Era meu mano, era eu...

February 21, 2010

Dear brother,

Sometimes, when I find myself alone and in peace, I think of you. Sometimes I see you as a victim, but other times I just see you as one piece of the whole picture that my life is. As you know, I’m an activist. Since you left I started fueling all this strength in me, all this hope. Maybe because I wanted to save you... maybe because I needed this courage to be free of fear and pain, I took the stand of my life without notice. I started reading about the Movement and the rebellion; about the troubled youth in Mexico City that, like you and me, had suicide thoughts every day, that was using drugs, that was losing all kinds of hope, that was resign to live without any sense. Maybe you didn’t do it on purpose, but it happened, you decided to leave me and I decided to change, to save that youth that was dying... like you.

Now I see myself like a woman, a rebellious one, with the strength to do anything, to fight against anyone, to change and mobilize a community, to teach equality to kids who think that crying shows weakness, that being a girl means being insignificant or, as you felt, that being a man means being unbreakable. I’m a woman that no man can touch with violence; thanks to you. I am an agent of change now, a militant that wants to shut down all the madness that suppress us and kills us.

I remember that you loved Bob Marley, in fact, when you left I ran to your room to take all your cd’s. I found notebooks filled with the lyrics and little notes you made on the side. I was 14 years old when I discover that that music represented your departure and my birth. Next week I’ll be 25 and Bob Marley still sings your name every time that I go out with my comrades to organize a protest, an action, or a campaign. He taught me with the words what you didn’t want to teach me (because I was a girl?)... “Me say war”, “Emancipate ourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds” “Until there no longer. First class and second class citizens of any nation. Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes - Me say war.”

I’m singing, brother, I’m singing the songs of freedom; I’m fighting with my hands and my stories. I’m part of “the war of images, ideas, messages, and culture”. I dream with equality and I walk with this dream teaching the kids a world without violence, a battle without blood, a game with girls and boys doing exactly the same thing, a love without gender, a future full of options for them to choose. I believe that I can help these kids as I couldn't help you.

I read the other day a letter that Doyle Canning wrote to the young organizers of the future. He reminds us that “we are working to build globalized, cross-cultural, queer-positive, equitable networks and movements. We are working to challenge oppression and domination in all of its forms. We are working locally in our neighborhoods, schools, and union shops. We are mobilizing to flood the streets in big cities when the so-called rulers must be reminded that they are few, and we are many.” We are not looking for acceptance, tolerance, or respect we are fighting for a social change.

I’m so young sometimes, that I feel my spirit cry. I thank God for the talent that he gave me and I thank You for the deep courage that you planted on me. My life, in this moment, is ruled by the learning that I can get from the old minds, the big ones, the wise ones, because I think that, as Lauryn Hill my favorite hip-hop poet, says: “we look at Bob Marley, you know, and we say “Ok, let’s just grow locks and wear the clothes and have the band”, and we have no many idea how many years of struggle and pain and suffering that made that content. You see what I’m saying? You can’t get it from the outside in. Truth is from the inside out. You know, and the way we’ve been trying to heal and be healed is with this topical, surface, superficial, temporary solution. And I’m telling you, true healing is from the inside out. You know, we’ve been told to protect our outer man while our inner man is dying.” So I’m building myself out of the box of the social doctrine, looking for the problem, the cause and the solution. And to really achieve this we need to be congruent with our ideas, our acts and our words, as Gandhi taught me: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”. He also taught me that “Nobody can hurt me without my permission”, because I’m the one who decide anything in my life... “I don’t have to slave anymore. I’m ready to be me” (Lauryn Hill).

You used to read my first poems. I remember your eyes trying to understand my immature handwriting. I remember myself loosing my notebook in your room “by accident”. You never said anything and I have to thank you, at this point because that silence is the one that moves me today to write, to read, to sing and dance because Poetry is an Insurgent Art: “Poetry the perfume of resistance” (Ferlinghetti).

I have to finish with a last quote that makes me think of you, it comes from another hip-hop poet, Lupe Fiasco: “I know we’ll meet again, so it’s never me against the world.”

Axé,
Lola.