“America the Beautiful”
We are not free. They tell us we are as they lie through their teeth telling us we can do anything, we can be anything. “The greatest country on Earth”, they call it. “America the Great”. “America the Beautiful”. What a load of shit. Our children are terrified, our people are miserable. Women cannot walk outside at night for fear of being raped, or killed, or kidnapped. A black man cannot walk outside at all without fear of those who are meant to protect. Indigenous people are shunned, or ignored, or attacked. We are afraid.
America. “The Melting Pot”. A pretty lie, hiding an ugly truth. America takes and takes and picks and chooses and destroys what it doesn’t steal. America. The eater of customs, the destroyer of peoples, the master of cultural genocide. Our leaders preach acceptance as they pass laws and ordinances made of hate and fear. We win battles and they rip the victories from our hands and spit in our crying faces. We stand up and they knock us down with rubber bullets and gas canisters. We speak up and are shut down and silenced. We are trapped.
They tell us that we are too young. They’re right. We are too young. We are too young to know violence and oppression first and second and third hand. We are too young to know to hide under our desks or to block the door or to turn our bodies into weapons and shields against a shooter in a place of safety. We are too young to be afraid of telling our families who we are for fear of being beaten or killed or cast out by those who were meant to love us unconditionally. We are too young to know that some people are so full of hate and bigotry that those who are not like them are seen as beasts to be put down. We are too young. We are too young but we have seen and heard and lived through things that no one should. We have feared things that no one should have to fear. We have screamed, and shouted, and cried out for justice that was not delivered. We are too young but the world does not care. We are scarred.
How many of us lie awake at night fearing and wondering what they will take from us next? How many have seen people attacked verbally or physically with threats or with violence for things that they cannot control? How many have with good reason questioned our so-called truths only to be beaten back into that cookie cutter mold that we were each shoved into at birth? How many have been told that they can’t possibly know what they are asking, or saying, or fighting for because they are inexperienced, naive, too young. We are not inexperienced. We are not naive. We are not too young to know what we are saying. You have shoved your violence, and your bigotry, and your “normality” down our throats since before we could understand what you were saying. You have forced us to be silent and obedient and sweeten our tongues with sugar-scented rot so as not to offend, so as not to shatter your fragile egos, your delicate worlds coated in hot glass and barbed wire. You have used every ounce of your energy, every resource you have to to mold us into your clones, to squash us down. You have tried to rip away our autonomy, our individuality, our humanity just so you can keep things the way you say they should be. You have been cruel and kind only when it suited you so as to keep us in those single-file lines waiting to be picked off, one by one. You have tried to condition us, to bring us into your fold of hatred and ignorance, but we are learning. We are strong.
We speak to each other now, and we listen. We hear the stories that you so willfully ignore. We listen. We listen, and we learn, and we build our own selves up from the dust and the dirt that you have ground and crushed us into. We are beautiful stained glass and you cannot grind us into sand again. We are growing. We are growing, and branching out, and putting down roots where you say we are not allowed. We are dandelions. We spring up from the cracks in the concrete, we do not need your tender care or potted soil. You spray us with your poison and still we come back. We will survive. We will not be torn from each other. We will not let you burn our bridges to build your walls. We will not sit idly by while you tear our worlds apart. We are every color and shape and size and you cannot alienate us with our differences because we do not fear them anymore. We are not like you. We have seen the light, and it is not flashing red, white, and blue. It is pure light refracted in a prism. It is a rainbow of differences, and uniqueness, and rebellion. We are our own guiding star.
We are united.
