
of looking at life of moving into it of using it of dealing with myself and my experience,

00:22:21.125 --> 00:22:25.775
I am not speaking of living itself, I am speaking of a use of my living.

00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:30.175
The difference between poetry and rhetoric

00:22:30.700 --> 00:22:36.600
is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.

00:22:37.375 --> 00:22:45.250
\"Power\" is a poem that unfortunately still continues to be so true.

00:22:45.250 --> 00:22:49.975
It\'s a poem about the death of a ten year old black boy who was shot down.

00:22:50.025 --> 00:22:56.325
And the policeman who did this was a student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

00:22:56.325 --> 00:22:58.675
which was a college where I was teaching at the time,

00:22:58.675 --> 00:23:06.550
although I had never had him, but it really made me think about even on a deeper level,

00:23:06.650 --> 00:23:10.750
how do we use, what we have, where we have it, at any given moment.

00:23:10.750 --> 00:23:17.875
How do we train ourselves to recognize where power may lie at any given moment?

00:23:18.050 --> 00:23:23.875
And I thought the inability to do that is what makes not only our pain and our losses

00:23:23.875 --> 00:23:29.850
and our fallen so dreadful, but it also makes us unable to respond.

00:23:29.875 --> 00:23:35.600
I mean we don\'t all of a sudden any one of us become the person we want to be.

00:23:35.650 --> 00:23:39.075
We don\'t all of a sudden become the warrior.

00:23:39.125 --> 00:23:44.775
And I thought about that and also the rage that filled me when I heard that he had been acquitted.

00:23:44.775 --> 00:23:47.150
I was on my way to a friends house

00:23:47.175 --> 00:23:50.050
and I was driving and I literally pulled over

00:23:50.075 --> 00:23:52.674
and grabbed up my notebook and just started writing

00:23:52.675 --> 00:23:59.375
because I knew if l drove into traffic, I was going to run down the next white person I saw.

00:23:59.825 --> 00:24:07.500
#Wade in the water. God\'s going to trouble the water...

00:24:14.800 --> 00:24:23.375
[Ellen Kuzwayo] To Audre, These are the words that come out of South Africa for the pebbles of inspiration.

00:24:23.475 --> 00:24:28.275
Your name is known in Sowetto; You have not been there.

00:24:28.425 --> 00:24:32.725
[Jacqui Alexander] Ellen Kuzwayo was invited to the conference for a very specific reason.

00:24:32.750 --> 00:24:39.575
She together with Gloria Toseph started the Sisters in Support of Sisters in South Africa.

00:24:39.575 --> 00:24:43.225
[Ellen] You are greatly thought of for the work that you have done.

00:24:43.750 --> 00:24:46.125
You have sent your message through your poetry;

00:24:46.575 --> 00:24:49.700
you have sent your message through prose

00:24:49.950 --> 00:24:55.204
you have sent your message just through your love

00:24:55.600 --> 00:24:58.084
Audre, your warmth.

00:24:58.150 --> 00:25:00.600
[Jacqui] When we shift to other parts of the world

00:25:00.625 --> 00:25:06.575
I think there is an interesting shift in Audre\'s own formulations and understandings

00:25:06.700 --> 00:25:11.675
based on the very particular experiences of women in different countries.

00:25:11.875 --> 00:25:16.325
And here I am talking about indigenous women in Australia,

00:25:16.350 --> 00:25:19.650
in Arteroa, New Zealand, Black women in Holland,

00:25:19.700 --> 00:25:24.850
Black women in Berlin, Caribbean women, women in different parts of the world.

00:25:24.850 --> 00:25:31.475
[Audre Lorde] Our sisters in Sowetto, look to us not to answer their problems

00:25:31.500 --> 00:25:35.275
but to give them what we have which is our support,

00:25:35.300 --> 00:25:41.625
our resources and an insistence that their lives not be forgotten.

00:25:42.050 --> 00:25:45.800
[Tacqui Alexander] Instead of arguing for something called sisterhood is global,

00:25:45.825 --> 00:25:51.300
i.e., we are all women in common and therefore suffer in the same way,

00:25:51.675 --> 00:25:56.000
she developed this notion of sisterhood and survival.

00:25:56.500 --> 00:26:01.900
[Audre] We are here women, we are here men,

00:26:01.950 --> 00:26:08.900
we are here as part of communities that are gravely under threat.

00:26:08.900 --> 00:26:11.675
[Jacqui] She said how can I argue for peace,

00:26:11.675 --> 00:26:15.125
if my sisters are being gunned down in the streets of Sowetto,

00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:21.650
[Audre Lorde] And all over the world, people of the earth are saying,

00:26:22.800 --> 00:26:27.275
you took my land, you didn\'t use it well,

00:26:27.300 --> 00:26:32.350
you abused it, you polluted it, you didn\'t pay for it, give it back.

