LET US CALL OURSELVES ARTEMISIA VULGARIS

LET US CALL OURSELVES ARTEMISIA VULGARIS

The difference between us and them is we spend too much time mourning our losses and not enough time celebrating what we still have.

Do the bankers or the developers or the fossil fuel execs worry about losing everything? No. They’ll work themselves bankrupt and this whole world into lack if there is a chance there is some sort of profit to be had. Shit, even when they are bankrupt they’ll work the system to bail them out. I mean, look at it this way, a man who lost $10 billion and has bankrupted more institutions than should even be possible in a single lifetime, is now our president. That is “them”.

We need to have that kind of fearlessness to protect what we still have. We need to develop that kind of fluidity to let go of what is already lost in order to save enough so that we have ground from which we can rebuild it. The radical left needs to become more agile. More able to take a blow and regroup with a new defense. We need to carry multiple flags, multiple hats, and at the same time refuse becoming too structured, too able to be cornered and had. Bought and sold. Our tears only more room for their profit.

We still have the Earth. We have her to lead us. Does the Earth mourn the loss of a single flower at the end of every summer? No. She puts all her intentions into the roots and accepts the cycle of winter, knowing the shadow is necessary before next year’s growth.

We must be more like the Earth. The Earth is the only true radical, and we are hers to hold. Our roots are still yet to be cut. Until they are, we must hold strong and be like the garden weed. Be like the mycelium. A network of roots springing up through out the ground, never to be dug up or struck down as long as the Earth still holds us.

We call them the Black Snake, but what is our antidote?

We must be less like gardeners and more like the actual roots of our garden. Let us call ourselves Bindweed. Or Morning Glory. Or Artemisia Vulgaris. Turn this whole land back into a swampy meadow.

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POEMS FOR THE PIGS

I jump into the fray again. This time unintentionally. When I show up to Santa Fe, I find out the republican governors from all over the country are meeting at the conference center to discuss conservative policy. Somehow I didn’t get the memo. There are protestors on every street corner. But it’s nothing like Philly in 2017 when the GOP showed up a week after the inauguration.

We protested for over a week, with snake marches leading to organized marches, leading to dance parties, leading to tens of thousands of people surrounding the hotel all those pigs were hiding in. Inside, the traitor in chief probably told everyone that his supporters had come to celebrate his victory, but outside the energy was livid. The marches didn’t really lead anywhere, but that was the beginning of so many activist groups finding alliances in the streets. It was a time to see each other and find hope in the multitudes that love was still possible even in tyranny.

In Santa Fe, things are a little more low key. Mostly Women’s Marchers sans pussy hats holding signs that outline that Santa Fe is a sanctuary city and accepts refugees. No action, but frankly, it’s just exciting to see so many signs walking through the streets, mixed in with the usual amount of summer tourists, heading towards relieving a group who’s held a corner for a few hours or stopping to take a bathroom break. The retired mothers of the city taking their time off to push through some progressive messages to the backwards Man, himself.

They stand outside the El Dorado hotel picketing the buses full of governors’ aides that pull in. They stand outside the Cathedral of St Francis de Assisi catching the evangelicals who want to see architectural history. Anywhere where the buses drive through, they are there to greet them.

I set up my typewriter in the plaza next to a group doing a silent vigil for the children at the border separated from their families. They hold signs with simple mantras like “Free The Children” and “Everyone Welcome”. In front of them there are a dozen or more baby shoes. The symbols there are heavy.

Meanwhile, I write poems for children about dreams of mermaids and family road trips. The dialogue being translated through poetry. It doesn’t escape me how there’s no difference between these children who get to live out their freedom and the ones currently locked up in cages, maybe never seeing their parents again.

An afternoon turns to evening and I change my location several times, till I find my prime spot for the late night dinner crowd, and that’s when it happens. I’m not quite paying attention because there’s so much going on. But out of the corner of my eye, I see one of those huge busses pull over and a dozen or more suits get off of it. They are surrounded by police and secret service, who seemingly appear out of nowhere. Suddenly, the streets around me have been cleared.

It’s Mike Pence who stops and reads my Dream Poet For Hire sign. He’s chatting to Susana Martinez, who I guess is giving them all a tour of her state’s capital.

“Write a poem about me and my wife,” he says.

Obviously, I’m boiling over with malice, but I’m the Dream Poet and with my mask on I put on a good show entertaining his midwestern interest.

The poem writes itself, keys mumbling away. It talks about how love can’t be defined by time or place, age or gender. It’s a spark that speaks beyond the limits of our patriarchal understanding. Love thy brother, love the human race in all of its manifestations, love thy mother, love this planet and all the ways she holds us in nurture. Love is love is love and hate for the love between two men or two women or two people who choose not to define themselves within a binary does not erase the divine essence within that love, something that is so magical it inspires all of us to keep living through the madness.

I fill the page and read it back to him. His icy eyes look at me with a smile that says he knows I gonzoed him, dropping the bill in my case anyway, and slipping the poem in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He moves over for the next one, which happens to be Governor Martinez.

“Write a poem about immigrants,” she says.

