De Vandiver

“Boldly you must hang your light.
Neon,
buzzing, bright. And do not be
chagrined when
your light blinks. It is a silent
song of yes, you,
you are welcome here. Boldly
give your love
and arrive at your joy.”
― Theresa I. Soto, Spilling the Light: Meditations on Hope and Resilience

“If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.”
― Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War

“My prayers for these stressful days
Have become sharpened. Unadorned.
A single word to the bereaved and
Wailing Mother God - mercy.
Two words to
The infant child God, on trial in
an unjust system--
Tender love. And for the God who
is not a
White, robed, bearded father, but
a migrant laborer
Daddy, with a red baseball cap,
who only cries
When he thinks no one can see,
not a word, but
A silent squeeze of his calloused
hand to telegraph
Reconciliation, wholeness. There
was a time when
More words brought comfort, but
now my heart
Wants most to be true. Ready for
resistance by
Unapologetic clarity and fueled
by moving toward
A future in which we have made
all of us free.
-Holy Quiet”
― Theresa I. Soto, Spilling the Light: Meditations on Hope and Resilience

“Systems of racism and sexism and oppression are not systems we choose, but they are ones we inherit and are responsible for perpetuating, or not. When I hear so-and-so was "a product of his/her time" as an excuse for bigoted behavior, I remind folks that there have always been people in every time who did not agree with the bigoted systems they were born into and who actively fought them. The question is, which are we?”
― Kameron Hurley, The Geek Feminist Revolution