00:26:32.475 --> 00:26:40.125
[Jacqui] It is the question of understanding women\'s struggles in the context of their daily lives as a way to talk about feminism.

00:26:40.400 --> 00:26:43.975
It\'s a model I believe in which feminism is not a scarce resource.

00:26:44.150 --> 00:26:45.175
Everybody has it.

00:26:45.975 --> 00:26:49.850
All women are feminists, can be feminists,

00:26:49.850 --> 00:26:55.121
not in the same way, but one simply cannot use one measure of feminism

00:26:55.121 --> 00:26:58.641
to determine how feminism ought to operate in different parts of the world.

00:26:58.641 --> 00:27:01.900
[Audre] What do you do with your spare time?

00:27:01.900 --> 00:27:03.450
How many computers are there?

00:27:03.450 --> 00:27:06.150
How many arms, how many pieces of paper?

00:27:06.200 --> 00:27:11.450
Write a letter, get 10 other women to write a letter or 10 other men,

00:27:11.500 --> 00:27:19.450
get ten letters out saying this is not an acceptable way for me and my children to die.

00:27:20.050 --> 00:27:32.475
# Woman, Woman Woman Woman Woman

00:27:32.700 --> 00:27:37.550
I am a Black lesbian and I am your sister.

00:27:37.850 --> 00:27:40.300
[Audre] I really love telling this tale.

00:27:40.325 --> 00:27:42.775
[Barbara Smith] This apocryphal tale

00:27:42.775 --> 00:27:46.900
[Audre Lorde] In 1976, I was invited to give a reading at the MLA, Modern Languages Association

00:27:47.150 --> 00:27:55.875
and this was the epitome to me of dry academia, the bastion of properness.

00:27:56.575 --> 00:28:05.125
And I saw in the program, that there was going to be a talk in the grand ballroom and one of them was Barbara Smith.

00:28:05.700 --> 00:28:10.875
And I had heard about Barbara Smith, I had read some of the things by Barbara Smith,

00:28:10.950 --> 00:28:15.575
and I had seen this article in the Times about Barbara Smith

00:28:15.625 --> 00:28:20.800
giving a course on Black women writers, somewhere, at Yale I think. it was?

00:28:20.825 --> 00:28:24.325
[Barbara Smith] That\'s not true, but of course I was teaching a course on Black women writers.

00:28:24.350 --> 00:28:29.250
[Audre] Well that\'s it, I thought, Ok, I want to see Barbara Smith.

00:28:29.250 --> 00:28:35.500
So I went to the Ballroom, and I will never, never forget that image of you,

00:28:35.600 --> 00:28:41.200
first of all when you stood up you were so lovely you were so lovely .

00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:42.000
[Barbara Smith] In my youth.

00:28:42.025 --> 00:28:45.975
[Audre] And you had on a blazer.

00:28:46.025 --> 00:28:49.450
I thought look at her in jeans and a blazer in front of MLA,

00:28:50.025 --> 00:28:54.800
green and white, and you stood up and you began and you said,

00:28:55.325 --> 00:29:04.375
\"well I\'m a Black lesbian feminist literary critic really wondering if l can be that and live to tell the story.\"

00:29:05.225 --> 00:29:08.000
And I was so taken with you.

00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:16.675
I was so taken--first of all--with how beautiful and brave you were to stand up and say that, but I was also really taken with--

00:29:17.075 --> 00:29:24.000
I thought well if she is wondering if it\'s possible to be that and live to tell the story,

00:29:24.050 --> 00:29:29.200
than we haven\'t, some of us haven\'t been telling the right stories,

00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:32.000
because she\'s got to know-- it is possible,

00:29:32.400 --> 00:29:37.825
and then and there, I made up my mind I was going to write what later became Zami,

00:29:37.850 --> 00:29:43.525
then and there I thought I have to put some of this stuff down.

00:29:43.575 --> 00:29:45.925
[Jacqui] I remember, now that you ask this question,

00:29:45.950 --> 00:29:48.400
I remember going to New Words Bookstore,

00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:52.325
that\'s one of the few feminist bookstores still in existence at this time,

00:29:52.350 --> 00:29:56.100
and moving to the back of the store and seeing Zami,

00:29:56.150 --> 00:29:59.450
and being totally seized with fear,

00:29:59.850 --> 00:30:07.650
because Zami was the pejorative name given to lesbians in the Caribbean

00:30:07.850 --> 00:30:14.775
and so I saw that and said oh so that\'s what I am having totally internalized the negativity,

00:30:14.900 --> 00:30:19.525
and then I pick up the book, That says Zami, a New Spelling of my name.

00:30:19.525 --> 00:30:24.775
So it\'s really interesting to kind of trace this movement from this personal

00:30:24.925 --> 00:30:32.475
coming to growth, coming to consciousness into doing a certain kind of political work

00:30:32.475 --> 00:30:37.700
understanding that the experiences of one\'s own sexuality are formed and forged

00:30:37.700 --> 00:30:42.850
by processes larger than oneself and coming really to grapple with what that means.

