kimberly nightingale executive director of the st paul mn act and i want to invite you to invite you and welcome you to tonight's lowertown reading jam it's hosted by the st paul mn achan we do a lot of things around town we do an open mike at golden time coffee shop we do these readings every month and we publish a book it's the st paul mn ack each year this year we're working on our eighth book so if you're interested in reading and writing check out our website there might be a story in your heart or in your mind that you'd like to show to the rest of the world and it might be best to a loose illustrated in the same plamann x the chicken our submission guidelines and we'd be interested in having your work published in our book i want to give a big shout out to the black dog caf the light rail coming down here in lower town i just want a little bit about the same plamann acra literary organization and we create opportunities for understanding learning and building relationships through sharing people stories and we'd like to think our sponsors this activity is made possible in part by funds provided by the lowertown future fund of the same paul foundation and support from the st paul neighborhood network s p n n errors or shows through the month on their cable access channel we also like to give a big shout out to to cooma akin our incredible artist who draws the action as it is happening and you can watch to cooma right here while he is drawing tonight show is titled new wave a new able misty's a loss and our curator tonight is louis louis on my you is a writer educator administrator poet father grandfather performer an activist of african and native american heritage louis is a co founder of the native arts circle the oldest native american artists organization in the upper midwest in two thousand and three the headwaters foundation gave louis an award of for lifelong commitment to social justice currently  work focuses on teaching writing performance mentorship community organizing charter schools and organizational development samples of his ancestor energy cd all where can be heard on line at dot com today louis works directly across multiple cultural communities oh my you is the director of the poetry jazz ensemble ancestor energy and he's the winner of an urban three award in two thousand and nine these poems songs and stories are the synthesis and manifestation of our dream and physical worlds is i am the product of many people places and experiences and likewise these expressions these poems a reflection of science and the truth of mythology these poems jump with juju float on prayers of sage and sweet grass remember zion in the rugged cross ancient egypt and milan these poems know that not only are the pyramid still standing but equally yet still falling and few humbled and blessed in the vastness of the universe these poems have circled it an afro carmel woman's breast known the tenderness of a father's a rough friend red brown earth bands these poems have been by the fire of an ethiopian woman's eyes healed by an afro sisters our love of shock by the first born sweet thunder learn the brawling qua balloons and had vision renewed by then lucy these poems have danced on a bridge called tomorrow while the music of a youth sang in this old ones is witness to the  these poems dance on a bridge called tomorrow while the music of youth sing sing sing witness to these poems have known the cultural political and spiritual zombies that mood amongst us every day causing confusion and and i am not afraid these poems know the tyranny out silence and believe the creator will gather all those who are scattered not knowing that earth is on earth is believe that after much struggle storm and wisdom hard won the meek will inherit this same earth transformed these poems more and celebrate these poems have their feet on a road  moving toward tomorrow seeking only the peace of one that's the these poems stories song i wrote that a long time ago and probably a good thirty years ago and it feels like i really didn't know what i was writing at the time there's a whole lot of ways i don't really feel like i'm a writer like most writers or writers that have this discipline of sitting down in the morning or the evening and writing writing writing i pretty much weight on the spirit to talk to me and if the spirits don't talk to me i don't necessarily write a poem i might write other things but one of my mentors was a guy named haki madhubuti whom i met when i returned to chicago after living here for quite a while i came to minnesota to go to college and in retrospect all of that seems very different than it seemed to me at the time but i went from the south side of chicago an african american community i really did grow up in a community i had other parents other onsen uncles other sisters brothers cousins that i was deeply related to and it took me a long time to figure out that that practice of extended family was something very african and over time i begin to discover as i met more and more people here that i was also a very mexican thing it was a very somali thing an ethiopian thing i mean a rural german or we jhon kind of thing you know like everybody had some form of this and i also began to understand that modern western world was in complete opposition to that kind of relationship amongst people because i grew up in that on the south side of chicago when i'm eventually moved to the twin cities my survival strategy was to build an extended family to build a community and because of the make up of that my extended family began to be this incredible mix of people that i discovered i had some kind of heart connection to and some of you are here you know you are yes you do so  i want to jump to why i came up with this guy this idea of and it was written by a woman