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

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.

Check me out in this new article about Black art in a time of Black resistance!

Local Artists Discuss the Place of Healing Artwork in Black Lives

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

Black Love Is Revolutionary

Hands Up, Don't Shoot!

New Book!

I would like to proudly announce that I have finally completed my first full-length poetry book!!! Since I was 9 years old, I have had dreams of being a poet, a writer, a performer...and an author. It is with a heavy heart that I'm publishing my first book in the absence of both my mother and my sister, two people who have motivated and shaped my drive and perseverance. In all realness, my accomplishments don't mean the same without them here to share this beautiful moment with...but it is in honor of their lives that I share my inner most passion with the rest of the world.

This book is not a "happy" book about freedom; it's a book about the realities of struggle and resistance and revolution because the struggle continues for those of us still fighting for liberation and I refuse to tell the "romanticized" version of our experiences. I hope that the messages ring true to those who share the experiences and shed light for those who don't.

Here's how you order one!!!!

Amazon: http://amzn.com/1499709161
Kindle: http://amzn.com/B00PSS3V14
My website: http://akaladyrose.wix.com/lady-rose
Email me directly: akaLadyRose@gmail.com

Please let me know if you have trouble using any of the links.