The Poetics of Solidarity: A Justice Poetry Jam
David Mura
This dynamic keynote poetry jam invites us to be ground in movement, memory, and meaning. Emceed by Kyle Tran Myhre, this session features powerful spoken word performances by Ed Bok Lee, Diego Vasquez Jr., Nimo Farah, Tish Jones, Cydi InLights, and Bobby Dues. Through poetry, these artists illuminate the realities of justice work and call us to reflect, feel and act with courage and care.
Tonya Allen, President, McKnight Foundation
We’re at a tipping point, said Tonya Allen. The crises are no longer abstract; we’ve seen attacks on freedom of speech, the NEA, NIH, etc. This is the time artists go to work. There is no time for despair, for self-pity. Artists are light seekers, builders, activists, organizers; they unlock and create new ways of thinking and help us reframe complex issues and open up to new possibilities. There is no better time for us to be investing, celebrating, uplifting and creating platforms for artists than today.
Artists contribute 13. 7 billion dollars to the Minnesota economy, 90,000 jobs. When a cultural center was built at New York Mills, MN, it brought jobs and new businesses.
Bao Phi, McKnight Foundation
Rather than a traditional keynote, we invited six poets and community organizers to read their work.
Bobby Dues
Bobby has appeared on FX, Reservation Dogs, and is part of the 1491 comedy troupe. He started off by saying, “I’ll be your land acknowledgement.”
The premise of his poem was, If I die under the policeman’s boot, “please record that shit.” And the poem went on to list some of the ways people now engage in political protest, and there was more than a strain of satire in his lampooning of social media activists. “Do we not remember history and the countless repeated mistakes? The insatiable need to be superior …. we teach nature is a mirror…”
I talked to Bobby afterwards and he says he’s been making his living as a comedian these past ten years. On hearing this, I the blogger had this thought: Perhaps there needs to be more work in fostering comedians from marginalized communities. Unlike theater, comedy has lower costs, and yet more and more comics from marginalized communities are making their mark on our culture, and once an artist makes a name in comedy, other opportunities begin to crop up for them. Bobby also echoed Michael Palimieri’s proposal for a network connecting Indigenous mentorship and performing organizations.
Ed Bok Lee
Ed said his poem was written after the killing of Mn. Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband and the shooting of Mn. Senator Hoffman and his wife, and the killings at the Ascencion Church in Minneapolis. He lives near Ascension and his poem was dedicated to one of the boys who were killed. His poem focused on the kindness of neighbors and the small acts of activism that embody love and caring.
“I have a friend who in her spart time bakes muffins, scones delivers them to workers on strike… ….two state legislators shot in their pajamas….old neighbor Duane, clears snow off everyone’s snow on the block, his defense against the slum lord across the way…some people are like the wind sweeping up the leaves….
every tree has a face and on every last gravestone there is no time or space for race. And the highest class is kindness. It’s okay to bake for strikes, to clear walks….
my daughter’s teacher hangs a rainbow flag over their family’s front door….a rainbow is not just a symbol but a visitation….”
Cydi Inlights performing
Cydi Inlights
Cydi read with a drummer a poem about the present political climate.
Nimo Farah
Nimo decided not to read her long poem on the murder of George Floyd. Instead she asked the question, “How do we do better?”
Diego Vasquez Jr.
Diego’s poem was about a trip across the border in the 1970’s and how much easier it was back then to cross the border compared to the present. At that time, the border guards would just ask your nationality, but on the way back to El Paso from Juarez where he and his friends bought mangoes and liquor, Diega said, when asked his nationality, “Chicano born in Chicago” and the border guard stopped them. The guards searched the car and took away their mangoes and booze they had bought, and they only got through when another agent said Chicago is in the US. Afterwards his friends in the car complained about the lost booze: “Next time you declare yourself at the border as Chicano, let us know!”
Tish Jones
Tish Jones read a poem about remembering the murder of George Floyds and the demonstrations in the Twin Cities that took place five years ago:
“Five years since…zip ties and night raids, militia blockades and our bodies on display in all ways brown and brutalized…..wanting justice still…..do you still rub where the rubber bullet hit? How do you frame Somali youth in Minneapolis?....targeted by shooting of peaceful protests and tear gas rolling through the streets?….I wonder how many of us are still back there in need of a gentle touch….Did you go to the square after Chauvin robbed George Floyd of his breat..….we can’t talk about antiblackness Palestine Congo …did you go to any protests, ever go to the third world and wonder who’s on first and why? …..what didn’t affect you is at your door without a badge about to snatch you from home. You think you have rights five years since the murder of George Floyd…. five years since …and I still don’t know quite what to say or how to pin it, I don’t know what invitation or call to make action…I know we must do something…I do have questions…Hope you ask them too….Five years since”
The link included is to Tish Jones reading her poem “Five Years Since” about the murder of George Floyd and the reaction of the community to that murder and the issues surrounding the police in Minneapolis.
“This reading and the poets reflect the diversity of the Twin Cities and the Twin Cities art scene. Many still think of the Twin Cities and Minnesota as the Land of Lake Wobegon or Mary Tyler Moore, but the cities are incredibly diverse. My children went to a high school that was 20% Native American, 20% Latinx, 20% Black and East African, 10% Asian and 40% white. The artists from the various communities here are very connected to each other and this is especially true of the poets and writers. For a sampling of this diversity, take a look at We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World, an anthology of MN BIPOC writers that I and Carolyn Holbrook edited and A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, an anthology of essays by BIPOC writers edited by the Mpls. poet Sun Yung Shin. For various reasons, the artists in the Twin Cities, especially the BIPOC artists, see their work as aligned with activism and social justice, and so many of us were affected and spoke out against and wrote about the police murders of Philando Castile, George Floyd and Dante Wright. ”
