Bill Ayers

Celebrate Freedom!
Demand Freedom!
Into the streets, fire from below!

Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman
By Sonia Sanchez

1

Picture a woman
riding thunder on
the legs of slavery    …    

2

Picture her kissing
our spines saying no to
the eyes of slavery    …    

3

Picture her rotating
the earth into a shape
of lives becoming    …    

4

Picture her leaning
into the eyes of our
birth clouds    …    

5

Picture this woman
saying no to the constant
yes of slavery    …    

6

Picture a woman
jumping rivers her
legs inhaling moons    …    

7

Picture her ripe
with seasons of
legs    …   running    …    

8

Picture her tasting
the secret corners
of woods    …   

9

Picture her saying:
You have within you the strength,
the patience, and the passion
to reach for the stars,
to change the world    …    

10

Imagine her words:
Every great dream begins
with a dreamer    …    

11

Imagine her saying:
I freed a thousand slaves,
could have freed
a thousand more if they
only knew they were slaves    …    

12

Imagine her humming:
How many days we got
fore we taste freedom    …    

13

Imagine a woman
asking: How many workers
for this freedom quilt    …    

14

Picture her saying:
A live runaway could do
great harm by going back
but a dead runaway
could tell no secrets    …    

15

Picture the daylight
bringing her to woods
full of birth moons    …    

16

Picture John Brown
shaking her hands three times saying:
General Tubman. General Tubman. General Tubman.

17

Picture her words:
There’s two things I got a
right to: death or liberty    …    

18

Picture her saying no
to a play called Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
I am the real thing    …    

19

Picture a Black woman:
could not read or write
trailing freedom refrains    …    

20

Picture her face
turning southward walking
down a Southern road    …    

21

Picture this woman
freedom bound    …    tasting a
people’s preserved breath    …    

22

Picture this woman
of royalty    …    wearing a crown
of morning air    …    

23

Picture her walking,
running, reviving
a country’s breath    …    

24

Picture black voices
leaving behind
lost tongues   …

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen~~~Lenin

https://portside.org/2020-06-06/mpd150-working-towards-police-free-minneapolis

Defund the Police!

What would a public safety and policing look like in a free and democratic society?

A key question to raise up and organize around.

Police would not deploy military equipment and weaponry, would not get training from Israeli armed forces, would not act like an occupying army, would not carry lethal weapons, and would not operate with a contract beyond any popular scrutiny or control and a shadow leadership with more power than elected officials.

Police would be under community control—a democratically chosen citizen review board (100 people, to whom they are accountable.

And budgets would reflect people’s priorities—millions more for education, housing the unhoused, community mental health clinics, drug treatment centers, health care, job creation, guarantees of income…Money taken from the bloated and extravagant police budget.

See the link? Policing, surveillance and prison are the last entitlements, while every social need and priority is hollowed out or eliminated, and the occupying police forces are brought in to manage the predictable crisis.

Defund the Police!

Racism as an attitude—backward, bigoted stupidity—is one thing, but this is not about that. This is not about having a self-designated “good heart.” The question is: What are you doing to dismantle and destroy the system of white supremacy—social, structural, and historical racism—a system that every single one of us lives within, a system that benefits white people in a zillion ways? White supremacy has a knee on the throat of Black people in every area (health, justice, education, economic) and those who don’t see the crime being committed in front of our eyes are choosing to be blind, and their faux innocence only serves to perpetuate the crime.

https://www.spreaker.com/user/radiosputnik/education-for-liberation-in-a-time-of-ma

https://www.theonion.com/sweatshop-worker-devastated-to-hear-jacket-she-worked-s-1843834363