“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed- Let it be the great strong land of love. Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme- that any man be crushed by one above.”
The words of Langston Hughes rang across the Sacramento capitol steps, spoken by one of the many poets, writers, and friends at the “Courage of Poets.” The event, sponsored by Sixteen Rivers Press on Friday, Feb. 6 was meant to commemorate the lives of Renee Goode, Keith Porter Jr., Silverio Villegas Gonzales, Alex Pretti, and others killed by federal agents during the most recent raids and within ICE detention centers.
The U.S.’s collective grief has shown itself to be the surmounting challenge of the current political moment. Being spectators to the violence of immigration enforcement has left many
Americans in an emotional freefall of sorts, creating a valuable need for events that bring hope back to a country in a democratic decline.
Prominent American poet and former United States laureate Robert Hass was in attendance and expressed his very own views surrounding the loss of Goode, herself a poet
“It was moving and important that the murder of Renee Goode wasn’t met with silence. That was one of the things that people kept saying…that silence is complicity, not doing anything,” said Haas.
And not doing anything wasn’t what this group of passionate literary greats had in mind.
Stockton’s own poet laureate Tama Brisbane came to the event with her own views on the power of poetry in these emotionally charged times.
“When we gather like this, we demonstrate that the power of the human voice is not being snuffed out. And because we have creative voices, oftentimes we can say in three lines what people are struggling to process, to feel, to utter themselves. That’s our job,” said Brisbane.
Pouring out of each somber speaker were the words of past poets, intertwined with names of the immigrant Americans who were killed during attempted captures or to suicide in ICE custody. The detailed stories of their experiences need to be shared so no loss would go unaccounted and unspoken for.
Each story and poem comes with layered lessons of courage and determination to not fall victim to those who want to come down onto his most vulnerable with an iron fist cloaked in an American flag.
But the power of poetry acts as a repellent to that feeling of hopelessness. A two to three line declaration of “I am here,” that projects a human’s deepest fears, joys, hopes, and life experiences all while providing a framework to heal all of it within.
“This is a bewildering time and being helpless to change what’s obviously against our values, isolates us in our daily life. On the one hand, poetry is the archive of what human beings felt. So somebody has to be articulating that,” said Hass.
Throughout the event, poems were shared, inspiring music was played, and a collective barbaric “yawp” carried across the granite steps. The loud yawp meant to serve as a communal outcry where each participant stands upright and lets out a loud primal scream to unleash all of the pent up anger and hopelessness that many are feeling in the current moment.
The day filled many with not only a sense of relief, but also a sense of hope for America’s democratic future.
“I do have hope for democracy going forward. Will it be the democracy that we thought that we had? No, but it doesn’t need to be. It shouldn’t be the democracy we thought we had because now we’re seeing that it’s flimsy as [expletive]. So now what the new democracy looks like- that’s what I have hope for,” said Brisbane.