named gloria and will do and reading this book really began to give me away to what i understand the life i had been living in this book was very important and also a woman named oh my poor memory  marlice arora yeah she wrote a book with her mother back in the eighty's and her talking about being jewish and being puerto rican and all the levels of what it means to be puerto rican i was like a den of fine with that it like made sense to me also the experiences that i had meeting amos only in at the pearly eilon reservation and being brought into ceremonies and being taught by him by a good seven years a lot of things begin to fall into place i actually began to i had an opportunity to meet gloria at a queer studies companies as a community based artist and i was trying to figure out what do i need to do in order to make best advantage of this year and that was one of the things that came up because it just seemed to me really important to like digests that because i'd already been reading some feminists writings by feminists of color and they seemed to be to me the most radical folks at the time maybe still because it seems like they had a lot more reason to break out of bounds and i've had a really good relationship with a lot of progressive women mariella sore was a mentor going on then brooks was a mentor other women and i've actually been invited to from time to time women ceremonies and kind of asked to hold a certain kind of place so i don't know why this happened but it happened and so i feel like i need to be responsible for the people to the people that gave to me like all the ancestors that came before i think they knew that we were coming and they suffered through a lot so that we could be here so that i could be here and i feel a real responsibility to keep giving sustain myself but also figure out how to keep giving i'm going to ask someone who have had a real heart connection to for a long long time to just say a little bit about why gloria is important and i really want to encourage people to buy her book and digest it because we're at a point in history where the some of the wisdom in this book needs to be translated especially if we're men so that we understand the essence of what she's saying and can really begin to deal with the tsunami of change that is coming our way right now and we've got to realize that we're relatives and that all the various paradigms that we've been exposed to there's a way to assimilate all of that into hello welcome thank you everyone for coming tonight and i want to say that i am very happy and proud because you are in for a treat the artists here are more than artists  they build community and if you haven't heard them before it's going to be life altering if you have heard them before it's going to be life altering because you will take away tonight what your heart so desires for me gloria was i have met her a couple times when she planted her feet here on this earth before she went to the other side she was before her time that's why to me she is an amazing amazing woman and it wasn't that she wasn't afraid i'd like to say that she did everything that she did because she wasn't afraid there was times that she was afraid but she was more afraid of not living her truth and gloria was one of the my first loves from afar of course at that time and she knows very well now and i just want to honor her and welcome this space and welcome her to that space and so i'm going to defer from the request because as a friend as someone with the her connection we we do what our friends would like us that is healthy and builds community i am going to turn it over to an incredible young woman that i think is wonderfully gifted and talented and i'm very honored to become knowing her and you will too as she speaks but for gloria her geographical space was always very important she later moved to santa cruz and when she was in santa cruz she would always walk along the oceans when she was getting her ph d at the university there and so land was something that always nourished her and i think that's space the actual physical border which she says is a thirteen hundred mile long wound a bleeding wound that divides our countries shells so talks about it as a physical space so she says that we come out of this state of quality quiet this terrible space if you've ever been in a place of depression of darkness you go through quietly kwan when you come out of quality go you come to a new place which she calls the mist these that consciousness and when she wrote this book in the early eighty's it was for chick ghana's it was for queer women of color in particular to be adopting this type of consciousness where we live in a constant state of what she calls this in between space where neither you know mexican enough us white mainstream enough so we're in this in between land this border land but later when she died in two thousand and four from diabetes she was coming to a new sense of writing in which she called spiritual activism and in this spiritual activism she says that all people regardless of your ethnicity your history your heritage can adopt this missy's of consciousness and so that way it becomes part of your physical being as you know also your philosophical being so the last thing that i want to say became very important because she also instituted this idea about our h to be connected so i think in relationship to the folks that will be seeing tonight this idea of the soul meaning that there are no borders that we don't rise above them as if they don't exist but that with this type of consciousness we can really build connections with people  i think on the tallest one thank you all for coming out tonight i don't know how i got invited to this line with lewis and but it's really quite an honor so i don't really know what it