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“I don’t know if my family…” and “68 Children among the dead”

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[TWO WEEKS IN APRIL 2017] REPORTED CHEMICAL WEAPON ATTACK IN SYRIA
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/05/middleeast/idlib-syria-attack/
Victim: ‘I don’t know if my family is dead or alive’
Mazin Yusif, a 13-year-old-boy, broke down in tears at the Reyhanli Hospital in southern Turkey near the Syrian border. About 25 survivors of Tuesday’s attack are being treated there, and several said they saw a plane drop chemical bombs.
Mazin Yusif, 13, tells a harrowing story of being caught up in the apparent chemical attack.
“At 6:30 in the morning, the plane struck. I ran up on our roof and saw that the strike was in front of my grandfather’s house,” Mazin told CNN.
He said he ran toward his house and found his grandfather slumped over. He ran outside to call for help. “I got dizzy and then fainted in front of my grandfather’s garage. I next found myself here in this hospital, naked in a bed.” . . .
The boy’s grandmother, Aisha al-Tilawi, 55, said she saw blue and yellow after the plane dropped a chemical-laden bomb.
“We started choking, felt dizzy, then fainted. Mazin was trying to wake up his grandfather. Three of my family died,” she said, lying in bed with an oxygen mask on her face.
‘Sixty-eight children among dead’ of suicide bombing attack in Syria — Blast targeted convoy transporting evacuees from Fua and Kefraya under deal between Assad regime and rebels
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/16/sixty-eight-children-dead-suicide-bombing-syria
Maysa al-Aswad, a 30-year-old evacuee from Kefraya, said she was sitting on one of the buses with her six-month-old son Hadi and 10-year-old daughter Narjis when the blast shook the parked convoy.
“Hadi was on my lap and Narjis on a chair next to me. When the explosion happened I hugged them both and we fell to the floor,” she told AFP by telephone from near Aleppo. “I didn’t know what was happening, all I could hear was people crying and shouting,” she said.
“All I can think about is how we survived all the death during the last few years and then could have died just after we finally escaped.”
More than 5,000 people left Fua and Kefraya and about 2,200 left Madaya and Zabadani on Friday, the latest in a series of evacuations from the four towns under the agreement.
The evacuation process resumed after the bombing, the Observatory said, with the residents of Fua and Kefraya eventually arriving in Aleppo, Syria’s second city that the government took full control of last year.
Wounded survivors, including many children, were taken for treatment at an Aleppo hospital.

"Two Weeks in April" (2017) brings together two accounts of violent events in Syria.

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Home

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Home, by Warsan Shire (British-Somali poet)

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.

you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.
your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.

it’s not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did –
you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.

you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.

who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.

no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
the boat because you are darker, be sold,
starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage –
look what they’ve done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?

the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off,
the indignity of everyday life
more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between
your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child’s body
in pieces – for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.

i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don’t know what
i’ve become.

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Theological Aesthetics and the Recovery of Silenced Voices

