Thoughts On the Day After

What happens the day after we publicly remember? After the social media reminders and the public declarations, how do we continue to remember?

How does memory get turned into action?

How do acts of remembering, naming, and publicly declaring those names and memories reverberate into other days, thoughts, and actions?

Here’s what I think about today: I think about what it might have felt like in 1989 to wake up to a world that said, in no uncertain terms, women are not people, that young women do not belonging classrooms.

I think about the women who have been murdered or disappeared.

I think about the lengths to which media will go to sustain the “lone shooter” fiction.

I think about empty desks in classrooms.

I think about them as I write my syllabi and work for inclusivity and diversity.

I think about them as I stand at the front of the classroom.

I think of them as I speak publicly about gender equity.

I think of them as I listen to other women speak and write and sing.

I think about things, and these women  on December sixth, and I think of them on December seventh, and on December eighth. I think about them every day.