An important assessment of the protests
and the subsequent condemnations of the looting
came from Trevor Noah
at the beginning of this week.
and the subsequent condemnations of the looting
came from Trevor Noah
at the beginning of this week.
What stood out was his phrase
"The police in America are looting black bodies."
Here's a statistic:
"1 in 1000 black men will be killed by police violence in their life time."
(The Guardian, June 3, 2020)
And so a poem began to unfold, with the background question:
Who are the consistent, predatory looters out there?
"1 in 1000 black men will be killed by police violence in their life time."
(The Guardian, June 3, 2020)
And so a poem began to unfold, with the background question:
Who are the consistent, predatory looters out there?
They Looted & They Looted
1.
They looted black bodies. And there was a terrifying silence.
They looted the water and there was nothing to drink but lead
and death, and there was praise for profits
accrued and quotas met.
They looted brown bodies. And there was a terrifying silence.
They looted food programs and gave the booty to military contractors, and the praise was bountiful.
They looted the earth and the canyons roared with the fundamentalist
black and white language of engines and pumps and dominion
and there rose from the dark pits a terrifying silence.
They looted immigrant bodies and built a cage of praise
to themselves.
They looted the public schools, stole the voices of
children, and laughed at how loud they sounded
in the resounding silence.
They looted neighborhood after neighborhood, thieved bodies
out of homes in the middle of the night
to fill a vast prison system, and there was praise and a demand for more bodies,
and more bodies were delivered and there
was even more praise.
They looted the treasury and wagged their fingers at
families put out on the street, and there was a
terrifying silence.
They looted women’s bodies, and there was terrifying praise.
They looted the health care system that was no system at
all and left behind a deadening silence.
They looted the air and left behind cancer and the
rhetoric of filth and there was praise that echoed
in the echo chambers of praise.
They condemned looting and praised white
bodies, and praised AK-47’s, and praised toughness and the work ethic, and then retreated to their bunkers and
relied on other bodies to protect
them when the going got tough.
They looted and they looted and could not stop looting and will never stop looting because looting is their language, their love, their beauty, their pleasure, their only dream...
2.
We have another dream.
*********************************************
Some articles & opinion pieces that
contributed to the poem:
People
of Color Suffer Most From Pollution (Fast Company, 2019)
Inequity in consumption of
goods and services adds to racial-ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure
(PNAS, 2019)
The
Recession's Racial Slant (The Atlantic, 2015 - about a 2008 recession
study about the disproportionate effect of the recession on black households)
Ways you can help:
Bail
Funds for Protestors (supporting the fundamental right to protest)
Support Code Pink's petition in
support of Senator Schatz's amendment to abolish the 1033 program ((the
militarization of the police)
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