i don’t even know how to talk about melanie, and the place she’s had in my political and cultural life. i don’t have the kinds of stories that make for good anecdotes, just a lot of years of sharing space in the lowkey ways that happen with comrades working in parallel, and even more years of reading her words and being fed by them.
she gave me part of my name: the “/” that marks the history of my paternal line’s arrival in north america. (she once told me she was surprised folks hadn’t taken up her innovation in large numbers — i’ve yet to meet another person who has.)
she helped invent the organization (JFREJ) through which i found a political home when i settled in the land of my foreparents — new york city — and warmly supported me and my comrades when we launched a palestine solidarity project (Jews Against the Occupation/NYC) that JFREJ would not house.
she was one of the voices who brought an analysis of jewishness, from a secular diasporist perspective, into the feminist analysis of white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism that has fed my work.
she modeled a committed life as a cultural worker and organizer — at once interwoven, rooted in communities of struggle — for the long haul, with all the scut-work that involves along the way.
she embodied a lesbian feminism that was uncompromising in its support for sex workers’ struggles for justice, for explorations of dangerous and fraught desires, for both militant tactics and coalition strategies, for (as far as i know) trans women’s place in dyke spaces — while remaining deeply generous to those with more restrictive visions.
i find myself coming back to her work again and again in my life as an organizer and cultural worker, feeling grateful (as she said about muriel rukeyser) to have her speaking voice lingering in my ears as i think with her words about women, violence, and self-defense, about jewhatred in a time of christianism and war, about classic lesbian poetry in the 21st century, about diasporism and the many jewish cultures zionism has tried to erase, about so many things.
all of which is maybe just to say:
a shenem dank, mit eybike khaverteshaft: zol lebn!
! אַ שײנעם דאַנק, מיט אײביקע כאַװערטעסהאַפֿט ־ זאָל לעבן
—Rosza Daniel Lang/Levitsky, JFREJ; The Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee; Survived & Punshed NY