Marcela Grace Eiler was my friend, though I knew her as Sally/Sali, but also remember her funny nickname as Ratty. I first met her when she was 16, which unfortunately wasn't that long ago. I always remember the first time I saw her in the Eugene public library because even though she looked healthy, happy and smiling she was covered in dust and mud and had a pet rat peaking out from her pocket like a cartoon character. We didnt actually meet then, just smiled and passed by, but I was really curious why she was so dirty. I ran into her repeatedly all that summer traveling around the west coast and later found out that when I saw her that first day she had just gotten back from a forest defense campaign, living in the trees to protect an old growth forest from being cut  down. The very first thing she did back in town, not caring about what any of the fancy city slickers thought, was check her email in the public library and write her friends and family with an update. So I guess it all made sense in retrospect. Sali loved nature and was an activist for many causes. Sali had so much good energy and was always educating herself, learning new things and traveling. I was in Eugene with her the day she first bought her banjo, shortly after we said goodbye and parted ways as I headed up to Portland.
Later that fall when I saw her walk into my friends house in Philadelphia I jokingly accused that one of us was stalking the other. She was one of the last friends I expected to run into so far from home. We were both on the east coast for the Republican National Convention protests in New York City in 2004, though we had not compared travel plans before that, so it was a pleasant surprise to see her there. Things would continue this way constantly and
we would often find ourselves in the same places at the same time, and it was unavoidable to become good friends because we both loved to travel, play music, and perform and had a lot of the same friends. Sali had many friends because she was so charismatic and talented.
Over the last few years I have been out of contact except for intermittent emails catching up with each other. Though our paths remained similar by context geographically we were worlds apart. I'd been spending a lot of time in Asia and living in Indonesia with artists and activists there, and she had been in Mexico mostly doing solidarity work with indigenous groups and social justice campaigns. Just last week I chatted with friends about how I planned to see Sali again when I go to Mexico this winter.

Its easy to smile reminiscing about the beauty of her life and the opportunity to know her, but when I snap out of it and think about the last moments of her life I almost choke.

I'm in a blank nebulous state of dealing with how I feel right now reality past and future.

I immediately think about her family and her mother and everyone else who was close to her, and how it could have been myself in a similar situation, and then I think about my mother and family and any female loved ones and anyone who we wouldn't want to see harmed.

Even though the personal emotional distress is deep there is a much bigger picture here of institutional dismissal of male oppressive violence against women, as well as disservice from government for indigenous/minority communities, and social justice struggles.  We need to
be conscious of building and maintaining good social support and safety networks to take care of each other and educate against this oppression, and fight for accountability when it happens... not just by finding the person who did it but acknowledging and challenging societal structures that allow this to happen! This kind of crime is an epidemic and needs to
be addressed like one.

I'm tired of violence and sexual harassment against women I know and love and care about and tired of violence and sexual harassment against all women all over the world in every community.

Justice for all the women
past,
present,
and into the future,
who stand up and fight oppression!

September 30th 2008 would have been her 21st birthday

Rest in Peace Sali

She was beautiful in every way with the most amazing compassion, intelligence, art, and constant search for the beauty of life- just ask one of her friends...she had many.

I didn't know Kirsten personally the brutal murder, not just natural death, of 2 powerful women activists in such a short time is so fucking overwhelming I don't even understand it.

It makes me angry. I want to scream.  Instead I've just been crying.

xx
Rio

So terribly disturbing to read about the loss of Sali.  She was a beloved soul, and a familiar face to so many.  Her work was of great importance in her life, taking much priority over anything else.  The struggle for equality will continue, but a great hole will be left in her wake.  

  Long live the memory of Marcela Sali Grace Eiler!

An Open letter In Memory of Kirsten Brydum

These are the facts as we currently know them:
· Kirsten Brydum was last seen leaving a dance club in New Orleans at 1:30 am on Saturday morning September 27th
· The doorman remembered her leaving alone on a bicycle
· At 8:30 am. police and paramedics respond to a call of shots fired
· The paramedics could not revive her and Kirsten was pronounced dead at the scene
· Kirsten could not be identified at the time (we surmise that her belongings were missing/stolen)

Dear Kirsten,

Written though tears on the train to your wake,

I am trying to write her a letter that I never got to give her when I saw her at the Poor Peoples march at the Republican National Convention. It made me so happy to see her there in the crowd smiling, dancing, shouting and chanting. "Stop the war, on the poor" we chanted together as the crowed from the Rage Against The Machine concert flowed into the poor peoples march. She was so vibrant and full of love, laughter and life. I don't know how you kill that. How do you shoot laughter in the head? I gave her a quick hug which made me less alone in the crowd. Seeing her reassured me that I had people who had my back in the streets. In that crowd of thousands on that Sept 2nd 2008, She was the one person who I knew would care for me, take risks with me. I knew with out a doubt that she would put her ass on the line to make sure was safe, to go with me to jail in the face of violent police attack and protect friends and loved ones with her body and song, like she did when I first met her and was arrested with her at the San Francisco Bio Tech and Anti-G8 protest in 2004.

