New Album: Say You're Sorry

So I have been going into the recording studio of late to work on my next poetry album, which I have affectionately dubbed my "angry album." I am collaborating on this album with a talented musician by the name of Nik Ritchie. He is also recording the album.

The centerpiece of the album is a poem I have been working on for some time called "Say You're Sorry: A Rant About Slavery" I decided quite a while ago that as a country we were never going to become anti-racist until we dealt with our shameful history. American racism was born out of our horrific history of slavery and genocide. The land was stolen from the Indigenous people, many of whom were slaughtered, and then Africans were stolen from their homelands and brought in chains to experience hundreds of years of what can only be described as one of the greatest acts of inhumanity in the history of the human being.

But we don't talk about this. The history books I grew up reading made light of slavery. The history books still in circulation when I became a teacher still failed to engage the history of slavery in any sustained way. Current discussions of racism or race relations continue to fail to engage this important issue.

So I am writing this poem and making this album and hoping to start a conversation on slavery and its aftermath. The final poem will be epic in length. Here is an excerpt from one chapter on lynching:

Say you're sorry that the lynching of blacks

Was a form a of recreation

A national pastime in our country

An outing for the whole family

Complete with food and drinks

Say you're sorry the thousands of Black people

Hung up, burned alive

Tortured castrated

Was entertainment for whites

Say you’re sorry it wasn’t

Just an abberant minority of white men

Wasn’t just the White Knights of  Columbus

Or the Klux Klux Clan

Operating under the cover of darkness

Say you're sorry it was whole communities

Law enforcement city mayors

Jailers and judges, legislators,

Upstanding white men

Say you’re sorry antil-ynching legislation

Was defeated in the US Senate

Again and again

In 1922 1937 and 1940

While black bodies hung

While Black bodies burned

Say you're sorry mutilated black bodies

Were hung from flagpoles and rooftops

White racism’s  “old glory”

Yes We Did! (for my students)

Yes, we did

For my students

When I got the job offer

People told me not to take it

Said The South

Is too racist sexist homophobic

For someone like me

They might have been right

But I came here anyway

Told them it may be that way now

But I’m gonna change it

I will teach those racists

How to love Black and Brown people

I said

I will teach those sexists how to love women and girls

I said

I will teach those homophobes

How to love The Queers

And I will gather up

The Young Ones

Teach them to rebel

Against the hatred of their elders

And together all the young ones

They will change things

Yes they will

Its been 7 years

And I changed things

Yes, I did.

Maybe not enough

To save my own skin

But we changed things

Yes we did

My students and I made a difference

We changed things, yes we did!

Taking Back the Night

Tonight the National Organization of Women (NOW), organized a "Take Back the Night" march at the University of Central Florida. They worked with the Student Government Association, the Multicultural Student Center, and other campus organizations and were successful in bringing out a couple hundred students to the event.

Marches to "Take Back the Night" have been held for many years in many cities throughout the world to call attention to the high rates of violence against women. Feminists in the 1960s began to hold these marches composed entirely of women at night to protest the fact that women could not feel safe walking the streets at night. By coming together, shouting, and chanting without men to protect them, these women were able to symbolically  reclaim space. The Take Back the Night events provided platforms for women to denounce  the high incidence of rape in our country while also empowering themselves through testimony and the dissemination of information.

I attended my first "Take Back the Night" march when I was a college student. I am fortunate that because I am now a professor I have students who continue to organize such events and who invite me to participate.

I read a few of my poems at the event. Here is the poem, "Rape: A State of Emergency"

The Demands of Existence

Demands of Existence

If I told you to do the impossible

To fight the impossible fight

To pursue the impossible dream

If I told you it was the only thing that would

Make you possible

Would you do it?

If I told you your life was absurd

And unfair and that the cards would be stacked

Ridiculously against you

But that you should live nonetheless

That you must live nonetheless

Would you do it?

