The Death of Apathy

We speak of revolution
Of resistance to the persistence of illusions
The removal of the conscience from contemplation
As the mind is incubated in delusions
We speak of revolution s that we fail to start with ourselves.
Cannot delve into righteous internal protests
Yet want to profess our commitment
To power to the people and progress
We know less than we think and think less than we know when...
We speak of revolution

Met with indifference when asked critical questions
Treating tragedy like a trend as we trend-set
With only the widely televised capturing our attention
The devastation is in rotation on your local station
Watched like spectacles for our entertainment
And never did we entertain the chain of events
That led to the debasement of entire nations,
Ethnically cleansed and faceless, so we can’t face this negligence
realities concealed by officials and presidents
When we speak of revolution do we see the relevance?

Do we see the precedence we’ve set?
spiritually in debt when blood is shed and we can’t shed tears
So how much blood do you have?
Nations have searched for it to quench their thirst
While hearts circulate its stories
But how much is stored and how much is pouring?
How much is shed internally without you knowing?
How much of it does take to be awake?
How much must drain for you to give back what they take?

Transfusion of the soul—is there enough in you to circulate
Through the networks that connect us?
I’m talking vessels of truth that flood veins just to reach hearts
And not in vain just to recharge
It’s abstract like just a brief part of the story
I'm talking days of glory we’ve forgotten
I'm talking million man marches and saying “never again” to picking cotton
Yes, I'm talking Malcolms and Martins
Ches and Rosa Parks and rays to outshine the darkness
Ways to implant light where the heart is
And wisdom where your thoughts live

So when we speak of revolution,
Let minds feel and hearts think
Converse in one another’s tongues so they may exist as one
Understand one another...
so they may brand one another as the freedom fighters of your body
With every cell of your composition in the army
Fighting for the return of your blood,
this flowing liquid that allows your heart to beat so it can love,
Allows your lungs to breath so you can speak truth
Yet we blood-let, ingest messages of self-indulgence,
Addictions to freeze you conscience, spiritually impoverished,
Selling our souls and their bodies for economic progress,
Neoliberal individualistic culture forgetting the collective problem,
And we would rather not think of the causes, with lives full of voids we avoid

And that’s why to speak of revolution Apathy must die,
Assassinated to avenge the injustice it breeds throughout its life
Apathy has built a life breathing death to the mind,
Arresting empathy where it finds so that in indifference we find satisfaction
Indifference is a war waged against your body to stop it from seeking action
Relaxing in its comatose state it lives for yesterday
because it can’t carry its weight as far as tomorrow
infatuated by the lies of its powerlessness
it lavishes in the cowardice bliss of ignorance
and we’re devouring this like its a privilege not to know
that our tax dollars fund treachery across the globe
that our weaknesses are profitable and keep corporate pockets full

Where are the people in this progress?
Living in dual times of up rise and conflict
Times to make like Tunisia and Egypt and revolt against politicians who should be convicts
Like neurons we live in a nervous system because nervous is the system to resistance...
But before we seek revolution we must destroy the inferiority complex of marginalized communities, of minds monopolized by insecurity
At the hands of the hegemony that’s educated us out of our identities

So take back your legacy!
Take back your freedom!
The revolution will be internalized so that when we speak of it, we believe it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Performed February 13th @ Showcase Your Roots

Malcolm X and The Black Panther Party

A powerful montage shown in my discourses of dissent course.

The Revolutionary Spirit

The revolutionary spirit is comprised of a selfless relentlessness to create positive change. Many of us never develop this. Where we lack is not in the rigor with which we chase this pursuit, but in our perception of the starting point of this journey. The problem is that we want revolutions we fail to start within ourselves. It's not a lack of wanting something enough, but of being and living what it is we want. When we want more than we are willing to work for, dreams become nothing but notions living vicariously in the mind.

I have learned through observation, experience, and conversation that many people want to contribute something positive to the world, many have a yearning for revolution; but many of those who have the capability never realize this potential. The reason for this outcome is one of the great obstacles of the human experience: "realism". We fear what is uncertain, those intangible and tangible things that live outside our proximity. Realism acts as a blanket of comfort convincing us only that which has already occured is possible, ultimately destroying the imagination.

When we lose our capacity to imagine, our lives become redundant as we are found lost in the imaginings of others, trying hard to convince ourselves that the dreams we've stolen have always belonged to us. We want so much to believe that our borrowed ideas are original beacuse without them we are left with a graveyard of dreams, unvisited. We assasinate our own dreams, our own selves, and bury the evidence by cloaking ourselves in the ambitions of others to create the illusion that we are living the lives we've imagine--that we are free.

Wiping our hands clean of our true selves, we walk through life deluded to believe that our choices are well-calculated and clever, that if we break this chain of conformity we will be unsuccessful. This message carries itself proudly in our institutions, media, and pop culture with a plot to infiltrate the mind and control the masses. This because, in the critical thinking of rebels to this status quo, those who dare to question, lives the audacity to ingite revolutions. Revolutions that threaten this culture of conformity.

What about those who have the courage to dissent? Does this courage alone dictate the revolutionary spirit? Courage is only part of the battle. Many toil over the fruition of their ideas, innovations intended to change the world, and through it all a revolutionary spirit may or may not exist within them. The absence of the spirit behind the act renders the act insincere, though it may produce positive effects. This occurs when altruistic acts are reduced to a therapeutic means of coping with one's life or filling a void. "Because it makes me feel good," has always struck me as a disconcerting and incomplete answer to the question of why activism is necessary. There is no urgency, no sincerity, or evidence of consciousness in a self-involved motive to do good for others. We have to do better than acting merely to buffer the guilt of not acting.

It is better to act for the sake of those in need of your actions, to help give a voice to the voiceless, liberation to the oppressed, and dignity to the denigrated. However, I believe the purest reason for activism is for the sake of God--to see the spiritual connection of each member of the human family through the singular source from which we all came into existence. Through this divine lineage of every human soul, we have not only a worldly but a spiritual duty to protect/perserve our brothers and sisters in humanity. This is the essence of activisim; an understanding and acceptance of this responsibility is the essence of the revolutionary spirit.

Tahrir square, Eygpt

Rememberance is at the core of the revolutionary spirit.