Audre Lorde, Self Titled Warrior That We Should All Take Good Example From To Improve The Lives Of Others.

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To the world you may be just one person but to one person you may possibly be the world.

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INJUSTICE?

When services that we pay to protect us,
COMPLETELY FAIL!

Audre Lorde, The Warrior.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

THE BLACK UNICORN!

Audre Geraldine Lorde:
Audre always described herself as a 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet'.
She had dedicated her life, and her incredible talents to confronting, and addressing the injustices of racism, sexism, Classism, and homophobia.
Audre was born in New York City to her Caribbean immigrant parents.

Her fathers name was Frederick Byron Lorde, (always called Byron), and her mother, Linda Gertrude Lorde.
Originally her first name was spelt, 'Audrey', but she dropped the 'Y' to give artistic symmetry to the name 'Audre Lorde', both ending with the letter 'E'.
Audre had written her first poem by the time that she was just eight years old.

Awards:
Audre earned her BA from Hunter College, and MLS from Columbia University, a lady of talent, intelligence, and emotional power.
Her honours and awards included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
She became the New York State Poet Laureate in 1991 - 1992.
Warrior Poet written in 2006, by Alexis De Veaux, is the first full-length biography of Audre Lorde, and its well worth reading.

Poet:
Audre always used her poems for communication with people, as her eyesight was classed as almost blind.
Her first single poem 'Spring', was published in 'Seventeen Magazine', because her school's literary journal rejected it for being inappropriate.
Then the first volume of poetry that she wrote was called, 'First Cities' in 1968.
Continued by 'Cables to Rage' in 1970, which took on the theme of love, deceit and family, it also addressed her own sexuality within the poem, 'Martha'.

Then followed, 'From a Land Where Other People Live' in 1973, and 'The Black Unicorn' in 1978.
She also wrote personal memoirs of her own struggle with breast cancer, called 'The Cancer Journals' in 1980.
The spread of cancer to her liver was covered by 'A Burst of Light' in 1988.

Audre Lorde, The Warrior

CLIFFORD GLOVER MURDER!

Spirit:
Audre Lorde epitomises the word 'struggle'.
The pain and the torment of total injustices shown towards those of African American, Asian, Gay, Transgender, and many, many other natural people.
Only someone with prejudice would question the word natural, because people are exactly whom they believe themselves to be.

Some of her writings, and some of her reactions came from her own personal struggle.

Audre Lorde.

Emotions:
Something enlightening struck a cord with me as I was studying her life.
This came from an emotional experience that she had described.
Her words literally made me feel as if I had already known her!
The emotions that she had described were very similar to those that I had expressed myself, the anger, the helplessness, and asking the question, 'WHY'!

Because what she had been describing was the death of ten year old Clifford Glover who was killed at around 5 AM on April the 28th, 1973.
Stepfather (Add Armstead), and Clifford Glover were walking together, and Mr Armstrong had his wages on him that he'd been paid the previous day.
The two undercover cops had pulled alongside of Clifford and his stepfather with guns drawn. These cops later stated that they had suspected them of a robbery.
Clifford and his stepfather believed that they themselves were about to get robbed, so they immediately started to run.

Clifford Glover:
They couldn't have possibly known that these were cops, as they were both wearing plain clothes and driving an unmarked car.
Worse still was the fact that they didn't even announce themselves!
Whilst running Cliffords stepfather managed to flag down a passing patrol car, but at that time he was completely unaware that Clifford had already been shot.

Officer, Thomas Shea with his gun drawn, had chased after Clifford and then shot him in the back.
Standing over Cliffords dying body he was overheard to say the words, 'die you M***** F******'.

Later in court he even used the words, 'I didn’t notice the size nor nothing else, only the colour'.
Shea was arrested for Cliffords murder, but it truly beggars belief that he was later acquitted.
This led to understandable widespread riots in Queens, New York.

Precious Lives:
All this immediately reflected the same feelings after I had read about seven year old, Aiyana Stanley-Jones.
My heart felt like it had just been crushed, this little girl was no different to my little girl that died at the age of five.
However, Aiyana, didn't die in any nature related incident, she was cruelly shot in the head by a police officer.

When Audre had heard of Cliffords death, she depicted how the sky seemed to turn red, and a kind of fury rose up inside of her, she felt sick.
She had even described how she had wanted to drive her car into a wall, or the next person that she seen.
So she pulled over and stopped, then took out her journal to dispel her fury, thus by letting it flow directly through her fingertips.
The poem that took birth from this experience was eventually called 'POWER!'.