Year Published: 2008 - Author: 
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Created 09/02/2008 – 2:36pm
Theological Aesthetics and the Recovery of Silenced Voices
Cecilia González-Andrieu
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles CA
An Invitation
In March 2004 something unexpected appeared along a stretch of land the Tucson Weekly called “an ugly
wound cutting some three miles across Nogales”[1] [1]. In a moment of intense incongruity, several large
enigmatic figures materialized on the Mexican side of the fence separating the U.S. from México.
“The wall is military surplus,” explained the newspaper noting its war-like nature, “made of corrugated
helicopter landing pads that U.S. troops once laid out in Vietnam’s jungles and in Kuwait’s deserts. The
color of an ugly bruise, its sickly green merges with gun-metal gray. The perfect canvas, in other words, for
a giant piece of political art.”[2] [2] We, of course, know what these enigmatic figures are…they are
milagros. And we know they are profoundly complicated, much beyond “political art.” I begin with this work that the art world calls “public art” but we might more accurately call “popular religion as public art” to give specificity to my proposal.
A proposal advocating the recovery of silenced voices is nothing new to anyone working in the field of
Latino/a theology. We are all, in some way, actively involved in this work. We know that a commitment to
our quehacer teológico necessitates searches beyond volumes of overly verbose theology in dusty libraries. We have known this for a long time. What is new about this proposal then?
First, this is an invitation from us (and other so-called contextual theologians[3] [3]) to the wider academic
community to adopt a rigorous and productive methodology growing out of our experiences of doing
theology. Our ways of doing theology respect the variety of ways that our communities theologize. Second,
the invitation has depth and reach because it uses the language of theological aesthetics to connect a
variety of discourses and disciplines. Especially between the arts and theology, aesthetics is a recognized common discourse. Beyond this, its adoption inherently challenges and effectively dismantles overly rationalistic paradigms. These very same paradigms, set as they have been as the only normative type of theological discourse, have been used to keep “the other” as “other” silent. Third, the invitation comes with a “how-to manual.” While many of us have indeed been involved in doing this work for years, how to do
the work is often a struggle. This methodological proposal seeks to minimize the difficulties posed by such radical interdisciplinarity by first articulating and then carefully systematizing a method to make the work of theological aesthetics more accessible.
The final goal is evident as we again look at the border milagros. We will lift voices that are generally
ignored, classified as “folkloric” or “political”, or demoted to the category of “affective religiosity” without regard to their very real theological thickness.
……
So as we look at the milagros what do we notice?
If we are attentive, if we enter into the relationship, we see a powerful, painful, enigmatic, and quite
beautiful work. The work will help us fill in the definition of theological aesthetics.[14] [14] First, the work is powerful because it deals with human life; there is none of the aestheticism here
commonly found in art that exists only to gaze narcissistically at itself. Theological aesthetics deals with works that are “oriented to human ends.” [15] [15] Second, the images are indeed painful, if we dare be
present to the depth of suffering represented by la frontera and the way milagros function in the
community. Theological aesthetics looks with reverence at that which moves the human heart and to that toward which it moves it. [16] [16] In this work, there is supplication, there is lament, and there’s a communal gaze of hope lifted to God. Third, the work is enigmatic, and theological aesthetics acknowledges the radical polyvalence of creative expressions and experiences as well as their ambiguity. The univocity often claimed for normative written texts is perceptibly impossible with most creative works, and this radicalizes theological aesthetics toward a constantly receding horizon of appreciated otherness.
Fourth, the work is beautiful, its beauty captures us and fills us with longing; it also exposes the horror and
ugliness of the fence and those who put it there. In the beauty of the work we come to know the many
communities for whom and about whom it speaks and their beauty. Theological aesthetics fills in what just
“aesthetics” cannot, because as García-Rivera underscores “theology recognizes that Beauty shines
through the suffering in this world through its communal dimension.” [17] [17] It is our recognition of this communal dimension that shifts us to the next set of categories of this method and to the image for the “how to.”
……
Looking at the milagros, which effectively efface the categories of art, popular religion and folklore, we also
notice the inadequacy of the paradigm of intersecting lines. Where does the art end and the religion begin?
Is there a neat and localized point where we can see them meet? Or is there an intricate interweaving, an
interlacing, of artistic religiosity, religious art, myriad iconic traditions, political protest, Latin American
popular religion, European Medieval Catholicism, and Amerindian symbology?[25] ……..
Just one look at the milagros on the border fence tells us the artist as lone genius is a lie. Its very power lies in how broad its voice/appeal is. Interlacing replaces this predominance of the artist with a communal view. As we can see in this border
art, there are three major authorial or meaning-making influences on the work. They are equally important and must be kept in a creative and fruitfully interlaced relationship. [31] First, we have the work itself, and the understanding that a creative work has its own life; sometimes taking
a very different form from what the artist intended, and often surprising even the artist. Federico García
Lorca radically proposes that unless artists completely let go of their egoistical plans in favor of the work
the work of art will be unsuccessful, missing the quality of depth and power a community recognizes
calling it duende.[32] [32] In the case of this work, we can see how the milagros would have shifting meanings if placed on the Mexico side of the border, or on the U.S. side. The work has its own life.
Second, we have the artist. An understanding of the artist’s context is important, because creative works
happen in history and reflect the forces at work in that history. Yet caution must be exercised to not reduce
the work to the artist, and especially not require “sainthood” from artists in order to recognize that their works have theological significance. In the milagros we can see the role of the artist mainly as the artful translation and invocation of an old and beloved communal religious tradition. To emphasize his authorship as an individual’s accomplishment would lead us to minimize the tradition.
Finally, and just as importantly, we must focus on the communities involved in the work, behind the art and
in front of it. Rather than one discrete group, the category of communities seeks to recover all of those
whose traditions may lie behind the work, and whose interpretations, appropriations and critiques lie in
front of it. It is an extensive category which offers much richness, and which beautifully embodies the
Latino/a model of doing theology as teología en conjunto and of its pastoral implications as pastoral en
conjunto.[35] [35] To conclude, the Border Milagros artwork hanging in both desperation and hope on the U.S./Mexican
Border has helped us to articulate some of the initial parameters of theological aesthetics as practiced
through a methodology of interlacing. A methodology that effaces and decenters traditional categories of
engagement between art and religion, and which, owing to its debt to Latino/a ways of doing theology,
expresses itself in a joint, fluid and dynamic approach to a work of art, the artist and the many communities
involved in its beautiful life.
Postscript: About the Artwork
Parade of Humanity: Border Milagros was created by Alfred J. Quiroz, artist and professor at the University
of Arizona’s School of Art, in collaboration with Taller Yonke (Nogales Sonora, Mexico). Quiroz explains, “I
created 16 milagro images, some of which are actual milagro images, but altered for the purpose of
making individuals aware of the dangers of crossing the desert here in Arizona.” [36] [36] Quiroz received a
grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts to produce this collaborative work. The milagros have
traveled and also hung at Agua Prieta on the Mexican side of the border. Part of the work’s intention is that
it “hang” on as many spots of the border fence as possible. As of the date of publication the art
cooperative has not been allowed to set up the works on the U.S. side of the border.[37] [37] The work may
Theological Aesthetics and the Recovery of Silenced
be seen on the Mexico side of the border in Nogales where it was re-installed in 2006.
Voices–http://www.latinotheology.org/print/43[1/21/2012 3:58:38 PM]

