Freedom Dreams

Posted on 11. Mar, 2010 by MVMT.

Freedom Dreams

“Now is the time to think like poets, to envision and make visible a new society, a peaceful, cooperative, loving world without poverty and oppression, limited only by our imaginations.”
Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams

Destruction, devastation, disaster, desolation, pollution, poverty, overpopulation, plagues, epidemics, earthquakes, hopelessness, hurricanes, nuclear explosions, radioactive waves, floods, famine, drought, disease, despair, grief, greed, warfare, tsunamis, anarchy, misery, chaos, Crusades, annihilation, mayhem, H1N1, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, vaccination, ruin, obliteration, collapsing buildings, falling bridges, flying locusts, mutant lizards, wretchedness, terrorists, apocalypse . . . these visions haunt our waking dreams?

Our minds are inundated with these images. In this era of digital media, we receive minute-to-minute reports about the destruction of humanity. Movies, television series and books provide our fervent imaginations with countless scenarios of plots, plans and possible ways civil society can be destroyed. Add to this list, aliens, asteroids, zombies, and vampires, and it is evident that the human psyche is fixated with our mortality as a species.

When I asked my eleventh grade student, Sorel Walker, what she thinks is going to happen in the next fifty years, her immediate response was “a lot of destruction, we’re all going to die.” This response is typical of most high school students I interact with. Sorel’s response is mirrored by the responses I received from posting a Facebook Status asking, “What do you think is going to happen in the next 50 years?” The first response by Hazi Simone reads:

“More of the same. Over population, illness, laughter, births and deaths, war….. and lots more pollution and destruction. Plenty more natural disasters. And of course arrogant pompous greedy self serving humans with a God complex, trying to rule the world.”

This distopic view of humanity’s future was summed up simply by Sahnye M. J-Waldrum:  “honestly….Global warming will have wiped us out. (Just being honest)” People seem to believe we are on the precipice of the end of human civilization. This view is echoed by this Twitter response by user: Sherese Francis: “The world [assuming this is a reference to the physical planet earth] is going to continue to get her revenge for abusing her and we are going to be forced to change our ways . . .” In addition to people believing humanity will be wiped out, we believe it is the only way to achieve justice.
These responses are captured in verse by the hip-hop/rock band GAME Rebellion, “There’s a whole in the sky/The city’s on fire/You ain’t fly nigger/We all goin’ die.” These lyrics, sung over dark base guitar licks, provide a fitting soundtrack for society’s dystopic disposition.
Even documentaries, whose purposes appear to be to inspire citizens to positively change their behaviors, create narratives detailing the devastation of civil society. Al Gore’s award-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” epitomizes this dystopic approach. Scene after scene, show possible scenarios of global climate change threatening human civilization5.
I share in these dystopic visions of society’s future. I remember joking with my brother, “The world needs to hit the reset button,” “Yeah, just hit the button and let God sort it out.” When I moved to the Upper West Side in Manhattan four years ago, I would walk west to the water and look to the sky, wishing to feel a moment of equality as radioactive waves washed over me. With so much injustice in the world, this seemed like the only opportunity to achieve justice, since rich and poor, powerful and powerless, would equally be affected by a nuclear explosion.
As I write out these visions, I realize how damaging they are. Today, I have alternative visions which I hold close. These visions are where I draw imagination and strength for my actions.
One book which has become a foundation for my visions is Freedom Dreams, by Robin D. G. Kelley. In this book, Kelley looks at the dreams of freedom found in different social movement. In the epilogue, “When History Wakes: A New Beginning,” he looks closely at the relationship between visioning and creating a movement for social justice. Kelley asks the question:

How do we begin to dream ourselves out of this dark place of death and destruction and war, from this suffocating place where anyone who is not down with the war plan could be labeled as a traitor. It’s very hard to imagine a visionary social movement when officials can openly advocate the racial profiling of “Arab-looking” people with hardly a voice of dissent, or when laws are passed that ease wiretapping of private citizens and allow officials to detain immigrants without charge. (Kelley 196)

Kelley moves from question-posing to concluding by suggesting: “Unless we have the space to imagine and a vision of what it means fully to realize our humanity, all the protests and demonstrations in the world won’t bring about our liberation” (Kelley 198).
In this concluding chapter, Robin Kelley proposes his Freedom Dream about a group of poets who transform the world:

It was a long dream to be sure, a fantastic, futuristic tale of a group of “Maroon poets” who transform a local struggle over police brutality into a full-fledged revolution rooted in love, creativity, and cooperation over the course of seven hundred years. In my dream, it took thirty generations of poets, surviving and creating in the “liberated zones” of North America’s ghettos, to build a cooperative world without wages or money. (Kelley 195)

This vision has become central to my work as a writer, a performance poet, and as an educator.
In the “Outro” of Growing Up Hip-Hop, I present some of these visions and the impact they have on our waking dreams6:

Our visions keep us living on the edge: a hundred foot tidal wave crashing against the New York City skyline; dark-cloaked figures on horseback galloping out of the clouds to smite all sinners leaving only forty-four hundred righteous souls behind; a bearded child Allah unleashing an atomic mushroom cloud with radioactive waves rippling and ripping through flesh and concrete. These visions haunt our waking moments. These visions hold our dreams hostage. (almustafa 112)

This passage ends the book with the question, “What vision informs your world?”
In my performances, I invite people to share their visions. In my multi-media show, “Growing Up Hip-Hop: Plugged-In7,” audience members were given yellow cards asking them to make a VISION STATEMENT:

Hip-Hop has protested, resisted and fought. We know what we are ready to die for. What are we ready to live for?

