Dear Friends, Colleagues, Fellow Activists and Human Rights Defenders

Today, one year ago, a few of us were hanging out having a lovely new year connection full of hope for possibilities for our activism here 3 kms from the CAL office.  Victor received a call [almost to the minute as we put out this note]…

David Kato had been murdered and our celebration in an instant turned to mourning, shock and anger and rage and pain.

For those who worked directly with David on an ongoing basis in Uganda, in particular, the pain was acute. And because David’s work was known so widely all over the world, many others were in shock and outrage. For some of us, the victory we carried in our hearts in the Rolling Stone case was, for a moment, like water in the ground.

And as they say, the rest is history. And is not history. A history that so many of us live every day. We keep it alive every day. So much has been written and said and documented in different forms about David’s life and murder and the meanings of this.

We miss David. We miss all he was and did and said. We love him. Still. And we know that love is the purpose of our struggles. Or there is no point in any of this.

For today, we step out of the words and the writing and the rest and, as a team at the Secretariat of the Coalition of African Lesbians, stop to salute David.
We borrow from Alice Walker and say and echo everywhere –
“David, rest in us; the meaning of your life is still unfolding….”

Secretariat Team
Coalition of African Lesbians

Source – Coalition of African Lesbians