Wow, these kids, or young adults, in Baltimore staged a hunger-strike recently in order to get mayor Sheila Dixon's attention and funding for a peer support group that the young people believe in and feel is necessary in order to turn around the futile, perpetuating state of violence and hopelessness in the inner city.
These kids are heroes, and I want to be like them. I want to have a heart big enough, strong enough and courageous enough to lay down. I wish I knew them, I wish I could be there with them, I wish I could call them my friends.
Read about it http://hiphopcongress.com/protesters-promise-hunger-strike-baltimore-press/
Mayor Dixon, to date, is typical in her bureaucratic rhetoric. Here are groups of local, dedicated citizens--and the youth at that!!--getting together and motivating and taking action! And the mayor's office says, It's a decision up to the school board. Right--aren't they supposed to be representative of the people? And are these kids likely to get their voice heard through those dog and pony show proceedings? If they were our city's school wouldn't be in the condition they are. Yet again this affirms my bitch that politics, on even the local level, supports only agenda and is not now, nor likely ever has been, ABOUT REPRESENTING US--I am incredulous over this, it is a simple common sense issue. Give these kids the time to have their voices heard and ideas grown... don't make it about waiting til election time so you all can shine your pretty gold belts.... What an insult. Amen to these young people with hope enough in them selves, with hope enough in Change, Amen to these young people and their tenacity to dream...
Poem for the Hunger Strikers, by Marge Piercy
The low road
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want. They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can’t fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fundraising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
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