hate-filled tirade by stabbing suspect<\/a> Jeremy Joseph Christian.<\/p>\n\u201cI hope that most people would do what he did, to see hatred and to meet it with openness and love, to be a source of support and safety,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Nasiah said she remains deeply moved by his last words, and said that being able to meet the two people who tended to her brother as he lay dying \u2014 a paramedic and fellow passenger Rachel Macy \u2014 was an immeasurable gift.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt so horrified and scared imagining him being stabbed in the throat and the state of mind he might have been in that moment,\u201d she said. \u201cI felt like I couldn\u2019t breathe \u2026 and then to meet these people and find out, he wasn\u2019t scared, he was loving, and he was at peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had these two incredible beings who loved him in those last minutes and reminded him of his true nature. They allowed him to die at peace and at ease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nasiah described Taliesin\u2019s last moments, as related to her by Macy.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe told him he was beautiful and she said he smiled this shy smile,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then he said, \u2018Tell everyone on this train that I love them.\u2019 That was his huge brilliant heart, his ability to see hatred and stand up. They did that for him, they did the thing that was kind and right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was huge. I\u2019m happy that he got to have that and I\u2019m proud that he was able to, in the face of something that would make most people shut down and be afraid, he was able to love.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Message of love\u2019<\/p>\n
Nasiah said that she is still in shock and trying to process her grief, adding that she can\u2019t separate the personal from the political.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel so weak and so tired and that\u2019s where I am,\u201d she mused. \u201c(But) understanding and processing this situation inspires me to rise up, and maybe it is in a political way, to help people of privilege unpack issues of inequity, to understand systemic inequities and the hurt that comes out of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nasiah is more qualified than most to do this work, as she has spent her post-college career working in the field of sexual assault and domestic violence prevention \u2014 she currently serves as the violence prevention and outreach director at AWARE, Juneau\u2019s women\u2019s shelter.<\/p>\n
In the last two weeks, Nasiah said she has been working to share a \u201cmessage of love\u201d on both the personal and political levels, within her family dynamics and society as a whole \u2014 to say, \u201cOpen your heart bigger. Try to understand where people are coming from. To choose love, and to create systemic and institutional change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nasiah, it is clear, has spent a lot of time struggling with the meaning of her brother\u2019s violent death.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did we get this huge national platform?\u201d she asked of the enormous media interest devoted to the murder of Taliesin and Ricky Best. \u201cWhy? Because we are a white family. I don\u2019t want to get political in the sense of division \u2014 but our system is inherently inequitable. \u2026 I am still trying to digest (this). What does this mean? How do I love? How do I help my community unpack privilege?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the speech that Nasiah wrote to share with the world, she said that her family has been \u201chumbled by the abundance of support and love we have received from all of you, from all over the world.\u201d While she noted their \u201cunearned platform of privilege,\u201d she said finding meaning in Taliesin\u2019s death would involve challenging systemic and institutional inequities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be with you, stand beside you, become allies to you. Pray for unity. For peace. For grace. For courage. For compassion. For kindness,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t just want us to pray. I want us to act.\u201d<\/p>\n
One opportunity for men in Alaska who want to end men\u2019s violence, Nasiah said, is a Men Stopping Violence <\/a>training June 19-21 in Juneau that is being hosted by AWARE and the Juneau Violence Prevention Coalition.<\/p>\n\u201cThere is real suffering today, in our community. We are all responsible, together, for the community norms that are perpetuated,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is our world and somehow we have to figure out (how) to create greater equity. I can\u2019t do it alone, we all have to do it together.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a memorial service last week at Taliesin\u2019s alma mater, Reed College, his father told the mourners that \u201cthat at his time of death Tilly transmuted into a thousand-armed Buddha, and now he is acting through all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Referring back to her father\u2019s words while trying to move forward, Nasiah concluded, simply, \u201cWe<\/em> are the thousand-armed Buddha. It\u2019s a collective work.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Liz Kellar at 523-2246 or liz.kellar@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ati Nasiah had an important message to share last week \u2014 and last night \u2014 when she spoke at several memorials paying tribute to her brother, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, and to Ricky Best, both stabbed to death on a light-rail train in Portland on May 26. \u201cMy brother is not a hero for acting like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":7569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7568"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}