As
a writer, I've had an office at home for years. It started out as an electric
typewriter on a desk in my thirties, became a computer in my fifties, and a
separate room in my apartment in my sixties. Now, I'm in the process of
organizing that room to take on the appearance, efficiency, and feel of the hub
I want to see Louisiana Network for Criminal Justice Transformation become.
For
those of you who don't already know, I'm stepping down from my full-time
position at the university on August 1st to dedicate the rest of my life to
prison abolition. So I'm transforming the office that has been until now a
center of creative womanist energy – fighting oppression as I have always done – to reflect the more honed focus I have developed in the past year.
Initially,
I removed things: books, personal items, and random clutter unrelated to
criminal justice transformation, collected over time and in the way of progress
and practicality. I added a printer/scanner/copier and a shredder. And I will
soon remove some of the art on the walls, replacing it with LA-NCJT documents
and such.
Yesterday,
as I continued the process while wading my way through six weeks of largely
unanswered LA-NCJT mail, I came across a copy of the following poem by Otto
Rene Castillo. Castillo was the Chief of Propaganda and Education for the Rebel
Armed Forces in the mountains of Guatemala when he was captured in 1967 by
representatives of the right-wing government installed by the U.S./CIA in his
country thirteen years before. He was thirty-three years old when he was
captured, interrogated, tortured, and burned alive.
When I organized a conference in Havana, Cuba,
in 2017 for 300 radical sociologists from fifteen countries, I carried this
poem in my heart. It seems appropos to re-post and re-center it again in this dark time with one additional note.
It won't be just the apolitical intellectuals who will be interrogated after this. It will be the anti-stay-at-home folks that have been encouraged by those at the top to pick up their weapons and create drama in public, calling it "freedom." It will be the die-hard ministers gathering their "flocks" to die and go to Heaven. It will be the ones who had the money to order Waitr and the health insurance to buy three months of their prescriptions at once. It will be the birthday party revellers, the beach goers, yes, even the Netflix binge-watchers, who have hooked themselves up to the simultaneous intravenous drips of mind-numbing drugs and mind-numbing programming, which in fact has already been programming them for years. It will be everyone who let themselves be distracted from the suffering by the circus, who rode Instagram and Reddit while riding the lemmings off the cliff, who thought nothing could be done and so did nothing.
It won't be just the apolitical intellectuals who will be interrogated after this. It will be the anti-stay-at-home folks that have been encouraged by those at the top to pick up their weapons and create drama in public, calling it "freedom." It will be the die-hard ministers gathering their "flocks" to die and go to Heaven. It will be the ones who had the money to order Waitr and the health insurance to buy three months of their prescriptions at once. It will be the birthday party revellers, the beach goers, yes, even the Netflix binge-watchers, who have hooked themselves up to the simultaneous intravenous drips of mind-numbing drugs and mind-numbing programming, which in fact has already been programming them for years. It will be everyone who let themselves be distracted from the suffering by the circus, who rode Instagram and Reddit while riding the lemmings off the cliff, who thought nothing could be done and so did nothing.
The COVID-19 pandemic is going to change human existence from this point forward. But in the struggle to survive, many are ignoring to one extent or another the creeping onslaught and entrenchment of right wing fascism in this country, dragging White Supremacy, misogyny, and religious fanaticism with it, like the four horseman of a long-awaited apocalypse. The amused smirks of so many when that word is used suggest that much of the population of the United States is still just comfortable enough to ignore the fact that (Netflix be damned) life is not a movie. It will not play to the credits in two hours with snacks.
And the revolution will – this time – be televised.
"Apolitical Intellectuals"
by
Otto Rene Castillo
One
day
the
apolitical
intellectuals
of
my country
will
be interrogated
by
the simplest
of
our people.
They
will be asked
what
they did
when
their nation died out
slowly,
like
a sweet fire
small
and alone.
No
one will ask them
about
their dress,
their
long siestas
after
lunch,
no
one will want to know
about
their sterile combats
with
"the idea
of
the nothing,"
no
one will care about
their
higher financial learning.
They
won't be questioned
on
Greek mythology,
or
regarding their self-disgust
when
someone within them
begins
to die
the
coward's death.
They'll
be asked nothing
about
their absurd
justifications,
born
in the shadow
of
the total lie.
On
that day,
the
simple men will come.
Those
who had no place
in
the books and poems
of
the apolitical intellectuals,
but
daily delivered
their
bread and milk,
their
tortillas and eggs,
who
cared for their dogs and gardens
and
worked for them,
and
they'll ask:
"What
did you do when the poor
suffered,
when tenderness
and
life
burned
out of them?"
Apolitical
intellectuals
of
my sweet country,
you
will not be able to answer.
A
vulture of silence
will
eat your gut.
Your
own misery
will
pick at your soul.
And
you will be mute in your shame.
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