Spirit Day
Oct. 20th, 2010 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetI find I am not very eloquent about today, or about the reason so many people (and blogs) are wearing purple today. I shall try nonetheless.
Spirit Day is an attempt to honor the memories of those we have lost to slow poisoning by intolerance and hate. While these horrific elements can and do kill swiftly, they can also take lives an inch at a time, and for a very long time, more quietly than the rest of the world might have us believe.
Spirit Day is a statement of solidarity with LGBTQIA people and against those harmful elements. Even those who survive the poison can be left incredibly weak - or worse, those who drink them willingly can be ready to turn away from a loved one, or more than one.
Spirit Day is the idea that a little more love and a little less hate in the world can make everyone's experience that much better, means we'll all breathe a little bit more freely.
I'd say about one in every eight people I saw today was wearing purple. One of my two roommates wore purple by coincidence, the other by design. I went out and bought a purple shirt from Goodwill yesterday, added a purple-and-pink scarf, and made around eighty-five pin-able purple ribbon twists for my mom to pass out at work (since I was pretty sure she'd be seeing more people than I would). Mom passed out the ribbons to the rest of the library staff, and only two people refused them ("only" being not disappointing on the planet of Low Standards); several reportedly were very happy to have something purple to wear, since they couldn't find any in their wardrobes.
Is it a small thing? Yes. But the world is made of small things, and small things of all sorts can add up to big things.
More importantly, it's a start. And starts can go places.
----
Linkage:
It Gets Different; Leveling Up
The We Got Your Back Project
The Make It Better Project
The Trevor Project
Spirit Day is an attempt to honor the memories of those we have lost to slow poisoning by intolerance and hate. While these horrific elements can and do kill swiftly, they can also take lives an inch at a time, and for a very long time, more quietly than the rest of the world might have us believe.
Spirit Day is a statement of solidarity with LGBTQIA people and against those harmful elements. Even those who survive the poison can be left incredibly weak - or worse, those who drink them willingly can be ready to turn away from a loved one, or more than one.
Spirit Day is the idea that a little more love and a little less hate in the world can make everyone's experience that much better, means we'll all breathe a little bit more freely.
I'd say about one in every eight people I saw today was wearing purple. One of my two roommates wore purple by coincidence, the other by design. I went out and bought a purple shirt from Goodwill yesterday, added a purple-and-pink scarf, and made around eighty-five pin-able purple ribbon twists for my mom to pass out at work (since I was pretty sure she'd be seeing more people than I would). Mom passed out the ribbons to the rest of the library staff, and only two people refused them ("only" being not disappointing on the planet of Low Standards); several reportedly were very happy to have something purple to wear, since they couldn't find any in their wardrobes.
Is it a small thing? Yes. But the world is made of small things, and small things of all sorts can add up to big things.
More importantly, it's a start. And starts can go places.
----
Linkage:
It Gets Different; Leveling Up
The We Got Your Back Project
The Make It Better Project
The Trevor Project
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Date: 2010-10-21 05:47 am (UTC)