If I set wolves at your door and

Snakes in your bed

If I made your neighbors vultures

And your enemies your only friends

If I gave you but a stone for a pillow

And a shack for a home

And told you to awaken each morning

With a plan

To wake each morning

Determined to live

Would you do it?

If I gave you but one hawks feather to pray with

And 7 rocks set in a circle for a temple

If your flock was a ragged and desperate band of thieves

Your children thugs and your own mother addicted to drugs

Would you have the strength to lead them?

Would you have the heart to love them?

Would you have the humility to call yourself one of them?

To claim their faults as your own?

If I colored you black or red and set you down in this white world

If I shaped you woman and set you down in this man’s world

If I fashioned you queer and set you down in this straight world

If I told you to do the impossible

To fight the impossible fight

To pursue the impossible dream

If I told you it was the only thing that would

Make you possible

Would you do it?

Why You Must Vote

1. So you will have less to complain about next month

2. So you will have the right to complain about anything next month

3. To keep the crazies out of office

4. To prove you are not a nihilist

5. To demonstrate by your actions that you actually believe in participatory democracy

6. To prove the old folks- who say all young folk are apathetic slackers- wrong

7. So you can walk around all day with your "I voted" sticker proudly displayed, gloating and boasting about your implied political astuteness

8. So you can avoid coming up with a convincing lie to tell you friends and families when they ask you if you voted

9. Because Obama said to and he is commander in chief (if you believe in commanders in chief, that is).

10. To avoid letting the people who believe the world is about to end, who have already voted, and are voting in large numbers (because of their paranoia) to determine your future

11. To save soldiers. Historically, every time we have a Republican president or Republican majority in Congress there have been more wars and more loss of life.

12. To keep the Tea parrtiers out of office (Imagine Palin as your next president and then decide how safe it is to sit out this election)

13. Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Reproductive rights, healthcare reform, immigration, the economy, etc.

14. To keep the corporations from controlling our country (Ask David Koch)

15.  Because you claim you are anti-racist

16. Because women died slow painful deaths by starvation in their protests calling for female suffrage

17. Because countless black Americans died so that all Americans could vote regardless of color, race, or creed

18.  So our future can be better than our past

19. To increase the odds of having a representative who actually votes the way you want them to some percentage of the time. however small.

Some Wounds (a new poem)

Some Wounds

There are some wounds that never heal

No amount of tending pretending

Careful concentrated concern

Nor Positive neglect release of regret

Some sores nothing erases nothing cures

Bandages don’t hide scars refuse to fade

Some wounds are for life

Testimony to strife tell on us

Broadcast to the world

Accusations in the flesh

Let everybody know what got left

What was undone what mourning

Song was sung what can’t be forgot

What and who after all we have become

There are some wounds

Red gashes of pain

raised black and brown

Welts remain some scars

That grow larger not smaller

With  time.

Some wounds that mark us

Stain the soul, set one forever apart

Cause people to stare and start

Some wounds that can’t be glanced at

Never become commonplace, happenstance

Never get replaced by glory funny stories

The champion’s parade

Never become red badges of courage.

And these are the wounds

Nobody talks about

Everybody sees

These are the wounds nobody wants

Everybody runs from nobody seeks

Everybody shuns

Which is why

These are the wounds that never heal

We refuse to believe they’re even real

It seems easier somehow

Never mind the screaming bleeding tirades

In the end we just refuse

to be marked

By something we can’t change rearrange

Overcome unravel or defeat

Still

There are some wounds that never heal

Wounds that are for life

Testimony to strife

Evidence in the flesh

Let everybody know what succumbed/what died

What did and didn’t survive

What and who after all we have become

Ordinary People Making a Difference: Hands Across the Sands, Green Energy Congress,

Lately it seems like people have been busier than ever trying to address global warming, peak oil, fossil fuels, and the need to transition to a greener economy. The oil spill in the gulf has killed a lot of fish and fowl. Maybe we needed to see that to wake up? As Americans?  Whatever it takes, people...

