by Judy Juanita
before
at the Chevrolet manufacturing plant on 73rd ave
See the USA in your Chevrolet
America is asking you to call
Drive your Chevrolet through the USA
America’s the greatest land of all
We paid our parents no mind at all
when they said Dinah Shore was passing for white
Oakland had white-only garden apts. on 66th ave
housing UC Berkeley grad students
young dads in Bermuda shorts
moms in capri pants
a 99 year covenant kept us out
the little children called us niggers
if we took the shortcut home
Those apts. became the site of the 1980s drug wars
The would-be Coliseum was a swamp
BART was a developer’s dream
to bring suburban commuters to SF
Oakland be damned
We had to fight to get Oakland stops added
The boys across the street were from Georgia
Their mother welcomed my brother to peepee
in their bathroom but insisted he poopoo at home
I thought white people pooped white poops
And we pooped brown
Wave after wave of Ohlones, Mexicans, Chinese, Portuguese
Oakies and Arkies from the Oklahoma and Arkansas dust bowls
coloreds and whites from Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma
migrated for munitions and troop movement work during WWI
Our parents and grandparents came in droves
planting their families and dreams
in the fertile soil called California
after
We’re all Panthers now
The Black Panther Party did not backfire
It was an early warning system
for this entire country/world
about U.S. oppression
the ravages of imperialism
the rampant police-as-occupying-force
in the black community
As the vanguard it did exactly
what
it was historically tasked to do
it woke people up
What people choose to do now
under this near totalitarianism
is up to individuals and groups
We don’t need Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Denmark Vesey
Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Fannie Lou Hamer
MLK, John Lewis, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver
Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, all our people
who fought to the finish
They came, they saw, they served
It’s up to the living to stand up and be counted
Judy Juanita’s poetry has been published widely. Her poem “Bling” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Her semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul is about a young woman who joins the Black Panther Party in the 60s (Viking, 2013). She appears in Netflix’s Last Chance U: Season 5, Laney College where she teaches.