(Left to right: Oscar Cain, Jakalia Brown, Kamau Franklin)

No
I will not be your martyr
Not anymore
I will not lay my valuable life on the line
Simply for your entertainment
Every step I take
Has to be leading me to a better tomorrows
No longer marching to yesteryears
On MLK
How dare you
Ask me
To carry this burden too
Haven’t we done enough

No
I will not black out my picture
Or congratulate you for “taking a stand”
Why?
Because Oscar Cain’s name
Is barely mentioned
Atlanta Activist who fought for
Cams on cops
Got shot in the back by APD
But no one cares
Because they say that he
“Brandished a gun”
But we will never see
His last moments
Simply because officer Kelly
Decided not to turn his
Body cam on that day
Coincidence is it?

No
Don’t come at me
With some “but did he have a gun”
Idk but How dare he not
Number one target on the streets
Of this American dreamland
And you tell me
With seriousness
That hands up don’t shoot
Should be the only defense
When they let Mike Brown body
lay in the street
After they shot him down
For “stealing” possibly
But Dylann Roof
Took nine christian american lives
And got treated to burger king?

No
I won’t speak the spells
Of I can’t breathe
Because words are powerful
I will breath
And with every breathe
I will have intention
And purpose
I didn’t sit in those rooms
With Oscar speaking freedom
To let him down now

No
I didn’t go to jail
Fighting for justice
For Kendrick Johnson
To hear the media say
Why GA?
Aren’t we blackity black
And progressive
Ke ke don’t love me
Increased funding to APD
After they murdered my friend
Before his mother could bury him
His killer was on the streets again
Imagine that?

So no
I will not be out
Playing theater with the media
While piles of bricks
Are being placed
As incentives to cause damage
While the drones above
Catch everything on camera
Not saying there isn’t a purpose to it
Just saying I’m tired
Of these burst of caring
And have to try something different
Discipline my elders tried to teach me
Last time when I thought I knew
Way to much to be taught

Yes
Revellution is birthed
Out of anger and passion
But what they wont tell you
Is tho it won’t be televised
You can read about it
Written by your ancestors
Dripping with blood and resistance
They never mentioned in their history books
Because the Docile slave
They convinced you MLK was
Is a facid to hide the true legacy
They let you have a dream since 1963
But in 1967 Martin Luther King said
There was 3 evils
racism , poverty, and war
It wasn’t the dream that got him shot down
It was the challenge to the system
The audacity to say that we
Needed more than promises of integration
We needed change
A year later we were rip-ing his name

So No
We don’t need no
2020 Malcolm X or MLK
We need you
To wake up
Long enough to realize
Being woke will only stay
Sexy for so long
Time is running out
So what you going to do
What does sustainability in this movement
Really mean to you?
Cuz we have to Sustain
More than survive
Our children’s literal lives
Depend on it

Yes
You should be angry
Outraged, afraid, hurt
Don’t let no one and I mean no one
Take away your humanity for you are worthy
Feeling is revolutionary
Don’t let their parade
Of Black men being murdered in the streets
Rain down on your ability to feel
Every time
Every hashtag
Every Name

If you pull nothing away from this
I ask you again
What will you do to sustain?
Wheels have already been created
No need to start from scratch
Be weary of gatekeepers
True elders will warn you of that
Seek knowledge from a place of humility
Learn to tuck ego
Long enough to learn
Question all information
Never forget to reach back
And teach the wisdom you have earned
Don’t believe the lies they are planting
From every movement we have grown
For we are the seeds
The oppression of this country has sown

Signed an angry black woman
Sustaining her people
By any means necessary
Even via poem

Jakalia Brown