Poets for Ferguson | 7 days 'til goal, a reflection
I've performed in spaces where I was the only poet of color in the room. I've heard members of the audience deciding that it was okay to disregard my work because I was "doing that black shit" that's "always about race."
Granted, these were usually poems lasting about 3 minutes in length, that proved to be entirely too much time for non-PoC's to listen to a monolithic commiseration of the black experience before they spontaneously combusted into a million tiny pieces of guilt and exhaustion.
I guess.
And so, the formation of 24 uninterrupted hours of PoC's being the only voice in the room seemed like the obvious way to respond to that--to that instinctive want to silence and/or disregard the voices of POC.
Every poet who participated in this project gave of themselves in no small way, offering the telling of personal tragedies gracefully and unapologetically. And not just personal tragedy, but varied experiences with "otherness" and all its intersections.
Poets for Ferguson is an ongoing demonstration in prolonging the voice.
Simultaneously, it is an ongoing demonstration in amplifying the voices of those who have not stopped protesting in Ferguson, from the beginning. There are 7 days until our funding period closes, but the protestors of Ferguson will still be on the front lines far beyond that.
If you can donate, do it! If you can't, share this link with your resident gazillionaire: http://www.gofundme.com/e15suw
-S
