White hoods

Confederate flags

Burning crosses

Callin’ us “fags”

Vicious and violent

Even if they can’t reach us.

But we don’t stand a chance

If those who could help don’t show up,

Speak up, Reach out for us.

Even then, when the streets

Are cleared of new bodies and fresh blood

We will march and we’ll scream

For the chance of a new world.

The proud and the bold

Speaking just to stand out

We unite as a unit

But not as a country.

We are the young and the free

Against those who would oppress us.

And those who would oppress us

Claim to be those who would educate us,

Foster us, claim us, save us

From our ignorance and stupidity.

We are “snowflakes” in the sweltering summer

Struggling against the heat of being silenced.

But we will not go quietly into the night.

Not when Flint, Michigan suffers a health crisis

Or our black youth go home in caskets

When they should be sent to higher classes.

The white supremacist of the new age

Raises a bible and a fist

Instead of a burning cross and a noose

They don’t even hide,

See, they’re proud of their creed.

And who are their enablers?

Would the President-elect come on and please stand up?

And all the others who follow him

Bowing to the orange calf cast in gold

Our America is one of diversity,

Of freedom, of opportunity.

And try as you might to rage against the storm

Winter is coming.

The “snowflakes” you would blame

For all the problems you have

Are an avalanche when amassed to become

The phalanx you never had.

When our Mexican fathers and mothers

Are severed from their families

No human is illegal and we will fight for them still.

When our planet is being leached

Of its natural resources,

The pap of life, our only blood and air

And the bodies of our Native elders

Float in rivers of oil and cold, hard, cash

We will not stay silent. We will show up, we will pay the price

To see that our nation is not taken by greed,

By hatred, intolerance, and fear of the “other”.

The white man’s legacy carries 500 years

Of slavery and bloodshed

And a supremacy complex.

The festering European footprint

And the wounds it has caused on the world

Have yet to be healed.

Especially in this land,

The one we call home,

As we paint our faces red, white, and blue

Under the shadow of a soaring eagle.

Built atop a palace of bones of

Navajo, Sioux, and Cherokee,

And on the backs of our genetic ancestors

From Botswana, Nigeria, and Chad

The roots of America’s family tree

Were fed from the blood of numerous wars

All to prove that we are who we say

And we will not back down even when it’s wrong.

I get paid 56 cents for the dollar a white man will earn

For the same job, same clothes, same duties and chores

And I’ll likely get raped before I’m 21.

Our breast-grabbing commander-in-chief

Would like to pretend it’s not true

But, of course wouldn’t every man?

He probably knows one of you.

I was born legally American

But not what you would call that

See, I’m brown, not white, and bilingual to boast

And I get rights called privileges that the rest of my family can’t host

Just because of a signature on a document I didn’t sign

On my birth certificate saying “she’s a citizen”

But it’s not a crime to be born someplace else

When will this so-called “great nation” learn

Its most brilliant minds were all foreign-born?

Your Tesla, your Einstein, your Madam Curie

All part of a worldwide pan-ethnic tapestry

But still, we exclude, and we shun and we brag

Our whiteness is what makes us better, our American-ness,

Still magnificently managing to miss the point

Of what a truly great nation should aspire to be.

Until this blood-money corporation

That attacks countries in the Middle East

Learns that a hijab is a symbol of peace

And that all races, religions, and creeds of this world

Belong in a place they shouldn’t have to be afraid,

This country will continue to be

An opportunity missed

Never learning from its mistakes

An empire destined to fall.

America the great?

Try, America the late.

Too late on civil rights, labor laws and universal healthcare

Things that the happiest countries in the world

Never had a problem to share.

Until racial wounds that never healed

Are not reopened just as they begin to scar

Until we understand that our poor citizens

Are brothers and sisters just like we are

This nation will remain a hollow shell of what it claims to be.

Our maxims are but words, our principles cheesy

The original sin of slavery continues to stain our legacy

And to stagnate our progress

And to prove that we’ll never learn

Our national leader is a dunce

Right after a great man we’d never accept

Because of his ebony-colored suit.

Until we finally learn this country does not belong to a single group

We will continue to fail to live up to our name.

For a country this divided

Cannot claim to be united.