My, my, my people. Look at the times!
How many of us are still captive, confined?
We’re reading, speeding, feeding on this info highway.
We are the fortunate lot who’ve been allotted a byway,
Yet cannot freely speak our truths afraid of what they might say,
Find ourselves with no job with no pause nor delay.
Don’t even speak a word unless it sounds like “obey!”
How they terrify terrifically, so we do not speak specifically.
Relay a hint of history? Reveal what’s been a mystery?
Truth be told, outrage on hold, he seems a little pissed to me.
Perhaps because he sees what has been hidden so explicitly.
That the plasticity of enslavement shapeshifted with plausible complicity.
I wonder what the fourteenth amendment was for?
Perhaps an uncivil war slaughtered 600,000+ to blood and gore,
So under the law a person could be a person and a negro no more.
OR,
Maybe it was a concession for new breed of oppression upon the “poor,”
For under that law, corporations quickly became persons too
The “person” now patenting life itself, doing what they do.
The “person” capitalizing the most on the law meant to protect YOU
How many mortal “persons” died for that law so that immortal “persons” can sue
After all the horror, you see who got their foot in the door?
Are the beneficiaries the descendants of DeWolf or The Moor?
If that’s unclear, let’s go straight to the core:
The wealth usurped off the backs of blacks
that built the universities from out of the cracks,
that trained lawyers to cleverly devise a new plan of attack,
to leverage that same wealth to make a bigger stack,
so once shackles were removed, they could put them right back.
A law that remains intact – and that is an actual fact.
We choose to ignore this parasitic symbiosis
Divide conquer subjugate – prepare for the prognosis
Reduced to fractions of opposing factions,
While extraction is the action during our distracted, delayed reaction
to the retraction of our freedom as it erodes to mere abstraction
and sink deeper into indebted servitude through predatory transactions.
Politically, it’s present perpetually.
Realistically, a ridiculous rivalry.
Sadistically, it’s psychological slavery.
We can’t know our history, but can at least get a fistful.
Words straight from the heart, from the start make you tearful.
Fearful, although the fear is unnecessary.
Simply submit to the empire, it doesn’t have to be scary.
See beyond surface, I don’t intend to offend.
This is a time to build bridges and a time to blend.
To send a message similar to the dream
It’s why we still celebrate the day of his birth.
He put faith in the world when we doubted our worth.
A black man on the mic defending “niggers and kikes,”
Publicly speaking his mind – until he rested in Earth.
Honor to those who fought so that we could be free,
Instead of picking weeds or hanging out in a tree.
If we explore our roots, we most certainly see,
Soil and ivy bloodsoaked, fertilized with fallen ebony.
These Ivory Towers, towering over our ancestors,
Unite education, exploitation, imperial oppressors,
Taxation for public research serving private investors.
Baskin, my name, it comes from slavers,
Now with global corporate presence – think thirty-one flavors.
What have we learned? Some things are not what they seem
Chocolate or vanilla? You know, it’s all ice cream.
-By Andrew Baskin
For more on “Ebony & Ivy” see here
In a roundabout way, Andrew Baskin recognized food as a nexus linking complex issues regarding sustainability and immediately put this knowledge into action. Transitioning from volunteer positions with Soil Born Farms in Sacramento to guiding collaborative projects as a senior apprentice at Love Apple Farm in Santa Cruz, he subsequently traveled across Western Europe studying food systems for 2 months on a shoestring, and finally returned stateside to a vermicomposting farm in Sonoma. Now in his senior year at UC Davis studying Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems with emphasis in Economics & Policy, he has an immense appreciation for the movement driving this educational paradigm shift. As with many families, his has survived genocide, exploitation, and war and he desires to integrate this historical narrative around social/economic/ecological exploitation into his professional career as he, both personally and collaboratively, pursues healing and justice in these dimensions.
In a roundabout way, Andrew Baskin recognized food as a nexus linking complex issues regarding sustainability and immediately put this knowledge into action. Transitioning from volunteer positions with Soil Born Farms in Sacramento to guiding collaborative projects as a senior apprentice at Love Apple Farm in Santa Cruz, he subsequently traveled across Western Europe studying food systems for 2 months on a shoestring, and finally returned stateside to a vermicomposting farm in Sonoma. Now in his senior year at UC Davis studying Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems with emphasis in Economics & Policy, he has an immense appreciation for the movement driving this educational paradigm shift. As with many families, his has survived genocide, exploitation, and war and he desires to integrate this historical narrative around social/economic/ecological exploitation into his professional career as he, both personally and collaboratively, pursues healing and justice in these dimensions.