Sarah Pizer-Bush
Watercolor on canvas
Response
Missing Daughters of the Movement
By Darice Jones
Inspiration piece
Latasha with the big amber eyes and glowing almost-black brown-colored skin
descendant of intersecting activisms
of remixed and remastered freedom songs
of the love kind of love only people who had been kidnapped and tortured en masse for generations knew how to create
and that made sense, since it was they who had innovated from the dawn of orally recorded time
hailing from the largest and most populated continent on Earth
showing up in all the shades of earth
Latasha who meditated a few times daily, who studied Ifa and world history, who read the philosophers of Alkebulan,
and found the co-occurring super powers in the carefully formed rhythmic and musical riffs of Megan Thee Stallion, Toby Nwigwe, Dom Jones, Le’Andria Johnson and Gene Noble
who volunteered helping her own community, shoring up her own family in the tough times
who showed up at the marches
testified in front of local politicians,
and who directed the majority of her sizeable income back into businesses, organizations, and causes run for and by her people
Latasha was clear that she was a child of many movements
That the grandparents and great-grandparents, and great-greats had instigated social change
That they had put their comforts, their very bodies on the line to see a more just world for her
Just as she was clear that there were allies who stood alongside her grands and great-greats, exercising the courage that comes from knowing that on some fundamental level, humankind can only be good to the extent that it knows and acts like it knows that there should be no oppressed, no disenfranchised, no hungry, no unhoused, no unsupported, and certainly never any group that is targeted for perpetual torture and exclusion by the powers that be
Today, having scrolled past all the social media commentary
on yet another assault on a peaceful and beloved Black citizen – another day of grief while the traffic still roles along
Latasha’s big amber eyes were looking for the daughters of the white abolitionists, for the mothers, the sisters, the peace activists, the true friends
Where were those folks who seemed so comfortable shaping the minds of young Black children in the classroom, supervising their parents on the job, running the foundations that decide how many hoops community members will jump through to reclaim some of the resources the people in fact generated?
Where were those agitators, allies, and friends who grands and great-great grands had stood with hers?
Where was their pain to rival her own? … that baseline human connection
Where were the self-proclaimed empaths?
Where were the spiritualists?
Where were the Bible believers?
Where were the Buddhists?
Where were the folks who held the Kabbalah?
Where were the Koran carriers?
Where were the Spirit practitioners who held life itself sacred above all else?
Latasha was wondering about her actual friends, many of whom she had stood by during their greatest triumphs and held close through their most heart wrenching losses.
Did they think there was a way to love Latasha and be indifferent to the plight of the rest of the African diaspora whose breath she breathed?
Did they believe they could cherry pick Black creatives, celebs, thinkers, politicians, partners, or neighbors to love, but not love Us in total?
They had to know that it was all of us or none
They had to know that she, who they called friend, was looking for them
Latasha found herself looking out into the empty valley of those daughters descended from women of courage, of intersecting movements, of radical change-makers, of healers, of light-workers, of truth tellers – as tumbleweed twirled on invisible winds.
Written By Darice M. Jones
In the year of Toni Morrison ©2023
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