means to be misty so i'm just a red blooded american boy what i experienced traveling from and it wasn't the first time i'd been to latin america but it wouldn't be experience of traveling to latin america as a brown person and reflecting upon some experiences coming back a couple house baseball is big in venezuela and figured out that soccer is the revolutionary sport of the people apparently but we forgive him for that i don't other than that the only other reference that may be somewhat obscure is that there is a japanese restaurant in minneapolis called so somehow that gets referenced in this poem poem is called brown unlike me in where i watched the people of the nation stood at the plate swung out in defense of their president who won a democratic referendum by a majority of the majority unlike our own president that same year in defense of chavez millions of hands upon a single bat so swing for the fences on home over the wall of the white house lawn in venezuela as in cool i am a j now as i pass through miami international airport international code am i a i feel every letter of it owning that i am made in america but also feeling like part of me is missing in action and somewhere on the journey home if there is such a place an invisible line is crossed it may be at the point where sky meets earth where earth meet sea where skin meets sky somewhere in this sacred trinity i don't know where i cross a border to three i hand in my took passport of first world citizen in exchange for my second skin of second class citizenship the kind i wear like a favorite sweater an old pair of tennis shoes the don't wear out no matter the miles i put on it in my sunday best just the only thing clean in the closet deep boarding the plane i assume that here on u s soil i will be me again i get to go back to being my complex complete self and the white boy i'm travelling with who gave himself his own hip hop name taken from a distant red planet and a local japanese restaurant he will be the same color privilege the man in the customs agent uniform resembles my uncle carlos enough to warrant a double take with that votto turned family man look completely shaved head goatee tats and work boots and carlos the customs of otto tells all international travelers to divide into two lines u s citizens and foreigners nothing seems more foreign to me than a white guy with a martian japanese name here i am standing with mars each in the us citizens line because here the color of my passport is deeper than the color of my skin and standing on the in the other line of this instant and an even divide are people who look to me like family some darker some lighter some of african bloodlines some of indigenous most are some mixture of something children of colonization occupation and slave means of melanin nation migration all of them yet their passports make them unlike me when i get to the customs desk in the agent asked me for my passport and do i have anything to declare i want to say i have no passport to give you america it has been stolen from me over and over again my name is willie brown loman but you may call me memo i'm late for my night job as a busboy in a japanese restaurant so can i please go now what you don't believe me ok my name is google chavis but you can call me my purpose for going to venezuela to watch a game of baseball on my way home i plan to stop in d c to get a ball off the white house lawn these people on the other side there with me carlos the customs of otto two i can fall for all of them their family and you can create all the lines you want cord on us off you can impose and revoke citizenship with this wash the salt of the caribbean sea from our skin the island sand from our hair you can scold the trills from our tongues criminalise our languages anglicize our birth names but i will not let you take from us our memory of family home language blood these we hide very well amongst the pages of our passports the ones we keep just below the top layer of our skin the only passport we will ever really need to know just who we are and where we come from i'll do one more for you before surrendering the mike so louis louis asked me boy this is what like october november two to do this he said january twenty third and that seemed like in the future and i said well if i don't have a football game that night play do it and he said just say yes so i said yes and i have a football game that i missed tonight so that's how much you know i respect louis if i'm willing to miss a food ball game to come and do this you know i got a lot of respect for you so speaking of sports i don't know how many of you have i mean we all have sports her probably unless we like really don't like sports maybe who i don't know who that is well my hero was roberto clemente so he was also before my time but i followed him later on when the when the war when we went back to war with iraq and we not that we ever stopped being a war with iraq but in two thousand and three i remember watching e s p n or some sports program and there was this very short piece about a young woman in new york and manhattanville college you name was tony smith anybody ever hear of tony smith except for the fact that you probably heard this poem before tony smith was a division three basketball player at a school called manhattanville college in new york mixed race girl black black white and cherokee when we went back to war with iraq it was against her conscience told her that she could not stand for the pledge of allegiance or for the for the national anthem before their basketball games and so when the rest of the team stood up she stood up with them but she turned her back on she'd turn one hundred eighty degrees from the rest of her team and this was her silent protest to not only the war in iraq but her understanding