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People's State of the Union Address in Redding: https://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/news/Peoples-State-of-the-Union-Address-in-Redding--505138081.html
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A Litany for Okwonkwo
A Litany for Okwonkwo
you and i
you and i
you and i
ceremonious dark men old and young
in the jungle the jungle
the Brothers the Brothers
lifted His Name (and that of others)
talked up the now 45 with .45s
for a score and a half
rock creek parking over boom bap soul clap and trap
rolling with this flavor
despite the stomp to the nine zero’s jump off
wilding out with full page calls for Pentothal
despite
despite the warnings
despite the Lorde’s word of it
serving to remember
serving to remember
serving to remember
despite the warnings
of El(ie)El(le)Cool W
to understand that
the bombing of tracks
did and would not come from
the U.S. State Department
who knew the time
yet sat it out back in thirty seven
despite the protestations
of the People the People
still The Brothers The Brothers
long to be Farrakhaniam circumcisors of herstory
joy dividers despite our protestations
we been through this before
they keep saying
that the maafa wasn’t so bad
that the maafa wasn’t so bad
and besides
this the flow of this stream
will once again be seen worldwide
is delivered in a black plane
spares us the indignity of boat and/or train rides
includes meals and per diem
and pays by cashier’s check
© 2017 Juba Kalamka
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Becoming American
Becoming American
The truth is being an immigrant is a malleable place, a no destination, an in-between, a pending state where no country you call home is ready to accept you. Most immigrant stories in our popular consciousness are about immigrants who are fully formed swans, arrived at the comfortable threshold of identity—while the stories about those of us caught between the homeland and the adopted place get put off because of the ungraceful state of our becoming.
This year marks the point in which the time I’ve spent in the U.S. will equal the time I’ve spent in Colombia. Because identity is hard to define, and a forming identity is even harder to describe, I have relied in my thinking about my identity on mathematics. It’s helpful to know the sum of years and the geography of the sum of years.
I study the flashcards bought from the government for $12 dollars, the one hundred things one must know in order to become an American. They are the 100 questions one must answer for the citizenship test. The basics are:
Please name two branches of government. Where is the Statue of Liberty?
There are no lessons on Japanese internment camps, or eugenics but:
What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States? What ocean on the east?
Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?
In the great long view of things, what does it matter that I have stood stuck to the earth on a southern piece of land for fourteen years, and that now I have stood stuck on the same strip of land, except on the northern point for another fourteen years? It shouldn’t matter, had we no history. Except that we do, and it does.
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Broken Things
Broken Things
It was on a Thursday
At 3pm
When it happened.
I had just finished a long meeting at work
In the midst of a long week at work
After an exhausting life time of always doing
Too
Damn
Much
You know the story
5 years old: Don’t bring home any report cards with anything lower than a B!
work!!!
7 years old: There is no other option than a college degree
Be focused while you work
10 years old: When you leave the house you are a representation of your family
Look pretty while you work
11 years old: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Emmit Till didn’t didn’t for mediocracy
Be terrified while you work
12 years old: You can be as smart as you want, but no man is going to want to look at a sloppy fat woman all day in the office
Don’t eat and be lady like while you work
13 years old: If your teacher calls home for any reason you are a statistic and Racism has won
Be perfect while you work
14 years old: Don’t be aggressive, arrogant, dramatic. Don’t ditch, drink, fuck, or do drugs
Be meek, dull, bored while you work
Listen I understand liberation,
I’m still aiming for validation from who ever my parents were invested in impressing
Even when I believe in revolution, I’m still working so hard to succeed in this system
Even when I hate respectability politics
<Damn it!>
I exhaust myself senseless to prove that I am deserving of acceptance
So that moment
On a Thursday
At 3 PM
Right in the middle of my work day
I was finally so exhausted with my life being about that bullshit
