Issue 10: What Audre Lorde Said About The #EndSARS Protests
Ignore the clickbait title, since Audre Lorde technically didn't/can't say anything about EndSARS but read because #EndSARS is important.
I started writing this letter at 13 minutes past seven because I knew it’d take me only two minutes to put this together. For context, I often start writing my letters hours or a day ahead because bandwidth. The message was/is clear: End SARS. It’s the air I breathe, the words I speak, the thoughts I think(I’m no Shakespeare): End SARS.
If you need information on why this cause is important to me, to millions of young Nigerians protesting on the streets, to 16-year-old Tina who was shot dead by a police officer in May or Jimoh Isiaq who died while protesting, here’s a good starting point.
If you’re very visual, this narrates some of the details succinctly:
I encourage you to share this letter and/or resources with your networks and friends. More people need to feel discomfited by this movement. Discomfited enough to do something about it.
I was talking to my workshop tutor today about Covid-19, the protests in India (where he’s from) and Nigeria and then my work. He said something interesting and it wasn’t necessarily in reference to the protests. Still, I found it oddly real in the larger context of EndSARS protests in Nigeria vs The World. I don’t have fully formed thoughts on it yet, so I can’t properly articulate my point. Here’s the quote, anyway:
“Don’t accept the western binary that only one kind of trauma is real.”
Now what did Audre Lorde say? She said, “I see protest as a genuine means of encouraging someone to feel the inconsistencies, the horror, of the lives we are living. Social protest is to say that we do not have to live this way. If we feel deeply, as we encourage ourselves and others to feel deeply, we will, within that feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, we can love deeply, we can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy. And when they do not, we will ask, "Why don't they?" And it is the asking that will lead us inevitably toward change.”
She also said, “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”- Audre Lorde. So what are you waiting for, speak.
Have a lovely weekend!
