What Should I Do Assata: for the Ancestors

What Should I Do Assata: for the Ancestors 

What should I do Assata? They’re coming for my womb!

Shouted Justice

And, I won’t know who is grabbing my pussy because I’m blindfolded!

But, I can guess.

Is it quisling Alan Dershowitz forgetting the wisdom of “when they came for…”

Is it the narco-trafficante 

Killing Isabel Cabanillas while she bicycles home from a gathering in Ciudad Juàrez?

Was her music too dangerous?

Or, her murals too revolutionary and inflammatory?

Was it the artificial intelligence facial recognition technology that misidentifies Black, Brown, Yellow and female faces?

But can spot a Uyghur from outer space in a crowd of ethnic Chinese.

Removed from their homes

Their graveyards desecrated

By a country that claims to be re-educating them 

And protecting them from their own culture, religion, and language

To make them more productive citizens.

Uyghurs — apparently — are the new Niggers; or perhaps the new Redskins or Chiefs

And, A.I. Identifiable “Whiteface” is the new blackface warns the MIT Media Labs.

Was it the new laws in South Dakota outlawing treatment for trans youth? 

They won’t have to be oppressed if they just kill themselves and be done with it

Cause of death: body dismorphia

Is intersectionality dead 

The wisdom of “when they came for…”

Or are the opiates just that strong?

Because if they come for my body

They will come for yours, too.

Who was it who said:

I wish that they all had just one neck so that I could slit their throats all at once 

I think it was Caligula

If he had waited just 2000 years his wish would have come true. 

We rewrite the New Colossus to include a wealth and education test

While we install a new Caligula

His hand on the throat of Our collective dreaming 
One foot in America and the other in the Middle East

While pissing on immigrants. 

And the lies 

So many lies.

“Why don’t we get to keep the oil?”, he asks.

I shake my head in shame

Everyone I respect is dead 

And all of my enemies are in power 

The affirmation of an optimistic 

Revolutionary mind

I would root for the intelligence agencies if your COINTELPRO experience didn’t inform me, Assata.

What should I do, Assata? 

While you are still here for me to ask you the question

What should I do?

How did you find hope in your gunshot riddled and beaten body?

How did you not despair when your godson was taken away too soon?

When you were imprisoned with men

And they tried to murder both you and your hope

How did you escape to fight another day? 

Oh, 20 century escaped slave with a price on your head

A two million dollar bounty for helping people to get freed;

While America bends over backwards to exonerate a man murdering representative democracy

And renewing the call for your capture

The first amendment has been  shot through and beaten 

As if it were a Black Panther on the New Jersey Turnpike 

Tolls paid for with blood sweat and tears 

Hope left waterboarded, tortured, and gasping 

Through disinformation and the scrawl of a Sharpie marker

Assata, may the trade winds of Cuba ever caress your skin 

And Afro-Cuban music ever fill your ears. 

Spit in the direction of Mar Largo

And cast ancient curses at an Orange Man.

Should I learn how to make myself small like Harriet

Or should I become larger then Life itself like you?

If we sing out loud; or paint our murals; or march

Will the Space Force and the A.I. cameras see us? 

They are coming to get me

And I AM paranoid.

Justice is blind 

But not stupid. 

At midnight all the agents and the superhero crew 

Will round up all the people who Love more then they do

Then they’ll hook us to Alexis to publicize our dreams 

And sell our souls to Facebook and the information machines.

Ain’t I a woman, too?

Asks justice 

Taking off her blindfold 
And baring her breasts.

Ain’t I a fuckin’ woman, too.

 

(Image Credit: LA Progressive)