Rally Poem: A Reflection on Charlottesville
Sometimes I have trouble processing and rationalizing tragic events, particularly those that affect our current history. I can find emotions and opinions. I know what I'm feeling and I know what I think about what happened. Though sometimes it is best for me to process our world through poetry. Poetry is gentle and I believe that we need a bit of gentleness in the fight against oppression. Even if it doesn't help with the big fight ahead, art and words helps us process the world around us. Here is me processing a rally I went to after the events in Charlottesville.
It was the day after August 12th.
It was a Sunday.
It was ten or so minutes to 5:00 pm.
We were 370 miles away from Charlottesville, Virginia.
The sun was still bright and blinding in the late summer blue. Zig-zagging light moving between city buildings drew long, silent shadows on the sidewalks. Our sandaled feet tapped across those sidewalks as we moved through the empty, unconcerned streets towards the square. We passed some closed doors, some still shop windows, Some small plants desperate to grow between concrete cracks, some unmoving street signs.
We also passed people:
people behind windows, people holding hands and walking perpendicular to our street, people passing by in their cars, people sitting outside a restaurant and popping a champagne cork, people watching the cork leap through the air before lazily rolling away into the road, people with many faces. There were some people walking in the same direction in which we were walking;
we were walking in search of hope.
By the time we reached the square there was already a crowd. It was a good crowd that kept growing and growing like an old tree. Roots were planted firmly in the ground while arms and leaves spread into the sky. People gathered in mosaics with skin and hair in multi-colors. Every person’s features told a thousand histories and love stories that lead back to a handful of common ancestors and a single beginning.
In their hands were the hearts, the minds, and the voices of the next one-hundred generations. They held actions. They held faith. They held words. Some walked with words that roared at the present.
“Resist”
“No More Hate”
“End All Supremacy”
“Nazis Are Not Welcome Here”
“Spread Love”
Some walked with words and names that echoed the memory and legacy of others.
Orlando.
King.
Trevon.
Obama.
A woman walked with a woman named Heather.
I walked along with Angelou.
We were lead by many voices. Leading us in reimagined protest songs and rallying.
“Black lives!”
“Matter!”
“Black lives!”
“Matter”
“Black lives!”
“Matter!”
“No Trump!”
“No KKK!”
“No more fascist USA!”
We spoke and rallied together.
Then we listened.
I listened to the words and stories of others. Some of those experiences I have lived. Some songs I sang and already knew by heart. Other experiences I could never understand. I’ll never fully know another blood history, another skin, another way of walking down a street, another faith, another way of feeling and experiencing the world based on permanent features passed down to me from my mother and her mother.
No one can own every experience.
But we are all given the same tools:
A set of ears, a mind, a moral compass, a heart, and a voice.
We use our ears to listen. We use our minds to learn. We use our own compasses to stir ourselves in the right direction. We use our hearts to connect.
And then we use our voices.
We speak.
We show up.
We write.
We make art.
We educate.
We are there.
We are actively there.
Even after each banner was taken down and each person began to find their way home through the edging, whispering sunset, we were all still there for our fellow humans.
The voice continues.
Every person walking home was still creating a future and writing history. People would go home to have conversations, plan the next move, educate their communities, pick up the dusty pen and write about what they just experienced that evening.
The movement continues.
The song plays on.
And the voice keeps speaking in circular winds of blue and red.