Today we watch as the economy collapses and She is gone, She who had a vision of how the economy could run. And She who put in to practice. The way she told it was that The Really Really Free Market was a sharing that prefigured how the world could be. In that world Kirsten is alive today, in that other world she laughs and hugs us and brings us a fierce fire and dedication. I also want to remember her integrity and dedication. She lived her life as she spoke, when She said that there should be a better world where people took care of one another and gifts, not markets, not money but sharing and love should be the basis of our society she had the integrity to put her whole life on the line to make that real.

When we were in jail together She was fierce, resisting police violence, putting her body in the way, clasping on to friends to protect them as the riot police raided our cells and brought violence and pain compliance to separate us. She stayed consistent, creating a better world with all her actions and She kept doing it for almost half her tragically short life. She gave love support, laughter solidarity and a fierce fire to everyone she met.

With love greater then sorrow,
With love greater then loss,
Jonathan

P.S. Which addresses political context that is necessary to me to create meaning out of such madness, but may be controversial to some... or "How the government murdered my friend, and some poor fool pulled pulled the trigger." ... or " The violence of poverty is the poverty of our imagination"

"These were people who saw life as it is, yet died despairing. No glory, no brave last words, only their eyes, filled with confusion, questioning "Why?" I don't think they were wondering why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams - -this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all - -to see life as it is and not as it should be." - Man of la Mancha, Don Quixote.

So there are a few things I'm having a hard time making clear to myself. First that she really is dead. That the love and laughter and care is really gone out of this world, that there is a hole in the world. The second thing is that someone killed her. That someone brought this kind of harm to someone so humble, thoughtful, and committed. That the horrible unthinkable harm of tearing the life from her young body, blasting metal through her head. How can a world with flowers, sunshine and Humming birds allow Kirsten to be brutally murdered. In my first attempt to understand this horrible reality I tried to kill a hummingbird on a nearby bush. The sun, the flowers and the humming bird were so beautiful that I felt I had to kill the bird because it could not exist in a world where her beauty had been so cruelly crushed. Thankfully the pretty bird was fast, my eyes were filled with tears, the bush was covered in thorns and I failed miserably at blind vengance.

NOLA: here the economy explodes through women's skulls

Yet the harm done by placing bullets in her brain is less then the harm done by the crushing of her dreams and her visions. The hope that made her travel the country, that brought her to that tormented corner of New Orleans. The Ninth Ward, where she rode her bike from that fateful night, is not a poor ghetto, it is a deliberately impoverished neighborhood that government refuses to address because to do so would make corporations less able to make money off the backs of poor people and people of color. That a couple of days after her arrival her body crashed to the pavement with multiple bullets in the head is no accident, she died in conditions deliberately created to divide and intimidate the vast majority of the world and prevent us from creating the world that Kirsten envisioned and struggled to create.

"Humble yourself to Kirsten you got to listen what she know, we will rise each other up higher and higher. " -Sung together in a round between the 40 of us During our three days of Jail Solidarity in 2004.

Kirsten worked to solve the the root cause of the crashing economy and the violence of poverty in every breath she took, in how she lived her life. She worked for years on projects that pointed out the immorality, brutality, and genocidal basis in our current economic system and created a community with a simple and elegant solution, and though others may have put their time in to thinking through every argument for a more sustainable and participatory economy, Kirsten was practical and humble enough to simply made friends and fliers and go to the park on a sunny Saturday and put such a economy into practice every month. In her mind, in her dreams and every Saturday she saw people give goods back and forth with out money, capital or markets, with out barter, but out of the desire to meet there own needs and to care for others, an economy without the institutional greed of capitalism. She built an alternative to the violence of manufactured poverty, she with her breath, with her laughter, her intelligence, love, and with a community of people around the city, the country and the world. Now that the greed in our financial system has reached such crisis that it threatens and annoys the %2 of world population that control and create these economic conditions, that elite population that owns the industry, the banks, the corporations and the media, the way Kirsten lived her life and the ideas She fought and ultimately died for are even more visionary and critical for humans collective survival.

She was targeted for death because she was a women who was friendly, lovable and unafraid to stand up tall for a better world, humbly bridging people, movements and divisions. She was courageous enough to put herself body and her ideas on the line to prove that peace and cooperation can overcome the competition and violence that imprison humanity in our age.

