Kloncke

Yesterday: amazing political art by Young Gifted and Black, Isis Rising, and all kinds of other phenomenal hip-hop and soul-flavored performances at the Life Is Living festival yesterday in West Oakland (including an extended Nina Simone tribute that, during Jennifer Johns‘s take on Sinnerman, evoked a cathartic tear or two from the wildly dancing audience). On my way out of the park I watched this rhyme unfold in my head.

It started with the tradeoff of wages and prices, then meandered to attacks on reproductive care (thanks for that presentation, Becca!), the false liberation of muslim women thru u.s. imperialist war, and nuclear energy and fukushima (shouts to Umi for alerting me to the feminist working-class issues there).

So here you go — an extremely extremely rough experiment, something that will probably never amount to anything polished. Still, it represents my gratitude for all that I’m learning, every day, from comrades, artists, thinkers, ancestors, and people in struggle.

lyrics

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what they give to us in wages

they take back in price raises

and when prices go down

ain’t no jobs to go around

class war is the struggle of haves and have nots

the haves got cops and the nots get locked up

knocked up

patriarchy ain’t always a black eye

it’s that guy

cuttin reproductive care statewide

stay wise

stay apprised

don’t believe in state lies

women’s liberation ain’t no bombs in the sky

ain’t no nuclear sites

claimin power for the people

but indigenous displacement

and radiation is the payment

that’s why i send love to mothers in fukushima

and the elders volunteering

for the deadly job of cleanup