Blog: History

(in response to surprised news reports about women’s participation in Tunisia and Egypt)
by Samanthi J Gunawardana

When Claudette Colvin took a stand, sitting on a bus,
When Adrienne Rich wrote to us,
and my sister bell hooks spoke back,           
they reached across time to another place where
Bahissat El Badia implored from the Egyptian desert
Pandita Rambai travelled, and started women’s organizations
and Seitosha asked women to awake.

Dear LS Reader,

Having been poked and prodded into writing one of the inaugural posts for the Lanka Solidarity Blog, I finally relented out of my hope that this would in some small way contribute to making Lanka Solidarity fertile ground for debate and discussion among the diaspora, a place where progressive, open-minded individuals of all ethnic groups can exchange ideas about how to move our community forward.  It is also my hope that Lanka Solidarity can help articulate a vision of a Sri Lankan identity that transcends the differences that have been too-often emphasized between the ethnic communities, and instead focuses on the commonalities that we share.  This is no easy task, but a task that I feel is imperative if Sri Lanka is to move forward productively.