of united states sort of empire and history as you'll see in this poem she caught a lot of flak for that her teammates gave her flak opposing teams gave her flak at one point they played against i think a military academy and the entire basketball court was lined with cadets who had flags and at another point of war veteran or not a military veterans actually interrupted the game stormed the court and got all open her face  because she stood for what she believed in and so because of that and she never backed down she didn't back down so tony smith becomes one of my sports heroes and for that i wrote her a poem called poem for tony smith very creatively titled it's all just a matter of degrees and you went to college to get yours and so she allergy turned your body ninety degrees so they gave you the third tr turn a young woman's hoop dreams into a nightmare because you stood for what you believed in refused to salute a flag that symbolizes the enslavement and slaughter of our ancestors and their anonymous the middle passage the trail of tears the war zone iraq this is not a story about an athlete in protest but a nation in conflict with its own history citizenry and neighbors and those who wanted a patriot act got worn not from the floor of congress but from a basketball gym those who wanted an army of one one got those who wanted this n youth to be all you can be got just what they were asking for in tony smith your woman from washington heights basketball in the borderlands that buffer that buffer between black and white said your favorite artist is lauryn hill and the person you most admire is your mother well tony smith you are my she wrote because this year i was a woman who stands for what she believes in even if it is display or sold on e bay or red sleeveless with a beat with the with a bold number twenty four gripping the back and a big white am superwoman on the front with the team mascot splas reading valiance and i can't tell yet if it's ironic or appropriate that you're the only one on the team that mascot fits in the year of controversy you served as the team's captain averaged eight rebounds in five point four points a game but you made your most important point even before the opening jump ball in this game it's not a matchup between this team and that but between basketball and police because the national anthem before games is putting politics into sports and i salute the tony smith along with the  tommy smith the carlos the john carlos is the carlos del gallo the mohammad the adonal foyle of these national treasures long before i'll ever stand for old glory our beliefs our histories our futures our heroes our homes there are some things we must stand for some things we must not turn our backs on but the stars and stripes is not one of these so i hope that on a summer night not on like tonight somewhere on an inner city court in washington heights on a schoolyard playground in tahlequah oklahoma a young mixed race girl with a ball as big as her head and hoop dreams as big as the sky is skittering through a fistful of trash talking boys just before she pulls up hits a fade away jumper from the baseline and on we need to admit that most of us were not a culture a did to build community beyond whatever identity we were taught was ours we tend to see the world through lenses of us and them my country vs your neighborhood more than the earth that cradles all these locations roots is a profoundly false consciousness a dangerous fairytale view of reality and we all fall down the holy land is all the earth  and thinking that in reflection upon what they were both singing about and talking about this last september i had the opportunity to reconnect with one of my older sister mentor as a woman named bernice reagan who was one of the founders of sweet honey in the rock i met her as a college student when one of my mentors again a woman ethicists named eleanor haney eleanor haney i'm afraid her name might pass away but she was a really incredible teacher to a lot of people at concordia college in morehead and later out east  in maine eleanor somehow found out about bernie's who was then a part of cynic and the freedom singers which was a group of singers that use music as a way to inspire people to do what they were told they should not do on threat of death on threat of losing their jobs on threat of having their houses burned and the freedom singers were important part of the civil rights movement and they use music at that time as a way to help people pull up the courage to do what the time was demanding of them and this freedom movement and freedom songs have a lot in common with the way they knew of a car can see on the new song movement of south america latin america because we were taking traditional songs and rhythms and infusing them with the messages of revolution and transformation and i think we're at a period of time when we need to like totally rethink what revolution means because as audrey lord said the tools of the master will never dismantle the master's house and i think we're being brought to a time of needing to pull up tremendous courage because guns and bombs and gases pull us deeper into the paradigm that's destroying us and we have to become somehow i don't know the road map we make the road by walking as tonio machado wrote long ago it has to be something profoundly spiritual and profoundly courageous and i don't really know how to do that but i'm trying to trust that as i take this breath and the next breath and the next breath some wisdom will come through i'm being reminded of a wisdom that came from my grandfather which i think is really a universal wisdom and it came to me in this form one no matter what if you looked into my grandfather's face were all the times in trials that come to rest into his eyes you