Nothin' like the SFA
my feelings post-Encuentro, post-missing all my flights, post-lessons with Cande on the jarana, post-ex-boyfriend encounter, post-everything I dig in SW Florida.
Nobody, no one, and nothing in this struggle like my people in Immokalee. On any given day, they rock me to the core. This goes for every SFAer out there, whether you reside in Immokalee or not. This goes for the workers, CIW staff, the AFF, for Vero and her soon-to-be-born child. I realize all this every time I come back here. Feeling amazed, inspired, frustrated, renewed, exhausted, crying til it fucking hurts, no kidding! Sleeping wherever you can find a safe spot in a good house, relying completely on everyone around you. This level of trust is hard to come by; talk to a million progressives, you won't find any more right-on political analyses, any better people to work with, any stronger focus on what needs to be done and how to do it. But let's not romanticize, Immokalee's a hell of a place to live -- Moklei, "the fenced space" but it is a home, it's a fucking neoliberal-built cage. Let's name it after nafta, after Policy, after every brown person who has fallen to brutality, and alcohol, and taser guns, and debt. Live in that town, you see it on the doorstep every single day. And that's where all this revolution springs from, that's all I have to say, after two years in it, that I am in love for life. The SFA crew, from I-town and out, I don't feel truly content anywhere else but with them.
This goes to Oannes too, my friend and mentor. Man, next year when you can walk again, from the Penobscot Nation, from the Wabanaki Territory on down to these illegal reservations, let's put the names of every Native person on the road signs, and the jail. From here to Oaxaca, Chile, Bhopal, the mid-east, let's keep growing our collective liberation.
Nobody, no one, and nothing in this struggle like my people in Immokalee. On any given day, they rock me to the core. This goes for every SFAer out there, whether you reside in Immokalee or not. This goes for the workers, CIW staff, the AFF, for Vero and her soon-to-be-born child. I realize all this every time I come back here. Feeling amazed, inspired, frustrated, renewed, exhausted, crying til it fucking hurts, no kidding! Sleeping wherever you can find a safe spot in a good house, relying completely on everyone around you. This level of trust is hard to come by; talk to a million progressives, you won't find any more right-on political analyses, any better people to work with, any stronger focus on what needs to be done and how to do it. But let's not romanticize, Immokalee's a hell of a place to live -- Moklei, "the fenced space" but it is a home, it's a fucking neoliberal-built cage. Let's name it after nafta, after Policy, after every brown person who has fallen to brutality, and alcohol, and taser guns, and debt. Live in that town, you see it on the doorstep every single day. And that's where all this revolution springs from, that's all I have to say, after two years in it, that I am in love for life. The SFA crew, from I-town and out, I don't feel truly content anywhere else but with them.
This goes to Oannes too, my friend and mentor. Man, next year when you can walk again, from the Penobscot Nation, from the Wabanaki Territory on down to these illegal reservations, let's put the names of every Native person on the road signs, and the jail. From here to Oaxaca, Chile, Bhopal, the mid-east, let's keep growing our collective liberation.