Claiming sanctuary is a concept that emerged from the diasporic experiences of people in search of fundamental safety, justice and freedom. In claiming sanctuary, someone seeks to engage in the ritual of summoning the divine through invoking forces larger and more bountiful than any one political or social site or system of governance or power. By claiming sanctuary, one is also asking for physical and emotional protection, for oneself and for one’s family, from the hostile systems that dominate the landscape of being. Sanctuary is an abiding and ultimate gesture of hope, of scrappiness and resilience, of epic strategies to stay safe and take control. It surrounds the edges of wild imagination which then become imbued with more assured protection, more powerful agency.

See also: making sanctuary, post activism, black geographies, white supremacy, slave trade