That I decided to stop
And breathe
(inhale/exhale)
To close Microsoft Word
And Gmail
And Facebook
And Calendar
Put my cell phone on silent and my dog in his kennel
Close my blinds and my bedroom door
Turn on the Youtube 90’s RnB Late Night Mix - “I got my t-shirt and my panties on”
Smoke a bowl full of some fresh green my best friend just hand-picked out in Humboldt County for not nearly enough money
Take off my blouse and my bra, my skirt and my panties, my shoes and my earrings
Climb into my bed underneath some sheets that honestly probably needed to be washed last week
Lie down next to a pile of clothes that I promise I’ll hang up…eventually
Kick my dog’s bone off the bed
Flick away the tweezers that are poking me in the ass
Shove Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar away from my pillow
Change my playlist to the Neo Soul Lovers Mix so I don’t have to hear any more R. Kelly
And let my fingertips travel the lush expanse of my body
From forehead to knees
Stomach lobe to back roll
Nipple to nipple
I Queer-Black-Femme-Jesus worship my body
Paster and choir call response my body
Sunday School and Bible study my body
Praise dance and testify my body
And right when I am at my most potent
Most ripe
Eyes closed
Holy Spirit mounted
Ancestor Tongue Speaking
Crip Walking in front of the pulpit
Portal to heaven wide open
Self possessed with eyes rolling to the back of my head
Clit perfectly sanctified and orgasm ready to be delivered
I grab my Hitachi
<who I have named Shereefa, after a fine ass thick girl who once wanted to bone me when I was going through a period of being too hell-scared to even consider fornicating>
And try to set my soul free
But seconds before about to ascend
Or at least experience a brief, maybe 10 second release from the stress that thirty-odd years in the thresholds that the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy has imposed upon me
My Hitachi jumps
Then sparks
(Make Grumpy Face)
And dies
(Look at audience with grumpy face)
Naturally.
With my hips still bucking
And my heart still racing
And my clitoris still throbbing
And all of the stress and tension and unactualized fantasies
Just roaring, and clawing, and begging for a moment of redemption
To escape all the ways I have suppressed
Or silenced
Or rejected
Or denied
Or worked so hard to suffocate
The dangerous parts of me
The angry parts of me
The voices in my head that say perhaps destruction isn’t that bad
When you live in captivity to a government forged from the busted bones of your ancestors
Overlorded by police officers and legislatures still feeding from blood your people never stopped spilling
Built on top of the genocidal graves of Indigenous civilizations rich with centuries of
history and family
medicine and technology
art and spirituality
Broken and stolen, burnt down and corralled
Just to to create room
For Donald Fucking Trump to be elected our first overtly fascist president
So he can blackmail scientist into pretending that global warming doesn’t exist
Take away healthcare from anyone who’s not economically blessed and force the rest of us to watch our loved ones die from necessary bullshit
Build pipelines, walls, and international enemies at everyone’s expense but him, his homies, and his kids
Trap refugees and Muslims in airports, danger, and hopelessness
Invite civil rights villains, nazi leaders, Islamophobes, and anti-poor into the highest positions of leadership
And tweet us into both civil and world war so his stock portfolio expands at the booming weapon industry
And
Really
I just want to ejaculate away the fact
That on so many levels I have consented
To participating in this regime
That I hate so much
<breath>
And so I’m grieving
My dead vibrator
My dying complacency
And the ease it afforded me
Because that orgasm I didn’t have
Penetrated me at my core
Inseminated me with all the fury and rampage that I’ve been fighting to suppress
and helped me give birth to the Monster
that America, her savage colonizing ancestors and murdering supremacist babies, created inside of me
This Monster wants to scream and yell and growl and bite
Chop down telephone poles and oil wells
Smash apart freeways and court houses
Rip out college classrooms and jail cells
Set fires to factories and the White House
Pummel Military bases, banks and space stations
And at through every piece of infrastructure and capitalistic industry stapled into the charred earth of this nation
After dipping it into the cheeto dust decorating trumps face
Because if my vibrator and the government has to break at the same time,
the very least I deserve is some high fructose, heavily processed, artificial cheese
Although I really rather just smoke a joint, bust a few alone time nuts, and fall asleep to Netflix instead.
