It is with both sadness and profound gratitude that we announce the transition of Anne (LA) Armistead, SONG member leader and cherished long-term resident of Floyd, Virginia. LA’s dedication to our community, her active involvement in local politics, and her unwavering support for the LGBTIQA+ community have left an indelible mark on us all.
Please join Floyd SONG members on September 10 at 6:00 p.m. in Floyd, Virginia, for an evening dedicated to honoring LA’s legacy. We welcome music and performances as part of this special gathering. If you wish to join or contribute in this way, kindly reach out to SONG member AJ Cook personally for location information at ajcookfloyd@gmail.com
Below are a few remembrances of LA from SONG staff and a poem from Floyd SONG member Mara, reflecting on almost two and a half decades of friendship and organizing with LA.
“LA scratched so many itches for me. Her elder style, hippie vibe, women’s music vibe. LA was widely herself. She had lived a lot of lives. She had a lot of names. I so honor her legacy of showing us how to make and remake ourselves. Of being deeply rooted in community and seeking the community that we need. LA was so juiced to find SONG and was so willing to receive feedback from a place of love. LA was part of our terrain mapping process and, along with Kifu, is one of the people who have pushed us to ask ourselves, “What is SONG doing about land and where we are going to be, and what can we call our own?” I am hearing that call echoed through her and several of our recent ancestors” – Jade
“I’ve been a part of so many great long conversations with LA. I love how much LA loved SONG. On calls during COVID where we didn’t always have a lot of people show up, LA was there with a background of the mountains of Virginia. She was always smiling and happy to be there and brought the energy we needed. I am so very appreciative of the love that LA brought to SONG and for SONG. LA was very serious about the work of protecting our people, our queer and trans kindred, in the face of Christian nationalist threats and violence. She challenged us to think about spaces for education, for resisting indoctrination, and asked, “What can we have for our own people that is in alignment with our values and what we be about.” – Angela
“I am grateful for having known LA. Watching them transform and grow into a more self-aware, devoted member who embodied the very best of small-town and rural organizing across difference was something to behold. She struggled while being committed to growing in her multi-racial organizing practice. LA showed up open-hearted, with giving hands, and was about disrupting and agitating in Floyd. Joy and gratitude, they brought. Love for the land and horses, they brought. Willingness to be in principled struggle, they brought. She was doing her work and collecting her people. Her leadership and commitment to the Spokescouncil and Small Town and Rural working group was evident. She showed up during the pandemic ready to work. LA will be missed.” – Carlin
Two Angels Brainstorming About Creation
For Anne * Armistead by Mara Robbins
Fireflies in 2013
were especially luminescent.
When we imitated our scripts
they mimicked confetti
sprinkling scenes
on posterboard wings.
Eleven years later
we mentioned it again
but deferred to plans
for theater of the oppressed
or a drag puppet show.
I didn’t know.
If you knew
you didn’t say
and what was said
cut deep,
or wasn’t always heard
in the ways we intended
if at all. Wish we’d formed
that improv group
like we kept talking about,
and I’m so grateful we did
The Artist’s Way
for months,
working our way
with wild abandon
through all the prompting
to explore where we were frozen
or when our mothers lost us to lesbians
and kept keeping time
even when days out of time
less tasks undertook
what we keep, abandoned houses
on the corner near the elementary school,
cops aiming tear gas at counter-protestors
or simply dropping bombs.
You lived through Vietnam and Stonewall.
Me, being born just before Roe vs Wade,
so many unconscious freedoms
climbing like liberation
climbs when we’re convinced.
But that suspicious chorus
at the end of fabricated rainbows
the night we all came undone
and you and I just sat on spectrum clouds,
listening to the Indigo Girls ask
try to love one another right now”
and while the singalong was close to fine,
we held the key to love and fear
all in our trembling hands
and yet forgot to take notes.
The storm kept passing. High winds.
Our brains tossed lightning
back and forth.
If only the urgency,
if not the genocide,
if only the room
filled with children
dressed as butterflies
was truly created
with your best ideas
floating down the aisle
towards what we can choreograph
over near the horses,
feeding them combative pacifism
and cooperative anarchy
or singing songs to chickens
and finches, rainy dogs
and fresh milk
as the sundogs
come back out.
“Look!” you say. “We did it!”
So we keep that creation
and move onto fireflies.