As for myself, I have been busy of late with various green activities. I participated in "Hands Across the Sands" last Saturday to protest offshore drilling, attended the Clean Energy Congress in Tallahassee on Monday and Tuesday, calling on the Fl. legislature to hold a special session on renewable energy this summer, and  I attended a Transition Town meeting in Orlando today. All of this "greenwork" has got me thinking about oh so many things. And it has given me hope.

As an educator I cannot help but ask myself how I can contribute to the dissemination of knowledge about how to live more efficiently, more sustainably, how to prepare for a post-peak oil future, and how to turn this planet into something the seventh generation can use.  Fortunately I am far from alone. Many people are asking themselves the same question.

I have been reading a number of books on green energy, climate change, sustainability, community farming, etc (see images) and several facts really stood out for me:

The first one concerns public perception of the problem. According to an article in the Worldwatch Institute book, "2010 State of the World: Transforming Cultures from Consumerism to Sustainability"):

1. "Seventy percent of Americans already believe that climate change is a problem and 51% view it as a serious problem." (studies performed by Yale and George Mason Universities, p. 154)

So it is not just a bunch of anti-establishment hippies living on the fringe of society who are concerned about the future of the planet (though we need to thank the hippies for making us all more aware of the problem). Most people are now concerned. What's more, most of the world is making serious changes to transition to a greener, more energy-efficient, less-polluted future. Unfortunately, the United States lags behind most of the rest of the world in terms of making changes.

Africa, for example,  is the first region to develop and launch a 10- year Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) program ("2010 State of the World," p. 120)

"Over the last four years, China has apparently reduced its carbon emissions, even while its economy grew 7% annually, using subsidy phaseouts for coal, market pricing for fuels, and new energy conservation policies." ("Eco-Economy,"p. 101)

In 2008, the European Union approved a "package to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent, improve energy efficiency by 20 percent, and achieve a  20-percent share for renewables by 2020." ("2010 State of the World," p. xxii)

What about us? What are we doing?

"The U.S. holds less than 5 % of the world's population but produces nearly 25 percent of carbon emissions and has played the role of saboteur by failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels." ("Oil and the Future of Energy, p. 21)

Its a sad story, people....

But not to worry. While our political and economic leaders may not be doing enough, we as a people are busy! Many Americans are involved in one way or another with envisioning a better future for the planet.

Thousands of people came out to hold "Hands Across the Sands" at beaches and deserts all over the planet in response to the horrendous oil spill in the gulf. With little advance notice or time to organize, a movement took place in which strangers all around the world gathered on beaches and held hands to protest offshore drilling and to call for a move to green energy. On the little corner of New Smyrna Beach where I went we easily had a couple hundred people. It was exhilerating and empowering!

Only a few days later environmentalists, activists, community gardeners, solar power businessmen, and educators from every part of Florida gathered in the state capitol of Tallahassee in the House Chambers for a Clean Energy Congress to discuss and vote on a solution to our current use of fossil fuels and the damage it is causing to the planet and the economy. The congress met for  two days and put forth several important proposals for policies on solar energy, electric cars, a ban on offshore drilling, a 20/20 RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standards) for Florida, grants and rebates for alternative grid and fuel systems, and a green energy education policy designed to educate children, university students, businesses, and communities about sustainability and energy efficiency. Like the "Hands across the Sands" event, this event was organized in a short amount of time but 120 delegates showed up and we were productive.

The oil spill in the gulf is a tragedy but it has galvanized activity and inspired people to get busy trying to transition us into a green economy. Keep up the good work, people!!!!

As for me, I have my mother (Michaele Lee Davis) to thank for raising my awareness at an early age about the importance of treading lightly on the earth. As one of the original environmentalists (AKA hippie) my mom had us doing organic gardening, washing our hair in the rain, heating up our water with a solar water heater and buying local when I was just a child of 9.

She taught me to respect animals and plants, not to take up too much space, and to avoid getting caught up in American materialism.  I may not have learned well all the lessons she taught me but I am trying...

Thanks Mom.