I Woke Up With My Mind Stayed On Freedom, Knowing We Will Overcome Some Day

 

I woke up this morning, this "Independence Day", with my mind stayed on freedom

Not “Make America Great Again” or the US neo-imperial project but actual freedom

The type that lets our young ones look forward to sunny days and clear blue skies because they don’t have to fear drone warfare or our bombs bursting in their air

And as I considered this freedom, I considered our current state of being

Thinking of how the toxic brew of white supremacy, transantagonism, homophobia, xenophobia, and classism

Have left too many breathless and lying as strange fruit on hard ground after their lynchings

Those who cough from the fumes of this brew, cry “Oh Freedom” between breaths

because we want our liberation

We want to not only be free of the violence that dismisses our humanity,

that attempts to rob us of our dignity

We want to be believed when we show the scars of our trauma

And not be told that our abuse and subjugation aren’t real

We want to wade in the waters that serves the source of life

Its stillness only disturbed by the splashes and stirrings of those swimming and riding its currents

Not troubled by black snake pipelines,

crude oil spilled from breaches the elders warned were there

Our life source placed on your altars built by greed and sacrificed to your god named Capitalism

We want our joy to be unfettered

Our personhoods to be celebrated

Our love to be uncontested

Our sacred lands to be honored

Our peace to be undisrupted

Our inherent worth to be upheld

Our lives to matter

We want our liberation to be complete

And until that all comes

I know that we, the Resistance, shall not be moved

We will give what we have to meet each other’s needs,

Grow hoarse crying out over injustice,

March and occupy space to disrupt the oppressive status quo

Counter lies by bearing witness to the truth

And love wildly and radically

Because we hold this truth to be self-evident

We know deep in our hearts a change is gonna come.

and that we shall overcome someday