would see that all the world merges into one dream one linking listen one exquisite eternal movement on believe a bully one gorgeous movement of coming and going coming carrying our one soul to a new birth something dangerous and delicious about exceeding the limits breaking the brown breeze overflowing the banks something exhilarate new invigorated about no ten down and runnin over discarding the rules of given order be in a piece about breaking the peace something downright gratify and certainly satisfy and about bleeding those definitions how to describe what you see is it black or red or white male or female and a move that's double men rule hey is it day or night it's all one in the spirit little some people have a hard time coming from minneapolis to saint paul but pinu toe is my foot stool and i'm stretching mercedes sosa there are times when she didn't know when she was singing on the stage if she would like literally be dragged off or shot so it took courage to be a singer to be an artist  i like to bring my dear nephew home to the stage to do something i asked him to do like one of my favorite pieces unless he change they gave me when i would use it before and in any case real quick i just want to say something about this you know sticking with this team of new able misty so it was less than a year ago now though it's approaching a year doesn't seem like that long ago that trayvon martin was killed anybody remember trayvon martin young man who was killed in florida he had committed no crime he was suspected by this  named george zimmerman of acting suspicious and because he was in a neighborhood that didn't seem like it was his young african american man i think hughes was seventeen years old when he was when he was shot and killed by george zimmerman you know  first the news when the news first picked up on the story when the media picked up on the story george zimmerman they showed these pictures of him he seemed like this this basically seemed like a twenty something year old white guy it actually turns out that george zimmerman is the child of a peruvian immigrants and a a who is his mother and his father is a magistrate or some sort very interesting to me that was very interesting because  because of the complexity of that identity of that mixed race identity parents or the child of an immigrant what i what i wonder so deeply in the time since then is what is his understanding of his own place in this society and how he comes to see himself as being privy or privileged to certain spaces where this young man george trayvon martin is not who w not be welcome in this community when which he was killed and what's what is so fascinating to me about this in all of his tragedy and what gets lost i think in the conversation is that george zimmerman represents the future of latino be mixed race in this country and so george zimmerman to me represents a very fascinating and very frightening experience of assimilation that is really what is at the core of this for me is that george zimmerman bought into the american dream he saw himself as as a protector of private property and of wealth and of and in a way of whiteness and what that how that is tied to the opposition to blackness and to to urban youth  you know the idea that somehow a hoodie is threatening or that a young man talking to his girlfriend on the cell on a cell phone is threatening is really part of the equation that when we talk about about trayvon martin i think the piece about george zimmerman is equally as fascinating the other part that i found very fascinating is that i have brothers that resemble both of these and this is what this poem is about it's called i have a brother i have a brother who could be mistaken for trayvon martin eighteen and life to go senior in high school but won't graduate new tattoo on his neck says you only live once and i don't know why but somehow this all you only live once became very popular recently so you got a tattooed on his neck you only live once talks to his girl on the cell phone wears on the regular just as i did at seventy eight and still do at thirty eight i wear hoodie to get to know my little bro is black and mexican so he fits the description coincidentally my little bro even shares last name and i know that could have been him lying in a puddle of his own blood murdered for being in the wrong skin at the wrong place wrong time he fit the description of a dangerous threat to our post racial sensibilities at age seventeen my little girl got busted for stealing wine from wal mart and got community service a slap on the wrists trayvon martin didn't steal anything bought his skittles and iced tea and got a death sentence a bullet in the chest i have another brother a year younger than me who could be george zimmerman like zimmerman we have one latino parent one wh coincidentally this brother shares the same last name as me we were best friends growing up until we grew apart he went off to air force academy i went off to college he wanted to be an air force pilot family obsesses over crime carries a gun everywhere on weekend nights he listens to the police scanner knows every juvenile delinquent in the city by name and case number i ended up a bookstore worker a soccer player a community organizer on weekend nights i read poems about my brothers with the criminals the delinquents the dead and i have a brother who could have been trayvon martin and another who could have been george zimmerman and a recurring nightmare in which one brother is lying in a pool of his own blood tea and skittles while the other lies in the cell of a jail of which he is the commander listening to my post broadcasts on a police scanner in a country that swallows them both all right this so this is the poem that lewis requested i read are there any music fans out there my