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“Decoration Day--
created to honor
the enslaved African-Americans
in the Civil War
who fought for their own emancipation
and liberation
and for the health and integrity of
this country.
American History stole that one, too.
Made it Memorial Day.
All Soldiers Matter?”
― Shellen Lubin

“I am memorializing
the just-barely-adults
(mostly boys, mostly less privileged)
who have died fighting wars that
for the most part
were not their own...
the families
who have had to go on without them...
those who gave their life to this country
by standing for our freedoms in non-wars--struggles--
struggles about race, religion,
gender, sexual orientation,
contraception and abortion rights,
the environment, eradication of global disease and world hunger,
the right to collectively bargain and unionize...
who paid the ultimate price
through their civil disobedience, protest, collective action,
or just by living in a way that was so challenging to others
that they were executed for it...
the ones
from whom we stole this land
and those whose lives we stole
to build it...
those who were just trying
to go to school, pray, shop, watch a movie, be,
when they were gunned down in a country
that loves its guns
far more than its people...
those who were killed for
driving while black,
walking while black,
talking while black,
sleeping while black.

On Decoration Day we are decorated
with their blood
and their memory”
― Shellen Lubin