#FuckTrumpAndMyBrokenHitachi
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Conversations
Conversations by Julia Serano
conversations I have had since the 2016 election:
with my partner on election night both of us in shock
we scroll through our social media feeds
mine is filled with trans people panicking about getting passports ASAP for fear the Trump administration
will prevent access to changing gender markers
and pass voter restriction laws making it more difficult to vote without one my partner says people on her feed are fretting
about the possibility of queer internment camps I tell her that seems really far-fetched
that many many things would have to go wrong before reaching that point (then I think to myself, “but it has happened in the past”)
we spend the rest of the night lying in bed together with insomnia
holding one another
and making morbid jokes
with much younger friends the night after the election
at the weekly queer karaoke night we all go to they are distraught
feeling hopeless
so I try to console them
I tell them about living through similar political shifts in the past like in the early 2000s after Bush was elected
I tell them about the mass protests against his wars how despite all the harm of his regressive policies queer people survived
in some ways thrived
I tell them about the queer/trans performance scene during that era how we shouted our manifestoes
shrieked our punk rock songs
spat out beautiful and subversive spoken word poems we celebrated our bodies
our identities
at drag and burlesque events
at queer dance parties and benefit shows
I’m not sure if my stories cheered them up at all but for the rest of the night
we sang cheesy karaoke songs at the top of our lungs
it was really cathartic
with an ex-partner
who is now raising a child in Ohio
she tells me how she heard gunfire on election night
Trump supporters firing their weapons in the air in celebration the next day
someone sprayed racist epithets on a building downtown she then tells me about
her plans to move to Canada
with an acquaintance
who identifies as a moderate they didn’t vote for Trump
and were disappointed by the election result
but they were not especially worried about the next four years things will work themselves out
they always do they said
(I think to myself, that’s easy to say when you’re white, straight, and well off) I tell them that they have no idea
what we are all in for
yelling at my computer
every time I see an op-ed or election post-mortem claiming that liberals need to get out of our “elitist bubble”
and have sympathy for working-class middle-American Trump supporters what the fuck?!
many of my friends moved from middle America to this costal big city
in order to escape
the rampant racism, sexism, and queerphobia of their hometowns (btw, these are all forms of elitism!)
many of us are struggling to get by too
so where the fuck is middle America’s sympathy for us?
with a friend
after Republicans announce they plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act both of us are self-employed artists barely making ends meet
we wonder how we will afford health insurance without it
we wonder whether we will even be able to get health insurance since we both have pre-conditions
she has a chronic illness
I’m a transsexual and cancer survivor
emailing someone who I haven’t seen in a while my usual opening greeting:
“I hope you have been well!” seems all wrong
I modify it by adding:
“or at least relatively well given the state of the world” in their reply
they mention that they too have started using a similar qualifier when they greet people nowadays
bargaining with myself
as I struggle with writer’s block (which normally isn’t an issue for me) I stare at the blank page
trying (unsuccessfully) to resist checking Twitter to see what ridiculously horrible
or horribly ridiculous
(and many times, simply horribly horrible) Trump-related news story is just now unfolding
the humorous novel that I’ve spent the last two years working on suddenly does not seem very relevant
so I decide to focus on writing activist pieces again upon doing so
I suddenly feel energized
the creative juices are finally flowing! after writing five of them
I notice that all of them include the phrase “white nationalism”
(I guess this poem makes it six)
I have been an activist for the last twenty years mostly on LGBTQ+ issues
feminism and intersectionality
trying to raise awareness about marginalized populations and challenging discrimination
but quite honestly
I never imagined that things would get so bad that I would have to focus my activism
on fighting Nazis
the world usually seems fairly static incremental change here and there
but otherwise fairly recognizable from year to year but occasionally
the world changes in drastic and dramatic ways sometimes for the better
sometimes for the worse
I am not sure where we are heading but for the first time in my life
I have no idea what the world will look like one year from now
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Faction Factotum
FACTION FACTOTUM By Dawn Robinson February 7, 2017
In 2015, 102 unarmed black Americans were shot and killed by police. 112 transgender Americans have been murdered since 2010. More than 267 people have been killed by active shooters, mass killings perpetrated by gunmen who were not police. When we, as black americans, and queers and concerned citizens pleaded with you to help us change these horrifying statistics, when we begged you to join us in action and resistance and gun law reform, you could barely look up from scrolling through your phone or scheduling your Uber. “We don’t know what really happened.” you said, over and over, shaking your glossy heads. #BlackLivesMatter to you was code for “property damage.” You tried to proclaim that All Lives Mattered, but that went down the toilet with the rest of your bullshit. Compare the numbers of “all lives” versus the black lives have been taken in the centuries since you brought us here? Count it. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Right.
