The Music We Made

We made a community. We made a family. We made heaven on earth.  But all you saw was violence, or noise, or chaos.  What you didn't realize, what you still don't realize, is that you were looking in the mirror.  We held up the mirror to your own bad past deeds; we held up a mirror to your own failure to make amends...and you still don't comprehend the alchemy performed here, or else you would have never installed a fence around this sacred place.

Like so many times before, Black and Brown people and their allies added value to a space that had no value...

We took garbage (because - make no mistake - this statue is garbage, worth less then the value of its smelted down parts)....

We bedazzled it, decorated it, anointed it with our music and our songs.

...and true to form - 

you appropriated it

and have made plans to slice it up and sell it off.

because in your worldview, everything is for sale.

My only thought now, over one week after the fence went up - 

Did you honestly think we didn't know what you were doing?

Did you think we believed that you were doing this in preparation for the statue to the human trafficker to come down?

We knew what you were doing from the moment we heard "fence."

Fences and cages and shackles and ropes are what got us to here.

But most absurd...why was it criminal last year, but this year...it's art, art you are preparing to sell?

When did that happen,

what pretzel-twists of logic turned a teargassable act into a commodity....

and what of the artists?

P.S. We know what you did to his trombone....