Testimony & Memory Public Record Node
This node is about how stories live — and how they are used. It treats lived experience as evidence, not anecdote, and builds an archive that institutions cannot easily ignore or rewrite.
Systems often act as if only their paperwork counts: the chart, the file, the case number. But the lived experience of the people harmed is also a record — and in many cases, the only honest one that exists.
This node is where testimony, narrative, and memory are treated as central to accountability. It connects my own documentation work to a broader practice: naming what happened, when it happened, and what it did to a life.
- For survivors & witnesses: a reminder that your memory is not “just a story” — it is a record that can stand beside or against official files.
- For institutions: a signal that rewriting or omitting the record does not erase what people lived through.
Civil Memory uses multiple layers of documentation, all of which matter:
- Written testimony: narratives, statements, and timelines that describe how harm unfolded over months or years.
- Document trails: emails, letters, screenshots, policies, and forms that either support or contradict what officials claim.
- Embodied records: medical impacts, disability changes, loss of education, and other lived consequences that powerfully reflect what happened.
- Public artifacts: meeting minutes, social media decisions, news coverage, and silence — all of which can be read as a kind of testimony from institutions.
None of these forms of memory are “extra” or “optional.” Together, they make it harder for harm to disappear.
In my own work, testimony shows up most clearly in the long-form narratives that pull together medical, educational, and legal harms into one coherent record.
Over time, this node can include anonymized or consented testimonies from others who choose to contribute to Civil Memory’s archive.