Vigil for Aaron Bushnell
and the 30,000+ People Killed in Gaza
Sunday, March 3, 6:30 p.m.
Gather by the Craven Street Bridge on the Wilma Dykeman Greenway by the river in Asheville to share words and silence in remembrance. That’s the same, now-sacred spot that we held a Public Mourner’s Kaddish in the early days of the genocide against Palestinians, and more recently, a remembrance for Tortuguita on the one-year anniversary of their murder-by-cops in Weelaunee Forest.
We’ll set up a DIY altar and gather around it. Bring flowers, candles, art, banners, and other mementoes to add to it.
We’ll have a few printouts on hand of “Memories of Aaron Bushnell as Recounted by His Friends” for folks to read excerpts aloud, and hold space for sharing thoughts and feelings, other readings, and/or songs/music.
Come as you are; bring your full self. And wear a mask for the collective care of all.
— self-organized by some AVL anarchists,
in love and rage 🖤💔🪬🍉🔥
Moved to be able to share this art and the words below by @porknap, and do a humble amount of support to help make time-space for all who were touched by Tort’s life to engage in rituals of remembrance on January 18.
One year has passed since our beloved friend and comrade Manuel Esteban Paez Terán was murdered by Georgia State Police in the Weelaunee forest in Atlanta, GA.
We will gather in ritual resistance on January 18, 2024 @ 6 pm to share stories, songs, prayers, and feelings in remembrance of our dear sibling Tortuguita.
Bring words or non-words to share and altar items.
Mask up! Bundle Up!
We will convene at the grassy area off the French Broad River Greenway near the intersection of Craven/Riverside (in the River Arts District), Asheville, NC.
It should not be lost that the anniversary (or yahrzeit in jewish tradition) is happening the same month that 1 of the 61 defendants indicted with RICO charges will attend their trial, where they face bogus accusations of conspiring, racketeering, and inflicting domestic terr0r.
A bitter reminder to fight for our friends while they are still here (and that fighting for our friends who are not physically still here is tied up together, as prosecutors seek to use Tort’s diary as evidence in the trial)!
May their memory be a blessing.
From the forest to Atlanta to the United States to Palestine, hoping for an eternal shmita (sabbath year) for all occupied land.
Mourning our dead—who herself did so much to mourn via her music against the often-murderous violence of the Catholic Church, colonialism, anti-Blackness, patriarchy, fascism, and more—as seen wheatpasted in a bunch of public places around so-called Asheville, NC.
There’s such strength in this image, with eyes so intent on seeing and confronting hard truths, underscoring her own lyric, “I’m proud to be a troublemaker.” And yet there’s a sorrow to this image, to those eyes, that almost unwittingly makes one start replaying other lyrics of hers, tape-loop style, in one’s head: “To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.”
Others have already said this, but it hits me every time I see this outdoor “altar” to Sinéad O’Connor / Shuhada’ Sadaqat: she, like other brave feminist truth tellers and healers, should have been honored in life, not relegated to a social death during life, nor had life made so hard and repeatedly abusive that death came too early.
May her memory spark a blessed revolution.
(photo: black-and-white headshot of Sinéad facing directly at the camera, with eyes wide open and no smile on her face, pasted on a buffed-gray, formerly graffitied wall)