Friends and admirers of South African poet Dennis Brutus gathered yesterday afternoon to remember him at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. Follow the Continue Reading link below to see my photos of the event. Michael Kohn, President of the National Whistleblowers Center (NWC), remembered Dennis Brutus and his role in founding NWC in an obituary posted here last month.
The event was called Somehow Tenderness Survives. The title recalls this poem by Brutus called Somehow We Survive:
Somehow we survive
and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither.
Investigating searchlights rake
our naked unprotected contours. . . .
boots club the peeling door.
But somehow we survive
severance, deprivation, loss.
Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark
hissing their menace to our lives,
most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unlovable;
sundered and we and all our passionate surrender
but somehow tenderness survives.
The co-MCs, Emira Woods (of Foreign Policy in Focus, Institute for Policy Studies) and Briggs Bomba (Africa Action):
Poet Kenny Carroll:
Author Dave Zirin:
Sameer Dossani:
Elen Awalom:
Neil Watkins of Jubilee USA Network:
Zahara Heckscher:
Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies:
Holly Bass:
Sarah Browning:
Michael Kohn, President of the National Whistleblowers Center:
Ellen Dorsey:
Susan Goodwin:
Here are two JPG files that Mozilla Firefox users can install as their "persona." It features Michael Kohn’s painting of Dennis Brutus.
And now the "footer":
