Archive for November 2008
Still I rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
as seen on this website via StumbleUpon
Just to remember an historic speech
Two of my favourites
“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral.
It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.
It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than to convert.
Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.
It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.
Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers”.
by Martin Luther King jr (1968)
“I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in the positions to block every thing that you and I need.
Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring and end to that situation, and it doesn’t mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time, I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence”.
by Malcolm X
