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13th: A Fight For Change

December 17, 20173 min read

America has never been great. It’s entire foundation was built on the back of slaves and has since never given people of color the equality and the freedom we deserve. Racism is still alive. The 13th Amendment set slaves free but only set up for another system of slavery — incarceration, and for people of color, mass incarceration. With the wake of Trump and his vendetta to “Make America Great Again,” people are opening their eyes and realizing: we’ve never been free, and we’re living in a revolution. This poem is about this and the past years realizations, through the eyes of a young girl of color.

The White Man smiles, The Muslim Girl cries, the Black Boy dies, the Queer Kid commits suicide, the Illegals “lie” just so they can stay in the country to see their child’s eyes & try to have a better life that no one would give to them; they weren’t lucky enough to be granted a better chance to survive.

To all the White people who now say they feel safe, I wonder how it felt for eight years to feel scared of your skin, scared of your own state, scared of your own country; it was my fate, fighting for my life the same for all my brothers and sisters; tell me how scared you are to have these hands of sacrifice, because I’ve been getting blisters.

They say, “it’s my first amendment” Cause now you care about this? You read 13th? Saying that if my cousin wanna smoke some weed he ain’t even gonna exist?

Just take out your pen, add him to the list & define him by his fists, cause doesn’t everyone say ignorance is bliss?

Time after time all y’all need to do is lie, telling us we’re important, until another one of us dies, but if we riot, we’re the bad ones, right? We’re supposed to stay calm, right? Never, so cover your eyes, cause i’m about to go screaming “fuck you” to the sky.

Don’t underestimate us, thinking we’ll result in our demise; we’re reading your newspaper headlines, ready to bury our graves fighting in the smoke with tears coming out of our eyes.

Cause Black Lives Matter, & the revolutions coming high; & don’t you dare be mistaken, we’ll be screaming the whole night.

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Liz Marie

latina, nyc, with a passion for art, of all kinds. "Your silence will not protect you" - Audre Lorde twitter: @blondedectrl

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