Again, I smile and put on extra airs. The poem coming full throttle. I write about the state of New Mexico still being a foreign country. How families are just moving between their ancestral homes. I write about the Pueblos. How this is their land and our borders hold no power. I write about the railroads, about the white settlers, about the slave owners. I write how an elected official in a state that is still Mexico, and before that stolen land, better reflect on who she represents. Amnesty for all refugees, I write. Open the borders.

There’s a silence after I read the poem and I think I’ve gone too far. But again, there it is the bills dropped and the poem stowed away somewhere safe.

Next it’s one of their aides.

“Oh, you write haiku, I see. Write a haiku about Washington DC.”

Sinkholes everywhere
the swamp sinking as it drains
swamp things go kerplunk.

Someone asks, “Are you related to Brett Kavanaugh?”

“No relation. The Kavanaugh’s are a proud clan of peacemakers. No way he’s really one of them.”

And then that’s it. They get bored and move on. And I’m left there wondering if it really was even them, or perhaps just another tour group of Texans.

COMPASSION IS CONTAGIOUS

COMPASSION IS CONTAGIOUS

I’m brought back to my time in North Dakota, holding space with the indigenous protectors of sacred waters. Another long drive through miles of agriculture to a point of interest in the middle of nowhere to meet as a clan of rainbow people and stand up against injustice.

This time we are calling for the protection of families and individual children. The corporations are not digging up death and employing the black snake to transport it beneath our feet under sacred waterways. No, they’ve decided to put death out in the open, this time utilizing the form of a tent city to detain hundreds of children in 100° desert temperatures.

A local representative comments on the audacity of this current administration using taxpayer dollars to build these concentration camps, doing so seemingly overnight. He goes further expressing how adequate aid still hasn’t been provided for our citizenry in Puerto Rico recovering from Hurricane Maria, and yet they build these “detention centers” so quickly. Saying we must look in the mirror as a nation. This presidency is conscious of the acts of genocide it is committing. It is continuing an American tradition.

“Open borders,” a sign reads.
“Abolish ICE.”
“Yes, we care,” in white painted on the back of a green silk coat.

“Si, se puede,” she chants. The audience goes wild and moves closer to get a better view. Bobby Kennedy’s daughter moves to the side after introducing the esteemed labor activist, Dolores Huerta.

“Si, se puede!”

Huerta encourages everyone in the crowd not to give up. She says we must keep marching. That this administration has already backed down after rising public pressure. We must keep the pressure on. She recants slogans from her days as a young labor activist saying a democracy fails without a strong middle class. We must empower the workers of the middle class. Goes on to say we must be marching every day. Says everything but “seize the means of production”. But she says that too, only in her own way.

The woman who coined the catchphrase, “Yes, we can” has no doubt that the people can unite and thwart their oppressors.

I am struck by how there is a difference in cadence between the politicians’ way of talking and the activists ability to rally. Politicians with their lines well-rehearsed and a controlled pattern of when and how to gauge a rise from the audience.

On the other hand, activists move straight from the heart. Their words are not always smooth and well-versed, but they move the audience deeper into feeling what’s right from the blood to the breath. Mothers and teachers talking about the issues from personal experience. And the more seasoned the activist, the more their heartspeak is a spell cast that wraps the audience up in a swirl of synergy between heart, mind, and spirit.

“Dreamers are not illegal.”
“No illegals, on stolen land.”
“Love Trumps Hate.”
“Impeach.”
*Persist.”

A few thousand feet away, behind several rows of chainlink fence, you can see the pointed tops of several canvas tents baking in the hot sun.

Speakers from the Border Network for Human Rights remind the audience that these children are refugees running from struggles that America’s foreign policy has created. They speak in terms of compassion pointing out that many of these families are not victims. They are strong people who stood up to the gangs and corrupt politicians of their homelands and as a result were pushed to flee.

They remind us that not all of these children are just from the American continents. ICE and border patrol have been going after dreamers from all different backgrounds. The policies that go after the most at risk are based in white supremacist ideology.

In this last group of activists, who have worked so closely with the refugees that are detained, I see how we have yet to hear from the actual refugees themselves in the mainstream media. In the coverage of this debacle, these very real people have been dehumanized to numbers and mere statistics.

All of their stories are yet to be told. We must use our own hearts to understand what they must be going through. To understand what it must be like to be separated from your child, and told by an ICE agent you’ll never see them again.

All of it feels unreal and because it is so real, we must continue to fight. We must unify under one banner. Many speakers during the rally emphasized voting in November. But it goes beyond that. It goes beyond calling your elected representatives. It goes beyond marching in the streets and planning direct actions. It’ll take a radical shift in every aspect of American life to curb the monstrosity we have empowered. But, Si, se puede! We are alive at this time to do exactly that.

Only apathy will hold us back.

A Word From Standing Rock

For almost a year, I haven’t been able to drive or walk past an active construction site without feeling PTSD. I remember my drive across Texas last December, after my time in North Dakota and seeing a simple road crew repairing the highway, and how I had to pull over at the next rest stop because I was shaking so bad. The whole time I was looking for the yellow helicopter and snipers with orange paint on their rifles on the hills. I continued to turn off my cell phone for all low-flying planes.

