Illegal

Hey y’all!

I know I was on hiatus for a while, but now I am back. A lot of things personally happened since I last shared something, but now is the time to come back and continue sharing my poems with y’all once again.

The biggest news? I am working with the National Lawyers Guild. If you are a lawyer or legal worker, join up. There are a lot of useful resources for anyone who wants to be a leftist legal worker.

It really is difficult to write lately. The ongoing genocide of Palestinians cannot be ignored. The consolidation of corporate power cannot be ignored. It’s all pretty bleak. And I am not immune to any of this. And sometimes, I lack the words and actions necessary to explain all of this. One thing is certain though: we cannot ignore what is happening, because we are them, and they are us. Of this I am certain.

This week, a poem I wrote today.

Illegal
Just like my mother
Illegal
Just like my father
Illegal,
Just like four year old me,
Told that we were going to Disneyland,
A short trip,
My mom lying like that,
That should be illegal

Not that I haven’t done anything illegal
I have sped in my car
Bought bootlegged DVD’s
Snuck into Universal Studios
Snuck into Coachella Fest
Double-parked
Drank as a minor
Skateboarded where a “no skating” signed was posted
I have blocked traffic in protest
Stole from a Walgreens in Chicago
Gave my ID away, so someone without one could use it to get into bars
I have snuck into bars as a minor
Exist

Illegal
My dad once told me,
Is the life of the revolutionary

Illegal
Like feeding homeless people in Houston
Illegal
Like getting an abortion in Texas
Illegal
Like helping migrants at the border
Illegal
Like smashing windows, after a cop killed a black person
Illegal
Like marrying to get papers
Illegal
Like sleeping in the streets, after a bank foreclosed your home
Illegal
Like organizing a hunger strike in prison
Illegal
Like the Black Panthers stealing an ambulance, and providing healthcare to their friends and family
Illegal
Like Palestinian resistance
Illegal
Like stopping eighty acres of Atlanta’s forest from being turned in a police training facility
Illegal
Like occupying Zucotti Park
Illegal
Like the Zapatista uprising
Illegal
Like providing abortion care to migrant women
Illegal
Like defecting the army
Illegal
Like freeing captive animals from testing facilities
Illegal
Like affirmative action
Illegal
Like communists coming into power in Iran, and the CIA couping them
Illegal
Like slashing paintings in protest against oil companies destroying our planet
Illegal
Like selling your food stamps, because they can’t be used to pay bills
Illegal
Like working with a fake social security number, because you have hungry children at home, and they need a roof over their heads
Illegal
Like jaywalking, because streets were made for cars and not people
Illegal
Like breaking into an FBI office, and releasing documents that confirmed the existence of COINTELPRO
Illegal
Like being a communist
Illegal
Like telling the border agent that your name is Toni, when in fact it’s not
Illegal
Like setting yourself on fire in protest
Illegal
Like a Free Palestine
Illegal
Like a child roofer, risking their life to send money back home
Illegal
Like crossing borders, and making the most militarized border in the world look like a joke
Illegal
Just like I was for fourteen years
Like all the music I downloaded from Limewire
And the advice I have given to friends and family who have very little options to get their papers

So yes
We are illegal
If only because we have questioned power, and resisted annihilation

The life of the revolutionary will always be illegal

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