Anger:
In that precise moment, I had felt this strong connection with Audre Lorde, because of the time that I had written about Aiyana.
Because what you see on my website is actually the only version that I was legally allowed to publish.
My anger was such, that as I wrote, I miss-keyed a word, and then back spaced to correct it, but clumsily faltered yet again.

And that was when I closed my fist, and struck the keyboard, almost breaking it in half.
It had nothing to do with the keyboard, it was pent up emotion that had triggered an overwhelming feeling of anger and helplessness.
Because here was yet another injustice by a so-called police officer, that had once sworn an oath to protect people, not murder them!

Abuse:
You could easily forgive anyone for shouting from the roof tops, that changes must be made to law enforcement.
Because over the many decades, all the police forces seem to have established their own forms of abuse, and that abuse is of power, just as Audre had written.
Such was my own intense feelings, which gave rise to the fact that Aiyana was simply sleeping next to her grandmother in her home, where she should have been completely safe.

Yet here was some arrogant power crazed cop that had taken out his gun and took away her precious little life, and in doing so, had removed her entire future.
Just as they had done so to Clifford, and now both their futures had been completely wiped out, and it included all of their families and friends that loved them.

Clifford Glover and Aiyana Stanley Jones.

WHITE PRIVILEGE!

White Privilege:
Audre was emotionally driven much the same way as I have always been throughout my entire life.
Whenever my solicitor proofs this website, I have to read back all of the unjust deaths of these victims.
This quite often leads to a conflict in what I would much prefer to say, and the suppressed words that you are allowed to read.
During her time Audre had blamed white males for the inhumane treatment of Afro-Americans, and as such, I could never disagree.

White privilege is a real thing, something to which I can never deny, and yet fail to see why it even exists, because we all evolved from the same continent, (Pangaea).
I grew up around racists, even many in power, and they should have known better.
But whilst being very young I'm guilty of never taking it too seriously, because no-one had ever taught me any differently.
Nonetheless, in a human prospective, I felt that Audre had demonstrated to me, what I had felt from an early age, that I wanted to defend others.

My reason was clear, even back then, I failed to see why anyone should be treated any differently to anyone else.
But the bigger question is, to whom do we owe all this hatred and despair that acts as a plague against all our societies?
Governments?

Racism:
The government has failed to arrest the rising tide of racism in the UK.
Because since Brexit, racism and discrimination are going unattended in our slowly corrupting society.
There's this ridiculous belief that now we're not a member of the EU, the rules no longer apply.
This belief is completely wrong, as there should never have been a requirement for those man made rules to begin with, there's a much better rule created by nature, and its called' mutual respect'.

Considering that this is now a time of pandemics and global warming, wouldn't it make more sense for people to come together and talk?
Racists remind me of children arguing over whom it should be to get what toy to play with.
If people would only consider putting themselves into other peoples shoes, then they could clearly define how it would feel to be victimised, chastised, and hated for no good reason?
We would be doing this, not just for ourselves, but securing a future for those yet to experience life.

Futures Lost:
Sadly Aiyana and Clifford, no longer have that future, other than their precious memories being preserved within the hearts and minds of those whose lives they once touched.
As a nation we owe it to them, and many others damaged by injustice, to make a better future and a much safer place for people to live?
Audre was right, she had risen above the pointless arrogance of racists and homophobes to become this legendary person that personifies the dreams of a better world.
A world where we can all walk free, and never need to fear each other (As Equals).

Couple: Frances Clayton & Audre Lorde.
The love between two people, is the greatest power on earth.

Labels:
Education, better parenting, and signifying the dangers of excluding people that appear to be different to others.
It's a time to stop labelling people, and simply accept, and feel that 'different', actually means 'variety', and that is the very spice of life.
Why is it that we can love animals of different variations, and yet we shun those of people?

It should be celebrated, not cast out, because its what life is all about, that difference is always the thing that makes life more interesting.
Now more than ever before, or throughout all of history we are going to need each other, just as we did during wartime.
But this time, instead of just forgetting those that fought along side of us, it must be carried forward to create a brighter and more meaningful society.

