What is freedom, to breathe, to talk, and to travel?
Oh how we took for granted those past years:

What is freedom summer, here in America?
Where we can still purchase a bottle of cold coke cola for a dollar
But wouldn’t be able to sit on the stoop with friends
Just sipping, and chatting away.

Thinking of a time in history when

Freedom summer was a nonviolent effort by
civil rights activists to
integrate Mississippi's segregated
political, system during 1964.

A poet who knows her history is exceptional
Poets words can sometimes comes off as gossip column

What is freedom?

In 2020 without the interference of
Other countries, city or states…. or the faces of
heart breaking stories of missing persons….
Who took a stroll or jog through the wrong street
And end up in the news while they were
trespassing in Karen’s neighborhood

What is freedom:  not to be cage,
Not to be muffled and not to be Taser by the police:
What is freedom summer of 2020 in New York City.


Limited!
Complicated!

The reason I don't like you,
let me put it into words.
You're a prat, a drain and a hypocrite,
a ****** characterless ****.

You talk,  you talk, you ******* talk
But you never say a thing.
You think that you give speeches
Like Dr. Martin Luther King.

But you don't because your boring,
You bore us all to tears.
Ruining every social event,
by banging on for years.

Bla bla ******* bla bla bla,
your monotone drones on.
You're in love with the sound of your own voice,
while we just want you gone.

So pack your **** up in your soapbox,
And turn your answer machine on.
Then ******* back to snoresville,
or wherever the *******'re from.

The preacher, the politician both the same
Nothing but swindlers spewing specious sermons
Noisome talk from their mouths came
Rapacious hands, oh what vermin!

I, as if compunctious for my fault
Left feeling only surfeited  
Fulsome factitious assault
I am left as the convicted

The pulpit stone was gray and warm,
  beneath the priest of fire.
Each flaming word a dread alarm -
  portentious and dire.

"Your ways must change!" he did extoll
  with booming voice and spittle.
"Or hell will claim your timeless soul
  to dance to Satan's Fiddle!"

Some people who, enfeared, did try
  to mend their sinful ways.
With hope that cleaner souls would buy
  more peace at End-of-Days.

But others left the place unmoved -
  they stayed the way they were.
And though their ways did not improve,
  to sin was still to err.

Then years did pass; the reverend died.
  So too did all his people.
That pulpit where he stood with pride
  lay crumbling 'neath the steeple.

Whatever thoughts of wrong or right
  lie quiet like these motes in light.
No matter what the old man said,
  your life's your life, and dead is dead.

I picked out a funeral song back when I was still alive.

Of course I did all the preparations when I was alive. I still sang the song of my life long before I ended up here.

I still want a good song to "play me out".
So I picked "Save Rock And Roll" by Fall Out Boy to usher me into Elton John styled heaven white tuxedos and all.

But death is so simple. It happens and nobody can stop it. I don't need to plan my funeral when I know you can do it for me.

I would joke about writing your eulogy, like we expected you to go first. And we didn't back then. Back when I was still alive.

So now that I'm... here.
Pick the song for me.
I think you know which one would put me to rest.

Shout the eulogy at everyone, tell them how this wasn't supposed to happen, but it does. My family will be as sad as I was thinking about when they would end up here. But now they just watch.

And I guess I that's all I can do now.

I can still see it. I am twelve years old looking at my mom lay in her hospital bed. They told me she had a hole in her esophagus, and not too long ago, had been dying of blood loss. I stand still too shocked to cry, and in my trance I hear the hum of the t.v. behind me. And I know that if I flip through the channels right now I’ll land on a commercial depicting false paradise. Toned, tanned, pretty people on a beach smiling like they were in Heaven as they swallow down the drink that put my mom and my family through hell.

I am a biased person. This tragedy that I have gone through has made me biased about all subjects relating alcohol. If I were to have one wish, it would be to expel the very idea of alcohol from our heads. But I can’t do that, just as I can’t let my opinions cloud my vision for the future of the families of America. In this simple vision, alcohol advertising is banned from television and radio.

Researchers found that an average of 29 percent of alcohol TV ads in Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago don’t abide by voluntary standards set by the industry, which involve not being shown during t.v. shows where at most 30 percent of the audience are kids. One out of eleven radio ads for alcoholic beverages in 75 markets across the nation in 2009 failed to comply with the alcohol industry’s voluntary standard for the placement of advertising.

Alcohol advertisements aren’t the only type of ads that violate our industry’s standards. We see it all the time, when some sketchy commercial on t.v. has microscopic words at the bottom or a radio ad has the bad information sped up quicker than our ears can catch.

I believe that alcohol shouldn’t be prohibited, because I believe that people are born with the right to choose what they want to do with their life. But with that in mind, let’s let them choose! No more brainwashing commercials that promise a good time, let us decide what we need in order to have a good time.

Maybe then there wouldn’t be 30 percent of American adults and one in five teenagers living with alcoholism, 6.6 million children living with alcoholic parents and tens of thousands of alcohol induced car crashes. I believe that this will change. But I don’t just believe for those numbers I said. Thirty, five, one, 6.6 million--what do numbers mean? Nothing.

I believe for the kid who thinks drinking might solve her problems. For the other kid who wants heaven, but doesn’t want to get there too quickly. I believe for the little boy who has to take care of his siblings because his father is a drunk and his mother works hard. For the guilt ridden, God fearing man who can’t stop falling asleep with a bottle in his hand, I believe.

I believe that for the good of America, alcoholic ads can be, and should be banned. Because I never want my mom to have to sit me down again and say, “Bailey, I fell off the wagon” all because of our bandwagon, conspicuous consumer society. Because there are moms and dads here, wishing their kids were in paradise--playing volleyball, building sandcastles, and collecting sand dollars. Because approximately 100,000 people will die this year of alcohol related deaths, 4,700 of them, teenagers.

In the 1970’s, Cigarette advertisements were banned from our television sets and radios. The 70’s were considered the “me” generation. Hopefully, alcohol advertising will be banned as well in 2016, because we are the generation of activists. We are the “we” generation.