Apicha CHC Stands in Solidarity With Black Lives Matter

Apicha Community Health Center sends its condolences to everyone grieving George Floyd, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Jarmar Clark, Dreasjon “Sean” Reed, Botham Jean, Ezell Ford, Michael Brown, Stephon Clark, Tamir Rice, and the countless others who have lost their lives by the hands of the police force. 

We all grieve with you. 

To honor these lives lost we must focus our efforts on achieving justice for George Floyd and pursue meaningful changes to police departments to root out police brutality for good. 

In this spirit, we share this poem--originally written for Apicha’s 2018 benefit gala. It conveys not only the grief, the anger, and the frustration that have become our far-too-consistent feelings in a world where Black lives do not matter, but also hope for a better world to come.

“Stones”

Written by Therese R. Rodriguez

In the jungles of St. Louis

In the state of Missouri

A white policeman on a hunt

A game.

Licensed to kill blacks

And did.

Found Not Guilty by a white judge

Another murderous act unpunished.

How many mountains should be leveled?

To have enough stones and rocks

To hurl

At Goliath as David did?

The only weapon of anger

Of frustration

Yes, the glass doors and windows shatter

Alarms wail

Cars overturned,

Explode in fiery scrappy mess

Looters claim what they can carry

No cash registers to fall in line on

Just a mad rush through those kicked-in doors

Main Street store owners collateral victims

Life savings swept away the morning after.

In the streets vivid replay

Centuries of grievance

Of ancestors hanging from tree limbs

Bleeding hands doing back breaking work

On sun soaked earth

For the owner to claim full profit

Of land and slave.

Abuse of power absolute

Immovable as mountains

Black bodies so young

Laying in caskets

Drowning in mothers’ tears

Cemeteries filling up

With their bones and ashes.

Prison cells bursting with

Bodies corralled behind cold iron bars

Snatched from mothers, fathers, partners

Sons, daughters and community.

Piles of human debris

Mountains of despair

Seeking breathing space

From a society where

White Supremacy

is God.

Congregations in the streets

Angrily sing and chant

Like the Ugandan characters

in "The Book of Mormons"

"Hasa Diga Eebowai"!

Hearts hardened like stone

Anger transformed

Liberated

Only hearts can dream

Dreamers join

Scaling the thorny and rocky terrain

Of a steep climb

Up the Golgotha

To unburden the cross

On the mountain top

Young black men,

Children of Newtown and Parkland,

Bodies pierced with bullets

Akin to Malcolm X’s

And that of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s

Their spirits live on

In Black Lives Matter

Parkland High School

Me Too

Movements who now bear the burden of the Dream.

A summit

At the top of the world

Where the compass points nowhere

No north-south, no east-west

In the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi

Mending broken jars with gold

Finding beauty in broken things

An imperfect paradise

But paradise nonetheless.