Reason number 1,001 why I love Poppy Z. Brite:

If you have lived in New Orleans or visited here, you know the sudden spangle of a trumpet on a spring afternoon, the golden light of a fine restaurant at dusk, the smell of jasmine and sweet olive in the night, the unforgettable voices of our people. If you've never been here, maybe you've read our books or listened to our music. You've always loved the romantic idea of us, but maybe now you think it would be smarter, kinder, certainly cheaper to let us die. We will not die easy. We will not be driven away from the places that are in our blood, because any of us can die any damn minute of any damn day of our lives. If you're ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life. Please don't let New Orleans be banned.

This was taken from a speech she just gave at a banned books event. Please go read the whole thing on her live journal and then send another one of those "God I hope this isn't useless" letters to your senators and congressmen. You might want to mention what Edwidge Danticat had to say in the Washington Post over the weekend: (link via Moorishgirl)

Torture aims for a single goal -- obtaining information -- but it achieves a slew of others. For one thing, it martyrizes the tortured. Think of the old Christlike images of Che Guevara's corpse in Bolivia -- or even of Christ himself.

"This is why we have this proverb," one repentant torturer told me, " bay kou bliye pote mak sonje ." The one who strikes the blow might easily forget, but the one who wears the scars must remember.

I can't believe I live in a country that is discussing not the morality of torture but how to do the torture, what torture will be acceptable and what won't.

It isn't about stopping the torture, it's about making sure the torturers won't be sued.

Look I'm not a naive idiot - I have a degree in history, I taught college courses on history - to soldiers for God's sake - I know about the countries that sanction torture and practice torture and one of the things I know is how a few years later the governments change and suddenly the tortured are in power and everyone realizes they were right in the first place.

You are familiar with the current presidents of Liberia and Chile aren't you?

I know it would be different if my loved one was killed or in danger of dying - I would probably want to do the torturing myself but that is why we don't have victim's justice in this country; that is why we are not a country based on revenge.

We are supposed to be governed by the rule of law, by the spirit of that law, by the morality behind that law. We are supposed to want to do what is right - to live by what is right and to damn it all do what is right.

But here we are and New Orleans doesn't matter anymore but how to put someone away in a hole for a very long time and ignore all the laws we have lived by (and reiterated with the Civil Rights Movement just a mere forty years ago) is what we talk about. That's what matters in America today - how to legally beat the shit out of someone.

We should be better than this, that's what I learned in all those years of studying history. We keep promising ourselves we should be better.

When the fuck are actually going to try and do something about it?