The Youth Group that Launched a Movement at Standing Rock in the Fight Over the Dakota Access Pipeline, Native American activists achieve one of the most galvanizing environmental victories in years - and it all began with a group of teenagers.
Browsing category: Political
Field Poem
When the foreman whistled
My brother and I
Shouldered our hoes,
Leaving the field.
We returned to the bus
Speaking
In broken English, in broken Spanish
The restaurant food,
The tickets to a dance
We wouldn’t buy with our pay.
From the smashed bus window,
I saw the leaves of cotton plants
Like small hands waving good-bye.
Harbinger
Just another day in hyper-capitalist society—
in my Facebook feed, news of rabbits and
chickens tortured on meat farms, but I’m still not
vegan and I’m waiting to die myself
from cancer I may have gotten from soil or ground water
contaminated by nuclear weapons, and no amount
of posting uplifting stories is going to fix that.
And lord, let them cease trying to control women’s
bodies, people’s genders, people’s desires,
let them stop hating people because of their color
and ethnicities. I want to shake the bigots and racists
till their teeth come loose and they lose their bite,
till their tongues swell up in their mouths
and they’re stricken mute. I want to save
all the slaughtered animals, save the seas and their
inhabitants—whales, birds, the tiniest bivalve—
from choking on plastic. I want to purify the air
of sulfur and carbon dioxide, scrape the lead
from plumbing pipes, god I need to do something
besides dying, besides thinking about death
and the neo-fascist politicians who lead
a nation of people unable to think critically
after 40 years’ systemic dismantling
of the education system by the rich
so their lackeys can make it
illegal to prosecute corporations for poisoning
the air, earth, water—and Jesus, isn’t it
a kind of mental illness
annihilating what you need to stay alive
for the accumulation of blind profit—
and in the process killing and killing and
murdering me, along with the people and animals
I can’t save but want to, with all my goddamn
fucking heart, but instead I’m waiting to die,
trying to find some last meaning in all of this.
A warning, perhaps. You’re next.
Call me by my Name
Between Nina Simone’s teeth and pendulum quiver—
A tiny white misery unfolds
from the Appalachian hills.
Men with black lungs
gather in red caps
for their right to descend
again. Polished white
women give control
of their wombs to a salmon-
skinned savior for a myth.
Alternative fact: he will come for you too.
I’m the brown daughter
of a white woman who voted blue
and now has made a nest
called sorrow from twigs of left-
wing shame, from shards of blue
glass bottles and jellyfish,
from coral reef blue and eye bruise
blue, from her there’s plenty of room
for you blue, but how do I tell her
I can’t live there too? How do I
tell her she named me after papaya
flesh and cornhusk, after sweet
juice of black women’s song,
whose only known border is water,
who dip sacramental bread in
Obea chant? Slow churned
memories of the Arawak.
Did she know they were a poetic
people when she named me?
Did she prophecy the sap of Ackee tree
lingering in the ashen grooves
of my knees and elbows?
Their jerk and rock-steady lilt.
What I don’t know of them
is the white space of every page
I’ve not yet written. What I don’t know
of my people is their name.
A tiny white misery smokes
meth in the alluvial plains
of Missouri. Make America great
again! slides through decaying
teeth dangling from threads
in the mouth of last-ditch hope.
Alternative fact: I will fight for you too.
I’m the brown daughter
of a black man from Dallas who died
like black men do: too soon,
back broke, inevitably. In
retrospect we should have
buried him in the worn down
beanie he wore every day:
yellow, green and black—
Appropriation or premonition?
Were he here, he’d shrug, say,
ain’t no surprise. Them white folk
never meant us t’have too much
slack in that rope. How do I tell him
I can’t give up like that? How
do I tell him, he named me
after a place designed to resist:
cocoa leaves and tamarind breeze,
cutlass slash, and Parish streets.
Did he know my name
would call attention to
how very American I am?
A tiny white misery has spread
disease-like from every he doesn’t
mean that, each he tells it like it is,
and words are just words I heard
from all the well-meaning
white folk who voted him
in. Between Standing Rock
and Flint, Michigan
—I am here.
Between refugee
and immigrant
—I am here.
Between birth control
and rape control
—I am here.
Between Nina Simone’s teeth
and pendulum quiver
—I am here.
Immigrant Blues
People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.
It’s the same old story from the previous century
about my father and me.
The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.
It’s called “Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.”
It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,"
called “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.”
Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.
But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?
And me, confused about the flesh and soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?
You’re always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body’s finitude,
at peace with the soul’s disregard
of space and time.
Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.
If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,
she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,
at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.