00:30:43.225 --> 00:30:46.650
(POEM) #Last night I took a woman home to my mind

00:30:47.125 --> 00:30:49.275
#but who I take home is my own damn business

00:30:49.575 --> 00:30:51.600
#last night or maybe days ago

00:30:51.600 --> 00:30:55.050
#Time has little significance in the timeless world of memory

00:30:55.100 --> 00:30:58.825
#But last night or days ago, I took a brown skin woman home to my memory,

00:30:58.850 --> 00:31:04.625
to my life and she lived there for forever or for a few days or was it just last night

00:31:05.450 --> 00:31:07.950
#Time again, its just a trick so lets pretend like

00:31:07.950 --> 00:31:11.400
we do every time we step over each other on Brooklyn pavement.

00:31:12.075 --> 00:31:17.125
#A little brown woman sending me a postcard from my mind with words that somehow

00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:21.275
#encompass all that it means for me to be black in white world

00:31:22.075 --> 00:31:25.450
#Female in phallic symbols equal life world

00:31:25.800 --> 00:31:28.700
#gay in straight-die before wondering world

00:31:28.825 --> 00:31:32.125
#Sixteen in a world without place for the old or the young

00:31:32.175 --> 00:31:34.150
#and she revives meaning with her tongue,

00:31:34.175 --> 00:31:38.750
on my skin in my ear with a language; I will protect with my life

00:31:38.750 --> 00:31:40.750
(Applause)

00:31:40.750 --> 00:31:45.025
#Brown skin girl stay home and mind the baby

00:31:45.800 --> 00:31:50.694
#Brown skin girl stay home and mind the baby

00:31:51.125 --> 00:31:55.175
#I\'m going away on a sailing ship

00:31:55.375 --> 00:31:57.825
#and if I don\'t come back,

00:31:58.150 --> 00:32:00.625
#stay home and mind the baby.

00:32:00.925 --> 00:32:05.275
#And so I bring home Africa, and so I bring home Jamaica

00:32:05.300 --> 00:32:08.975
#and Puerto Rico and all islands isolated like my people

00:32:09.300 --> 00:32:12.225
#months days years ago or last night I brought home

00:32:12.225 --> 00:32:15.375
#a small brown woman who brought a queen home to me

00:32:16.875 --> 00:32:20.725
#and if I bring home love that is female, Puerto Rican, West Indian,

00:32:20.725 --> 00:32:24.050
love that is unbending, unbreaking the bridge of my faith

00:32:24.100 --> 00:32:25.500
#Woman against all odds

00:32:25.525 --> 00:32:28.175
#herself by any means necessary

00:32:28.175 --> 00:32:31.325
#Let me remind you in the most deadly way possible

00:32:31.350 --> 00:32:34.875
#that who I take home is my own damn business.

00:32:34.875 --> 00:32:40.750
(Applause)

00:32:40.800 --> 00:32:46.650
At the time that I read Audre, the first time I really read any of her essays

00:32:46.650 --> 00:32:49.700
was at a very critical part in my life,

00:32:50.050 --> 00:32:54.800
I had just lost custody of my son to the state for being a lesbian

00:32:54.800 --> 00:33:00.500
and it was like I was reading my life written by somebody else.

00:33:00.675 --> 00:33:09.300
#ohhhhh Can\'t tum around. We\'ve come this far by strength.

00:33:09.700 --> 00:33:14.150
[Angela Bowen] Audre was the first black lesbian feminist that I saw in the flesh

00:33:14.150 --> 00:33:17.150
and of course I had gone out of my way to see her,

00:33:17.400 --> 00:33:20.125
driving to New Haven to Bridgeport for that purpose,

00:33:20.250 --> 00:33:28.875
but I had discovered her a couple of years before in my bedroom upstairs by myself.

00:33:28.900 --> 00:33:32.950
It was during a time when I was educating myself about feminism.

00:33:33.050 --> 00:33:38.700
And I discovered her in a Black feminist magazine called Azalea.

00:33:38.900 --> 00:33:40.975
The room was two o\'clock in the morning

00:33:41.350 --> 00:33:44.075
and my daughter and my niece were sleeping in the next bedroom

00:33:44.100 --> 00:33:48.275
and I remember yelling and immediately clapping my hand over my mouth

00:33:48.325 --> 00:33:50.875
because I didn\'t want to wake them up, they were both light sleepers.

00:33:51.075 --> 00:33:53.200
But, here was this discovery

00:33:53.250 --> 00:33:56.475
So after that I kept looking for her in all the women\'s journals.

00:33:56.675 --> 00:33:59.550
So when I heard she was coming to Bridgeport I went to see her.

00:33:59.575 --> 00:34:02.950
So that was my first time laying my eyes on a Black Lesbian Feminist.

