Stop the Next War Now (31 page)

no longer reverberating with shock waves of violation.

My name is Vieques.

This is
my
body.

It may be worth eighty million dollars a year to you,

Yanqui,

but it is priceless to me.

My door is barred.

I have burned the clingy, itchy dress.

The encampment grows stronger.

The lizards, the grass, the fish, the butterflies stand

with me.

I’ll never be the same,

but I’ll never be yours again to do your dirty business.

My name is Vieques

and I will be free.

SING AND DANCE

IGO ROGOVA

Igo Rogova cofounded the Kosovar women’s group Motrat Qiriazi.

When I was working with women and girls in the Chegrane refugee camp in Macedonia, a woman from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) came to the women’s tent, where we were singing and dancing, to give us some information. “I have not come here to sing and dance,” she told us.

But singing and dancing help many women overcome the traumas they experience. Our meetings in the camps included women who were raped, who had lost their families.We met daily and shared stories.We even had a comedian.A thirteen-year-old girl who had been raped by the Serbian police came with her mother.The girl didn’t speak to anyone, not even her mother, but when we sang and danced, she slowly joined in, and her spirit came alive again.There are similar stories of other women who attended our meetings. So when the UNHCR woman came that day, I quoted Emma Goldman:“I don’t believe that a cause should demand the denial of life and joy.”

LESSONS FROM

THE FIELD:

IGNITING

THE SPIRIT OF JOY

ALLI CHAGI-STARR

Alli Chagi-Starr is a Bay Area cultural organizer, workshop leader, and writer on the power of arts activism. She is a founder of Art and Revolution, Cultural Links, Art in Action Youth Leadership Program, Dancers without Borders, and the annual Radical Performance Fest.

Sustainable movements share a secret—they cultivate the power of joy. The elements in our movements that are vital, innovative, and colorful motivate even the most serious, stalwart activist. Organizing work often suffers from a lack of fun. Yet, we thrive on the moments when we cast off the stress and despair that often accompany change work, and remember to play. If there was ever a time for social-justice organizers to encourage joy-filled practices, it is now.

Following in the tradition of Bread and Puppet, Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Zapatistas, and Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, I have worked with artists and activists since the late 1980s to develop strategies for getting off our booties and plugging in to the critical struggles of our times. Giant puppets, dance, spoken word, music, and humor draw media attention, build community, and illuminate our humanity. When we prioritize creativity in our efforts, we ignite our power and remember why we are working for justice.

After years of performing in modern dance companies and producing cultural arts benefits, I got a taste of how delicious art in conjunction with street activism could be. I was invited to a San Francisco demonstration protesting nuclear dumping on First Nations’ sacred land in Ward Valley, California. The protest was planned to coincide with a visit by President Clinton. The demonstrators were forced to stand in a small fenced-off area out of view. Our group refused to enter their little pen. Instead, we gathered in a circle and each person made a simple dance gesture with a protest placard. In about ten minutes we had a fully choreographed dance. We took the street in front of the Civic Center and began performing. A confused police officer approached us middance. I reassured him that our free theater performance would be done soon. He said, “Well, finish up, then.” Television cameras, eager for film-worthy visuals, followed us as we moved from street corner to street corner with our dance number. Our signs reading, “Mr. Prez, Stop Dumping on Native Land” got on network TV, and we left feeling uplifted and ready for more.

This was one of the many moments that catalyzed what would become Art and Revolution, a national movement of arts activists in the United States who revitalized many movements during the turn of the millennium. It has defied the social construct that only some are destined to be artists, while reclaiming the knowledge that every individual has creative potential.

Art can never be separated from the work of cultivating democracy and building a just society. It is often the creative visionaries who are capable of illuminating the passions of the heart and kindling the fires of change. We can make present our humanity and joy without denying the histories and realities of slavery and colonization, racist wars on poor communities at home and abroad, and ecological suicide. Indeed, humor, music, and art have supported communities in surviving the worst travesties and injustices ever perpetrated.

We shift what is expected when we collectively pull down the walls of a two-story cardboard jail and free a twelve-foot puppet to lead the march. We change the tune when we take the microphone at a schmooze-fest of government and industry elites and sing, “Now is the time for democracy—corporate cash, won’t you set me free?” Imagination frees us from the confines of the activist box. Why not have fun as we challenge business as usual?

