WEBVTT

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My name is Dr. Grace Gámez, and
I work for the American Friends

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Service Committee
here in Tucson.

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We are an abolitionist
organization,

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and we work on issues related
to mass incarceration and mass

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criminalization.

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And central to our
work is a commitment

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to directly impacted
communities, which

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are defined as those who are
criminalized, surveilled,

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and supervised, convicted,
incarcerated, and formerly

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incarcerated people,
people who have survived

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harm and their families.

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Their voices,
experience, and need

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determine the direction
of our programmatic work.

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And at AFSC, we move
from the understanding

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that the punishment system
does not reduce but produces

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harm and violence, that it
does not create but undermines

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safety.

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And we work practically for
non-reformist reforms, which

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are reforms that
reduce rather than

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strengthen the power and scale
of policing, imprisonment,

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and surveillance.

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We pursue reforms that
shrink the state's capacity

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for violence while also
eliminating the system's

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inability to solve the
crises that it creates.

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We work to dismantle the
system and to co-create

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true alternatives that center
power within communities

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and support them in
creating safety, well-being,

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and abundance for themselves.

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And to me, it's through
this radical love

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and community-making that we
see justice, safety, healing,

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and accountability takes shape.

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It's outside of the state
where we create pathways away

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from the punishment system
and back towards spaces

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of nourishment and revival.

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I've agreed to participate
in these events,

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because I believe in
the power of language.

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With our words, we can construct
and we can deconstruct.

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Words have the power
to unmake people.

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As someone who spent 13 years
in Arizona's punishment system,

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I know what it feels like to
have my humanity unwritten,

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and I'm familiar with the
challenge of writing myself

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back into the world again.

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I've also witnessed the power
of art and poetry to intervene.

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Poetry has the power to
create rupturing spaces,

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to inspire a
different way forward.

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But really, it's
not enough for you

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all to come out here and take
in an evening of poetry and art.

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Your job is to step into
the voids that are created,

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to shift your gaze, and to do
what you can with the resources

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you have to produce peace
and justice in the world.

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Maestra Diaz, thank you
for being here tonight.

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Your words taste like someone
who deeply understands

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this machine and how it
consumes people, families,

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and entire communities.

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Your words have the flavor of
ancestral wisdom, resistance,

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creation, and rebellion.

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And your work ushers
in new language,

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new ways to think about
this age-old problem.

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And I'm looking forward
to how you're going

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to break up the night for us.

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So I suppose I
should read your bio.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Natalie Diaz was born and
raised in the Fort Mojave

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Indian village in
Needles, California

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on the banks of
the Colorado River.

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She is Mojave and an enrolled
member of the Gila River

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Indian tribe.

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Her first poetry collection,
When My Brother was an Aztec,

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was published by
Copper Canyon Press,

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and her second collection,
Postcolonial Love Poem

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is forthcoming in 2020.

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There's a whole
bunch of accolades.

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She is a MacArthur
Foundation fellow.

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She was awarded the Bread Loaf
Fellowship, the Holmes National

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Poetry Prize, Hodder Fellowship,
and a US Artists Ford

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Fellowship, as well as
Princeton's University Hodder

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Fellowship.

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She teaches at ASU in the
creative writing MFA program.

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Please welcome me in--

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or help me welcome Natalie Diaz.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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