We’re over-reacting.
When the primaries happened and the bizarre joke candidate known as Donald Trump was not eliminated by a decisive margin, black america gave each other knowing looks, and tried again to engage your interest in preventing the avalanche of hatred, xenophobia and fascism we saw building like a rogue wave only slightly offshore. It wasn’t only for our own black and queer and trans bodies that we worked–this was going to help you, too. You glanced up, but only long enough to craft another ironic snarky tweet about the Clintons, and went on ad nauseum about how Bernie should be the Dems nominee.
By convention season, more of you were horrified to watch Trump accept the nomination for his party. When Sanders stood around with his defeated white-boy bitter face showing and stalled about throwing his support behind Clinton, black america saw that face, and KNEW that face, having seen it a million times on a million white faces. It’s the one that promises revenge, the one that cannot comprehend things not going his way.
You tsked, and you poured glasses of good red wine for your friends and you said repeatedly: “He’ll NEVER get elected! He’s insane.But I’ll never vote for Clinton!” You knew, as we did not yet know, that you would a) not vote at all or b) vote third-party. And you went blithely off to the airport for your planned summer vacations, secure in your ability to always, always, always get your way.
Suddenly September, and black america is watching as one pundit, blogger or columnist after another drags Clinton through the gutter over some EMAILS. It goes on and on, and yet that strong capable fighter plowed on, through pneumonia, to keep bringing us all back to the essential point: which is that Donald Trump must NEVER become president. We heard you calling her a crook, and dredging up 20 year old news as a justification for your out-of-control misogyny.
Black america kept on organizing to the tune of 98% of the black vote. Why do you suppose that happened? Because we know rich white men like we know the back of our own hand. We were never deluded about what would happen if that pouty baby got behind the wheel of our democracy. Ninety-eight percent of black america knew better than to vote against their own best interests! Why didn’t you?
The worst happened on November 8. The thing you swore would never happen, that we in black america had been warning you against, happened. You all stood around in shock and tears. It
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might have been the first time something so big didn’t go your way. And our black president and our broken hearted white female candidate took it on the chin. The held their heads up. No whining or tweeting embarrassing rants. They did what we’ve learned they are capable of: they showed dignity and class and RESTRAINT In defeat.
Now here you all come. A day late and a dollar short, as our grandparents used to say. Johnny Come-Lately. Po’ Faced. Yeah, you fucked this up! Because it turns out that 53% of the people who voted Trump in, were WHITE WOMEN. Oh hell no. Here you come with an idea for a Million Woman March.
Girl, bye.
You want lessons in resistance and coalition building from those who have been on the front lines. You want to write books and profit from the eloquence and pain contained in Pantsuit Nation posts, and you have to be told why this is not OK.
Where were you when Trayvon needed you to come out of your house and stand with him? Why didn’t you bring out a blanket to cover up Mike Brown’s body as he lay in the street for four hours? The white cops would have let you through. Where were you when Eric Garner couldn’t breathe? You need to be told that none of these deaths is OK.
You walk by, day after day, and ignore the death screams and tears of everyone that is not is your privileged tiny circle! Your white tears don’t move us. We’ll pour your white tears down the sewer, for they are not pure enough to drink, nor are they nourishing enough to water our
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gardens. You measure our protests in the dollars you must spend to repair broken glass, and you have to be told why this is not OK.
