Rejection of the Race-Based Agenda in Favour of the Common Struggle

Originally published at YouTube on September 16, 2017

I messed up one line in the poem. It should be, "Native language stolen from our tongues, too."

http://willowsweb.blogspot.com/2017/01/rejection-of-race-based-agenda-in.html

Rejection of the Race-Based Agenda in Favour of the Common Struggle
By: Willow from Willow's Web Astrology

We were once indigenous people, too.
Dispossessed from our land, too.
Native language stolen from our tongues, too.

We were pushed off, burned out, forced into starvation or urban slavery - a slow death sentence handed down by those with means
Forced into workhouses and gulags
Either murdered quickly or left to perish slowly from cold and damp and overwork and filth and bugs and vermin and hunger and lack
Forced to give up our ways, too, to be useful to them, to make profit for them, to bend our souls, our natures, to fit their machine(s)

For many, to come to this new land was not a choice.
"Emigrate or die" is no choice.
Sent on ships not seaworthy and many sank
Conditions so poor many did not live to see land again
No monetary value for us, less worth than livestock or commodified slaves,
So no one cared if we lived to see the other shore.
Deprivation and early death on this new land, too brutal to sustain us, too heartsick and homesick to resist it.

So don't call me a "white European colonialist."
Don't try to make me feel guilty for the crime of surviving.
Don't tell me I'm on land I have no right to exist on,
As if I somehow need your permission.
I'm here. I'm sovereign. And my roots go just as deep as yours.

My heart aches for a place to belong and for the old ways, for freedom, just like yours.
The Sun, the Moon, the seasons as my timepiece,
The intuitive call as true authority.

They teach us your history (their version) while we are severed from our own.
Our history stays invisible, while you spit their words at us: "white European imperialist"
And teach the partial story being misrepresented as truth
Common roots covered with convenient black-and-white agendas
The genocide has happened a hundred times before
To every colour of skin
The land has been taken, revoked, stolen and with it our survival, our peace
Set adrift on a sea of anomie, searching for a place to belong
Addictions to numb the heartsick and soulsick,
The gnawing knowledge that we may never again feel at home.

So if you want to fight corrupt power alongside each other
With long, parallel roots acknowledged,
If you want to make a better world for all
I will stand with you.

But if you want to overpower my voice, my history, my truth,
If you want to misrepresent who I am and where I come from,
If you want to take my right to a place on the land (just like they do),
You're on your own.

If you want to paint me as white imperialist scum, you are really no better than they.
Your rhetoric will crumble and your power will desert you,
Under the awesome, undeniable force of the real story,
Under the drive for full acknowledgement and justice, currently denied.

So reconsider this whitewash of history, this convenient erasing of roots, this partial truth declared to be whole.
Understand the common experience, the common struggle that is fought to this day, to this minute, to this second.
Overturn the denial of common roots.
Overturn these cheap slurs against those whose only crime is surviving the systemic violence they bring down on all of us.
Overturn their easy answers and over-simplified histories
Or take your place as just one more overlord
As just one more chapter in their false historical line
As just one more boot in the face.

The full spectrum is cracking open,
And the time is now
To stand for justice for all.

Willow is a professional intuitive astrologer, writer, and healing arts practitioner.

Website: https://www.willowswebastrology.com/
Blog: http://willowsweb.blogspot.com/
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