last all right before i let me say this before if you like music and you hip hop fans out there alright twin cities best hip hop artist is in the house tonight mr toki right folks stand up i don't know i don't know what's so funny about  i'm sorry did i say brenda i'm sorry rebecca saw me i apologize rebecca i know your name rebecca sound speakers of the sun if they ever take the stage check them out rebecca i apologize  marvin gaye i remember the day marvin gaye died i was i was only nine i was a marvin gaye fan but i remember the day he died in this is why every generation has its historical moments of collective grief and disbelief moments we forever remember exactly where we were when the death of the kennedy king clemente clement the space shuttle challenger explosion when the planes hit the towers on nine eleven some of these i was around for some i was not but i remember the day marvin gaye died it was the day i saw my father cry hundred eighty four i was halfway to manhood leaving halfway between motown and michael jackson's hometown i knew nothing of orwell's big brother reaganomics be rude or the conscious my world consisted of playing guns with my brothers a meager allowance and the dallas cowboys i was nine years old almost ten that april fool's day my father and i seated side by side in the burgundy brick pattern couch living room washing the electric blue gray glow of the television father and son sharing a can of pepsi as fathers or sons and our want to do in the last remnants of a spring sunday evening before it slips away into work and school the talking head announces the shooting of a soul singer by his father in a furious spit on the day before his forty fifth birthday my own father barely thirty slumps back as if a bullet has struck him in the chest puts his working man's hands to his music lovers ears as if by blocking out the messengers voice he can make the message come undone and i watch my father watched a newscaster waiting for the whole thing to be called a ruse an april fools day prank so we can laugh and say that was a good one they really had us fool but the punchline never comes there is no rebuttal the newscaster is on to the next story in my father's face is a pump lona of tears hundred eighty four marvin sexual healing may have been my father's sound check but michael jackson's thriller was mine if you can believe it thriller is now thirty years old makes me feel more than a decade would pass before i had come to fully understand and appreciate marvins gift for music his turbulent life or my father's sense of loss that day weeping for a man he never knew but a soul whose troubles mirrored his own so what's a boy to do when his father cries like a baby for the crimes of another son's father he reaches out his nine year old arms brushes away the salt water bowls running down his father's face wraps his small arms around his father's necks and hugs him until and should i some day be blessed with sons of my own may they never be afraid to sing like marvin cry like their grandfather and love is if you turn ugly and i thank you for  before i go into this bernice again when bernice was here one of the things that she said to me that really grabbed me was liberation isn't something far off into the future that it's something that's very present when you dare to do what you've been told not to do that you've been threatened that you shouldn't do liberation is in each moment you decide to act against oppression that's part of what's in this freedom ain't nothing but a word if anything it's actually a way of breathing being all right with the way things are good or bad hot or cold hungry or satiated tin or gold hold on cause nothing stays the same knowing that things are constantly changing that's a game it's moving toward a river called the doll the way things are in the way of nature a way of being in harmony with the flow and the pulse of seasons each precious moment is for all of potential of infinite becoming my mother taught me encourage me to keep unfolding to keep flowing though it frightened her she was always behind me the what often felt like hovering and controlling to me she unintentionally are otherwise taught me how to read belle thrive and survive now i'm moving into a righteous season of ripening i'm full of offerings for the possibility of newness of freshness and the flaming autumn of life yeah i've been fearful of death fearful of oppression fearing loss of the sheltering home fear of prison fearing the loss of loved ones fear of the fierce rebellion of mother earth against our foolishness tearing down deconstructing rearranging correcting and balancing yes i've been fearful of my rebirth in and out of body fear of letting girl in bracing the revelation of a new world fearing letting go of what i am used to although i know what i am used to is of a little use to me now yeah that times there are change in ya find your relatives find your relatives the ones you know about and those that have been invisible to you right before your eyes because of your belief about race sex class gender or species recognising the  your relatives really are animal vegetable mineral spirit joy and wonder or seek me as i seek them the future approaches me and pulls me into it flesh body and soul as a one of my mother's said we come to kiss where borders of nation worlds dimensions disappear to hear you to touch you to embrace you at last an moment become new men become new men become new m thank you very much for coming out thank you for your attention that oh  if you have extra change or change you want to give or objects you want to write in order to keep these events going and the publications rolling out would be really helpful if you would give us whatever you can whatever you feel moved to thank you so much for coming out tonight