Protest in a Time of Pandemic

by Jeff Kowalsky

source

Bear with me. I want to tell you something about how my inner being resists and rejects the racism, hatred and division coming at me on the news, encouraged by someone placed in a position of leadership who is not equipped intellectually or morally to lead. I want to tell you how many decades I have spent writing about and protesting for civil rights, African American rights, Indigenous rights, women’s rights, immigration rights, animal rights, gun control, environmental change and the rights of the creatures on Mother Earth to survival and a clean climate.

by Jeff Kowalsky

source

How do I get inside this topic and peel away the layers so you, too, can feel my outrage when I see people in Ku Klux Klan costumes openly marching? Men with American flags and assault weapons yelling their rage on State capital steps? A person in high office making inflammatory statements instead of leading with calmness and grace, taking us all down a slippery slope?

How do I come up with words strong enough to ease the pain in my heart, that will help open eyes and inspire change? How do I pick one thing, when so much needs to be transformed, starting with us?

Poets are prophets; we are the canaries in the mines. How do we open the doors, squeeze through the bars, Just Say No to the devastation happening everywhere?

In the time of the pandemic, so much else gets forgotten; yet it is all connected: the wet markets (still open) where the virus jumped from wild creatures to humans – wild creatures who should have been left in the wild, not carried to open markets to be boiled and barbecued and eaten. The virus is now showing up in outbreaks in North American meat processing plants, and, recently, even in fruit and vegetable processing plants. How do I tell you that I now look at the vegetables I am slicing with suspicion, wash them,  boil them to death, hope no stray virus cells have survived to arrive on my plate?

In our going forward, we need to go back: stop the global corporate stranglehold on our economy; return to shopping and eating locally, supporting small farmers nearby instead of importing food from across the world, stop polluting the skies to eat things from other countries that we can grow right here.

Let’s go deeper: let’s return to understanding that we are one small part of the natural world, not its overseers, lords and masters. We are waves and ripples, not the ocean; we are cogs, not the wheel. When we stop dominating and become one part, earth begins to heal and other beings begin to regain their compromised existence.

And let's remember: personally we may feel powerless, but together we are a mighty voice; at the polls, we decide. In our daily choices, we also cast our votes for a cleaner, kinder earth.

Dare I dream again as I once did that the transformation of consciousness, the people rising together, can topple this toxic regime and return us to something approaching dignity and social justice? That the corrupt will be banished and we will set to work restoring what has been lost, transforming what needs to change, working with our fellow man, caring for our fellow creatures, remember the hope of “Yes, We Can!”?

I hope so, for I need to tell you that the years since 2016 came close to extinguishing hope in me. Yet poets are  prophets; we are the canaries in the mines. I cannot abandon my post. There is still a small spark of belief that enough light-bearers will vote to topple the dark mercenary lords of corruption.

too many issues
grief layered upon grief
virus lays it  bare

Day Twenty-Four of Wild Writing with Laurie Wagner

My prompt at earthweal tomorrow is  protest in a time of pandemic: to write poems about whatever you care most about. Hope you come and join us. I will link a poem there, but had already written this and decided to post it  today.