Art and Revolution

"Oakland is Baby Baghdad and Richmond is little Falujah"-Poet Dre

Last night, I attended my first "Poetry Slam". It was held in a little restaurant in Downtown Oakland called "The Oasis". I was there to hear the featured poet, Drew Dellinger who I have grown to admire after attending a couple of his lectures at the Sophia Center, but I discovered a really cool side effect of going to Drew's gigs: Exposure to other poets.

One of the contestants at last nights slam was a guy named Dre. I don't know anything else about him, not even his last name, only that he is a hell of a poet. I found myself deeply moved by his words. They were a potent mixture of rage and grief that struck deep into the seminal places of my consciousness, that is to say the very heart of right and wrong, of good and evil, of just and unjust.

"We end each conversation with 'Be safe' and 'I love you' because we know where we're at" was a line that hit like a devastating blow. I could think of nothing else as I rode the BART home. It kept racing through my mind like a runner in a never ending 440 dash. I reflected on youth that should have their whole lives in front of them but they are not sure they will live to see another sunset for no other reason then the neighborhood they live in.

Now, I freely admit that I am a child of privilege. I'm white, middle class and educated. The system works for me and it has treated me well, but nothing bitters the sweet taste of prosperity like a look at the price tag. "Be safe and "I love you" is sticker shock of the first magnitude.

I cannot truthfully claim any great insight into the life of American, urban youth of color, at least not from personal experience anyway, but I have lived my whole life in the East Bay, most of that in Richmond and I have eyes. I see these kids everyday. I see them in the market and on the bus and on BART. I see them hanging out and walking to school. I've seen crowds of them filing out of funeral parlors as they bury yet another friend or cousin or sibling. You can feel the grief and the hopelessness is palpable. The wrenching brew of rage and sadness is right there in front of you, right there in there eyes if you only take a minute away from obsessing on your own trials and look. Look and listen, you will be disturbed by what you see and hear. Violence, especially gun violence, is a fact of life for these kids, and it is a way of life for far too many. Each one is all too aware that there is a strong possibility that there future is an early grave or a prison cell. It doesn't matter who you are or how hard you try, you might meet your end just standing on the wrong street corner or picking up a quart of milk for your baby sister or even in the school yard. Life is full of dangers and risks but for these children, the risks are exponentially higher then almost any other segment of the population, that they will meet a violent death. With that in mind, the sense of fatalism that is so much a part of these kids thinking is pretty understandable.

It's no great mystery why this is. It doesn't take any particular genius to see the inequalities of our culture. The global capitalist industrial economy, by it's very nature, is based on exploitation where the "haves" use the "have nots" as fodder and fuel for the system. At first it was in agriculture and industry. The poor, primarily people of color but also immigrant Europeans were exploited as labor. Soon the great industrial behemoth that was once the USA faded to a shadow of it's former self. Jobs were outsourced overseas and opportunities have become more and more restricted to the ruling elite.

The black and the brown have ceased to be a labor pool, with the exception of the military and the police, and have become the raw material for a new industry: the prison industrial complex.

Prisons are a growth industry in the US and is becoming more and more privatized. Huge profits are made by contractors, institutional caterers and even entire prisons run by profit making enterprises. In California, the Correctional Peace Officers Association is a king maker in state government. Nobody can expected to elected to high office without there blessing.

The prison industrial complex can be seen as a wealth creating process. Young people on the bottom of the social scale, who are not inclined to military service, are processed through the system over and over again through incarceration, re-offending and re-incarceration. This is made acceptable to the middle class through the use of institutionalized racism. Working people are much easier to control when divided along race lines and taught to despise each other. It would be tough to prove that a conspiracy actually exists but it sure works out well for the ruling elite. It also works out well if these oppressed people commit crimes against each other. After all, that's what marginalized communities tend to do any way, turn on themselves. The problem is that if you want to keep a people in a sewer, somebody had to climb into that sewer to make them stay. When injustice is inflicted on one community then society as a whole is poorer for it.

So what does that leave us? It leaves us with the intentional neglect of youth, the exploitation of immigrants, a pervading sense of hopelessness in the neighborhoods and carnage on the streets While this poverty and exploitation rages on in the cities, the denizens of salons and country clubs of the suburbs get fat on the wealth created by this injustice.

One miscalculation of the oppressors is an underestimation of the intelligence of urban youth. They see whats happening to them and they have a good idea who's behind it, and they are not going to take it lying down forever. In clubs, in galleries, on street corners they protest through art.

So there I was, the oldest person in the room by at least twenty years and a product of the white middle class to boot. Was I nervous? Actually no. Firstly, I was warmly greeted and made to feel welcome from the minute I walked into the joint. I sucked down a couple of Red Stripes which added to my festive mood. Mostly I got the feeling that these young people all had had a stomach full of violence and were done with it. This shows their wisdom as violent revolution results in more exploitation and a destroyed society that will take years to rebuild. Peaceful resistance is the "neutron bomb" of societal change. It destroys the structure of oppression and leaves the people. standing. I also felt shielded from the anger and hatred that is the neo-conservative right that is flooding into our institutions and rotting our leadership. I was able to take comfort in peaceful non-violent resistance which is the only truly effective weapon that the progressive forces of change possess.

I am thankful that there are such dynamic and talented young people to carry on this struggle. It was a joy to witness it last night.