You stood by while the media created and normalized him, you laughed at him, you watched his shows, you envied him, admit it. You let him confess to sexual assault. You hid from confronting your friends and neighbors on their vote. Some of you have to be told why this is not OK.
As it stands, you cannot control him or his many controllers, who have set the trap so neatly. Now that your livelihood/health care/travel options are in peril, you want to sing a song of resistance, of unity and community. As we have before, those of us you cheerfully marginalized and “didn’t even see” for years will find ways to work with you, organize alongside you. You have to be told why we cannot, do not trust your new-found activism.
We’ve seen your faces before, and we’re prepared for the moment when you’ll retreat to the many shelters afforded you by your whiteness, your white males, or your money. You will be shame-faced, yet righteously indignant over your choice of inaction. More people will die, more lives will be shattered, and more rights will be imperiled. You will still have to be told why this is not OK.
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RADAR Story Circles
In the near future – we will host intergenerational strategy sessions. That is what I hope for.
I remember Bush, 9/11, War in Iraq, Desert Storm before that.
This is worse than a Bush-Reagan orgy. Unpresidented.
The past is never far behind. But the lie of America ™ demands historical amnesia. One that forgets Strange Fruit, the Trail of Tears, the slave masters who made this nation’s history.
The Civil War ended, slavery (as it was known) ended, WWI and WWII ended, the Immigration Exclusion Acts ended (Chinese Exclusion 1882-1942, Immigration Act of 1924), Jim Crow ended……
“he started running for president, but the brash New York businessman bulldozed his way past every rival for” Trump Tower, 721 Fifth Avenue, NYC - Condo Apartments | CityRealty
What do we live in now?
“Make America Great Again” TM
Are we in the world’s worst reality TV show?
“https://www.donaldjtrump.com/Nov 8, 2016 - Donald J. Trump is the very definition of the American success story, continually setting the standards of excellence in business, real estate and” …a sanctuary for racist rapists, homophobes, classist predators
I sleep less than 1 mile from the White House, helicopters circling overheads
In DC the sidewalks are so wide and huge, the streets are so big, there are only a few people walking around….it feels like someone supersized this city, the capitol
white evangelicals by historic margins
Police cars blare by, a whir of red/white/blue lights
“Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency.”
Trump shuffling around in his bathrobe, refusing to read briefings
My biggest problem here was handling the material properly without causing undue anguish
And ordinary people doing ordinary (terrible) things
“Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer have both allegedly invented fictional terrorist attacks in what appears to be an attempt at justifying Trump’s ban on citizens from certain Muslim-majority countries entering the U.S.”
What is patriotism really?
Trump Hotels is a collection of luxury 5 star hotels located around the world providing a range of options and experiences. Our 5 star boutique hotels provide …
“In the wake of the White House’s distribution of a list of 78 “major” terror attacks that supposedly didn’t receive adequate press attention since September 2014, the mother of a murdered British backpacker has written to President Donald Trump to inform him that “[her] daughter’s death will not be used to further this insane persecution of innocent people.”
@realDonaldTrump
I call my own shots, largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it. Some FAKE NEWS media, in order to marginalize, lies!
“Donald John Trump is an American businessman, television personality, politician, and the 45th President of the United States.” Per Wikipedia
I can’t even believe this joke is real.
America’s true colors –
real estate mogul and former reality TV star Donald John Trump was born in 1946, in Queens, New York.
Welcome to Trump Chicago Condominiums. The most spectacular condominiums in all of Chicago.
Personality Disorders R Us
No Extra Charge, America
Thanks for coming by!
