Author: diaza3

Solidarity is an essential part of achievement;

What one wants, others must aid in;

Ideas and concepts all intertwined into one;

Finding commonalities and common ground;

For what is important and achievable;

But also for what the oppressors have made unachievable.

Allies and adversaries;

Tweed out the bad ones;

The ones you know will bring you down;

The ones you know don’t want you to achieve great things;

Invest in the good ones;

The heroes of our future;

The ones who believe in humanitarianism.

Liberate yourself, self-advocate;

Unionize and celebrate;

What one wishes for, others need to help grant it;

For when we all work together, we can have it all.

Poetry Response to The Children’s Ambassador.

Children are the future;

So it is our moral and social responsibility;

To educate and advocate for them;

And to make sure they know their worth.

If we are not there to support and raise them up;

Then who will be?

Children are the future;

So we need them to keep pushing forward.

If we allow them to believe they are not brave or intelligent;

Then what type of people will they become?

Angry, weak souls.

Children are our future;

So we must keep pushing;

Because sometimes a little push;

Makes the biggest difference.

A poetry response to La Prieta’s, Who Are My People? by Gloria Anzaldua.

Loving someone for their pure existence;

Should not be tarnished due to differences or personal hatred;

Do not apply your insecurities to someone else’s strength;

And then successively, turning their strengths into their weaknesses;

“Treat others as you would want to be treated;”

Would you like someone to pierce you with their offensive slurs?

Or choke you with their disapproving glances?

So do not commit these transgressions onto them.

I do not care if you are white, black, or purple;

If you are straight, gay, or pansexual;

If you love me, then I love you too;

But beware, not everybody is capable of this love.

I would like to ask those who struggle with their children’s identities;

Why does it bother you so much about who they become?

If not to live vicariously through them, why do you care how your child looks or who they love?

If they are happy, why do you care?

So to those outraged about your child dressing as the opposite sex;

Or to those squeamish at the thought of your child caressing and loving someone of the same sex;

Would you rather walk your child down the aisle?

Or put flowers on their coffin?

The reading that stood out to me the most was “La Guera” by Cherrie Moraga, and so I did a poem in “response” to her work.

My mother is a fair-skinned, first generation, Boricua to attend college;

Little did she know that the struggle would never cease, nor give her a break;

Williamsburg’s Humboldt Street’s public school education could not prepare her for a college career;

Her mother was a factory worker making cents a day, to make sense of it all;

For her babies future in a world of whiteness is rightness;

Papa Rivera working low-wage jobs just to provide warm food in his babies bellies;

My mother is a light skin, first generation, Boricua college graduate;

Bachelor’s from Hunter, Master’s from Seton Hall;

Let me not forget New York’s Finest;

To me she’s mom, but to others she’s Officer Rivera-Diaz;

Handed nothing but her fair-skin, that in turn did not a thing for her;

A thick, fair-skin that gave her very little privilege, but a lot of confusion;

A fair-skin that could never strip the Boricua or kinky thick hair from her or her degrees.