Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
Rosa Luxemburg
The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.
Assata Shakur
Inhale
Smell that righteous rage
Permeating from police precincts propaned with protests
I know we’re in the middle of a pandemic
But I need you to pull your facemask down
And smell the swell of a hundred thousand yells
NO JUSTICE NO PEACE
You can literally smell the fire
Of our legitimate political desires
Whenever wind blows
You tried to hide inside
but the revolutionary aroma rode in through busted windows
they found some rich rapping negroes
to denigrate the dark denizens
who dared to remind Atlanta’s black mayor that they too are citizens
and are tired of living in poverty in a city that leads the nation in income inequality
with black lives matter on their minds
and a radical inflection point within reach
These outkasts hit the streets
And told Mayor Bottoms fuck yo new Atlanta Compromise Speech
Inhale
Can you smell the fear of orange monsters cringing in bunkers
See the actions of neofascists dispatching troops on unruly youngsters
Teargassing our children because they have the audacity to believe
That another world is possible and won’t stop until it’s achieved
Smell the winds of change riding in on this new breeze
Not even your offensive lines can block freedom’s fragrance Drew Brees
See established budgets crumbling from our rumblings as we demand DEFUND THE POLICE
See charges being filed as brilliant red fires glow
Hear the chant BLACK LIVES MATTER as global protests grow
Hear essential workers on a picket line scream NO WE WON’T GO
Feel this mighty movement from below
Witness that this powder keg is about to blow
Take off your facemasks
Open your mouth and belt suppressed screams
Inhale and smell the cities on fire until you taste the kerosene
Say their names until you can taste our pain
Then join us on the frontlines as we struggle for change
Don’t let these embers cool youngin, feed the flames!
Afterword:
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass
Liberation does not come as a gift from anybody; it is seized by the masses with their own hands.
Adolfo Gilly