"Solidarity forever, solidarity forever cause that's what keeps us strong." - Old union song we sang together during our three days of Jail Solidarity together

"This relentless need for something much deeper then revenge comes close to the truth of many lives, black and white: but revenge is not among the human possibilites. Revenge is a human dream. " -James Baldwin , "The Devil Finds Work"

Now that she has left her body on that frontline of the war against the earth and women, the war in which we are all combatants and survivors, her ideas and vision are up to us to carry on. I'm angry that I was given no choice in the matter, and she, who was better at these things then me has been torn from the arms of the living. But a task for those who remain with out her, a task for the living, is how we feel, heal, and understand our loss. How do I understand the great tensing of every muscle as i scream in pain, anger, loss, and desire for bloody vengeance? Although my first instinct, to smash all the hummingbirds and poke out the sun will not bring her back, neither will building up the Prison Industrial Complex to imprison 3 million more predominately poor and/or people of color. In this US of amnesia we have already locked up one in every hundred people and our streets are no safer. Putting more brown, black or poor bodies in cages does not and will not provide security, safety, healing or justice. Responding to such grievous harm with accountability and a healing balance that overturns the violence which took her from us is at the heart of true justice is one huge question left by her death.

Another question her murder leaves open is whether it was politically motivated or a random act of poverty induced violence. We can know until we get more information, But what ever the attackers motivations its important to remember what Journalist Kristin Bricker recently wrote in "Hasta Siempre Sally Grace: Another US Activist Murdered in Oaxaca" about the recent rape and murder of another powerful women (a friend of many who knew Kirsten) 20-year-old Marcella "Sally" Grace Eiler, who was fighting for social justice in Oaxaca. She wrote that "violence isn't just intended for the individuals who physically suffer a violent act." Random unsolved violence is meant to terrorize an entire population. " It sends a message to everyone: No one is safe. ??If they'd grabbed a priest, a bishop, a social leader, or an insurgent, everyone else would have been able to explain it away, "Well, he was an insurgent, and she was a leader. I'm neither. I'm safe." ??But when someone is killed randomly everyone is terrorized: travelers, locals, priest, leaders, rank and file, neighbors, activists, punks, journalists, women... No one is safe". Only a full impartial investigation will yield answers, but given the corruption in the NOLA police department and the hundreds of "normally" unsolved murders in New Orleans it may be difficult for that to happen. Personally I feel great anger, hate and want to destroy whoever pulled the trigger but I hope to find a way to honor Kirsten's dreams, her love and her values in a way that reflects her best self and focuses that hate at the elite who profit from the maintenance of such violent instability masquerading as order.

At her Wake last night the general agreement seemed to that any world that would allow kirsten to be brutally murdered was deeply messed up. We were depressed and drunk but the humor of the gallows is a humor needed for meaning in such a terrifying age and so we joked "I guess we will have to be as Kirsten would have wanted us to be and be pretty damm awesome just to laugh in the face of such a horrifying reality."

---------------
memorial information:

general information:
lots of comments in memory of her:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/30/18542023.php

A memorial site with her last writings:
http://kirstenbrydum.virtualmemorials.com

2007 video interview with Kirsten:
http://ryanishungry.com/2007/07/11/the-gift-economy-really-really-free-market-sf/

memorial service for Kirsten Brydum:

2:30pm Sat. Oct. 4
St. Bernadine Catholic Church
24410 Calvert St
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
(818) 888-8200?
stbernardine.org

catholic mass and ceremony
followed by a reception
at Kirsten's aunt's (Kathy Page) house
caravan leaving from the service

all are welcome and invited to attend

this is near LA so let's organize carpools/rideshares
email tyson [at] millionfishes.com
unless someone else can take the central organizing role

Kirsten's Altar:
located in the main window space of Million Fishes gallery
2501 bryant st @ 23rd st, sf, ca 94110

to add items on the altar:
knock on door if someone is there
leave in mail slot if no one answers
or send by mail to the address if you're out of town

Million Fishes
Attn: we love Kirsten!
2501 bryant st
san francisco, ca 94110

sf memorial service:
will be held the middle or end of next week
info will circulate as soon as we know the details

kirsten we love you celebration:
at the san francisco really really free market
sat. october 25th, noon-

please gift whatever services you can
and contact others who will gift as well

looking for: music, entertainment, art making, workshops, dance, etc., etc., etc.,
can we find some brass bands who would want to play?!

day of the dead ceremony:
details to follow

1st annual (untitled) festival by friends and community in spirited by kirsten:
january 22nd (her birthday)
more details to follow

new orleans fundraiser:
this saturday oct 4 in new orleans
anyone with info on this please add