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New rules, same humans [February 2017]

Year Published: Unknown - Author: 
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SUN TIMES. OPINION 02/26/2017, 11:07pm
Opinion: New rules, same humans
Connie Schultz
On Tuesday morning of last week, less than an hour after U.S. officials deported Guadalupe Olivas Valencia to Mexico, he leapt to his death from a bridge that connects our two countries.
BBC News reported witnesses describing Olivas, who was 45, as distressed and saying he shouted that he did not want to return to Mexico before he jumped. He was from Sinaloa, one of the most violent states in the country.
If you’re inclined to point to Olivas’ three attempts to live here illegally as evidence of his unwillingness to follow the rules, consider recasting the indictment as a question: Why would this man have tried three times to escape Mexico?
We still know little about Guadalupe Olivas Valencia beyond the circumstances of his death. But anyone paying attention to the news and capable of even a whisper of empathy knows there is more to his story. It is not difficult to imagine his death as a harbinger of more tragedies to come.
Olivas died on the same day the Department of Homeland Security released sweeping new guidelines that will most likely target for deportation millions more undocumented immigrants living in the United States. No matter how much they pay in taxes and Social Security and regardless of what they contribute to their communities, they are now more vulnerable. Something as simple as failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign can lead to one person’s deportation and the devastation of an entire family.
When I read about Olivas’ suicide, I immediately thought of another family of immigrants I wrote about in December 2010. The parents — I called them Mary and Joe to protect their identities — and their two elder children were born in Mexico. They fled for their lives, crossing the border illegally and then paying strangers $6,000 to ride in windowless vans from Arizona to a small town in northeast Ohio. They found full-time work and brought three more children into the world.
They lived in constant fear of discovery, but they were willing to take the risk to improve the lives of their children — an American value, I was raised to believe.
As I wrote at the time, one foggy evening in 2010, Joe was driving home from work, when police pulled him over for using high-beam headlights. He was gone before his wife and children could even visit him at the police station.
His 11-year-old daughter, Emma, took his deportation the hardest. She was a bright student, but her light burned out in her father’s absence. The longer he was gone the more morose and combative she became. Mary shared her concern in phone calls with her husband, but she was trying to keep her family afloat. One afternoon, Mary left Emma to watch the younger children so that she and her eldest daughter could run errands.
By the time they returned, Emma was gone. She had coiled a cord around her neck and tied it to the banister and then slid down the stairs until she suffocated.
I learned about Emma only after she had died, in an interview with Veronica Isabel Dahlberg, who is a co-founder and the executive director of HOLA, an advocacy group for the large Latino community in northeast Ohio. After reading about Olivas’ suicide on that bridge, I called Dahlberg to see how Emma’s family is doing now.
After his daughter’s suicide, Joe made it back to his family, but only for a while. He was arrested in 2012 after he was pulled over for another traffic infraction. This time, the charge was more serious because he’d already been deported. For months, he languished in a detention cell in Youngstown, awaiting his fate. On the day of his court hearing, Feb. 28, 2013, his wife of 20 years called Dahlberg.
“I could barely understand her at first,” Dahlberg said. “She was so upset.”
Joe had hanged himself in his cell. He was 40 years old.
Days after he died, Joe’s family — including his parents — and friends and colleagues gathered at a local funeral home to say goodbye. His death notice described him as a man who read the Bible every day and who tried to live his life by its teachings.
“His greatest joy,” it read, “came from being with his family.”
He is buried next to his daughter Emma, in the small American town where he once dared to believe that his family would be safe.
Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism.

