From Keno Eval’s essay, Daunte Wright: A Billion Clusters of Rebellion and Starlight (via Ann Friedman).
Perhaps we should learn a little about activists organizing to preserve starlight. The work of Cipriano Martin is described in The End Of Night: “He talks in a language that seems made for ‘declarations’ written ‘in defense.’” Martin helped organize an international conference with the declaration “In Defense of the Night and the Right to Starlight.”
“…a writer from my homeland, an islander from the middle of the ocean, synthesized the whole spirit of the declaration in a beautiful short poem:
My inheritance was a handful of earth
But of sky
All the universe.
One of the most meaningful things about the Starlight Reserve concept is how detailed its dimensions are…rather than simply assume all protected areas are protected for the same reasons, the different Starlight Reserves imagine several types of these areas: Starlight Natural Sites safeguard nocturnal habitats; Starlight Astronomy Sites protect our view of the stars; Starlight Heritage Sites preserve ‘archaeological and cultural sites or monuments created by man as an expression of its relationship with the firmament [or the heavens].’”3
As abolitionists, how detailed are our dimensions? Where are our different sites of abolition located? How can local autonomous zones cooperate with each other to create what we might call a constellation of abolition? That is, a network of abolitionist efforts that are activated only at night? Only under starlight.
lexgill.com 