Memphis Group Quotes

knitted web in the Common is based on various pacifist yarn-bombings around the U.S. and the U.K., while the ice children in Nashville have their seeds in the surprise overnight installations of statues, such as the nude Donald Trump statues created by INDECLINE to protest his policies, and the haunting depictions of caged children that were planted by the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) to draw attention to migrant family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border. In particular, the nonviolent protests of the Serbian Otpor! movement, Syrian anti-Assad protestors, and other groups, especially as described so vividly in Blueprint for Revolution, by Srdja Popović, sparked the ideas for the cement block and crowbar in Austin, the ping-pong balls in Memphis, and Margaret’s bottle caps, as well as influencing the overall spirit of all the art protests. The struggles of prodemocracy Hong Kongers, particularly against the recent China-imposed “national security” legislation, were always on

group drugged him, put him in a cage, drove him to the Memphis Zoo parking lot, and then trapped him in animal form so the zoo workers found a lion in their parking lot when they arrived for work.

A singular reference laid claim to Joe’s Sicilian origins, proclaiming him a “half-breed . . . son of a Sicilian father and mulatto mother.”56 But the New York Times report remains inconsistent with a more comprehensive reading and broader sampling of press reports of Joe’s racial identity. According to most accounts, Joe was a “negro,” “a young half breed,” and a “colored man.”57 One report branded Joe a “desperate half-breed between negro and creole.”58 The Memphis Daily Appeal explained that Joe was well known along the Mississippi River from New Orleans clear up to Cairo in southwestern Illinois, a “desperate character, evil and treacherous as half breeds generally are.”59 The Daily Picayune went on to report that local “negroes [were] raising some trouble about the lynching” and were threatening to kill the group of men responsible for guarding Joe. As the Picayune warned, “Should the negroes attempt this, the citizens of Australia, [Mississippi,] have ordered a lot of Winchester rifles and will be prepared.”60 Across the dozen articles that mentioned “Dago Joe,” the singular New York Times report made the only claim to Joe’s Sicilian origins, indicating that Joe cannot be unequivocally included within this compilation of Sicilian lynchings.61

That second time, I didn’t know what to do, and neither did Danny. I ended up having an abortion. And it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. I was devastated. I did it and we both cried. We were both destroyed and not long after that we fell apart and broke up. I couldn’t live with myself. Danny went off to join the band on a cruise ship that traveled through the Caribbean. I went and traveled through Europe on a Eurail Pass for a couple of months. All the while, I could not believe that I had had an abortion. I was so upset with myself. So I made a plan. I planned and I plotted and I schemed. I pinpointed exactly when I was ovulating—I even went to Memphis first to hang out with my aunt Patsy and work out how to make it happen. It was a group effort. I had it down to a science—then purposely planned a trip to see Danny on the ship. We went to the island of Aruba or somewhere for the night. I remember getting back on the ship hoping I’d fucking done it. Danny had no idea of my plan. But I didn’t really care anymore what he thought about it. I didn’t care if he wanted to be part of it or not. I felt that I had to redeem, to make amends, because I still couldn’t believe I had had an abortion. I thought, I’m going to have this child. There is a child that I need to be having. I would be talking to the lost child, saying, “I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I fucking did that. Please forgive me and stay with me until I get pregnant again.