00:34:02.950 --> 00:34:04.325
And at the time

00:34:05.350 --> 00:34:10.964
she inspired me to know that I could leave, I mean I wanted to leave.

00:34:10.975 --> 00:34:19.175
I was trying to think I could get out of this whole totally big heterosexual trap surrounded by all of the stuff,

00:34:19.575 --> 00:34:21.900
which I won\'t go into, but I wanted to leave

00:34:21.925 --> 00:34:25.775
and I looked at her and I said here she is out here by herself

00:34:25.800 --> 00:34:30.450
it felt like, to me, just out here doing this work coming out over and over again

00:34:30.500 --> 00:34:31.593
all over the place

00:34:31.593 --> 00:34:33.569
and I said she\'s got to have help,

00:34:33.569 --> 00:34:37.319
she\'s got to have an army and I thought I was going to be one of an army

00:34:37.319 --> 00:34:41.100
well there are some of us we\'re not quite an army yet but we\'re out here trying

00:34:41.250 --> 00:34:45.525
but that\'s what I felt we need to be doing this work, and she was an inspiration

00:34:45.550 --> 00:34:47.300
[Nicaraguan Activist] I am thirty, yeah

00:34:48.150 --> 00:34:50.725
Since my fourteen years old, all my life,

00:34:50.725 --> 00:34:54.450
I give my life for the revolution,

00:34:54.500 --> 00:35:04.100
yeah and when I fell in love for the first time of a woman, that was a revolution in my life

00:35:04.100 --> 00:35:07.175
(Applause)

00:35:49.775 --> 00:35:51.775
(Applause)

00:35:51.800 --> 00:35:56.475
(Music)

00:35:56.625 --> 00:35:58.850
So when I speak of the erotic then,

00:35:59.250 --> 00:36:02.900
I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women

00:36:03.350 --> 00:36:06.275
of that creative energy empowered

00:36:06.300 --> 00:36:11.825
the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language,

00:36:11.850 --> 00:36:18.850
our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.

00:36:22.150 --> 00:36:26.225
[Blanche Wiesen Cook] I have known and loved Audre Lorde for over thirty years.

00:36:26.275 --> 00:36:29.975
We met when we were students at Hunter college

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:36.350
and although Audre then was the only Black student at Hunter college in New York city,

00:36:36.450 --> 00:36:44.825
She was already a leader, a poet, an editor, a spiritual guide, inspiration and conscious

00:36:44.850 --> 00:36:49.175
and she\'s remained all of that for over thirty years.

00:36:49.450 --> 00:36:55.625
#Just like Audre, we shall not be moved,

00:36:56.475 --> 00:37:01.700
Who Am I? I am a Phillipina born in the USA

00:37:01.750 --> 00:37:07.400
I have no doubt that sometime we shall arrive

00:37:08.500 --> 00:37:11.950
#The women united will always get excited

00:37:11.950 --> 00:37:14.800
#The women united will always get excited

00:37:14.800 --> 00:37:16.975
I love her work, I love her poetry

00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:19.075
She has been important for me personally

00:37:19.100 --> 00:37:24.675
and for the development of Afro-German people for the last several years

00:37:24.675 --> 00:37:28.650
I\'m excited, I love it, I like the energy it is just hopping.

00:37:28.650 --> 00:37:48.825
(Music)

00:37:49.050 --> 00:37:53.450
The black male consciousness must be raised to the realization

00:37:53.750 --> 00:38:00.575
that sexism and woman hating are critically dysfunctional to his liberation as a black man.

00:38:00.600 --> 00:38:05.050
[Calvin Hernton] You don\'t say how do you put Audre Lorde\'s ideology into practice

00:38:05.100 --> 00:38:07.050
you say how do you put her philosophy into practice.

00:38:07.700 --> 00:38:10.350
There is a difference between ideology and philosophy.

00:38:10.375 --> 00:38:12.650
You don\'t say let\'s put her theory into this... you know

00:38:12.650 --> 00:38:14.125
you don\'t say that. You say philosophy.

00:38:14.325 --> 00:38:16.975
Theory and ideology may be contained in philosophy

00:38:16.975 --> 00:38:21.200
but philosophy is so much more than just theory and ideology.

00:38:21.300 --> 00:38:25.525
Its purpose, the occasion for its origin,

00:38:25.575 --> 00:38:34.350
its call into being from exigencies that are far more profound and life giving than ideology and theory,

00:38:34.875 --> 00:38:39.125
so totally embracing so that you don\'t leave anybody out.

00:38:39.400 --> 00:38:42.300
[Angela] One thing that was wonderful about that conference--

00:38:42.300 --> 00:38:45.375
I was the person working in the office and I remember getting a call

00:38:45.400 --> 00:38:50.425
from a woman who was an editor of the Feminist newspaper Off Our Backs.

