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 36th 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.
to be loud in a room that calls us quiet, to braid joy into the ends of our tongues, to hold each other like the world is always ending but we keep waking up alive.
It’s ok to love the thick of us, to praise the way we wear spirit like it’s a second skin, like it’s been ours since the first sun split the sky open, our names threaded through the heavens, each syllable a gospel, a sermon on Black love’s resurrection.
They want our love to be a whisper, a soft yes, a nod without teeth, without thunder— but we got God in our laughter, a choir in the way our mothers hum, the holy communion of Black hands clasped together, each touch a prayer wrapped in melanin and miracles.
It’s ok to love the way we rise, how we are the aftermath of every broken thing, how we are the children of survival, the proof that joy can grow in the roughest soil, that we can call each other brother, sister, kin and know the weight of that word is a home we never left.
Love is us, refusing to disappear, is the way we two-step through grief, the slow dance with pain we’ve made a tradition but still find room for laughter in our blood, still make space for the ones who need a shoulder, a corner to breathe in, a corner to grieve in.
It’s ok for Black people to love Black people— to hold our history and say, yes, this is ours, to be the fire and the warmth, to pass the light down in songs and screams, to see the beauty in each other’s scars and call it holy, call it necessary, call it home.
We are the sun that won’t go down, the stars that refuse to dim, we are each other’s saving grace, the sanctuary in a world that wants us gone.
We are the love that grows wild, unpruned, untamed, a garden that don’t need permission to bloom, a revolution wrapped in the simple act of saying I love you, and I mean it, and I’m not ashamed. We are the light that never asks to shine, and it’s ok— it’s more than ok— to love ourselves this big, this loud, this Black, this now.
©️MustafaSantiagoAli
#Poetry #Culture #BlackLove #Joy #Healing #Thriving