Neither does our love.
So from some leftover paint and fabric that are transformed into banners, some old newspapers mixed with flour and water to be reshaped into a turtle, some heartfelt words turned into zines, and some odds and ends like blankets, candles, stones, and flowers, an altar sprang up tonight in the same riverside spot used a few months ago for a public Mourner’s Kaddish. You can still see the self-composting, pale-orange husk of a pumpkin that read “Free Palestine” and was left as our people’s memorial to honor the dead in Gaza. When this evening’s remembrance ended, we surrounded the pumpkin with the ecological remnants of our temporary autonomous altar honoring Tortuguita on this yahrzeit, this one-year anniversary, of murder-by-police in Atlanta.
For some two hours, starting just after a fiery sunset faded into dusk and then dark, people shared poems, blessings, and music; people lit candles, ate homemade food, and sipped hot tea; people formed wet soil into seed bombs and hurled them to new homes (because the cops and state may be able to cut down certain flowers, but they can’t keep the spring from coming); people spoke in low tones, passing along warmth through hugs, and here and there, taught each other songs like a Weelaunee version of “Bella Ciao” and sang aloud to the night sky and each other. There were silences too—not planned, not awkward, just right, as if we were hearing the old souls that are trees communing tenderly with the relatively new souls like Tort whom they are welcoming into their forest. Trees of life, trees as life, for even if the winter branches looked bare, the sap of life flows through them.
Then we walked in a small procession, guided by candles til the wind hushed them, down to the river’s edge, and to repeated shouts of #VivaTortuguita! someone set free the paper-mache tortoise into the water, and we watched it seem to swim away in harmony with the currents.
We make sacred against the profane of this world.
@stopcopcity @defendatlantaforest