00:38:50.425 --> 00:38:53.125
And she said that she didn\'t want to come

00:38:53.450 --> 00:38:58.925
and she was really struggling with whether to come because there were going to be men at the conference.

00:38:58.925 --> 00:39:01.100
I talked to her about Audre\'s vision

00:39:01.175 --> 00:39:05.025
and that these were feminist men and anti-racist men just like us and so forth

00:39:05.025 --> 00:39:07.550
and we talked and she called back again a day later and said

00:39:07.600 --> 00:39:10.275
that she thought that she would come but only because it was Audre,

00:39:10.275 --> 00:39:12.700
she couldn\'t be in this company if it weren\'t for Audre.

00:39:13.775 --> 00:39:17.425
We were on stage, a group of us singing Blueberry Hill,

00:39:17.425 --> 00:39:19.100
[Jacqui] I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill

00:39:20.200 --> 00:39:26.750
Because in Zami, Audre has that little section where she talks about being up on the hill making love to Ginger

00:39:26.750 --> 00:39:32.475
when this was playing on the car radio so we were kind of teasing her and singing that song and she was cracking up.

00:39:32.525 --> 00:39:40.850
#The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill

00:39:43.375 --> 00:39:46.250
This paticular woman who said she wasn\'t going to come

00:39:46.275 --> 00:39:49.375
said she was sitting out in the audience watching us up there

00:39:49.375 --> 00:39:51.425
clowning around and one of the people with us

00:39:51.425 --> 00:39:55.900
was Blackberri, a Black gay man organizer, singer,

00:39:56.100 --> 00:39:58.075
and she looked up there and she said,

00:39:58.425 --> 00:40:02.875
but Blackberri is not my enemy, he\'s after the same thing I\'m after,

00:40:02.950 --> 00:40:05.625
we\'re all after the same thing, and it was this revelation,

00:40:05.650 --> 00:40:09.225
that she was so happy that she had made the choice to come.

00:40:09.225 --> 00:40:13.850
so she could see that what is going on, and I was so thrilled

00:40:13.850 --> 00:40:16.931
And I said when she called, why don\'t you write it?

00:40:20.675 --> 00:40:24.850
So that was one of the high moments of that conference for me,

00:40:25.125 --> 00:40:31.250
one of the goals, to make people come together who would not have come together except for Audre

00:40:31.300 --> 00:40:35.075
and then go away with something that was transforming.

00:40:35.950 --> 00:40:45.750
#Cause you were my thrill on Blueberry Hill!

00:40:45.750 --> 00:40:56.725
(Cheers and Applause)

00:40:57.450 --> 00:41:04.509
[Audre] Why is it that so often when we try to get together to do what is closest to our hearts blood and each other,

00:41:05.375 --> 00:41:06.725
something goes on?

00:41:09.225 --> 00:41:12.450
What have they implanted in us that

00:41:12.450 --> 00:41:15.825
we are allowing to replicate like a virus?

00:41:15.850 --> 00:41:19.525
[Angela] A central part of our conference was the Eye to Eye sessions

00:41:19.550 --> 00:41:25.675
this was based on an essay called Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger.

00:41:25.675 --> 00:41:29.000
We are really committed sisters. We start out together,

00:41:29.075 --> 00:41:32.675
Somehow it\'s not happening, the paper doesn\'t occur,

00:41:32.700 --> 00:41:35.275
the meeting place is misunderstood.

00:41:35.825 --> 00:41:37.475
What is going on?

00:41:38.075 --> 00:41:40.525
Do we have an agent in our midst,

00:41:40.850 --> 00:41:46.125
or maybe there\'s something we have been too polite to talk about.

00:41:46.175 --> 00:41:53.850
[Angela] She was basically talking about racism among black women, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia,

00:41:53.875 --> 00:41:57.275
but within the community of black women.

00:41:57.325 --> 00:42:01.725
She wanted to talk about what the patriarchy has imposed on us,

00:42:01.750 --> 00:42:04.925
the effect on us, as Black women,

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:10.696
from the inside and how as a consequence we dealt with one another and with ourselves

00:42:10.750 --> 00:42:12.525
but we decided to expand it,

00:42:12.525 --> 00:42:15.350
so that it just wasn\'t black women talking to one another

00:42:15.375 --> 00:42:24.425
about their own internalized isms and hating those things within each other that we saw for ourselves, etc., very very deep.

00:42:24.425 --> 00:42:30.625
And so we had a period where we stopped everything and we just did Eye to Eye sessions.

00:42:30.625 --> 00:42:37.000
[Anna Ortiz] The women in Latin America thought that those of us who were born in the united states were spoiled,

00:42:37.050 --> 00:42:43.275
that we were privileged, that we wanted to reject our culture,

00:42:43.300 --> 00:42:47.150
that we didn\'t speak Spanish because, we didn\'t want to.

