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 12th in our Democracy and Peril Series. This series will highlight hopeful aspects about our Democracy using various genres including poems, interviews, short stories, and articles about political events.
they call it a plan— a blueprint for futures where breath is a privilege, where lead paints the tongues of our babies, where water shatters the glass of a mother’s hope, say sacrifice your skin to the altar of profit, your lungs to the black smoke & rising tide, say wealth is a wall to keep you out, say lay down your land for their bulldozers & broken dreams.
tell me how a suit can slit the throat of tomorrow, how a dollar can buy the silence of a child’s cough— they don’t see us, just the land we stand on, don’t know us, just the price of our breath, say life’s only sacred if it’s framed in stock photos & their ledgers show green, say the earth’s theirs to burn but tell that to the flames.
what’s it to lose another city to the flood, to watch fire swallow the green from the maps of our memories, what’s it to swallow the ash of a future you fought for? to be told you don’t exist in their America, that your voice is a ghost haunting their pristine dreams?
but we rise, like breath after drowning, like seeds breaking the soil’s hard silence, we rise, say no, say not this time, say we remember when air was sweet, when rivers carried the songs of our ancestors, say we are the dirt you cannot uproot, the sun you can’t dim, say this world belongs to us too, say we are not your sacrifice, say we choose life in every color, say we choose the fight over the dying.
we say we ain’t going back, won’t let our children sip poison, won’t let our lands cry alone, we say we the people are the promise of something brighter, say this land is ours to heal, ours to love, ours to defend with breath and bone, say our future is something you can’t steal, say we will rise, roots deep, voices louder, we will rise with this earth & make the future ours.
©️MustagaSantiagoAli
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