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Poetry in a Time of Protest [2017]

Year Published: Unknown - Author: 
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http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/poetry-in-a-time-of-protest
CULTURAL COMMENT
POETRY IN A TIME OF PROTEST
By Edwidge Danticat
January 31, 2017
The day that Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, I went to hear the Alabama-based poet Ashley M. Jones read from her book “Magic City Gospel” at my local bookstore in Miami, a city that is home to one of the largest foreign-born populations in the United States. In his inaugural speech, Trump had repeatedly invoked “the people,” and said, “And this, the United States of America, is your country,” but it was hard to believe that he meant to include my black and brown neighbors, friends, and family, many of whom came to America as immigrants. Trump’s speech was dark, rancorous, unnuanced. Afterward, I wanted to fall into a poet’s carefully crafted, insightful, and at times elegiac words.
At the bookstore, I listened as Jones read a poem about seeing a Ku Klux Klan uniform on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

Behind the glass,
it seems frozen, waiting
for summer night
to melt it into action . . .

Jones also read a poem about Sally Hemings, the woman who was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson, the father of six of her children. And Jones read haikus about the 1963 Birmingham Children’s Crusade, in which dogs were unleashed and fire hoses were used as weapons against young people, six years and older, who were marching for their rights.
Political language, like poetry, is rarely uttered without intention. When Trump said, unconvincingly in his speech, that “we are one nation, and their pain is our pain,” I knew that the They was Us, this separate America, which he continually labels and addresses as Other. “Their dreams are our dreams,” he added. To which I could hear the eternal bard of Harlem, Langston Hughes, shout from his grave, “What happens to a dream deferred?” or “I, too, am America.”
The late Gwendolyn Brooks, a Chicagoan and the Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry in 1950, might have chimed in with “Speech to the Young,” a poem about one manner of resisting and what we now commonly call “self-care”:

Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
“Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night.”
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.
Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.
Looking to both living and dead poets for words of inspiration and guidance is now part of my living “in the along,” for however many years this particular “night” lasts.
One of the bonds that many people in my community now share is a deep fear about what might come next. Twelve years ago, after fleeing unrest in our native Haiti, my eighty-one-year-old uncle Joseph, a cancer survivor who spoke with a voice box, died in immigration custody after requesting asylum in this city. He had a valid visa and family members waiting for him, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him anyway. His medications were taken away, and when he fell ill he was accused of faking his condition. As his health worsened, he was taken to a local hospital’s prison’s ward, where he died shackled to a bed, five days after arriving in the United States. Still, in later years I took some small comfort in the fact that Miami was generally considered a “sanctuary” city, where undocumented immigrants were not routinely turned over to the federal government for deportation. I also kept believing that our numbers, not to mention our vital economic, cultural, and political contributions to the city, would continue to protect all of those who call Miami home.
Only a week into the Trump Presidency, we learned that we were wrong. On Sunday, dozens of us rallied in front of Miami International Airport, where my uncle was first detained, to protest Trump’s executive order barring all refugees, particularly those from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Since Trump’s xenophobic order was issued, the potential for my family’s nightmare to be repeated in the lives of other refugees and asylum seekers has increased considerably, particularly for those who are fleeing situations in which waiting even one more day can be a matter of life and death.
At the airport rally, we carried signs that denounced the ban, but our presence also highlighted the erosion of civil liberties for people of color, Native Americans, women, L.G.B.T.Q. people, immigrants, and even journalists. One man carried a sign that, like mine, said, “No Human Being Is Illegal.” A woman held one that read, “Immigrants Are America’s Ghostwriters.” Another woman had simply scribbled on a piece of cardboard, in all caps, the word “No.”
We shouted slogans like “No ban, no wall!” and “When black and brown bodies are under attack, what do we do? / Stand up, fight back! / When Muslims and women are under attack, what do we do? / Stand up, fight back!”
We condemned the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Carlos Giménez, who was the first to fall in line behind one of Trump’s earlier executive orders threatening to withdraw funds from sanctuary cities that refused to act as an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We denounced Senator Marco Rubio, a former political rival of Trump, who now wants to join him in building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Without community, there is no liberation,” the poet and activist Audre Lorde wrote, nearly thirty-five years ago. In our rallying and marching, we rediscovered community in one another.
Throughout the rally, because I seek solace in words, my thoughts kept returning not just to my beloved uncle but also to Jones, Hughes, and Brooks, whose 1971 ode to the singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson echoes the words in our chants:
. . . we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

I also kept returning to Lorde, who wrote that “poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.”
Poetry, she said, is how we name the nameless. “It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”
Stripped of our usual bearings and sanctuaries, we must now decide on a daily basis what our tangible actions will be.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of many books, including “The Art of Death,” which will be published by Graywolf Press in July.
•

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(Untitled) Speech

Year Published: 1963 - Author: 

Speech by James Baldwin
(1963)

Transcribed from:
freedomarchives.org/Braden%20Audio.Images/BaldwinWeb.mp3

The beginnings of this country have nothing whatever to do with the myths we have
created about it.

The country did not come about because a handful of people in Europe said, “I want to be free” and promptly built a boat or raft and crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Not at all. Not at all.

The people who settled the country, the people who came here, came here for one reason –no matter how disguised –they came here because they thought it would be better here than where they were. That’s why they came, and that’s the only reason that they came. Anybody who was making it in England did not get on the Mayflower. [Laughter and applause.] This is important. It is important that one begin to recognize this because part of the dilemma of this country is that it has managed to believe the myths it has created about its own past.

Which is another way of saying that it entirely denies its past.

We did several things in order to conquer the country. There was, at the point we
reached these shores, a group of people who had never heard of machines or as far as I know of money, and we promptly eliminated them. We killed them. I’m talking
about the Indians.

I’ll bet you as we say in Harlem, (?), that there are not many American children being taught American history who have any real sense of what that collision was like or what we really did, how we really achieved the extermination of the Indians, or what that meant. And it is interesting to consider that there are very few social critics, none to my knowledge but I say very few, who have begun to analyze the hidden reasons the cowboy/Indian legend is still one of the most popular legends in American life, so popular that it still in 1963 dominates the television screen.

And I suppose that all those cowboy/Indian stories are designed to reassure us that no crime was committed. We have made a legend out of a massacre.

Now slavery, like murder, is one of the oldest human institutions. So we cannot quarrel about the fact of slavery; that is to say we could, but that’s another story. But we enslaved him because in order to conquer the country, we had to have cheap labor.

And the man who is now known as the American Negro, who is one of the oldest of
American citizens, and the only one who never wanted to come here, [applause] did
the dirty work.