00:42:47.450 --> 00:42:54.275
And it was good for them to hear women talk about being hit with a ruler in school when they spoke Spanish

00:42:54.475 --> 00:42:59.375
or how there families didn\'t want them to talk about that part of their background anymore.

00:42:59.450 --> 00:43:05.725
And I don\'t think that women in the United States had an idea of how to the grain

00:43:05.725 --> 00:43:09.525
the survival issues of women in Latin America and the Caribbean are.

00:43:09.550 --> 00:43:13.400
So I think that it was good for us to have a clearer vision of each other.

00:43:13.400 --> 00:43:17.075
(Music)

00:43:17.100 --> 00:43:20.600
[German Woman] We had to face our struggle, our weakness,

00:43:20.625 --> 00:43:23.375
and our anger and share the experience

00:43:23.400 --> 00:43:31.625
and it doesn\'t matter if the women were white or black or they came from other different backgrounds.

00:43:31.650 --> 00:43:34.225
So that means all this different energy,

00:43:34.275 --> 00:43:41.525
and all this different power it helps me a lot to deal with my own anger or my own weakness even in my country.

00:43:41.575 --> 00:43:48.400
[Asian Woman] Many people had talked about a very painful feeling of isolation, of growing up in neighborhoods throughout the US,

00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:54.325
for example where they were the only Chinese person, or the only Indian person, or Japanese person.

00:43:54.350 --> 00:43:57.175
For many people they were overcome with emotion.

00:43:57.225 --> 00:44:01.625
I feel that as Asian American women we have been taught to be silenced too long.

00:44:01.650 --> 00:44:04.175
[Angela Bowen] When people came out of those Eye to Eye sessions

00:44:04.200 --> 00:44:09.550
they were supposed to move into coalitions up on the stage kind of dealing with that.

00:44:09.550 --> 00:44:11.825
That next half never got handled.

00:44:11.825 --> 00:44:13.450
[Asian woman] We have not been on the stage,

00:44:13.450 --> 00:44:17.075
we haven\'t been seen and I need everyone to stand up right now.

00:44:17.075 --> 00:44:22.350
[Angela Bowen] People were coming out saying we were not being heard and we want to have a speak out.

00:44:22.350 --> 00:44:28.050
[Jacqui] People believed that the way in which the conference was organized was organized to silence certain people.

00:44:28.725 --> 00:44:33.100
Will Asian women stand? We are here.

00:44:33.225 --> 00:44:39.125
[Angela Bowen] Don\'t you think that within that framework, we as black women were seen as the powerful ones

00:44:39.125 --> 00:44:45.625
and the other women of color were seen as being powerless in relation to us, which surprised us.

00:44:45.625 --> 00:44:49.657
[Jacqui] If the conference was organized as it was around I am your sister

00:44:49.657 --> 00:44:53.113
and people are saying you are not allowing me to speak,

00:44:53.113 --> 00:44:59.897
then it seemed to us that as the organizers that we had a tremendous responsibility to create a space for that to happen.

00:44:59.897 --> 00:45:05.850
So we were up around the clock Saturday night changing the organization of Sunday morning.

00:45:05.875 --> 00:45:09.850
We came in twenty minutes before the session began and they took apart the set on the stage,

00:45:09.850 --> 00:45:15.925
took it apart completely, put mies on the floor in order to reorganize what Sunday would look like for people.

00:45:16.350 --> 00:45:21.550
[Audre] Ah, but that\'s wonderful, that\'s so wonderful.

00:45:21.725 --> 00:45:27.325
You stood up all Saturday night and redesigned what Sunday was to be

00:45:27.750 --> 00:45:33.275
on the strength of what the participants had articulated as their needs.

00:45:35.500 --> 00:45:37.500
(Snap)

00:45:37.875 --> 00:45:41.000
[Anna Ortiz] For many of us it has been extremely difficult for us to come here

00:45:41.000 --> 00:45:45.475
and we want to propose that there be some kind of space made

00:45:45.550 --> 00:45:49.300
where we can talk to you about the realities in our countries face to face.

00:45:49.700 --> 00:45:57.175
[Arab Woman] This is one of the few conferences in which we actually had a working group identified as an Arab group.

00:45:57.200 --> 00:46:00.950
We ask that anti-Arabism be recognized as racism.

00:46:01.125 --> 00:46:07.025
[Black Woman] One of the things that I would like to share with you is that we are 100% all of who we are,

00:46:07.075 --> 00:46:18.800
so I stand before you 100% African descent, 100% of Cherokee descent, 100% Asian descent, as well as 100% of Trinidadian descent.

00:46:21.900 --> 00:46:29.675
And this is the first time that I\'ve been able to say that and not have somebody say, well, yeah, but how do you identify.