Although Trump is not close to many people
Now deporting 11 million people in 2 years
Erasures from Trump’s Black History Month comments:
Well this is Black History Month, so this is our little breakfast, our little get-together. Hi Lynn, how are you? Just a few notes. During this month, we honor the tremendous history of African-Americans throughout our country. And their story is one of unimaginable sacrifice, hard work, and faith in America. it’s mind and spirit. whose incredible example is unique in American history. You read all about Dr. Martin Luther King a week ago when somebody said I took the statue out of my office. It turned out that that was fake news. Fake news. The statue is cherished, it’s one of the favorite things in the—and we have some good ones. We have Lincoln, and we have Jefferson, and we have Dr. Martin Luther King. But they said the statue, the bust of Martin Luther King, was taken out of the office. And it was never even touched. So I think it was a disgrace, but that’s the way the press is. Very unfortunate. I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things. Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I noticed. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and millions more black Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact. I’m proud to honor this heritage and will be honoring it more and more. The folks at the table in almost all cases have been great friends and supporters. Darrell—I met Darrell when he was defending me on television. And the people that were on the other side of the argument didn’t have a chance, right? And Paris has done an amazing job in a very hostile CNN community. He’s all by himself. You’ll have seven people, and Paris. And I’ll take Paris over the seven. But I don’t watch CNN, so I don’t get to see you as much as I used to. I don’t like watching fake news. But Fox has treated me very nice. Wherever Fox is, thank you.
We’re gonna need better schools and we need them soon. We need more jobs, we need better wages, a lot better wages. We’re gonna work very hard on the inner city. Ben is gonna be doing that, big league. That’s one of the big things that you’re gonna be looking at. We need safer communities and we’re going to do that with law enforcement. We’re gonna make it safe. We’re gonna make it much better than it is right now. Right now it’s terrible, and I saw you talking about it the other night, Paris, on something else that was really—you did a fantastic job the other night on a very unrelated show.
I’m ready to do my part, and I will say this: We’re gonna work together. This is a great group, this is a group that’s been so special to me. You really helped me a lot. If you remember I wasn’t going to do well with the African-American community, and after they heard me speaking and talking about the inner city and lots of other things, we ended up getting—and I won’t go into details—but we ended up getting substantially more than other candidates who had run in the past years. And now we’re gonna take that to new levels. I want to thank my television star over here—Omarosa’s actually a very nice person, nobody knows that. I don’t want to destroy her reputation but she’s a very good person, and she’s been helpful right from the beginning of the campaign, and I appreciate it. I really do. Very special.
So I want to thank everybody for being here.
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Trust What You See
Trust What You See
With Baldwin
They’ve been killing my friends all the years I’ve been alive
The suffering of our children has become a salient saline
Crashing into the White world
Stinging you’re cheeks with the acid of a rotting rind
Our weariness is now worn on your skin
Our decades of deconstruction has decomposed the permanence of your patriarchy
In my America, I’ve heard the sounds of mother’s weeping in helpless rage more than in sorrow
While priests acknowledge the increasing cost of a box of bullets
And the body that bled onto the thirsty pavement remains there
When we were children the pads of our feet stuck to concrete,
bits of us were buried each time our toes touched.
You can build your wall but you can’t keep us out
Our bodies are already buried in the brain
They made you a monster
The darker the days get the easier that is to see
You hoped we’d forget
Asked for assimilation
Assembled against us
And in your acts of insistence you have created the resistance.
As you tear at the earth
we are tasting your tar sands
It’s thickness feels like the lubrication that slides between thighs
at the climax of creation
All buried corpses now begin to speak
Tolerance
My people weren’t surprised. We weren’t horrified or stunned in fact we knew it was coming. It’s the realness of revelations. It is now our time to determine who are the meek and if inheriting this earth, this reality, is actually salvation. We were not surprised.
I’ve lived in an earthquake state all of my life and yesterday I followed a crack in my ceiling down to the center of the wall to the left of me. At the start or end of this crack, I’m not sure which, was a quote by Assata Shakur, “People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows.” Who was she speaking to because our people were not surprised?
A woman at work ran to me in the halls, wrapped her arms around me as if she needed an anchor to help her keep upright. In my ear, I heard the frantic cries of a crashing creation. She shook and something inside her had been broken. She was surprised. I pulled her off of me. Too many of my people are buried beneath these buildings and I didn’t want that to happen to me. She was surprised.
Revelations depends on the existence of a God and according to Coates you have deified your democracy and by doing so sealed its fate. We are not surprised. The path of Gods wrath was predetermined by some other group of dead guys in power and you have just made us all follow the script. How are you surprised?