Write down your vision for the world. One of my visions is a world where elders are respected. Make sure not to state your vision in the negative. For example “a world where elders are not disrespected” is an example of stating my vision in the negative.

My vision is . . .

These cards were given to me and some of them were read during the conclusion of the show. Here are some of these visions:

My vision is . . . a world where there are no more “rich” or “poor” countries but global economic justice!

My vision is . . . a world where the voices, rights and the visions of the most vulnerable are valued equally.

My vision is . . . a world with more empathy; realizing that people everywhere are more similar than we assume.

My vision is . . . a world where women can speak, walk, talk and choose fearlessly.

My vision is . . . a world where children can grow up to be what they wish to be.

My vision is . . . a world where teachers get paid more than lawyers and artists run shit!

My vision is . . . a world where we honor and recognize the divinity in each other; where we are able to forgive and be fully present, valuing love, the world where we live in and live sustainably. Love!

My hope was that people would be able to see how much hope we have in the world, both individually and collectively. Both shows left me with a sense of hope and hopefully left the audience members feeling similar to the way Wendy Kahn described in her feedback form, “You make me feel that there is hope in all the disaster.”
While presenting poems from my collection of 100 poems in the first 100 days of Obama’s presidency, I invite people to share their visions through poetry. During Living Room Readings, hosts invite their family and friends to gather for poetry and dialogue. The dialogue is highly tenuous. At some point, I give the guests blown-up copies of Barack Obama’s Inauguration Speech, scissors, glue, construction paper and ask them to write Remix Poems. Participants of all ages immediately focus in. After the compose their poems, they read them to the group and the overall tone is one of hope and possibility. Here are three examples of “Barack Obama Inauguration Speech Remix Poems”:

1.
prepare America
mindful by the task and raging storms
promises, bestowed,
sacrifices inevitable,
new age energy for planet
challenges profound dogmas, ideals
confidence spoken during the trust generation
purpose
chosen hope   That we gather
unity

2.
its our job
to harness the soil
sun the winds
transform child woman, and man,
and see friend rather than fuel
to seek a future of peace and
selflessness

3.
heroes today, fallen through the ages.
define a generation of service;

the spirit just as the kindness to
guardians of our liberty,
whisper and honor them

This visionary poetry transforms the reading and moves the conversations to possibilities.
I also ask my students to share their visions. Often when I enter a classroom, I read my poem, “I Musta’ Fit the Description.” This poem, inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes, uses the common police description “Five foot, ten, male, African-American” to express my frustration with being perceived as a criminal. This poem concludes with a vision I had for myself when I was fifteen years old:

I don’t see myself that way
when I look at my reflection.
I see myself in a different way
fittin’ another description.
A doctor, lawyer, scientist, astronaut, or engineer.
A poet, author, singer, or maybe a multimillionaire.
That’s the description that I’m fittin’ in.
Five foot ten, male, African-American.

Through this poem I invite these young people to make declarations about themselves. I give them an “I Am” prompt to write their own original poetry. When I give them this activity, I ask them to make sure they include their vision of themselves. An excellent example of a student presenting a vision of herself is this poem by Rontreisha Jones:

I Am the pen to your paper
Scribbling words of knowledge.
I Am the tissue for your tears
Wiping away the pain and sorrow.
I Am the rock that cannot be broken
Standing tall and proud I will
Rise above the rest.

I Am not just an image in a mirror,
When you walk past you won’t see.
I Will Not be a disconnected phone,
Where you can’t hear my thoughts
and ideas.

I Am the red in a mist of blues,
I Am the voice to a mute city,
I Am the sunshine to a shadowed town,
I Am the cute little Gucci bag
That goes with everything you wear.

I Am not just some rug that you walk on
or an old pair of jeans that you
think went out of style,
and I will
Most definitely not be just some
Speck on your wool sweater

We are alike, you and I,
but right now you don’t see.
And one day you and I will become a we and be the
United one in a society of 2’s.