00:46:29.700 --> 00:46:39.775
[Jacqui] I think it was the rifts in the conference that prompted Audre to come back to us with her own words and say:

00:46:39.825 --> 00:46:43.650
[Audre] Do not let the differences pull you apart

00:46:43.675 --> 00:46:47.400
Use them Examine them, go through them,

00:46:47.900 --> 00:46:49.576
Grow from them

00:46:49.576 --> 00:46:55.275
We do not have to become each other in order to work together.

00:46:55.325 --> 00:47:02.450
[Jacqui] The lessons, I believe, of the conference are the lessons of feminist organizations --

00:47:02.650 --> 00:47:12.900
about what it means to build coalitions composed of women of different racial, ethnic, class, sexual, national orientations

00:47:12.900 --> 00:47:17.250
and the difficulties that are involved in that and the capacity

00:47:17.250 --> 00:47:25.000
and willingness of people to look squarely at where things go wrong.

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.125
[Audre] There were what 1,000 women, 1100 at here,

00:47:29.600 --> 00:47:34.275
each one of those women, if we did anything at all,

00:47:34.350 --> 00:47:40.450
each one of those women brings back to a community and a life,

00:47:41.600 --> 00:47:46.775
some more possible activation of who she is and that will spread,

00:47:46.825 --> 00:47:50.575
and that\'s what we really got to be about.

00:47:50.625 --> 00:47:53.350
[Jacqui] Because that\'s what was beautiful about the coming together, right?

00:47:53.375 --> 00:47:56.225
That so many different people could come on board

00:47:56.300 --> 00:48:00.725
and even in spite of some of the criticisms and problems

00:48:00.725 --> 00:48:06.875
that none-the-less a space was created from which people could actually speak and act.

00:48:06.875 --> 00:48:10.750
[Audre] And we did not tum away from the differences, we did not tum away from the criticisms,

00:48:10.775 --> 00:48:16.900
we did not tum away, we said yes, this is the place to examine how next to better--

00:48:17.350 --> 00:48:19.875
how do we move it on?

00:48:20.600 --> 00:48:31.475
And that that is the first time that I\'ve been able to really feel that that vision was both present and allowed and used.

00:48:31.550 --> 00:48:35.550
(Chanting) The people united will never be defeated.

00:48:35.600 --> 00:48:42.325
[Audre]I think what happened this weekend was we moved the work along.

00:48:42.325 --> 00:48:45.300
(Chanting) We\'re going to keep on moving forward, keep on moving forward

00:48:45.350 --> 00:48:47.000
[Audre] It felt like a dream come true,

00:48:47.050 --> 00:48:52.475
but not completely articulated because we have so much work to do.

00:48:52.625 --> 00:49:07.100
(Chanting) Keep on moving forward, Never turning back, never turning back

00:49:07.175 --> 00:49:14.425
[Angela] A question though that some people ask well what makes her so important for instance to Black feminism,

00:49:14.425 --> 00:49:18.150
what makes her so important to white women\'s feminism

00:49:18.525 --> 00:49:20.000
and I think you are answering it right here

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:23.300
that she called for a specific kind of intense engagement.

00:49:23.700 --> 00:49:27.475
And I wish I had a nickel for every different person who would say

00:49:27.950 --> 00:49:32.875
\"Whenever she spoke to me, I was in the middle of a crowd, at a reading or at a conference,

00:49:32.925 --> 00:49:37.950
she looked in my eyes and she challenged me to do my work in a way that I\'ve never been challenged before,

00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:39.375
and I have been doing it ever since.\"

00:49:39.425 --> 00:49:45.850
That\'s a momentary meeting she might have had with one person in all those years and they are still doing their work.

00:49:45.925 --> 00:49:49.475
It\'s a challenge. That\'s part of why we did the conference,

00:49:49.850 --> 00:49:54.425
there she is that night when Wendy Cadden came up on stage

00:49:54.500 --> 00:49:56.250
and put that robe on her

00:49:56.825 --> 00:50:02.200
that Wendy had made with the Native American Women in New Mexico,

00:50:03.425 --> 00:50:06.725
and she brought the robe which we had commissioned,

00:50:07.050 --> 00:50:12.050
and she brought it up on the stage, she even shorter than Audre who is not very tall,

00:50:12.075 --> 00:50:17.125
reaching and putting it up on Audre, and then when Audre turned around...

00:50:17.375 --> 00:50:24.125
[Audre] I want to thank each one of you not just for your presence here

00:50:25.250 --> 00:50:29.900
but for the energy that I feel,

00:50:30.100 --> 00:50:34.900
the energy that you have brought to me and that you have brought to yourselves

00:50:35.950 --> 00:50:38.300
and that is so important.

00:50:38.975 --> 00:50:49.225
It has always been life sustaining to me to know that the work I do is used.

00:50:51.125 --> 00:50:57.400
That is what feeds me and continues making it come.

00:50:57.775 --> 00:51:02.450
That and those people who are patient enough to love me

00:51:02.450 --> 00:51:08.100
Francis Clayton, Adrienne Rich and Jean Milar

00:51:08.600 --> 00:51:13.975
I carry their print within me and so you carry their print within you also.

