Our Decision to Use the Word "Avenging"

The word "avenging" comes from the Latin word vindex ("defender, protector") (present active vindicō, present infinitive vindicāre, perfect active vindicāvī, supine vindicātum).

This passed through Old French to Middle English. As defined by leading etymological dictionaries, to avenge is to pursue "deserved or just punishment for wrongs or oppressions." It has little to do with "revenge," which implies the "infliction of punishment as an act of retaliation" and connotes personal malice and bitter resentment as the moving force. But that's not what ATAC does. That's not what ATAC seeks.

Instead, ATAC seeks deserved or just punishment — i.e., condemnation and correction — in regard to a wrong or oppression, e.g., President George Washington's enslavement of Black men, women, and children here in Philadelphia at America's first "White House."

Apart from that, I must mention something that I often wonder about when well-intentioned people ask me why ATAC uses the word "avenge." I wonder why these people express their concern or alarm about "avenge" but never express their concern or alarm — or justifiable horror — about the outrageously brutal violence of slavery itself. Slavery wasn't just the one-time loss of freedom; it was the centuries-long loss of culture, family, land, language, name, religion/spiritual expression, human status, limb, and life. To me, that hellish existence is much more of a concern than the use of the word "avenge."

Clearly, "avenging" is the perfect word.