MAY THEIR MEMORIES BE A MOVEMENT
Hand-set lead & wood type
4 in × 9.25 in
silver ink on 80 lb cover French Paper in nightshift blue
or
metallic blue ink on 111 lb cover Gmund Used, which is 100% recycled: 70% post consumer waste (PCW) and 30% post industrial waste (PIW)
___________________________
I find such beauty and solace in the Jewish saying, “May their memory be a blessing,” as a way of honoring the dead. It’s also now commonly said in movement circles as, “May their memory be a revolution.”
As someone who talks and thinks and makes a lot of art about grief, I was reflecting on the particular pain of losing members of our movement family, and wanted to make a related grief card. I came to the language of, “May their memory be a movement.”
But as I was printing the cards, thinking of them as cards for people to use in times of individual loss, our collective losses continued to mount. I thought about our collective memories of our people who continue to be killed by fascism, colonization, Israeli apartheid, empire, white supremacy, xenophobia, transphobia… And then this week, ICE murdered Johan Sebastián Duran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine - 30 minutes from where I live.
Each of these losses is of course an individual loss, but a thread of injustice pulls through all of them. And suddenly there was a plural sound to those words:
May their memories be a movement.
Because, I would argue, we need a movement (movements, really) in order to be ready for a revolution.
So these prints are a small offering for our collective grief, and for this movement we so desperately need to keep building. May our collective grief help to connect us instead of isolate us. May we learn from those who have grieved before us and listen to those who grieve beside us. The way we tend to each other’s grief is the spirit of solidarity we need to build at scale.
40% of the proceeds from the sale of these prints will go to the Maine Solidarity Fund. This fund is “designed to provide rapid, direct, and equitable support to community members facing increased detention, targeted harassment, policy rollbacks, and systemic discrimination under the current Trump administration.”
MAY THEIR MEMORIES BE A MOVEMENT
Hand-set lead & wood type
4 in × 9.25 in
silver ink on 80 lb cover French Paper in nightshift blue
or
metallic blue ink on 111 lb cover Gmund Used, which is 100% recycled: 70% post consumer waste (PCW) and 30% post industrial waste (PIW)
___________________________
I find such beauty and solace in the Jewish saying, “May their memory be a blessing,” as a way of honoring the dead. It’s also now commonly said in movement circles as, “May their memory be a revolution.”
As someone who talks and thinks and makes a lot of art about grief, I was reflecting on the particular pain of losing members of our movement family, and wanted to make a related grief card. I came to the language of, “May their memory be a movement.”
But as I was printing the cards, thinking of them as cards for people to use in times of individual loss, our collective losses continued to mount. I thought about our collective memories of our people who continue to be killed by fascism, colonization, Israeli apartheid, empire, white supremacy, xenophobia, transphobia… And then this week, ICE murdered Johan Sebastián Duran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine - 30 minutes from where I live.
Each of these losses is of course an individual loss, but a thread of injustice pulls through all of them. And suddenly there was a plural sound to those words:
May their memories be a movement.
Because, I would argue, we need a movement (movements, really) in order to be ready for a revolution.
So these prints are a small offering for our collective grief, and for this movement we so desperately need to keep building. May our collective grief help to connect us instead of isolate us. May we learn from those who have grieved before us and listen to those who grieve beside us. The way we tend to each other’s grief is the spirit of solidarity we need to build at scale.
40% of the proceeds from the sale of these prints will go to the Maine Solidarity Fund. This fund is “designed to provide rapid, direct, and equitable support to community members facing increased detention, targeted harassment, policy rollbacks, and systemic discrimination under the current Trump administration.”
