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 15th 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
— We were warned. Told in the shadows, in whispered truths that felt like myth, they said freedom can fracture, slip right through the teeth of grinning men, who sharpen laws like knives, who claim to know life better than the ones who breathe it, the ones who bear its weight and wonder.
We were warned that hands might reach into the flesh of our futures, wring out choice until it was dry as forgotten history, leave wombs to ache, choices wrapped in chains, voices locked in the quiet.
And here we stand, hollow with disbelief, as the clock turns back and back again, laws clawing at the spine of our freedom, hands too rough and foreign to cradle what it is to hold life, to shape it.
The clinics close, whispers become screams. Lives lost in secret halls, back alleys of desperation where hope once flickered, women’s bodies turned battlegrounds in a war we thought we’d won.
The blood is fresh, the soil uneasy, memories of choice slipping through cracks, as if they never existed, as if we weren’t here to claim them. They warned us, we let our ears drift closed, thinking nightmares can’t breathe.
But here we are, the cold sting of reality on our skin, facing a reckoning, a chance to claim what belongs to us still. This is only a nightmare if we let it remain so, still and silent.
Wake, rise, let your voice fill the ballot like thunder— for this only has to be a nightmare if you don’t vote.
©️MustafaSantiagoAli
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