Hoed the cotton. Do you hoe cotton? No? Chopped the cotton… whatever you do
with cotton, picked cotton. [laughter] Lined track. Helped, in fact, I think it is not too
strong for me to say; let me put it this way: without his presence, without that strong back, the American economy, the American nation would have had a vast amount of trouble creating its capital. If one did not have the captive toting the
barge and lifting the bale as they put it, it would be a very different country, and it would certainly be much poorer.

But the people I am speaking of who settled the country had a fatal flaw. They could
recognize a man when they saw one. They knew he wasn’t, I mean, you can tell,
they knew he wasn’t anything else but a man. But since they were Christian, and
since they had already decided that they came here to establish a free country, the
only way to justify the role this chattel was playing in one’s life was to say that he
was not a man, because if he wasn’t a man then no crime had been committed.

That lie is the basis of our present trouble. Because that is an extremely complex lie,
if on the one hand one man cannot avoid recognizing another man, it is also true
then, obviously, that the man, the black man who was in captivity and treated like an
animal and told that he was one, knew that he was a man and knew that something
was wrong. I prefer to believe that if this society is created by men, it can be remade
by men. The price for this transformation is high.

Every white citizen of this country will have to accept the fact that he is not innocent. And that those dogs and those hoses, those crimes are being committed in your name.

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To Rivers Running to Freedom

Year Published: Unknown - Author: 

To Rivers Running To Freedom

To Rivers Running To Freedom
(Apropos The Underground Railroad)

With eyes wide open
And souls burning,
While they rested
We were running—
Running dreams
To visions like rivers:
Cascading estuaries;
Wide open seas.

Running dreams
Under star decked heavens;
In the rivers God has troubled free.
Running dreamers
Running and running;
Laying down trace tracks of visions;
Highlighting paths to free flowing
River waters. Seeking depths
Of freedom’s ways:
Where there’s no more slavery
Over me;
And the weary too!

With eyes wide open
And souls burning,
While they rested
We just keep on a’running:
Running waters of rivers freely.
And now our children
Wade, bathe and baptize in the rivers
God has troubled free.

Copyright © millard lowe | Year Posted 2016
https://www.poetrysoup.com/poems/best/underground_railroad

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Underground Railroad poems (several)

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Details | Underground Railroad Poem | |
https://www.poetrysoup.com/poems/best/underground_railroad
Respect The Roots
I’m thankful for slaves who never could understand, “Why do I work for people and get less than the bare minimum wage?”
Why do I go through the pain and suffering if there’s no gain for my family or me? My greats never were a boss and rarely knew who their family was so why live this life if it wasn’t free to be?
My roots nurtured the seeds who helped create opportunities; if we as the people could see how they lived maybe we would be stronger minded people rather than living like we have no sense
We are a culture that is talented in so many ways but we want to be the target of a negative headline news story.
We already seen shackles on our feet, slavery, segregation, and racism against our peace, so why do we still act as if we can’t change the way people perceive us to be
We are not going to blame it on our past because they gave us freedom to see so why can’t we exploit this and live the true meaning of the land of the free
Disregard the negative news and set yourself apart change the way you act so others can see a fresh start
If we started from the bottom now where here isn’t that living proof we can do anything besides spend money on material things but invest in the future or non-profits to help others to build something and have a heart
We can’t just stay a struggle we have to be humble take over the government and make change not think we high class and go to jail for spending money or getting caught up for the wrong things
Set a strong example for these homeless, gangs, prostitutes, and dealers because they are suffering and have only 2 choices that put us on the news headline story in jail or death coming soon
As we lift up those who make a change on the streets or on Capitol Hill we are happy these people are creating an Underground Railroad to victory without suffering and hopefully this stand is coming to all my people to
We got to take charge in numbers instead of sit back all for nothing
If you better yourself from how others use to see you maybe you can see the roots that can help make the change for you as others grow in this thing called a root lifting cycle. Respect the roots.
Copyright © Brandon Browne | Year Posted 2014

Details | Underground Railroad Poem | |
“underground railroad”
undergound railroal
My hand are sweaty moist and cold
the bread we pack for the trip is
midew and old.
Some of us are young
and some of us are old
we struggle to the north looking for the that pot of
Gold.
Down south I was sold.
Some born and some was made
for that gold, What i heard and and what i’ am told
no where to run but up
No where to be bold.
but up.
So we press on
looking for a resting place
runing from the slave master face..
Some people help
and pep
to be free
when I dream and I slept

Nightmare of the slave master wip
I wept.