It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening
called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,"
called “Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,"
called “I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”
Peace Path
This path our people walked
one hundred two hundred endless years
since the tall grass opened for us
and we breathed the incense that sun on prairie
offers to sky
Peace offering with each breath
each footstep out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal remediation restoration
Peace flag of fringed prairie orchid
green glow within white froth
calling a moth who nightly
seeks the now-rare scent invisible to us
invisible history of this place
where our great-grandfather a boy
beside two priests and 900 warriors
gaze intent in an 1870 photo
his garments white as orchids
Peace flag white banner with red cross
crowned with thorns held by a boy
at the elbow of a priest
beside Ojibwe warriors beside Dakota warriors
Peace offered after smoke and dance
and Ojibwe gifts of elaborate beaded garments
thrown back in refusal
by Dakota Warriors torn with grief
since their brother’s murder
This is the path our people ran
through white flags of prairie plants
Ojibwe calling Dakota back
to sign one last and unbroken treaty
Peace offering with each breath
each footstep out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal remediation restoration
Two Dakota held up as great men
humbled themselves
to an offer of peace
before a long walk south
before our people entered the trail
walking west and north
where you walk now
where we seek the source
the now-rare scent
invisible as history
history the tall grass opens for us
Breathe the incense of sun on prairie
Offer peace to the sky
What We Need
The Emperor,
his bullies
and henchmen
terrorize the world
every day,
which is why
every day
we need
a little poem
of kindness,
a small song
of peace
a brief moment
of joy.
Cross That Line
Paul Robeson stood
on the northern border of the USA
and sang into Canada
where a vast audience
sat on folding chairs
waiting to hear him.
He sang into Canada.
His voice left the USA
when his body was not allowed
to cross that line.
Remind us again, brave friend!
What countries may we sing into?
What lines should we all be crossing?
What songs travel toward us
from far away
to deepen our days?
My Time in Better Dresses
I remember job hunting in my shoddy
and nervous working class youth,
how I had to wear nylons and white
gloves that were dirty in half an hour
for jobs that barely paid for shoes.
Don’t put down Jew, my mother
warned, just say Protestant, it
doesn’t commit you to anything.
Ads could still say "white" and
in my childhood, we weren’t.
I worked in better dresses in Sam’s
cut-rate department store, $3.98
and up. I wasn’t trusted to sell.
I put boxes together, wrapped,
cleaned out dressing rooms.
My girlfriend and I bought a navy
taffeta dress with cutout top, wore it
one or the other to parties, till it failed
my sophistication test. The older
"girls" in sales, divorced, sleek,
impressed me, but the man in charge
I hated, the way his eyes stroked,
stripped, discarded. How he docked
our pay for lateness. How he sucked
on his power like a piece of candy.
The Truth about Fences
They only hold in those who are willing
to be held. Horses prove it all the time,
unlatching gates in their idle moments.
I once saw a cornered ewe leap a six
foot buck fence because she didn’t feel
like going where the border collie wanted
her to go. She wasn’t even afraid.
When they were young, I took the children
to the state animal farm. Every inhabitant -
begging raven, crippled otter, trained bear -
had become too used to humans. The biggest
draw was the cow moose. We gaped as she
browsed in a swale behind the tissue paper
of some hurricane fencing. The game warden
explained it wasn’t so much that they kept her
as that she didn’t mind staying.
Protest
To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticise oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.
Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.
Peony
What appears to be
this frozen explosion of petals
abristle with extremist beauty
like an entire bouquet on a single stem
or a full chorus creamy-robed rippling
to its feet for the sanctus
is after all a flower,
perishable, with a peculiar
history. Each peony
blossoms only after
the waxy casing thick around
its tight green bud is eaten literally
away by certain small herbivorous ants
who swarm round the stubborn rind
and nibble gently for weeks to release
the implosion called a flower. If
the tiny coral-colored ants have been
destroyed, the bloom cannot unfit itself
no matter how carefully forced to umbrage
by the finest hothouse gardeners.
Unrecognized, how recognizable:
Each of us nibbling discreetly
to release the flower,
usually not even knowing
the purpose—only the hunger;
each mostly unaware of any others,
sometimes surprised by a neighbor,
sometimes (so rarely) astonished
by a glimpse into one corner
as how many of us there are;
enough to cling at least, swarm back
remain, whenever we’re shaken
off or drenched away
by the well-meaning gardener, ignorant
as we are of our mission, of our being
equal in and to the task.
Unequal to the task: a word
like “revolution” to describe
what our drudge-cheerful midwifery
will bring to bear—with us not here
to see it, satiated, long since
rinsed away, the job complete.