Her Memory:
Audre empowered women, and gave them a voice, and she was truly what she had once described herself as being, 'A TRUE WARRIOR'.
The voice of the people that matter, is the voice of us all, and not just the few.
Audre Lorde, deserves to have her life celebrated, her pure insight was the legacy that she bestowed upon us all, and its our duty to honour it?
Her memory will not only live on through her poetry, but the very desire to create a meaningful society will one day become the very infrastructure that provides the very glue of our society.

Audre Lorde.

NO-ONE IS A COLOUR!

Ambitions: Whilst this is a page entitled Audre Lorde, I want to try to continue her life's ambition, and make people realise that no one is really all that different.
Now that's a sweeping statement, because you can argue about gender, race, etc, but do any of those things truly matter?
Because what it comes down to is the fact that we all look pretty much the same inside, which is where we actually exist.
Confused?
OK, many people say words such as 'I love you with all my heart', and 'my heart is breaking', and 'I want to give you my heart'.
Well I certainly don't recommend the latter :-)
Truth is, that you really love someone with all of your brain, because if you think about it, that is the real you!

So whenever you feel sad, its just your negative thoughts, because if your heart was really broken, then you would simply just die.
Therefore the person that we are, is created by our neural pathways.
A neural pathway is a series of connected neurons that send signals from one part of the brain to another.

All these connected neurons process any and all information that we receive.
It is these pathways that enable us to interact, as well as experience emotions and sensations.
They create our memories and enable us to learn.
They are actually constructed in such a way that they make up a kind of persona, which is in fact, the real you!

If you concentrate very hard, you can even control your own innermost thoughts.
Meditation is a method of controlling and overcoming negativity, but its a constant battle when challenged.
We all have an inner voice, you know the one that argues about any decision we make?
But is it the voice of reason, and is it always correct?

The simple answer is 'NO'. Because if it was, we'd never make any mistakes, would we?
So the next time you want to decide whether to like or dislike someone on the basis of aesthetics, ignore it, just say hello instead?
Just ignore all your basic instincts and realise that people communicate with their voices or even sign language, but not their looks!

So in any given moment of meeting someone new, do you feel that you need to impress them?
Many males when meeting a female for the first time 'lie'!
You know guys, when you tell them that you're a millionaire just returned from a moon landing mission, they will probably have their doubts :-)

A women prefers a realist, although it won't go unnoticed if you are an actual millionaire :-)
And the reason I mention this, is to remind you to just be yourself, you don't need to impress people.
Because by the very act of simply saying 'hello', you just did...

Audre Lorde.

Strength:
Women really do have power, and Audre Lorde was truly a powerful warrior.
Throughout her struggle to overcome breast cancer and mastectomy, her work of, 'The Cancer Journals', was her confrontation of her possible demise.
So in my own words, her decision not to wear a prosthesis device to disguise her operation was the true act of a warrior.
She was making a statement to other women, that she had lived with, and survived cancer, and women with mastectomies should become visible to each other.

In 1985 Audre was diagnosed with liver cancer as it had spread, but she refused surgery, and battled it for over a decade.
She spent her last few years living in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and had taken the African name Gamba Adisa, which means 'she who makes her meaning clear'.
Prior to her death she is quoted as saying, 'I don’t want to die looking the other way'.

Sadly she finally lost her battle and passed away on November the 17th in 1992, on the island of St.Croix, the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
This incredible lady, this warrior, may have physically gone from this world, but her voice and opinions will never die.
So before my own emotions run away with me, I'll end this with Audre Lorde you are the female warrior I have come to know, love, and deeply respect.
My voice is now your voice, and we must never be silenced...

Audre Lorde.

EMOTION AND EMPATHY!

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

Empathy is Vital: Some people have commented on my forums that I show way too much emotion in my writing.
My answer to them, and to anyone feeling the same view, it's who I am, and you don't know the half of it:-)
If I cannot be true to myself, then how can I be true to others?

Emotion is something that develops as you age, and empathy is one of its strongest contenders.
However, it does come with a warning ... You will reap what you sow.
Whatever you do whilst you're young, will one day bite your butt, when you age.
Empathy increases as you get older, and in some people its their strongest emotion.
So beware, because the piper always has to be paid...

If you must say something based on an impulse, take a second to select the brain, before you engage your mouth.
Because logic is much better for dictation...

If you really analyse my text, you will never escape the reality of abstract humour.
And you never want to either, because humour can keep you alive when nothing else is available.
It's done well for me ... Trust me, its true!
Stay Safe!

INSPIRATIONAL WOMEN!