Passing on creative tools to the next generation, Art in Action programs bring together emerging youth leaders from vastly different communities. By the end of ten days, living, learning, and creating art together, profound respect and love grow between people that are typically divided by our oppressive society. Participants recently created a multidisciplinary performance that included a corporate cheerleading squad mocking the current administration with pom-poms, pleated skirts, and funky moves: “We are the corporate thugs, yeah, the corporate thugs, right on! We start all of the wars, yeah, and push the drugs, right on!” President Bush was played by a young woman who calls to her cronies, “We need an excuse to go to war!” and then sings, “We’ll find weapons of mass destruction, even if we know that they really don’t got none.” By the end of the show the audience was on their feet.

At every instant we have an opportunity to spark or dull people’s spirits. We are experts at critique and cynicism. How can we as change makers become adept at mobilizing, encouraging, and inspiring? We often criticize ourselves for preaching to the choir. While it is crucial to reach beyond our activist enclaves, the choir still needs encouragement. When we are despairing, there is a need for our spirits to join and be uplifted. When we sing together, we hear what community sounds like.

The giant protest against the WTO meeting in Seattle was several years ago, but I am still approached by unfamiliar people who remember the power of our dance group when we took the center of a major intersection before another impending violent police onslaught that day. Thousands of people sang together through the tear gas and rain. We disarmed the police, who backed off, with the greatest antiweapon we have, the power of our collective creativity.

How many times were people beaten down in the civil rights movement, the labor movement, women’s suffrage movement, and others before they were victorious? The songs from those movements still resonate today. Bernice Johnson Reagon’s words from “Ella’s Song,” “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes,” are sung time and time again at our demonstrations, to close our meetings, and often alone in our kitchens on the days when we don’t know how to go on. These songs help us to get up again and to keep going when we can see no light.

Victory happens in subtle acts, moment by moment. We are building the new world during every conversation, meeting, and action. We are modeling our vision as we tear down the old world—with every urban garden, every car traded in for a bike, every white person who begins to challenge racial privilege, every activist who remembers once loving to sing, every gift made by hand, every stranger who becomes a friend.

It is vital to keep the fires burning in progressive communities in this time in history. Now more than ever we must cultivate our collective passion for justice and keep each other strong for the times ahead. Even if we do not expect to see the change we hope to create in our lifetimes, we must see ourselves as part of a long, courageous struggle. We are the seed planters. Whether or not we will get to see our sprouts become trees, we must keep joyfully planting, even in dry soil. The rains will come—the fruit is for our children’s children. May it be sweet.

Planet Called Home

H

OLLY

N

EAR

Holly Near is an entertainer, teacher, and activist

.

Can you call on your imagination

As if telling a myth to a child

Put in the fantastical, wonderful, magical

Add the romantic, the brave and the wild

Once upon a time there was a power

So great that no one could know its name

People tried to claim it and rule with it

Always such arrogance ended in shame.

Thousands of years would pass in a moment

Hundreds of cultures would come and go

Each generation with a glorious calling

Even when they were too busy to know

Then one day after two millennia

Which after all was a small part of time

Hundreds of souls found their way out of nowhere

To be on earth at the threat of decline

Let’s all go, they moved as one being

Even though each would arrive here alone

They promised to work in grace with each other

To brave the beautiful planet called home

There was no promise that they could save it

But how exciting to give it a try

If each one did just one thing beautifully

Complex life on earth might not die

And so they arrive in a spectrum of colors

The population on earth did explode

Some threw themselves in front of disaster

Other slowly carried their load

Some adopted small girls from China

Some lived high in the branches of trees

Some died as martyrs, some lived as healers

Some bravely walked with a dreadful disease

They mingled among each class and culture

Not one of them could be identified

But together they altered just enough moments

To help the lost and the terrified

To step outside our egos and bodies

To know for once that we truly are one

Then quickly we would forget to remember

But that’s OK, their job was well done

And earth went on for another millennium

Now it’s time for my song to end

This magical story of hope and wonder

Invites you all to wake up and pretend to be

Fabulous creatures sent from the power

Souls that have come with a purpose in mind

To do one thing that will alter the outcome

And maybe together we’ll do it in time

Can you call on your imagination

As if telling a myth to a child

Put in the fantastical, wonderful, magical

Add the romantic, the brave and the wild

The Souls are coming back

The Souls are coming back

The Souls are coming back

PICTURE

PEACE

JUANA ALICIA

Juana Alicia is a muralist, printmaker, educator, and activist who incorporates issues of social justice, human rights, and environmental health into her art. Her public works can be seen throughout the country—from the San Francisco International Airport to the United Electrical and Machine Workers Union Hall in Erie, Pennsylvania.