Mustafa Santiago Ali
Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali is the Executive Vice President of Conservation & Justice for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), former Interim Chief of Programs at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and Instructor at American University. He is the Founder and CEO of Revitalization Strategies. He also serves as a commissioner for The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). He is an award-winning writer and poet focused on social justice. Dr. Ali is frequently seen on television, including appearances on MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, VICE, FUSE, BET, National Geographic, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and Democracy NOW! Mustafa is also a regular guest on Roland Martin Unfiltered, Black News Channel, Tavis Smiley Show, The Dean Obeidallah Show, and many others…
Editor's Note: This poem is the 93rd in our Democracy and Hope Series. This series will highlight hopeful aspects about our Democracy using various genres including poems, interviews, short stories, and articles about political events
america loves its ghosts / loves the bones it’s buried deep enough to forget / loves the erasers that leave us out of the sky. but the #Tuskegee men made the air their altar, every flight a sermon / every wing a psalm / every mission proof that Black ain’t just magic— it’s science / it’s skill / it’s strategy in the face of spit & sabotage.
they said: be twice as good / so we gave them infinity. be grateful / so we turned gratitude into rebellion. sit back down / so we rewrote gravity, carved a new language into the clouds.
america needed us / needed our bodies to hold its contradictions, needed our hands to steer its contradictions, needed our silence / but we flew too loud.
we climbed higher than their doubt, our legacy too big to fit in their textbooks, our names too sharp to fade. they tried to clip our wings, but they forgot: Black flight is eternal. we rise above their hate / above their fear / above the trembling earth that still refuses to see itself.
call us impossible. call us prophecy. call us the sky’s revenge. we are the red-tailed truth america will never outrun, and still, we rise.
©️MustafaSantiagoAli
#Poetry #Heroes #BlackExcellence #AmericanHistory #ProudBlue #WWII #Resister