00:51:15.050 --> 00:51:24.175
I want to tell you how full my heart is and how important what is happening here these four days

00:51:24.200 --> 00:51:28.825
is for me, for you, and for our world.

00:51:29.825 --> 00:51:34.050
I am taking away a tremendous amount every time we come together.

00:51:34.100 --> 00:51:41.200
I hope you are too. We have huge enormous work to do.

00:51:41.900 --> 00:51:52.550
This is what feeds us collectively and must, and must, because we are going to survive.

00:51:54.175 --> 00:51:59.575
You know we said South Africa will be free.

00:52:00.750 --> 00:52:05.325
It\'s not a question of if, it\'s a question of when.

00:52:05.325 --> 00:52:08.075
(Applause)

00:52:08.125 --> 00:52:22.150
That is the kind of work that is being done and every single piece of what you do and I do matters.

00:52:22.150 --> 00:52:26.125
[Angela] You know how she has always has said I\'m a coward like anyone else

00:52:26.150 --> 00:52:28.425
I just do it any way or words to that effect.

00:52:28.875 --> 00:52:35.975
I saw that over and over in her papers to an extent that I couldn\'t have believed,

00:52:36.075 --> 00:52:40.425
that yes she was fearful so much of the time.

00:52:40.825 --> 00:52:45.375
It was in unpublished work that is just sitting there where she is writing to herself,

00:52:45.375 --> 00:52:47.125
where she\'s encouraging herself,

00:52:47.150 --> 00:52:50.500
where she\'s castigating herself when she went home and didn\'t speak about this or that.

00:52:50.500 --> 00:52:56.200
It\'s amazing because she\'s dealing with her fear all the time that everyone else is dealing with her courage

00:52:56.475 --> 00:52:59.150
and she presents that warrior woman image.

00:52:59.200 --> 00:53:03.600
[Audre] Take this energy, that wonderful surge, remember that,

00:53:03.600 --> 00:53:06.400
that you\'re feeling doesn\'t belong to me,

00:53:06.850 --> 00:53:12.775
it\'s you, it\'s yours, you\'re making it, you\'re generating it

00:53:12.775 --> 00:53:16.300
you carry it with you, and you can do anything you want to do

00:53:16.300 --> 00:53:18.775
today, Monday, next week

00:53:18.900 --> 00:53:22.325
You can control it, and you can use it.

00:53:23.225 --> 00:53:24.825
And that\'s what\'s so wonderful.

00:53:25.225 --> 00:53:32.025
I didn\'t start out using mine, I\'m telling you, I started out like we all started out, a coward.

00:53:32.875 --> 00:53:34.475
(laughter)

00:53:34.500 --> 00:53:39.425
I learned to use it bit by bit and each one of us can do it, whatever it is.

00:53:39.475 --> 00:53:43.950
[Jacqui] To make that point that you do the work in spite of-

00:53:43.975 --> 00:53:46.775
[Angela] She wasn\'t saying it should be this work or it should be that work

00:53:46.825 --> 00:53:50.500
but are you doing your work... find it whatever it is.

00:53:50.525 --> 00:53:56.075
[Audre] I love you. I really love you.

00:53:56.475 --> 00:54:02.925
Even when I fight with you and even when the sever battles between us happen

00:54:02.950 --> 00:54:06.150
and they have happened and they will continue to happen,

00:54:06.175 --> 00:54:09.850
because we are different, because we see things differently,

00:54:09.875 --> 00:54:15.700
and because we have different ways of responding to the terrors that haunt us.

00:54:16.950 --> 00:54:21.700
But to be able to love and to recognize what love means,

00:54:22.125 --> 00:54:29.625
not total acceptance, not blind acceptance, but recognition.

00:54:31.050 --> 00:54:39.600
To recognize that we move against a common enemy does not mean we all beat the same drum or play the same tune,

00:54:40.100 --> 00:54:45.850
it means that we are committed to a future. Good night.

00:54:46.375 --> 00:55:08.525
(Applause)

00:55:08.525 --> 00:55:16.275
(Singing)

00:55:16.325 --> 00:55:20.325
Two years after the conference, Audre Lorde died in St. Croix,

00:55:20.375 --> 00:55:23.125
surrounded by a community of family and friends.

00:55:23.525 --> 00:55:28.725
During those final years, she took a trip to Hawaii to see the total eclipse of the sun,

00:55:28.775 --> 00:55:31.575
and she completed her last book of poetry.

00:55:31.775 --> 00:55:38.675
Many ongoing groups, personal and political relationships and transnational conferences originated at this event.

00:55:38.925 --> 00:55:43.800
Audre Lorde\'s life, her work, and her vision remain today as they ever were.

00:55:43.800 --> 00:55:45.800
As they ever were.

00:55:45.900 --> 00:55:57.100
(Singing)