Remember This

First they came for the people of Turtle Island

who were at one with the land.

Few spoke up for the protectors who fought back.

Then they came for the Africans, 

the soil and songs of home still on their tongues,

and they chained the resisters, for centuries.

Then they called in Chinese laborers

to tunnel through mountains. Defying the dream

of connection, coast to coast, laborers staged

the largest strike of a generation.

And then they created quotas: “America for Americans,”

welcoming only those so white their skin shined,

to a “Land of Opportunity.”

Then they turned a deaf ear to news of atrocities

against the Jews of Europe. Abandoned by the world,

Jews persevered to save their own from inevitable death.

They turned a blind eye to “others” deemed

“unworthy of life”— the Roma, “deviants,”

the mentally frail, audacious partisans: burned.

Then they herded citizens of Japanese descent,

most born here, into internment camps surrounded 

by barbed wire and guard towers;  

Then greed and fear of the loss of dominance, 

“America for Americans” continued

to distort the rule of law:

Then they walled the border against asylum-seekers,

ripped children from their parents’ arms, 

caged, and lost count of them.

And then we named the plagues: addiction, eugenics, 

homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, 

human trafficking, lynching, mass incarceration, 

patriarchy, poverty, racism, violence against women 

and Mother Earth.

And now we praise the strength of those scorned

and silenced, and speak of the beauty, unbroken,

and the valor within their stories.

Judy Dow and Verandah Porche

2020