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Shayloves Jul 2020
This right is sacred
Marking this ballot is my rite...
a passageway to true freedom.
I feel the blood of ancestors coursing...
I hear the haunting cries of arrested dreams...
Stolen hopes for my enslaved great, great grandparents...
persecuted & denied rights, beaten for daring to read & write.
I do this for them...
I feel the heartbeats of my children and my descendants ... this is my legacy...
I do this for them.
Oh yes! This right is sacred...
This is my justice... righting these wrongs...
These stickers symbolize the spoils...Prominently displayed
And these collective voices will be heard...battle cries of suffrage
this rite is ours...
it belongs to us...
it always has...
this is our ancestors’ hope,
our legacy...
This is our right...
This is our voice...
This is our vote...
William Edwards Jul 2020
Frustration I can understand,
Devastation I cannot bear,
King saw the promised land,
In the dream that we all share.
Tear that falls or persevere,
Across the land of ‘opportunity’,
Where do we go from here?
Chaos or community?
We sat through hate in Woolies,
Walked past Birmingham’s barks,
Rose a people ravished in slavery,
Yet in this stand tarnish Parks.
Voices are clearer than crackles of fire,
Change must be built peace by peace,
Though I know the situation is dire,
One must show beauty to tame the beast.
We will never see the coming of the lord,
Through the suffocating smoke, of the horde.
Arsala Jul 2020
I wrote this for myself,
not for its appeal,

you can say what you want,
but so can I feel

Freedom of speech,
that is written in ink

you can say what you want
and I can think what I think

Yell your opinion,
try to change my mind

try, try
to make me as blind

It’s my decision,
right to decide,

You can say what you want,
but so can I

Write what you want,
sing your choice of song

you can believe that you're right,
but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong

Just because you have the right to an opinion, doesn't mean I don't.
You can think that your right
but that doesn't mean I'm wrong
You can think that your right
but that doesn't mean I'm wrong
I repeat that doesn't mean I'm wrong☺
Andy Chunn Jul 2020
Many moments recalled in pain
Even as everyone wonders in vain
Martin lay motionless at the Lorraine
Photos pour popular chords of disdain

His was a hallowed history to gain
Innocence into infinity’s drain
Seasons secure will never be slain
Memphis
share24 Jul 2020
Shannon sang:
Life is hard,
We have to change

Global pandemics and
Civil uprisings

Nothing will be the same

People in the streets
Voices carry
Did they hear us?

No justice,
No peace

An echo

Rubber bullets
Mace in the face
Independence day

All lives matter,
So they say

Girl in the green shirt

Costume covers
Grieving mothers

Life is hard,
We have to change
Anais Vionet Jun 2020
What's the scariest book you ever read? ... Some Stephen King book like Salem's Lot or The Shining? For me it's Kate Millett's ****** Politics ... Oh, man ... Now THAT will scare you to death if you're female.

I discovered a man, overheard at my church, who actually believes his *** is a sign of power and of superiority. WHY am I so startled? Some childish trust not yet scrubbed off?" Or worse yet, some belief, not yet strangled, in a better world? See, stupid me, I thought this bill had been paid, by sufferance, by real people like Elizabeth Stanton, Carrie Catt and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ... by entire generations who ran through those tangled woods emerging cut and bruised ... if at all.

What is it like for HIM? I see him eyeing us, his little inferiors who bleed with the moon, with secret, catlike distaste ... regarding female opinions as slightly impure ... then, with calm, Godlike grace, granting females the forms of servant to assume.

Can I, can we, be forced to accept this inheritance? I don't know ... All I know is that this prejudice, so strangely without substance, strikes me like a dueler's lucky ******, robbing me of attendant rights and wit ... springing a tender trap of doubt in the future and abandoning me to stammering.
a free verse piece about sexism equality and about growing up
B Jun 2020
They spoke with warmth, their ideas so bright.
They told us for too long, we have had to fight.
It’s time to take it back, they told us all with might.
It’s time to end humanity’s, bitterly long night!

The next day we rose, with a correction of sight.
While the white men in their towers, looked at us with fright.
For our power now displayed, so ominously bright.
Now we fight together, for everything’s that’s right!
Regina Jun 2020
He was born July 2, 1925,
son of James and Jesse Evers,
Medgar Evers of Mississippi,
World War II veteran,
fought in the Battle of Normandy,
June 1944,
with his soldier brothers
of same and other races.

He rose a leader,
a Freedom Hero,
Mississippi field secretary of NAACP,
President, Regional Council of
***** Leaders,
husband of Myrlie, her purity
of devotion,
father of Darrell, Reena Denise,
and James,
civil rights leadership of the
highest calling,
of a bravery that persevered
again.

That early morning,
June 12, 1963,
a shot of hate tore
through his heart,
he was fallen in his own driveway,
his family witnessed this
most heinous of murders
committed in the insanity
of human acridity,
the bitterness in our psyches.

June 19, 1963,
full military honors,
Arlington National Cemetery,
for a man of a character so
much more loving
than his assassin's.

We, as a people,
we must obliterate
pre-conceived assumptions,
faulty thoughts of each other.

Medgar Evers of Mississippi,
Medgar Evers of America,
posthumously awarded the
Spingarn Medal,
murdered in a country
he fought for,
merited eternally by God.
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