Rontreisha, a twelve year-old student in seventh grade at the time she wrote this poem, shows a vision of herself as unique and significant. Lines such as “I Am not just some rug that you walk on,” and “I Will Not be a disconnected phone,” shows that Rontreisha is sensitive to the potential to be discounted and disregarded in the world. In this poem, she declares a powerful vision of herself.
In addition to speaking about individual visions with my students, I invite them to share visions for society. To model this, I share a poem called, “Burn.” Here are two stanzas from this poem:

i want to break the heels off of little girls’ shoes
make beats out of the skipping of double-dutch ropes
and hand-claps from hand-games
so little girls could scream their rhymes out loud
standing shoulder to shoulder to shoulders
make a new genre of music called
“Shoot, little girls got something to say too, stoopid”

i want to give every brother on every block
the biggest box of crayons
make their Plain White Tees their lives
so they could stretch them across the concrete
and color beautiful murals on them
fresh clean tees would be three for five
and whenever they got dirty
they could wash them out in their mamma’s sinks
and then hang them to dry across telephone wires (almustafa 89)

These stanzas share some of my visions for society.
In a recent poetry residency at Renaissance Charter School, Eight Grade English Language Arts Teacher, Miyo Tubridy, gave her students an exercise to decipher these visions. The students were instructed to break up into groups of three to four students per group, articulate what they think is the message of the poem, and draw images reflecting the poem. For this first stanza, a group of students said the message of the poem is that the author wants young girls to act their age and believes that all young girls should have the right to be independent and express themselves. Another group created explained the message of the second stanza by equating the “Plain White T-shirt” as “Life,” the “Colored White T-shirt” “Living Life Uniquely,” the “Dirty White T-shirt” as “Life Changes,” and another “Plain White T-shirt” as “Life starts over again.” This exploration into the vision captured in a poem was a way to model the way these students could use language to explore and share their visions.
As always in poetry workshops, this process leads into the students sharing their own writing. Some of the most powerful examples of student visions are classmates of the previously mentioned student, Rontreisha Jones. They speak powerfully about imagining a different world. The first poet, David Velazquez, wrote a rhythmic vision of a peaceful world which concludes:

With peace, the world’s a better place, so you better remember to embrace.

No more blood-shedded tears,
No more fighting with our peers,
No more living with fear.
Peace should start here!15

This simple vision of a peaceful world, without conflict and fear was inspiring to the entire class.
Another classmate, Ronjini Hassan puts forth a powerful vision of a world where women are respected, independent and empowered in her poem entitled, “Speak.” In this poem, she says, “We [women] will be the foremothers of our world.” Ronjini elaborates on her vision of this women-led world in sixth stanza:

A new way of life,
Starting with us leading the country,
From the hearts of the female body
And our preaching will not shine upon
How to clean the grease off your dishes,
But how to clean the grease of discrimination off our world.16

She concludes this poem by saying, “We are. . .ready. . .to speak. . .”
It is no coincidence that two other student in the class who spoke up her young girls. Two of the most powerful visions issued forth were by two of the quietest female students, Katarina Begonja and Elizabeth Darsan. Katarina, who poetic coming out was reflected by her hair which increasingly move from in front of her face, wrote a poem visioning a new society entitled “New Chapter.” Her vision of the future is a classic multi-racial society where “Every kid is playing with someone else,/Blacks, whites, yellows and the rest,” She gives a vision for her to arrive at this new chapter, concluding with “the last page,” “a plain white page,” with a message written like fine print on moving society forward:

Why make the mistakes of so long ago?
Why repeat the past?
If we could flip a page, start a new chapter,
If we have that power,
Then why don’t we use it?

Katarina visions a process where we look at the mistakes of the past as a roadmap to visioning this new society.
Elizabeth Darsan’s poem “As of Yet Untitled,” is the final poem in the student’s anthology. Elizabeth was a soft-spoken student who never shared her poem out loud. One day, her classmate, Eva Islam, a strong student who previously was chosen as an alternate for the class Slam Team, said to me, “Elizabeth has a really good poem I think she should share.” When I asked Elizabeth if she wanted to share her poem, she barely looked up and did not even open her lips as she nodded her head, “yes.” When it was her turn to perform, Elizabeth stood up, keeping her body narrow and confined, her arms to her side. The moment she began speaking, she thrust the top half of her body forward with her arms and hands animated and began speaking in a booming voice, “America, the land of the free/But if everyone is not free/Why give America that heavenly title?” Elizabeth was visibly upset in her delivery and the student’s responded with intense intrigue.
This poem was Elizabeth’s response to the Social Commentary assignment. She was upset with recent immigration reforms and believed this was in contradiction with the American moniker, “America, the land of the immigrants.” She asks the question, “Who are we to be SO selfish to hog America for ourselves?” As Elizabeth read the poem, the passion of her performance increased, to the final line, “So as of yet, America, you are untitled,” receiving a standing ovation by her classmates. In this poem, “untitled,” was the blank page in the new chapter, the Plain White Tee, the blank canvas for us to begin our visioning.
What world is possible if we take the space to vision? I invite you to take notice of the different messages you receive and the visions for the future encoded in them. I invite you to consider the visions which inform your world, which inspire you to fulfill on your goals, passions and purposes. How and who do you share them with? What future vision would you share with the world?

This article was created for my Goddard College MFA Interdisciplinary Arts degree portfolio.

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