Tuesday, April 28, 2015

When Reality Becomes Offensive

When Reality Becomes Offensive
An Original Spoken Word Piece Written by Lady Rose

Damn right this should offend you!
It should fill you with rage
Make you want to break these handcuffs
And blow up this cage
Make you want to stop killing each other
And start inflicting pain
On the ones who are really to blame.

While familiar sounds to suburban kids
Are piggy bank clink and ice cream trucks,
Our children hear sirens blare and guns buck!

Bullets have no name
My life could end just the same way
As hood kings and queens who lost their reign
Because hood kids are growing up
Not knowing who to blame
So pain seeps through every homicide
Into the one’s from which they came

Damn right this should offend you!
It should make your skin crawl
It should cause guilt to seep through your pours
While you inherit it all,
The world is still morally poor

As a result, we rebel!
What else do you expect us to do?!
The war on our streets create wounds too deep
And the truth is you should be fighting too.

If you aren’t part of the solution
You’re part of the problem
You’re the reason we stay oppressed
If you aren’t consciously working to stop it!

So this right here goes out to…

All of the warriors whose lives were have been stolen

So that the system can profit
Off of more guns
More coffins
More handcuffs
More death
More bullets
More bombs
More handcuffs
More death
More war
More jail cells
More handcuffs
More death
More police
More war
More handcuffs
More death
More war…
More war
More war
This is war.

Black lives
Lost to police homicide
Are victims of war.
We will not let your deaths be in vain
We will not allow ignorance to mask your pain

I promise to turn rage into resistance
Take the “I” and the “son” out of prison
It’s no longer a decision
We MUST make reality out of vision
Force those who cause it
To open their ears and listen
They don’t get to be comfortable
Jail cells aren’t comfortable
And neither are coffins
Even if you didn’t pull the trigger,
Your complacency still bought them
So HOW DARE you suggest
I don’t know about the root causes?!
Our children are dying
I will not accept them as losses
Someone
Something
Is to blame
The dotted line is located at the end of this page
Feel free to sign your name

Friday, April 10, 2015

Action.

Action.
We need action.
So we take action.
Action.
Action.
We need action.

We locked arms.
Front line
In front of
Armed
Military personnel
Who at any moment
Might be compelled
To drop bullets into Black bodies
Because nobody
Besides us
Have taken a stand
To demand
Someone protect us
Except us
But nobody’s life will matter
Until Black lives matter
Until our lives are made better
So we lock chains.
After bearing the trauma
Of generational enslavement
So sore feet hit street pavement
Full of determination and enragement
Demanding freedom that aint came yet

We shed tears for our children
Who keep coming up missing
Because nobody will listen!
After bearing the trauma
Of one less Black heartbeat
We held our hands up in solidarity
But even with our hands up,
They still steal our humanity

So we laid our bodies in the street
For Black bodies: deceased
1 hour
2 hours
3 hours
4 hours….
His body left as an example
Of what will happen to more Black bodies
Until this system is dismantled
Don’t you see?!
We are all Mike Brown
We are all Amadou Diallo
We are all Rumain Brisbon
Miriam Carey
Kimani Gray
Akai Gurley
Ezell Ford
Dante Parker
Tyree Woodson
Shantel Davis
Eric Garner
Victor White
Yvette Smith
Yuvette Henderson
McKenzie Cochran
We are all Tamir Rice
We are all Treyvon Martin
Oscar Grant
Sean Bell
The list goes on…
For how long will we watch our people die
Until we charge the state with genocide?
There are more Black people in US prison than during apartheid in South Africa
Still we convince ourselves the psychological prison is the only one we’re fighting to get out of

Action.
We need action.
So we take action.
Action.
Action.
We need action.

Because we are tired
Of being tired
Of being tired
Of losing sons and daughters to murder
This is DIRE!
And so we lock arms
Chained together
And march across city blocks
Once filled with the sound of double-dutch and hopscotch
Now plagued with cops
The sounds of rat-a-tat-tat
Another head blown back
Another life we lack

#NotOneMore
We will not lose one more life
To the dark fate of injustice
To grave sites and prisons
We will take action in the name of freedom
The time has arisen.
For…

Action.
We need action.
Let’s take action.
Action.
Action.
We need action.

Now.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Education is Revolutionary

5 years ago I met someone who changed my life. I was working at my dream job, I was young, I was single, and I was vibrant. I had everything I wanted at the time except for a college degree. I sat in a room at a conference with this person for HOURS (we lost track of time), me: complaining about the barriers to going back to school; and him: recounting the ways he had overcome very similar obstacles and encouraging me to surpass the difficulties that I had allowed to become roadblocks to my success. I returned home from the conference and applied for the next semester at a local college and have been in school ever since. Over the last 5 years, this person has inspired me; he has pushed me, has encouraged me, and has become the voice in my head always reminding me of my greatness. He believes in me in all of the moments that the world makes it too difficult to believe in myself. I would like to take this moment to do the same for him that he's done for me for so many years.
Education is not the pre-determined "rite of passage" for everyone that so many people who didn't have to struggle to attend nor finish school because of financial barriers experienced. I am an example of someone who had been denied access to a college education because I was an undocumented immigrant, and because I was poor. I constantly considered how significantly more difficult it was for people "like us" to seek higher levels of education: because of classism; because of racism; because of xenophobia; because of capitalism; because we live in a country that is more invested in bureaucracy and hierarchy than it is in the sustainability of its civilians; a country that makes that disinvestment from oppressed communities vividly clear by strategically and intentionally denying access to the "liberties" that are imposed on us as a necessity for basic survival, while simultaneously stealing our access to those things - the very same obstacles the system itself created. For some of us...a lot of us, the life-long pursuit of the access to that "rite of passage" is the very obstacle that denies us the ability to work just as hard once we've "made it in the door". We are left on the "outskirts" struggling through the varied hardships of the realities of oppression that keep people "like us": poor people, Black people, people from the hood, people from the "ghetto", and systemically oppressed people from our RIGHT to an education.
The very same person who I met 5 years ago, who has been my constant support system ever since, is now asking for the support that he needs to be the first man in his family to obtain a college degree. If you have $1, if you have $5, if you have $5,000...please give what you can. Every single semester, our financial limitations threaten what should be a RIGHT to education. For those who do justice work, here is where the fruition of our work becomes evident, not just through our "work" but through our commitment to secure the rights of those most in need. Always, in love and revolution! Please donate here: Education is Revolutionary