Laurelwood June 3, 2020

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endemic

In this pandemic every stranger is a threat 

Whether or not they look like trouble 

Best to step out of their way to let them pass

Sizing them up as potential danger approaches.

There will be no end to the need for vigilance 

Because the coronavirus will become endemic 

Even if a vaccine is developed in the future 

Many people will not be vaccinated. 

After weeks and then months of shutdown restrictions 

The desire to be liberated to be able to live free from fear

The frustration of ordinary pleasures taken away 

Something like the lifetime experience of the oppressed.

Think about living your whole life always under tension 

Knowing you may be beaten and locked up or killed 

For some minor or imagined transgression 

Because of the color of your skin.

Exposed at low pay work to the deadly pandemic virus 

Or facing eviction going hungry thrown out of work 

Having lives sacrificed forced to live in close quarters 

This is the racial and class divide crying out for justice. 

Endemic racism circulating as a virulent disease

Infecting white people but killing people of color

Brutal when blue lives murder with impunity 

No less insidious when hiding behind white enclaves.

There will be no vaccine to stop the hatred

Though it would be good to make racists afraid again 

There will be no full embrace of equal rights and opportunity 

Until those who benefit from division are dispossessed. 

The power structure set up during centuries of slavery 

Maintained through terrorism during Jim Crow KKK lynching 

Present today in mass incarceration and disenfranchisement 

Police brutality continues a long history of oppression. 

At bottom it is about protecting the property of the few

Against the poor and working people who create the wealth 

In this land that was stolen from the natives in the first place 

Tilled and planted in soil soaked in the blood of slaves.

To liberate ourselves we must liberate their property 

Taking collective ownership in the name of all the people 

Dedicating our work to the common good over profits 

That will create the conditions to be free at last.

Echo Lake June 2, 2020

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Augusta Savage Road May 31, 2020

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