Currently, they’re rebuilding a pipeline in the Rio Grande Gorge on the way to Santa Fe. I do my best not to feel the pain of the Earth every time I pass it. Just last week, in Philly I saw the construction there as what it really is, another war zone.

In the cities, they commit war crimes against the most vulnerable. Everywhere else, they do the same, but also dig up Earth, attacking her directly, poisoning everyone downstream.

I’ve learned my exits in protests, learned how to stay out of harm’s way, but then there was that one time they blocked a caravan of over 500 warriors from returning back to camp after an action where we arrived and left peacefully and in prayer, to check each car for specific people they designated as leaders and wanted to imprison. I thought they were going to arrest all 500 of us that day. Leave our cars stranded and impound what they could. The walked amongst the cars with rifles drawn, face masks on. For them this was some kind of war game to put on.

Before leaving that action, I retraced my steps to make sure my sister that I traveled with made it out okay. The highway was clouds of mace and the approaching army of hundreds of heavily armed police in military fatigues. My phone was blaring the alarm that the highway was shut down due to protester activity and to seek other routes.

My brother who I met in Rosebud camp and was just beginning to develop a solar powered recording studio to record and train native youth in DIY recording when I met him is now stuck in a jail cell because a rogue judge wanted to prove a point and send fear into other protectors. He was on a prayer walk. That’s it. That’s why they put him away.

Red Fawn who was arrested over a year ago, is still sitting in a jail cell for things she didn’t commit. She has yet to even be sentenced and her lawyers and family have a hard time reaching her. We have living prisoners of war in our country. It’s not just Leonard Peltier who’s been stuck in a jail cell and survived several assassination attempts since the 70s for a crime he didn’t commit. This is a women, not much older than myself, who they’ve imprisoned because they recognized her strength.

I was there for election day, but all of this happened in Obama’s America. The acting president of the United States couldn’t even mention the war that was going on in our own country, until most of it had already happened. He was questioned by the UN, by international citizens, and he would dodge the questions. His faux call for a halt to destruction last December was to save face because they didn’t want the bad press of the thousands of veterans who arrived in support and to stand guard over the prayers sustaining the same wounds and trauma that our indigenous relatives had already been going through for months. The pipeline didn’t even stop building for a single day, even though his call for a halt made construction illegal. Even though it was illegal all along because of broken treaties and the lack of an environmental impact statement.

Don’t share this post. Look to our indigenous relatives who faced much worse. Have been fighting against genocide for over 500 years. I share my experience, because the trauma is not forgotten by those who were there. By those who were connected to the movement, even though they couldn’t be there in person. It is still faced by those who are fighting for their lives, for their culture in the dozen or so pipeline and other resource extraction projects currently being built across the continent on indigenous land, right now. Over burial mounds and other sacred sites. Through sacred waterways and traditional hunting grounds.

Today, is an anniversary for a lot of us. For me, it was the eviction of the Treaty Camp that finally pushed me to let go of everything else and get up there. I should’ve been there earlier. I could’ve been there earlier, but felt I needed a grounded group with a plan to arrive with.

I spent most of my time there chopping wood and delivering it to different folks in need. Spent time offering support to the IIYC. I lived the most relaxed life I could’ve dreamed. I actually, for the first time in my life, felt like a human being.

I’ve seen myself in those photos. I still can’t believe how utterly honest the Corporate States of America could be. Armored tanks and military fatigues. Sound cannons and humvees equipped with microwaves. Snipers on the hills and no sign of the police to lock up these hired goons. The fact that I was there and it was in my own country still baffles me.

At night I would sit by the sacred fire in Rosebud and listen to the elders. Mostly they would crack jokes back and forth or talk about where they were from. They seemed to never sleep because I always left them there still talking no matter how late it was.

I remember they talked about the youth a few times. The young warriors who had been maced, tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and physically brutalized during the eviction of the treaty camp and the attempt to reclaim Turtle Island a few days later. The elders commented on how for some of the youth it was as if their spirit had sunk back in them. The light in their eyes was shrinking. They worried about their well-being.

The IIYC talked about it too at meetings. While I was there they organized a candlelit vigil to pray for those still experiencing trauma. To pray for those who attacked them. It seemed like a thousand of us walked with them with lit candles to the Cannonball River where only a week before, warriors had held a line singing prayers in the freezing river while the police tear-gassed and maced them.

During the candlelit vigil there was not a single word of condemnation for the other side. Even with all that trauma and suffering. The youth leaders only asked for the strength to keep going. For the ancestors to help them heal their spirits. I saw so much power glowing in them from that day forward. Their prayers were answered in so many forms.

We live in a capitalist, corporate-owned, police state. We have lived in one since the Constitution was written. Since the Declaration of Independence.

Who’s independence? Not mine. Not yours. Not the hundreds of tribes who have faced cultural genocide since Columbus first set foot in the outer reaches of this place. Not the millions of descendants of slaves who despite Amendment 13 haven’t received their freedom because of the color of their skin.

Folks want to say because of last year’s election, there is a renewed sense of urgency. No. There has always been an urgency. Now, we just get to see it more clearly. The whole damn thing is broken. It never worked in the first place.

We are overdue for something new, or a return to the values of this continent’s First Nations’ peoples.

John Trudell speaks wisdom when he says “We Are Power”. It’s not just power to the people, like what everyone was saying in the 60s.
We are energy.

The corporations and mercenaries in North Dakota understood that. The Corporate States of America understand that. That is why they attacked us with so much force. Their only understanding of power is brute force.

But
We are power
We are energy

Their fear of this power can and will not break our spirit. Their methods of oppression are weak and inferior. Their time of ruling over us is running out.
Together we have the power to overcome all of it and start something post-imperialist.
Post-war.
We have the power to free us all and together create a more peaceful world in tune with this planet we live on and all the nations of people who call it their home.

A Visit to #TentCityATL

POETS FOR PEACE
Tour #2
Day 5 – Atlanta
photo by Heather Marie Laveau

On our last night of tour, as the Libra full moon rose over downtown Atlanta, Catherine Rush and I performed with the local leaders of #TentCityATL. It’s an occupation outside of the former Braves baseball stadium, which is being redeveloped by Georgia State University. The encampment is set up to protest the gentrification of the surrounding neighborhoods and make sure the Community Benefits Agreement agreed upon by thousands of members of the neighborhood is used for any future developments.

There was magic held in this moonlight to share words on the front lines in the urban center of a city, and call upon the bald eagles and many blessings I witnessed at Standing Rock to come here to this city of Atlantis. To hear the stories of neighbors and their experiences fighting the imperialistic war machine throughout their lives. To see community formed around a cause that will benefit the many, and take power away from the few.

This energy is rising. It has been for a while now. The floodgates have been released. In each city. In each neighborhood. In each residence. The people are coming together and fighting off the warmongers. Fighting off the profiteers. They’re fighting for the right to exist. They’re fighting for their identities. They’re fighting for PEACE.

One wisdom from the night shared by a sister activist and poet: “When we think of peace, we think of flowers. But, to get flowers you have to shake up the ground a little. You know, till the earth and such. To get peace, we’re going to have to shake things up a little. Overturn the ground. That’s how peace can grow.”

Street Theater

STREET THEATER
(artwork by Dylan A.T. Miner)

I envision a mass demonstration. Folks coming into the heart of the city. Riding trains and bicycles. Assembling near City Hall. Tens of thousands. Maybe more. Each with their own sign rallying around the cause. A cause for the world and its children. A cause for Life. Love for us All.

They begin to march.

There are trumpets, sounding the alarm. Drum circles leading the charge. Movement in rhythmic motion forward.

They march onto the avenues. Hold traffic till tomorrow. Heading straight for the Liberty Bell inside Independence Hall.

Unnerved by routine, they only settle here for a while. Then they continue further. Marching north. And then west. And then south. Into the stars. Above the ground. Their souls’ chants echo against the concrete walls. Each footstep causes a groundswell.

Eventually the whole city is taken over. The working crowd leaving their offices and joining the march. Tourists and other pedestrians going along for the ride. People swept off their feet and into the current.

It all seems smooth and victorious, except for what awaits for them just beyond the next traffic light.

Near Rittenhouse, a tank is just around the corner. It’s a big tank. One of the largest and greatest tanks. A tank greater than any other made before. A tank made of cardboard and painted black. Recyclables turned into the war machine. Its motor singing the finale of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture as it rolls forward. Its wheels at least twenty pairs of boots belonging to its drivers marching a synchronized beat.

Led by the tank is an army of clowns. Bum clowns. Circus clowns. Awkward and Weird clowns. Fascist clowns. Merry Pranksters dressed in Federalist regalia. Minstrels of mummery dressed in the cultures they’ve conquered. Clowns in White Face. Clowns in Black Face. The Blue Man Group wooping like car alarms. Scary clowns. Nasty clowns. Jerk clowns. Clowns of the sewers. Clowns of the pipelines. Clowns of the pulpit and the banks. Hundreds of clowns following the tank.

At their back is the main cheese. The King Clown himself surrounded by a dozen or more head honcho Court Jesters. A cabinet as insane as it can get. In turn, all of them holding onto multiple leads. Hundreds of strings attached to the army’s heads and legs and feet and arms and hearts. Puppet masters and their marionettes.

The two parades meet on Walnut Street. Outside the Barnes and Noble. Clowns and Lovers and a whole city of park sitters, random shoppers, and luxurious apartment residents watching the scene.

At first there is a standoff. Neither side so sure of the other. The Clowns glaring pure terror, while the Lovers can’t help but laugh. But then someone turns up Tchaikovsky’s overture and the tank starts firing shots. Large balls of confetti shoot into the air. The cannon balls synced up to the music, firing like the Russians against Napoleon did.

At first nothing. Then people start dropping. Then finally pure absolute terror and the people not already on the ground start running out of the way.

Soon, everyone has either been knocked down by the tank, or been completely scattered onto sidewalks and out of the street.

All except for a single child.
They stand there upright. Not much older than 7 or 8. A short pixie cut with rainbow streaks in their hair. A young girl holding a heart-shaped balloon in one hand, while the other is extended forward offering a rose.

Tiananmen Square. A stencil drawn by the street artist Banksy. Zuccotti Park. Tahrir Square and so many others. These images are all brought to mind in this single gesture.

The tank silences.
The clowns mime surprise and awe.
They begin to step forward, maybe to snatch the girl up, and then they stop.
The child starts whistling.
They step forward towards the cannon on top of the tank.
The gun lowers down just in arms reach.
The child places the rose into its barrel.

A GOP official from Michigan wants another Kent State? Well, this is how Love overcomes Hate.

The Clowns all fall to their knees. Even the King. They bow to this child and the girl giggles relief.
One of the clowns brings forward a bucket of paint.
The child takes the brush and walks forward to the tank to paint it.

Behind them, others begin to rise from the pavement. They too come forward and begin to paint. Soon folks are wandering back onto the street from the sidewalks and joining them from the park and surrounding store fronts. Each person is handed a paintbrush as more buckets are brought out. The once black tank, quickly turns to a canvas of peace signs and rainbows and pretty flowers and moonshine beneath golden rays.

The scene turns from one that is war torn to a community block party. Folks of all ages and nationalities and sexual identities and gender pluralities exploring what it means to rediscover their inner child on the public street.

Someone passes out chalk and they start turning the floor beneath them into a whole other ecology. City streets turned into abundant gardens. Seeds of harmony blossoming. A psychedelia of awakened heart permeates in the breeze. A true rêvelution like never seen anywhere else.
The creative mind united with the heart making communal art.
A band sets up on the band stand. They play punk choruses like it’s the 1980s and everyone begins to dance.

At this point, the King Clown has let go of the leads or even begun to cut the strings and the Clowns are suddenly allowed to be truly free.

It starts with the King Clown’s Head of Interior. Then the Department of Education soon follows. Soon it’s the Attorney General. And his self-declared Head of Intelligence. They each grab at the tank. The cardboard beginning to tear. Where it tears, they rip harder, until each piece breaks free.

The other Clowns get a hint and join in this disassembly. Each taking a piece and ripping the tank to shreds.
The painted pieces are lifted high in the air. Some of them are attached to long sticks to wave in the air. New protest signs. New messages. Simple in their color and slogans. Rainbows spreading. LOVE. PEACE.

The act is almost over.
Everyone is feeling real fine.
For most of them they’re not even sure what’s happening anymore the vibe is so fresh.

And at this brightest moment, it springs up.
Hidden beneath the leftover rubble of the former tank, the BLACK SNAKE.
He emerges.
Dark and stormy.
A hiss as his head pokes high into the air.
Another hiss as he looks downwards on the people suddenly entangled in his long winding and ever-present scales.
A tail so long, it grabs up the people down the street even a mile away.

No one can move. They’re all entranced in his hypnotizing stare.

Except for the King.
The King steps forward. He’s lost his yellow wig. His fat gut. His entire wardrobe, except for the crown. Except for the crown, he now looks less like a monarch, and more like a human. He’s become an old woman actually. He’s grown long hair and tied it back. His court robes have been replaced by a polka dotted dress that reaches down to high heels. His gestures are less oafish and more heart-centered, sensitive. He holds a tall staff in his hand. To some he looks like a mixture somewhere between a wizard, a hippy, and Alice in Wonderland.

He removes the crown. Tosses it into the snake’s mouth.
The snake swallows it whole.
The elder pulls out a tobacco pipe and begins smoking.
The snake slithers closer.
Unfazed, the elder kneels down and touches the earth. People close to him can hear him humming.
The snake hangs overhead and opens its mouth wide.
With the speed of lightning it lowers its head and snaps.
The elder even quicker, places his wooden staff between the roof of the snake’s mouth and its bottom teeth.
Open mouth, it hovers around him, trying to bite, but failing.
In the confusion of it all, the elder grabs the snake’s tongue and pulls.
The snake lurches back, but the elder holds strong and the tongue pulls out of the snake’s head, bringing with it the snake’s black and gooey insides.

The girl from before reemerges. Giggling they join the elder and hold onto the snake’s tongue.
Others wake up from their trance and join them too. Each grabbing a hold of the extending tongue.

The snake still tries to get free pulling back even further. Unraveling as it pulls further and further away, letting more and more of its insides be pulled out.

Its insides go all the way back into history. They go back in time to before then into herstory.
They continue to pull out and suddenly we’re seeing the birth of it all.
Through the snake’s death, we are seeing how it all started.
The rope turns from oil slick to wooden stick to lightning strikes to molten lava.
Everything one can think of that burns and more.
A long fuse leading back into the beginning.
Before time.
Something like the chicken and the egg, philosophically.

At the end of the string is an egg.
Inside the egg is water.
The water is clear and pure.

From one of his dress pockets the Elder pulls out a bag of seeds.
He takes a single seed from the bag and holds it high over his head.
It shimmers gold in the sunlight.
Then he tosses it to the withering shell of the black snake skin beneath him.
He opens the egg and dumps the water onto this fertile earth.

From the point, where he placed the seed, grows a giant rose.

Catharsis.

The Pussy Grabs Back

THE PUSSY GRABS BACK

(photo from Earthcam on the National Mall in Washington DC)
A million women and their allies marched on Washington today. Millions more marched in cities around the world in solidarity. Even the organizers were surprised and maybe even a bit overwhelmed by the turn out. 

For those with any sort of connection to the feminine voice of our generation, we knew the numbers were going to be yuge. But being deep in it felt like finally this was the new world rising. 

A world in touch with its feminine side. A world with respect for its mothers, sisters, partners, and comrades. A world humbled by beauty, centered in love.

To be there one felt an end to the patriarchy. This system of self-destruction that has tied us all up in mountains of despair. In its stead the voices of matriarchs from far and wide came to magnify our joys, our communal struggles, and our ability to heal.

The movement on the National Mall was full of smiles between strangers, signs spouting slogans empowering pussies, and almost every issue one can think of that we face in this modern era from Climate Change to Anti-Pipelines to Black Lives Matter to Health Care As A Human Right being laid out categorically as a part of the fight.

There was a crude alchemy in the way this next wave feminism gathered its voice. Always simple and to the point with hashtag lines and meme-based illustrations. Sometimes tripping up the older generation who joined our ranks and asked questions like “What’s a Queef?” or “What is that green drawing that they’re calling Dope Kush?”

It went deeper too though. This surface jest gave way to the greatest demonstration of sisterhood that I think any of us have ever experienced. Even with a sister, as a cis male, my own personal experience of this type of sisterhood has only ever been looking in from the outside.

To be in the middle of it all, though, was absolutely humbling.

I saw women complimenting each other on their beauty. I watched as they assisted each other to have a better view or to get where they were going. The crowd made way for disabled marchers in wheelchairs and with walkers. Even with a million people amassed together in a small space, there was hardly anyone pushing up on anyone else. The few times I was bumped into, I was surprised to hear an apology.

These are still surface details.

What I’m talking about is a million non-male identified people and their allies stood on the street together and created a space that felt so safe, even the voices that might typically keep to themselves were made loud and clear. 

These are the mothers who have let the world of men throw their temper tantrums and still at the end of the day they offer warmth. The partners who have suffered abuse and emotional vampirism, and yet still find a way to forgive. Those that identify as queer or identify as trans or identify as uniquely themselves and are patient as the rest of us stumble over the simple request of stepping outside of the binary in our pronoun usage. Friends disenfranchised and attacked because of the color of their skin, being vocal on how we can stand beside them in their fight for their lives.

Sisters who give way too many hints that they’re not interested in the dudes hitting on them at bars, or catcalling them in the street, or in their homes, or work space, or wherever men are around, and yet still include men as victims of the patriarchy. Survivors of rape and sexual assault who rediscover their power and share it with the world. Drag queens and earthen goddesses. Nasty women and Black Bloc anarchists.

This safe space was their vehicle.

And as a fellow activist, it was exhilarating to see so many of these warriors standing up, some for the first time in a public forum. But we all know, they have been standing up for us for our entire lives. 

Since the moment we were born, our mothers have nurtured us. Doing this while secretly hoping the next generation would understand the love of its mother and not fall into the false egotism of its father. If for whatever reason not our biological mother, this mother planet which we stand on. To be more compassionate and caring. To take on the weight of the world and fight until it is brighter.

This is why I march. My mother. My sister. My planet. My earthly sisters. We together will overthrow this toxic masculinity. We will rally together around justice and peace. It will be the end of the patriarchy. A better world lies in the female heart of tomorrow. I see it on the horizon. It wears pink lipstick and shouts “The Pussy Grabs Back!”

Where The Wild People Live

The full moon rises. Another night of song and prayer. Howls echo into the night as mother moon reaches her maxim. Drums are the driving force. Fireworks burst in the night time sky.

All day there are chainsaws resounding across the camps. Groups of people chopping large woodpiles for their neighbors in preparation for the coming snows. Yurts and teepees going up filling every open space. 

Daily actions drive out in caravans to disrupt DAPL’s construction. Those that return tell stories of great strength and peaceful resolve through extreme conflict. Armed DAPL workers that pull out their guns and threaten the Water Protectors. National guard lined up in riot gear. Water Protectors being jailed in dog kennels. Twenty hours spent imprisoned by a police force that is utterly disorganized in their attempt to control the will of the people.

At sunset, my uncles strip down and dive into the freezing waters of Cannonball River. They shout, “In the spirit of Crazy Horse! In the spirit of Sitting Bull!” as they resurface. The river reflects the purple-orange of northern heavens.

A somber note is in the Hayukka Camp. Clowns feel as much sadness as everyone else, if not more. They feel it all, whatever it is. 

News that the pipeline is almost 100% complete in North Dakota has reached the front page of the Bismark Times. Everyone holds their breath that there will be a continued halt to construction as the Army Corps continues to not approve a permit for construction underneath the Missouri River.

The Bismark Times says the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners is going to go ahead with construction anyway. They can afford to pay the fines. They even offer to pay the $10 million in expenses that Morton County has incurred arresting everyone.

This is where this country is these days. The only penalties banks and corporations face are monetary, and they have so much amassed wealth no fine is too much to stop them.

Where are the People to hold these tyrants accountable? You think politicians have any control of these bullies? When are the People going to rise up and demand change?

Iceland is a small island. And yet after the financial collapse they had millions in the streets. Within weeks the bankers that caused the collapse were in jail. A new government was in place. Now they are one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, with the Pirate Party making gains each election in Parliament.

It doesn’t take much for social change. It takes the people trusting their own power. It takes getting rid of cynicism and despair. It takes warriors investing in their hearts.

Standing Rock is where these warriors are born. It is where the wild people live. The last people willing to take risks to save the water where all life comes from. It is a native movement that has encouraged others wanting to find their roots to dig in deep.

Communication is key here. The white way of talking has ruled this country for far too long. Man comes up and tells Other Man what to do. Other Man responds by arguing a better way of action. Both Men spend more time arguing than doing anything.

Here that doesn’t happen. Nightly, the conversation over the fire is about letting go of this old way of talking. Letting go of this toxic masculinity. Listening and showing respect.

Grandfather walks up to the Sacred Fire. The fire goes quiet to listen. Grandfather taps the fire with his staff and says, “This fire. These rocks. This river. These have been here. A long time. These people. We come here to learn the old ways. The ways of our relatives. The ways of this earth. This ground. These stars. The people come to the earth. They ask for her lessons. This is the way it was told. This is what we find here.”

The youth lead the charge. The elders are there with them. The clowns provide distractions to disrupt the Black Snake, so that the rest can continue to take action. The rest learn how to live without the Black Snake’s influence.

Two nights ago, I dreamt of the Black Snake. He had all my relatives entangled in his long winding scales. But he was not invincible. He was not indestructible. In the dream, I was close to defeating him. Another swipe of my sword and he would have fallen.

Life, unfortunately, is destructible. And we must protect it or fail ourselves.

Heart Warriors

Perhaps what I miss the most is being referred to as “Warrior”: 

“Warriors protect your sisters. Protect your aunts and grandmothers. Form a line to surround them in prayer. Hold the line, warriors!”

“Warriors form up. We’ll build a fire for the women’s sweat. A big fire. Be in prayer as you build this fire. Think of the women in your life. Think of the women you love. Hold them in your heart as you gather wood. Hold them there as you chop it. This whole ceremony is a prayer. After the fire is built, you’ll stand guard over your sisters. Make sure no one comes in to disrupt the ceremony. Make sure no one is gawking or taking photos. Make sure the women feel safe, so they can be in prayer. Make sure the fire is healing.”

“Warriors! Don’t leave anyone behind. You need to watch out for your elders. Make sure you offer them a hand to get back to safety. Your duty is to protect your elders. To protect your sisters. To protect the future generations. Warriors! Be strong! Protect life!”

My inner Aries, God of War, already feeling greatly encouraged with an ax in my hand, swinging at the logs, building camp fires, and living a rugged simple life, smiling to be referred to in this way, empowered by a culture of strength.

Though, one day, an elder revealed “The Warrior” in Lakota culture is not so much a person who goes out onto the battlefield, ensnared by a cycle of bloodshed, but instead is a person who is heavy with heart, feeling all things, and following the flow of life through their veins, protecting those around them, recognizing the sacredness of life and how the heart’s ability to love is the only way to restore balance, when darkness has overtaken the light.

It is this second definition of Warrior that I felt the strongest while camped out with fellow Water Protectors in North Dakota, defending the Sacred Waters of over 32 million people downstream, living off the land in a community strengthened by Love. There are plenty of days where the weight of my heart caused tears in my eyes. I would weep by the river I stood near to defend. Other days, I was overwhelmed by so much hope and love, my whole body glowed from the embrace of this inner warmth. Inside myself, I felt a peace of action. Doing right by my being.

Daily, I felt my Celtic origins coming to the surface. My Irish ancestry mystified by the land on which I lived to protect. Earth which lived to give a foundation to my community. A balance of Mother and Steward. My Pagan heart warming me through Grandmother Winter’s onset of cold, a lesson of humility, while Grandfather River flowed by increasingly charged by our prayers, to which an elder said: 

“We drink this water, DAPL drinks this water, the police drink this water. We are all drinking this water that we’ve put so much prayer into. Eventually, these waters will be so full of prayer, they will be unable to resist. The conflict will resolve itself. The people of this land will be healed. The scars on the Mother will be replaced by a harvest shared by all. A coming together of all people will be celebrated. Water is Life will be the refrain.” 

I met some of the bravest, most creative, inspiring, strong people during my time at Standing Rock. They came from all generations and backgrounds. Something pulled at their hearts and brought them there. Some traveling thousands of miles and across vast landscapes  and even oceans. Over 500 flags from over 500 indigenous nations displayed in the wind, proudly. These Water Protectors each from a long line of warriors, using their hearts to defend the sacredness of life.

This battle is ongoing. 

It will spread to each of our communities. 

Everywhere it spreads, be sure there will be Warriors there to carry Love in their Hearts. 

Enough Love to Protect Life.

No Spiritual Surrender.

Gratitude Is The Highest Order Of Thought

Honestly, I find it hard being back in this plane of existence after experiencing the pure way of life that I found up at Standing Rock. I expected culture shock, but seeing as Taos is one of the wokest places I have ever lived, a community made up of all kinds of healers and mystics, I didn’t expect my heart to be all that divided. I mean, what other small mountain town would fill a huge renovated aircraft hangar in the middle of the desert last night to watch Seun Kuti perform his politically-active afrobeat with his father’s arkestra, Egypt 80? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else for such a rêvelution of sound.

But it feels as if I have left a piece of myself on that southern shore next to the Cannonball River. This piece of self is burning eternally in Rosebud Camp’s Sacred Fire along with the spirits of my ancestors, my native relatives, and the spirits of the Dakota lands. It burns in prayer. A prayer that vibrated throughout me for the eight days that I stood there, chopping wood, sharing tobacco, building winter structures, going out on actions, talking and learning from my relatives, listening to stories told by my elders, feeling hope.

For a lot of you, the actions are the only thing you see of Standing Rock. The arrests. The mace and tear gas. The violent police brutality towards Water Protectors. If I thought it culturally sensitive, I would’ve shared more photos of the sense of peace and love present in all of the camps. But even then it’s really something that is better experienced first hand.

This sense of peace and love vibrates throughout all exchanges. Not a single word of hate against the police, the pipeline workers, or any other oppressor, but instead prayer for them and their children because this is all of our water for which we defend. The oppression of indigenous cultures is relieved as these people open up to the vulnerability of sharing their spirits completely, trusting that those they share with will be moved deeply towards greater respect and active solidarity. Allowing the descendants of white invaders into ancestral ceremony in order to change all of our futures. The coming together of so many colors in order to fulfill prophecy and overcome the industrial upheaval of our humanity. Forming a medicine wheel, symbol of the Rainbow People, tool of healing, holding hands to strengthen our sense of what it means to be human and what it means to be an organism of this Earth.

The Water Protectors are not merely building winter structures for the coming snow. They are building a sustainable eco-village where Protectors will not only survive, but they will thrive. The daily hope I felt around camp, was largely a reflection of the nonstop prayer being sung and drummed at all hours of the day. In addition, every action I took there was given this extra context of walking the walk that I’ve often talked.

Every camper soon found a purpose. This whole society functioned fully on the hard work of thousands of individuals. For me it was gathering and chopping wood to distribute throughout the camp to different groups like the International Indigenous Youth Council who were too busy leading actions and ceremonies and attending meetings to have time for this on their own. For others, it was providing three meals a day with increasing spirit to a whole camp of hungry hearts. There were folks who organized the donation tent daily. Teams that organized and built structures like a meal hall, an outdoor shower, multiple teepees and yurts and tarpees. 

I met a group of sustainable contractors from the Appalachia of South Carolina who drove up to offer their services and were tasked with building a winter tool shed for camp. I saw two busloads of separatists from the Cascadian Movement delivering supplies and putting together workshops about how to live with the land cut off from the outside. I heard Food Not Bombs talking about farming in the spring and eco-conscious everything. 

Even on prayer walks, we all were found picking up garbage in the streets of Bismarck or around camp, so that the land felt renewed beneath our footfall. Health care may not have been provided through private insurers, but the wellness tent, the sweat lodge, the fire worked to heal anyone under the weather.

To be in a society where currency is removed and shelter/food/clothing/community are provided allows the individual to grow. The heart no longer feels a repressed sickness from outside forces. It opens wide to its environment. Love comes easy. Gratitude is the highest order of thought. Dreams are manifested in a time of magic.

I saw a Bald Eagle fly over our action on DAPL Headquarters. Two Bald Eagles flew overhead during our Veteran’s Day March. Another Bald Eagle followed the car I rode home in as we exited North Dakota. These spirits of the land constantly came forward as if in a waking dream. These shared visions encouraged our ways. The Earth actively voicing its support. Its guidance. Its resilience against extreme adversity.

I saw police officers moved to tears. I saw DAPL workers silent in reverence. I saw dialogues that spread across cultural hurdles and expanded already progressive thought patterns.

When I say, I was living in the future, I’m not exaggerating. 

There is just no other way to describe the scenes that I witnessed.

In my mind, I constantly revisit my memory of the elder who came to the Sacred Fire in the middle of the night, while I was sitting there in prayer. He said the people who have come to Standing Rock, have come there to learn the ways of their relatives. To learn the ways of the land. To protect their ability to be human beings born of the Earth on which they live.

While the majority of the country is stuck in an endless sado-masochistic news cycle of “What Trump said”, the people up at Standing Rock are actively pursuing the future. Not only that, they are creating the future through which we will all continue to not only survive, but soon be able to thrive. 

As these people, return to their homes, expect this future to spread. Expect that it won’t matter who is president, or Attorney General, or White Supremacist head of cabinet. There is enough movement forward to wrangle in the Black Snake and set us free from its corporate stranglehold of our lives. There is enough movement forward for us all to find a way out. 

It starts today. Grab your readymade sign or banner. Defend the Sacred Waters. Defend your Community. Hear your voice heard in the streets. Begin with Love and feel the rest of it come forward easily. This new day is rising. We can no longer sit back and watch the present unfold. 

We must come together and fight for our future.