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 67th 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
grandfather wore calluses like medals, each scar a sermon, each crack a protest, hands that hammered out a living, carved futures deep in coal-black veins, slick with sweat, a symphony of work boots & grease-stained palms, & every bruise whispered union, every ache was a prayer answered in solidarity.
my father, too, was a man who believed in the gospel of the lunch pail, the strength of collective voices rising like smoke signals above smokestacks. he’d come home late, smelling of steel & purpose, taught me to see the muscle behind every movement, taught me the poetry in a picket line, taught me that standing together was an anthem the walls could never silence.
& mama—she was a union woman through & through, held her head high in a world that tried to shrink her, told me, baby, this ain’t just a job, it’s a legacy, said, every sweat-soaked shift is a promise, each paycheck a testament that dignity belongs here too. she worked her hands raw but kept her soul clean, lifted up the unseen, gave breath to the unheard, her voice a bridge to futures not yet born, her vote a seed sown for tomorrow’s sun.
& then there was me, born with ink under my skin, carrying the weight of their battles in my bones, raised on stories of strikes & shut-downs, of fists raised high in the face of profit margins. they said, boy, a union ain’t just a job; it’s a promise that no one stands alone.
so here I stand, third in a line of men and women who knew the worth of their worth, who saw dignity not as charity but as currency. they taught me that power isn’t owned—it’s shared, that justice is an open door, not a fortress to be guarded by suits in high towers.
& when we say union strong, we mean all of us— the janitors, the truckers, the teachers, the clerks— this isn’t a club or a closed door; it’s a foundation we lay brick by brick so everyone can walk across, so even the quiet ones can roar.
there’s a heartbeat in this work, in the sweat & the struggle, in the unity forged by people who believe in more than themselves. because union strong means the whole damn village rises, means every child sees a table they can sit at, means the air tastes cleaner, the pay a little fairer, means this country isn’t just soil but promise, means we are better together than apart.
so yeah, my grandfather, my father, my mother & now me— we’re union, & there’s pride in that, in knowing we built something that lasts in our hands, in our voices, in our name, an inheritance of grit & grace, passed down like legacy.
so i’ll walk in their steps, carve a road wide enough for us all to follow, lifting each voice until the echoes turn to thunder, until the quiet gets loud, until the invisible becomes seen, until union strong means we all rise, every single one of us, better than before, and so we vote.
we vote, not just to protect what we’ve built but to expand it, to invite every hand, every soul, into a future where we all rise, union-strong, a foundation deep enough to hold us all— so when we vote, we vote for the ones coming after, we cast our ballots like seeds, like prayers, for a world they’ll inherit, a world built with care.
©️MustafaSantiagoAli
#Poetry #UnionStrong #ProudBlue #DemVoice1 #KamalaHarris #IRA #Infrastructure #CleanEconomy #CleanPorts #ClimateActionNow #Jobs #StrongEconomy #vote