Why then do I feel this tremble,
more like a contraction’s aftermath
release, relax, relief
than like an earthquake; more
like a rustling in the belly,
or the resonance a song might make
en route from brain to larynx,
as if now, here, unleavening itself of all
old and unnecessary outer layers
butterfly from chrysalis
snake from cast skin
crustacean from shell
baby from placenta
something alive before
only in Anywoman’s dreaming
begins to stretch, arch, unfold
each vein on each transparency opening proud
unique, unduplicate,
each petal stiff with tenderness,
each gauzy wing a different shading flecked
ivory silver tangerine moon cinnamon amber flame
hosannas of lucidity and love in a wild riot,
a confusion of boisterous order
all fragrance, laughter, tousled celebration—
only a fading streak like blood
at the center, to remind us we were there once
but are still here, who dare,
tenacious, to nibble toward such blossoming
of this green stubborn bud
some call a world.
Autopsy
Last night, I dreamed that my passport bled.
I dreamed that my passport was a tombstone
For our United States, recently dead.
I dreamed that my passport was made of bone—
That it was a canoe carved out of stone.
“But I can’t swim,” I said. “I will drown
If I can’t make the shore. I’ll die alone
In the salt. No, my body will be found
With millions of bodies, all of them brown.”
I dreamed that my passport was a book of prayers,
Unanswered by the gods, but written down
By fact checkers in suits. “There are some errors
In your papers,” they said. Then took me downstairs
To a room with fingernails on the floor.
I dreamed that my passport was my keyware,
But soldiers had set fire to the doors,
To all doors—a conflagration of doors.
I dreamed that my passport was my priest:
“Sherman, will you battle the carnivores
Or will you turn and abandon the weak?
Will you be shelter? Or will you concede?”
Last night, I dreamed that my passport was alive
When it entered the ICU. It breathed, it breathed,
Then it sighed and closed its eyes. It did not survive.
The Birthday of the World
On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding
of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.
No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?
How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where
have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke
the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling
my eyes, and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.
The spiritual life …
The spiritual life is lived in a balance of paradoxes, and the humility that enables us to hear the truth of others must stand in creative tension with the faith that empowers us to speak our own.
We are volcanoes.
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. That’s what I want—to hear you erupting. You Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you---I want to hear you . . . If we don’t tell our truth, who will
We have been expected to lie with our bodies …
We have been expected to lie with our bodies: to bleach, redden, unkink or curl our hair, pluck eyebrows, shave armpits, wear padding in various placed or lace ourselves, take little steps, glaze finger and toenails, wear clothes that emphasized our helplessness
Partnering with Confusion and Uncertainty
Most people I meet want to develop more harmonious and satisfying relationships--in their organizations, communities, and personal lives. But we may not realize that this desire can only be satisfied by partnering with new and strange allies-uncertainty and confusion. Most of us weren't trained to like confusion or to admit when we feel hesitant and uncertain. In schools and organizations, value is placed on sounding assured and confident. People are rewarded for stating opinions as if they're facts. Quick answers abound; pensive questions have disappeared from most organizations. Confusion has yet to appear as a higher order value, or a behavior that organizations eagerly reward.
And as life continues speeding up (adding to our confusion,) we don't have time to be uncertain. We don't have time to listen to anyone who expresses a new or different position. In meetings and in the media, often we listen to others just long enough to determine whether we agree with them or not. We rush from opinion to opinion, listening for those tidbits and soundbites that confirm our position. Gradually we become more certain, but less informed, and far less thoughtful.
We can't continue on this path if we want to act more intelligently, if we want to find approaches and solutions to the problems that plague us. The world now is quite perplexing. We no longer live in those sweet, slow days when life felt predictable, when we actually knew what to do next. In this increasingly complex world, it's impossible to see most of what's going on. The only way to see more of the complexity is to ask many others for their perspectives and experiences. Yet if we open ourselves to their differing perceptions, we will find ourselves inhabiting the uncomfortable space of not knowing.
It is very difficult to give up certainty-these positions, beliefs, explanations define us and lie at the core of our personal identity. Certainty is a lens to interpret what's going on and, as long as our explanations work, we feel a sense of stability and security. But in a changing world, certainty doesn't give us stability; it actually creates more chaos. As we stay locked in our position and refuse to adapt and change, the things we hoped would stay together fall apart. It's a traditional paradox expressed in many spiritual traditions: By holding on, we destroy what we hope to preserve; by letting go, we feel secure in accepting what is.
I believe that this changing world requires much less certainty, and far more curiosity. I'm not suggesting we let go of our beliefs, only that we become curious about what someone else believes. As we open to the disturbing differences, sometimes we discover that another's way of interpreting the world actually is essential to our survival.
The global system we inhabit is dense and tangled. We each live in a different part of this complexity. And, no two people are identical. Therefore, it's impossible for two people to see things exactly the same. You can test this out for yourself. Take any event that you've shared with others (a speech, a movie, a current event, a major problem) and ask your colleagues and friends to describe their interpretation of that event. I think you'll be amazed at how many different explanations you'll hear. You'll end up with a rich tapestry of interpretations much more interesting than your single one.