Its cold the water as I step
we held hands as we felt
The chill of the water.
people geting sick
harder
as creep through night.
people who hid us help fight

Copyright © TARUS Taggart | Year Posted 2008

Details | Underground Railroad Poem | |
NEVER FORGET
February is the month that we celebrate our black race,
People from the past who set our pace.
Those who should have been placed in our history book,
But for some reason they were over looked.
Born into slavery or just grew up poor,
But they were determined to accomplish so much more.

First, on our list she was extremely brave,
Harriet Tubman help to free a number of slaves.
She had to come up with a secret move,
So the Underground Railroad is what she used.
Now how do you get rich from products for the hair.
I don’t know, but ask Madam C. J Walker the first black woman millionaire.
Now the 1st black woman aviator was a lady named Bessie Coleman,
And did you know that the stoplight was invented by a black man named Garrett Morgan.

Now hanging in the sports hall of fame,
Jackie Robinson is this baseball player name.
This list goes on and on,
Some are still living, but some has gone home.
There’s one, who truly paved the way,
If not for him, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
He marched from City to state,
And never once did he teach about hate.

The renowned Dr. Martin Luther King,
All of his marches and his well known speech “Let Freedom Ring”.
There’s plenty more that should be in a Hall of Fame.
But there’s not enough time to call them by name.
So let’s stand up and be proud of our race and who we are,
Because from slavery and racism we have come so far.

Written by Vertie Adams, February 2005

Details | Underground Railroad Poem | |
Harriet Tubman
Harrius Tubman

Harriet Tubman was my Great Great Great times Eight Grandmother
Trying to Free The Mind of my Brothers
Cause Our Eyes is Covered
From this Blindfolded Structure
of Vampires, Demons, & Witches
Rituals, Sacrifices, for Riches
Lucifers Music is Enrichened
Using His God Given Instruments for Demolition
Releasing the Spirits
All seeing Eye of the Pyramids
Illuminati Card Game Predictions
Predicting World Events Foretelling it’s Existence
Esau hates Since Genesis
Against his Brother to Afflicting
Oppression on his Brother without Forgiveness
They Eyes and Mind stay Attentive
to Lies Instead of Wisdom
Locked in the Devils Prison
Jesus last Words IT IS FINISHED
False Prophets
Make Profits
off the Gospel
Reciting the Apostles
Ain’t Scared of these Serpents
I was Breeded for the Purpose
to be speak the Sermons
as the Servant
the Prince Once on the Heavens Throne
left the Heavens Abode
To Expose these Foes
on the Underground Railroad
to the Path of the Gold
for the Soul
Salvation
Revelations
Judgement is Waiting

Copyright © uriel wisdom | Year Posted 2016

Details | Underground Railroad Poem | |
From The Cotton Fields To The White House
In 1619, “Black Gold” was expedited from the mother land
Shipped to a foreign sand to be servants but America had other plans
For years Royalty was whipped, hung and enslaved to work a brother’s hands
Institutionalized on plantations to picking cotton for another man
The blood of a slave screams for freedom as his faith is triggered
Degraded with names such a colored, coon, boy and nigger
The cotton fields was a sanctuary for spiritual and psychological therapy
The Jewels sang hymns in hopes to bloom towards the heavens like a buried seed
Through scorching heat & bondage, there was still value in this black gold
In pursuit of refuge they took route in the underground railroad
Torturous nights were recorded in the pages of Uncle Tom’s cabin
Telling everything that happened, from being beaten to held captive
Proof in our Roots are revealed on a gems back filled with stripes
But the bible prophesized we are healed by the stripes of Christ
So the runaway & revolting slave no longer had to run and hide
A bearded President saw no need for such toil, so it ended in 1865
Racism stilled reigned supreme in most of the American places
Black Gold was beaten again, raped, killed, tortured, hosed and spat in their faces
Limb from limb there were attempts to destroy them
Denied education, Denied to vote, Denied the ability to use what’s in
Imagine having to work from that cotton gin, to scrubbing floors
but they still believed one day they would be able to explore
One piece of jewelry refused to move from her seat, a queen
Another King woke up and spoke loudly about a dream
As a result sacrifice & segregation began to bring forth integration
Between blacks & whites, America began to look like a United Nation
We were allowed education, voter registration,
Became our own bosses, and finally knew what its like for vacation
The hate turn on ourselves, crime filled jail cells
Mostly populated by African-American males
We were told we shouldn’t and we wouldn’t
Then the stone plagued Washington, taking positions when they thought we couldn’t
Then the unthinkable, the unspeakable came to life in one chant
when a black man stood up and said, “Yes We Can”
Yes we can overcome, Yes we can be one,
Yes we can survive a struggle, Yes we can when our hearts are troubled
Yes we can live without doubt, Yes we can is what we shout
Yes we can travel treacherous routes,
in 2008 yes we can move from the cotton field to the white house!

Copyright © Mark West | Year Posted 2008

Details | Underground Railroad Poem | |
The Devil Himself
I feel horrible about being a slave
Day by Day I work
For a man that I hate

I decide to leave on the Underground Railroad
To escape from my master, the Devil himself
Get away and hope to be safe

I hope to leave on a warm summer day
I am waiting for my chance to go
I will escape to the north for my freedom

My journey takes me to places
Places I have never seen before
Unfortunately, I can only see these places after dark

I face the danger of being caught
Being returned to the plantation
Where I will be beaten, by the devil

The dangers have made me feel unsafe
No matter where I go, I am never safe
I still can be caught

I have help along the way
The people who support us
The people who leave signals for us to stay

I have made it to the north, to freedom
I react with a great rejoice
Joy, which I have never had before

Copyright © Joey Peters | Year Posted 2010

Details | Underground Railroad Poem | |
The Future 2
The future looks good, but a bit scary. Every time I think about the world changing in
front of my eyes, I’m afraid that the Earth would be way too developed. But fortunately, I
think that the future is clear and I’m ready for it. There’s advanced technology,
digitally-enhanced vehicles, including the cars, and stuff. What’s also going to be there
in the year 3000 to 3009 will be tall city buildings, TV screens will be all over the
futuristic version of the metropolitan areas, and the city streets will have underground
train stations, like Harriet Tubman, when she discovered the underground railroad. The
future will also include new computers, new cars and trucks, new cell phones, and new
exotic places. Every human being and a lot of aliens will still be living peacefully every
day for the rest of their lives. I’m so looking forward to seeing the world of advanced
technology. And if I were to stay on Planet Earth for the next 50,000 years, then I’ll be
able to see everything changing and stuff. I wonder if the Earth will go back thousands of
years and if God were to recreate the Earth?

Copyright © Brashard Bursey | Year Posted 2011

Details | Underground Railroad Poem | |
LITTLE GIRL LOST
she has blisters on the soul of her feet and cuts along her veins
oozing pain from the sores that cover her body
a lost soul living in the streets
digging in dumpsters for food to eat
rain pouring down her frail body soaked
sneezing and coughing with no chance of hope
she struggles to walk in the nighttime air
to find a place of warmth
the underground railroad ststion seems like the place
fighting off rats and roaches bugs and critters
predators on the loose
she finds a corner to huddle in underneath the ‘a” train
scared to go to sleeep in fear of beiong raped
she already was pregnant and had to terminate
a coathanger and a line of cocaine
made it all go away
a victom of child abuse and an drug addicted family
little rhonda had no choice but to run away
so many dreams of a life she knows shell never have
so she finds ways to end her life without being scared
she prays to God to help her but He must be busy
her mind is going crazy all she needs is to sleep
in the quiet of the night her restless body gives in
she begins to grift off asking God to forgive her sins
in deep sleep shes unaware of whats taking place
a vicious and nasty group of men
are violating her in disgrace
instead of letting her be they smash her head in two
leaving little rhonda to suffer no more
all she wanted was to be free away from the world that
tortured her
she never asked to be born but she did ask to die!

Copyright © brandy megens | Year Posted 2009

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