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 48th 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.
today a man with the power to undo murder wakes up, stretches his hands, sips coffee. i wonder if he’s thinking about marcellus.
wonder if he’s got god’s voice in his ear, whispering: *you could save a life today.* you could let a mother’s heart stay whole, let a daughter have a father to walk her down the aisle, let a man live to see another sun.
somewhere in Missouri, justice is folding itself up into a blade— ready to slice a name into the books of the dead. somewhere else, a black man’s breath is counting the seconds left, his body wondering what it did to deserve this end.
we know the math of this country, how it adds up black skin to a number, a statistic, how guilt is the only color they see when a black man walks into a courtroom.
this state loves a good lynching— doesn’t care if the noose is a needle, a chair, or a lie told over and over again.
how many men have we buried to find out later they were innocent? how many ghosts come back to haunt us, pointing fingers, asking why their truth wasn’t good enough to save them?
it’s not just the innocent who die, but every black boy who learns he could be next, every black girl who watches her brother leave the house, prays he doesn’t end up a memory.
& somewhere in the governor’s office, a pen waits to be mercy, to be the thing that turns the clock back, says *not today, not this man.*
it’s not hard to do good, Mike. just stop the killing.
stop making black mothers cry into the night. stop adding bodies to the ground when we know the truth won’t let us sleep.
today, you could be the reason we believe in justice again, the reason we see marcellus walk out of that cell alive,
the reason his name doesn’t end in blood, but in laughter, in family, in freedom.
governor, this is your chance to be the man who chose life, who let hope win, who said no to the blade when the blade wanted to sing.
don’t let us bury another black man who didn’t deserve to die, don’t let us look back in shame because you had the power to save him & did nothing.
be the one who remembers how precious breath is, who knows a life can be spared,
who knows that when you have the power to save a man’s life, you save it.
©️MustafaSantiagoAli
#Poetry #ProudBlue #Resister #GovernorMikeParson #MarcellusWilliams @innocence #Marcellus #Justice