I find that the first step to becoming curious is to admit that I'm not succeeding in figuring things out alone. If my solutions don't work as well as I'd like, if my explanations of why something happened don't feel sufficient, I take these as signs that it's time to begin asking others about what they see and think. I try to move past the lazy and superficial conversations where I pretend to agree with someone else rather than inquire seriously into their perspective. I try and become a conscious listener, actively listening for differences.
There are many ways to sit and listen for the differences. Lately, I've been listening for what surprises me. What did I just hear that startled me? This isn't easy-I'm accustomed to sit there nodding my head as someone voices what I agree with. But when I notice what surprises me, I'm able to see my own views more clearly, including my beliefs and assumptions.
Noticing what surprises and disturbs me has been a very useful way to see invisible beliefs. If what you say surprises me, I must have been assuming something else was true. If what you say disturbs me, I must believe something contrary to you. My shock at your position exposes my own position. When I hear myself saying "How could anyone believe something like that?" a light comes on for me to see my own beliefs. These moments are great gifts. If I can see my beliefs and assumptions, I can decide whether I still value them.
If you're willing to be disturbed and confused, I recommend that you begin a conversation with someone who thinks differently than you do. Listen as best you can for what's different, for what surprises you. Try and stop the voice of judgment or opinion. Just listen. At the end of this practice, notice whether you learned anything new. Notice whether you developed a better relationship with the person you talked with. If you try this with several people, you might find yourself laughing in delight as you realize how many unique ways there are to be human.
We have the opportunity many times a day, everyday, to be the one who listens to others, curious rather than certain. And the greatest benefit that comes to those who listen is that we develop closer relationships with those we thought we couldn't understand. When we listen with less judgment, we always develop better relationship with each other. It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments that do. Curiosity and good listening bring us back together.
Sometimes we hesitate to listen for differences because we don't want to change. We're comfortable with our lives, and if we listened to anyone who raised questions, we'd have to get engaged in changing things. If we don't listen, things can stay as they are. But most of us do see things in our life or in the world that we would like to be different. If that's true, we have to listen more, not less. And we have to be willing to move into the discomfort of uncertainty and confusion.
We can't be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion; cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for the new. Of course it's scary to give up what we know, but the abyss is where newness lives. Yet if we move through the fear and enter the abyss, we rediscover we're creative.
As the world grows more strange, perplexing and difficult, I don't believe most of us want to keep struggling through it alone. I can't know what to do from my own narrow perspective. I know I need a better understanding of what's going on. I want to sit down with you and talk about all the frightening and hopeful things I observe, and listen to what frightens you and gives you hope. I need new ideas and solutions for the problems I care about. I know I need to talk to you to discover those. I need to learn to value your perspective, and I want you to value mine. I expect to be disturbed, even jarred, by what I hear from you. I expect to feel confused and displaced-my world won't feel as stable or familiar to me once we talk.
One last thing. As I explore partnering with confusion and uncertainty, I'm learning that we don't have to agree with each other in order to think well together. There is no need for us to be joined at the head. We are joined already by our human hearts.
Maybe You Will Be The Ones … PDF
...Lake Powell is a dramatic testament to the troubling American impulse to use our technology and daring to coerce nature to our own purposes, our belief that the planet is here for whatever use we can make of it. And while the redrocks of Powell speak to the planet's history of creative forces, they also alert us to the ahistoric moment we occupy now. For the first time, the consequences of our acts affect the entire planet, all peoples and all beings. As I imagine what the next fifty years might bring, I know that we either will have learned to be responsible planetary stewards of our human creativity, or have wreaked unimaginable havoc with our only home.
We have never been here before. Human imagination has given us powers unlike anything in the past. Our immediate challenge is to deal with the consequences of human imagination, and to use this special gift of the human species on behalf of all life. (But whatever happens to us, the rocks will continue their cycles of emergence and disintegration.)...
Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘Planetary Mind’ … PDF
Krista Tippett: It's a constant theme these days: Where is technology taking us? Are we heading towards greatness, or just hyperconnected collapse? This challenge, our challenge, was foreseen a century ago by Teilhard de Chardin.
A world-renowned paleontologist, he helped verify fossil evidence of human evolution. A Jesuit priest and philosopher, he penned forbidden ideas that seemed mystical at the time but are now coming true — that humanity would develop capacities for collective, global intelligence; that a meaningful vision of the earth and the universe would have to include, as he put it, "the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter."
The coming stage of evolution, he said, won't be driven by physical adaptation but by human consciousness, creativity and spirit. It's up to us. We visit Teilhard de Chardin's biographer, and we experience his ideas energizing New York Times Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson.