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 twenty-fifth 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.
what is war but the forgetting of names? the way a mother’s face fades in the smoke, the way children become echoes before they’re old enough to know the sound of their own laughter.
we’ve lost too many to the silence, to the graves dug by hands that should’ve been holding, cradling, lifting life instead of burying it deep. in Gaza, the air is thick with the ghosts of what could have been, their whispers a constant reminder— we were once whole, once unbroken, once more than this.
and what of the hostages, trapped in the heart of a storm not of their making, their names held captive in mouths that have forgotten how to speak anything but hate? bring them home, bring them to the light that still remembers the warmth of peace, the way hope can rise like dawn after the longest night.
we are tired of forgetting, tired of watching the earth swallow our futures whole, tired of the killing, the endless rewriting of histories with blood. it’s time— time to remember what it means to breathe without fear, time to remember that every life, every name, is a thread in the tapestry we’ve been unraveling too long.
let the ceasefire be our remembering, the moment we stop the bleeding, stop the erasing, and start stitching together a world where we no longer forget, where every name is spoken with love, with the memory of peace, with the promise of never forgetting again.
©️MustafaSantiagoAli
#Poetry #DNC2024 #KamalaHarris #CEASEFIRE_NOW