Shackles OFF Aisha Truss-Miller
The shackles have not COME OFF! They are in courtrooms and on vans or buses headed to county jails from popo stations, and to prisons from jails, from youth detention centers to destinations leading our children to nowhere that they deserve to be. The shackles have not COME OFF! They are twist-ties, billy clubs, and officers giving youth busted lips and black-eyes at BLM demonstrations, officers in our schools, and guns in our streets or in the hands of police trained to gun us down while we stand with toys and phones in hand.... or, Or in our sleep. Rest in heaven Breonna Taylor, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and many more. The shackles have not COME OFF! They are knees in necks, words of disrespect, actions of violence and hate, embedded in and upheld by every institution- which all reiterate daily symbols and text that celebrate actors of genocide, as long as they fly an American flag, as long as they generate profits for this country. The clanking of shackles inspire policymakers and investorswho ought to be properly titled as enslavers; who ought to be imprisoned themselves, I call on spirits of my descendents and ancestors To haunt their peace until we get justice and reparations. The shackles have not COME OFF! They connected lines of gangs of Black men before bangin’ becomes
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