disarming silence

What better way to combat your own anger than listening to Rage Against the Machine? Actually one of my favorite songs of theirs is "Freedom"
and I'm listening to it right now, still churning that stupid term "rules of proportionality" in my brain...

"What does the billboard say? Come and play. Come and play.
Forget about the movement
Forget about your selves
Forget about your country
Forget about your history and just buy...just buy."

"Your anger is a gift!"

I love that song because of the questions it raises for me. The relationships of money as a tool of "freedom" and its uses and abuses in terms of creating economic political prisoners and ensuring our jails are disproportionately full of non-white inmates. Also though, I love the paradox of freedom, when freedom of speech is at times the only intervention against the tyranny of silence and apathy. Rage (the band) always spoke out on behalf of one of America's own political prisoners, Mumia Abu Jamal so this song for me, is very inspirational.
Mumia once said (in the film, All power to the people) that Revolution is speaking truth to power. Anger can indeed be, a gift and a force for good.

On that note, I'm wondering how to create a global and national space for rage to be heard, healed, and not just repressed or reactive while still refusing to be silent? Another article in the Opposing Viewpoints bok on human rights is written by a man excerpted from his book titled "The Cancer of Human Rights." I'm not going to mention his name yet because his argument (not to mention the title of his book) really disgusts me and yet it is worth noting that he was, according to the book, at one point an analyst for the CIA who now writes and researches on national security and defense. An "expert" opinion no doubt...

Well, my personal way of disarming silence is through writing and so here's my little poetic attempt to express my anger in a hopefully non-destructive manner. So I'm including here a poem I wrote after reading the argument that the U.S. treatment of "detainees" in Cuba is simply a matter of "national security."

Peace!

"Violation"
Welcome to
the most lucrative business adventure yet--
The Transnational
Translation of Skin
into
Transcribed
Identity
according to
parameters of nationality,
national security,
and humanity
mapped onto bodies
catagorized,
denied,
dehumanized
by definitions.

Didn't you know?
your body is land
a country to be taken,
bombed, infiltrated, conquered, claimed--
it is a number, a statistic that if counted at all,
matters only when you're on the right side,
playing for the home team,
praying for victory against that ever present enemy.

But what happens when that enemy
happens to bear your skin? What then?

What options remain
in this world without rain
where language muddies itself
to surround you
as a noose
as a chicken wire cage
pulled tighter
cutting deeper
depending on definitions,
official confidences,
silences,
and defenses
that are so quick to betray?