The American Tragedy
It’s a new day
A new me
There is no time to lay
It’s time to meet
The expectations I’m meant to be
I walk down the street
Listening to a beat
I pass by a dozen
No, hundreds now
Students walking like zombies
It’s early morning, they still want the Z’s
It’s been a moment and I zoned out a bit
Oh snap, class has started, my eyes parted
Teacher shaking his head with disapproval
Kids sniggering as I felt rueful
Class was over, I walked out
There was a commotion, I checked out
Three girls fighting in a mosh pit full of boys
It was a two on one, already unfair
But nobody had cared
Broken tiles and spilt blood
The fight was broken up
The principal’s office quickly filled up
A White and a Latina
Not so lucky pair
A Black girl whose face was spared
I heard the judgement
The black girl is to blame
But turns out it was a one-sided claim
She never got to explain
But ignorance they feign
Never saw her again
She’s probably in Juvie
Such stories are common it’s such a shame
I once punched a school bully, one that he deserved
All I received was a “slap on the wrist”
I got lucky for a minority
A single day in-school suspension, but I was okay
Over 3 million of my peers receive an out-of-school suspension
Little 4-year-old preschooler in the news,
To be placed in Juvenile detention
My heart aches, my mind afflicted
Because the little kid was black
How cruel can our system be?
To force a little child behind bars?
Barely aware of his surroundings,
He is shoved into a potential life of crime
So early in his life.
A cruel fate to live in.
I once watched a friend of mine get dragged away
He was black, I see a trend
We were taught rules and disciplinary actions
To be drones of the society
A nail stuck out is to be hammered in
And yet in that same school
We were taught the dangers of Zero-tolerance policies
Rules that don’t give a damn about the vulnerable youth.
I call that hypocrisy.
I see a jail.
SRO’s? Ha, I see only the police
Monitoring me and my peers’ every move
Mostly minorities, especially the black Americans
Wait till you hear these numbers
They’ll make you sick
3 million students with police but no nurses
14 million students with police
But no counselors, nurses, psychologists, or social workers
My mind goes blank at those outstanding numbers
I turn a corner and look up
Lights, Camera, Action!
Say cheese to the security cams
They’re everywhere.
School is safe they say
The government declared The War On Drugs
Believing Marijuana was a problem, among many things
The irony is the war itself created an even bigger problem
Delinquents can be quickly hunted, caught, and sent away
Minor infractions are capital offenses
With all of these security measures in place
There can only be good students
In reality, there are only the meek sheep left
To be herded by our uncaring society
They claim they care
They claim they are working on it
But they blame on each other’s politcal party
I can only see the Criminalization of the Youth
Some of these kids are never to be seen again
Many stuck in Juvie
This is called the school-to-prison pipeline
Where kids are funneled into jail
Juvenile detention supposed to re-educate them
Once let out, they are funneled back in.
‘Lost causes’ and ‘once a criminal always a criminal’
Some teachers and parents think
Resistance is disobedience, it’s hammer time
A stuck-out nail to be hammered in
It’s all about power
It’s all about the narrative
For power is subjective
If you were black
You get pulled aside
Stop and Frisk the police did
No matter if you were innocent
They deemed you a problem kid
Hebh Jamal would agree
That power is used to suppress
Not solve issues it needed to address
Voices stifled, cries for help unheard
Racial profiling a disease in our society
It’s easier to deal harsh punishments than to reach out
Yet all people just wanted,
Was an ear to hear them out
Ears fall deaf, voices clamped, hearts broken
Into the dungeon once again
Feeding into the Prison Industrial Complex
Where Privitation of Incarceration puts them back to work
In the name of remediation
Broken drones who are lent out to work
Prisoners have no rights
They lost their civilian status
Welcome to hell
Where slavery is back again
1 in 15 black men are behind the bars
US accounts for 25% of the world’s prisoners
Women of color also meet a similar fate
Dealing with molestation, rape, and homelessness
Young mothers hopping place to place
Only to find themselves digging deeper
Into a darker pit
These mothers need our help
Not tough love Sharon White Harrigan said
So much for the “Land of the Free”
More like the “Land of a Thousand Apologies”
Curiosity got the better of me
We’re taught that segregation is over
That it was a blight
But my school mostly white
My other school was mostly non-white
Yes very Asian of me, I attended two high schools during my Junior year
I saw a lie, segregation is a non-stop fight
It still exists today and many don’t believe it still breathes
Wake Up! Wake Up! It’s not a dream!
Our future is going down the stream!
Our schools are unfairly funded
No thanks to Neoliberalism
School boards take out their fishing rods
Funding strung, hooked and casted off
Schools fight for the money, like fish in a pond
Here come the charter schools
Oh No! Welcome to the Privitation of Education
A new era of US Education
Schools closed!
Schools Phased out!
Schools Converted!
Over 150 of them in Chicago were low income neighborhoods
It takes a 9-year-old kid to speak out
To lash out against the evil known as Rahm Emanuel
How dare he shut down our schools?
Asean Johnson rants as he spoke the minds of thousands
How can we let him carry the weight of this issue on his tiny back?
A shame on all the adults
Who don’t have the courage to fight back
We need a transformative justice system Walida Imarisha preached
One that stops harm being done
But also one that gives the needs of the people a ton
Not a hand gun
But a quality of life that is number one.
My parents came to America to be free
But what I saw was hypocrisy
What I saw in school was not a dream
I watched videos of students dragged from the classroom
I watched videos of students tackled
I watched them...
I could only watch them...
As their eyes stared into mine
Bloodshot with tears and anger
It was suppression and a reality
They claimed America was equal and free
But from what real life has it
We got snakes in the grass running our country
Forked tongues spitting poison in our society
In the name of American idealology
Where are the adults to help our children?
When their tears are shed because of the monsters in our society
Who shed crocodile tears for votes and money
Please I beg you all for civil liberty
So that we can be an educational society
We are no longer the land of the free
We have become a prison in a land called United States