From Port-au-Prince to Puebla: Poor People of Color Resist!
My heart is the drum that makes my feet dance to the beat… I sing my poetry in Spanglish … I love…fight…struggle… with knowledge.. I pick the drum as my weapon to fight for liberation..and revolution.. My brain is from Mexico y America. My feet are from Africa..
Our faces Black& Dark Brown like mama Africa, our noses round beautiful like the mountains of the Americas, our pyramids and temples from Egypt to Yucatan, Mexico can’t lie of the connection between my black and brown brothers and sisters.
In high School my teacher once told me that my people were savages, I was taught to hate the color of my skin and the shape of my nose.
Until One day I found myself in the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco, who was built by the descendants of the people who slave us and stole our land,I was there to witness an exposition of Aztec and Mayan artifacts, when I seen my nose and face engrave in those great artifacts I knew my people were not savages.
To witness the Olmec head, to see the traits of my African people, I knew we have more in common than the suffering our ancestors share under colonialism.
To learn about Yanga the first African slave people who free them self’s from Spanish rule in Veracruz, Mexico and created families with indigenous people from the area.
More than 500 years and we are still here breathing and thriving by any means necessary, and is time we celebrate our resistance and our people.
The
first week of May is the *150th ANNIVERSARY* of The Battle of Puebla (la Batalla de Puebla) when Mexico accomplished its historic defeat over the French occupying army. This victory could not have been accomplished had the Caribbean island of Haiti not proved to be such an inspiration in resisting colonial rule. In 1804, Haiti’s slave rebellion successfully created the first black-led nation to have conquered their colonizers and the first independent nation in all of Latin America.
The people of Haiti and the people of Puebla share a common bond—in Puebla, mestizo soldiers were outnumbered two to one while Black Haitians faced Napoleon’s heavily armed military—but both oppressed peoples prevailed in what many refer to as two David and Goliath victories.
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One of the main reason, that we decide to organize this event, was to conscience sly bring black and brown people together, as many us know and experience black and brown people are still one the most oppress people in Amerikka making the majority in prison population, in homicide, in poverty ,ect ,ect, you named it.
And to live pimp free-
To really be truly free-
Is to redesign systems based on eldership, ancestors, Pachamama
And We
To deconstruct all the simple answers of why
we kill each other,
starve our mothers,
shoot and kill our black and brown brothers
incarcerate so many others
excerpt from Living Pimp-Free by tiny
“Pimp-free organizing isn’t affirmative action, which leads to no action, which leads to default segregation and po’lice perpetration. Pimp-free organizing is the recognition, love, respect and honoring of our multi-racial identities, spirits, languages, culturas y traditions. Our West, East, South and North African peoples teaching with, being with our, Ohlone, Miwok, Salvadereno, Mayan, Aztec, Roma, Taino. Samoan, Tongan, Philipino, and Yucatec peoples .living, breathing, feeling and understanding, in the deepest sense that our differences is what makes us beautiful and hard, powerful and humble, loud and silent,” Lisa Garcia aka Tiny co-madre de Prensa POBRE
In POOR Magazine we destruct and speak about the separation done by systems within capitalism that are use to separate us by Race,Gender,class and struggles, for the benefit of this system to keep functioning .
We also see the importance to keep building those bridges among communities of color, that many sheros & Heroes have done in the Past and present.
It was beautiful and powerful to read the letter from Sub-comandante Marcos from the Zapatistas EZLN to Mumia Abu-Jamal to congratulate on his birthday and to stand in solidarity with all political prisoners in Amerikkka.
Sub-comandante Marcos:
We are also “people of color” (the same color as our brothers who have Mexican blood and live and struggle in the American Union). Our color is “brown,” the color of the earth, the color from which we take our history, our strength, our wisdom and our hope. But in order to struggle we add the color black to our brown. We use black ski-masks to show our faces, only then can we be seen and heard. Following the advice of an indigenous Mayan elder, who explained to us the meaning of the color black, we chose this color. Old Don Antonio used to tell us that from black came light and from there came the stars which light up the sky around the world. He recounted a story of a long time ago (in the times when time was not measured)
Through the Americas black and brown people were use to build this civilization where we are found ourselves captives under capitalism or kill daily, persecuted. More than 500 years of genocide to our people, have fell to exterminate us, and on May 4,2012 we will celebrate our ancestors and that we are still here fighting and resisting.
The people of Haiti and the people of Puebla share a common bond—in Puebla, mestizo soldiers were outnumbered two to one while Black Haitians faced Napoleon’s heavily armed military—but both oppressed peoples prevailed in what many refer to as two David and Goliath victories.
We hope this celebration of community can inspire us to begin to form the strength in what is possibly the most insidious Goliath to date—the United States of America. Only united can people of color be the most powerful David we can be.
Rebecca Luisa (Machetes)
Please join us for a night of poetry, music and resistance as we build Black-Brown solidarity in paying homage to our warrior ancestors who struck back even when the odds were against them!
From Port-au-Prince to Puebla: Poor People of Color Resist!
446 E 12th St, Oakland, CA 94606
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Friday, May 4, 2012
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7:00pm
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