B To

“The tides are turning.
Everybody else is waking up,
becoming more awake, aware, seeking knowledge,
challenging the assumptions.
'They' call it 'woke' and demean it...

'They' may be--may aspire to be--the authorities,
may judge and smirk and wield their swords,
but 'everybody else' knows what's really happening.
And the forces of change, however resisted,
will continue to awaken
us all.”
― Shellen Lubin

“When demanded of those without power--
'if you said it more nicely maybe we would listen'--
'I can't hear you when you're so angry'--
'the ones who are nice are the ones who will get what they want'
(or, worse, the ones who are nice and pretty,
which, of course, also includes white, Christian, and 'classy')--
it is yet another subjugation,
yet another tool of oppression.”
― Shellen Lubin

“If all of us who at some point in history were not considered white
considered ourselves "Other" then
how many white people would there even be?”
― Shellen Lubin

“What is more than memory
that connects us always?...
what was it I wrote for him,
this then-young then-not-young man hungering for fame and acclaim
as much or more than burning with something to say?

I wrote him a poem called Immortality,
assuring him of his,
about the immortality we have through connection,
through shared experience and the memory of it,
through how we touch and alter each other”
― Shellen Lubin