In 1989 after the earthquake, I remember watching people being pulled out of collapsed buildings, crushed, crying people. These people were all taking the bridge or sitting in parking garages after work. The earth didn’t care who they were. It doesn’t deal in flesh, it makes no notice of melanin and for a moment in the rescuing of these people we seemed to do the same. In this moment, we acknowledged the real order of things rather than the one created for us. In 1989, the same year as the Loma Prieta earthquake, Oakland hit a new record in homicides, 148, 81 more lives than claimed by the quake, and no one rushed to our aid. So we are not surprised.
I should be sad for you, right? Sad that now you know our focus on flesh was all in effort to create cracks, ones that will leave you bent and split at this very moment. You bellow, feel as though somewhere you are bleeding but since you don’t know from where you have no way of stopping it, you say things like I can’t breathe and beg us to show you how. Who are the meek and what will they inherit?
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@America
@America
Be grateful you live in America, my parents tell me.
They left a country that was once whole -
Fertile with coconut trees and rice fields -
Until the Frenchman mapped out our country like a boardgame
Except in this chess game, the white piece had the power to control all the brown pieces
Even had the power to call the brown pieces “burdens”
“Burdens” that worked rubber plantations for your Michelin tires
My parents dreamed of coming here since 1975, the Fall of Saigon
After years of war - of bombs and Agent Orange, of watching monks set themselves on fire in protest
Years of food rations and watching their friends leave the country one by one -
They had the American Dream
To leave war-torn Vietnam for a land said to be brimming with opportunity
This dream was hollow, its skeleton sustained by the myth of meritocracy
The maintenance of the model minority that would manifest
In ways meant to divide and conquer people of color
They left for a land that backed the very war they were escaping
A land that elected a president with complexion resembling the orange pesticides that rained over my parents’ motherland
Embodying violence as lethal as the chemicals that maimed my people
A land that forced us to assimilate into an America we dreamed would be better than our war-torn home
And made my parents believe that we should be grateful for this sliver of American pie
This land was not made for you and me
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Youth Speaks - Story Circles
Dear America,
There’s a couple things I believe we need from you but you fail to give us. You fail to give us all the things you promised us. You fail to give us all people of color an opportunity, a chance to better our lives and the future of our children. You fail to give us equal rights. Instead, to you, some are more equal than others.
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Gracefully
Gracefully
Swaying towards misconception,
Threatening the flow in my blood.
Rebelling systematic oppression
Infiltrating fear of progression
Preventing assertive communication.
Grasping stagnant situations
Upcoming is a death zone
(TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND SAY)
Express Originality
Feed cultural Knowledge
Partake in things YOU truly love.
Trust me honey
You will grow
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Youth Fellows - Story Circles
I stand in the middle of being a women and latina oppressed
For being both just because being both or one isn’t important to those who oppress me
Not respected because I have a uterus but they claim they do only when it benefits them
Viewed as an object rather than a person
And they still ask where my respect is at
Hated for my culture because it’s not what is considered normal
Sometimes oppressed by my own people because they think that I’ve changed because I’m speaking white
Norms that are set up to define what a latina or a woman are
Which don’t fit a all who I am as both or one
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Youth Speaks - Story Circles
Trumps intentions for American has become a nightmare for most of the people living in this country
I feel the consequences being president will lead to a violent revolution
People tired of the injustice, racism, and inequality.
This land feed off of
I also think that Trump will lead us to a path of war
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Youth Speaks - Story Circles
Education is something we are given all the same
And that’s the problem
This system focuses on equality rather than equity
I don’t learn the same as Tammy or Bill
The lack of creativity is always something that I feel
Although they teach us about what’s fake and what’s real,
they never tell us about the brothers in the ville.
** Never about the pain or what oppression felt like, not what the whip or
what the belts like ***
Never about how people got sprayed down or the emotions that are found
In the families who are praying year round for their brothers
Who now wear crowns
The make us feel inferior
They think that they’re superior
Although we’re minority
We make up the majority
Of all the success stories
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