Letter to a Little Man

 

I drew the above as a design for a protest sign, which I want to display when counter-protesting the fash as a counterpoint to their shite, expensive, AI-generated banners of the likes of Charlie Kirk. I like the idea of toting something handmade, homebrewed, put together on a shoestring with real creative effort honouring real heroes instead of something expensive and fake bigging up a dickhead who died the way he lived - making a tit of himself on a college campus spreading hatred against black folks and trans people. Basically I'm trying to put into practice the things I said about getting as real as we possibly can in opposition to the fake, AI-fuelled social media world the fascists are all desperate to be stars of in the interview I did for We Create Together last month: 

After having drawn it, though, I read some posts about how many more people than just Pretti and Good have been murdered by ICE in the past year or so, which led me to tracking down The American Prospect's Running Count of How Many People ICE Has Killed and Injured. And I felt that I should also do something to honour them, too. And, because I have previous form for writing protest poems about events in Minnesota, and because a poet whose work I greatly value told me once I seemed to do my best work in the form of a direct address, I wrote this: 

Letter to a Little Man 

Your cheque bounced, Donald: as you knew it would.

It bounced for Alex Pretti. It bounced for Renee Good:

A mother shot dead in her car. A nurse killed like a dog,

And both would be the first to say they’re not the only ones. 

It bounced for Jaime Alanis: they threw him from a roof

In Southern California, and Robert Valdez too:

They ran him over with a car, and then, in Illinois

They shot Silverio Gonzalez, after he dropped off his boys

And daughter at their school, in ‘ Operation Midway Blitz’;

And then, on a highway in Virginia, a speeding truck would hit

Jose Castro-Rivera as he tried to flee your thugs;

Isaias Barboza and Keith Porter they just shot down with their guns

In Texas and Los Angeles: we know the names of some

Who had their fingers on those triggers, but most remain unknown

Because your murderers wear masks and turn their backs to hide their shame,

And what we also know with certainty is these are just the names

Of those they killed in public: behind the high white walls

Of your detention centres you’ve killed five-and-thirty more

That we can name. I’ll name them here. Their names should be remembered: 

Genry Ruiz Gullen. 

Serawit Gezahegn Dejene. 

Maksym Chernyak.

Brayam Rayo-Garzon. 

Nhon Ngoc Nguyen. 

Marie Ange Blaise. 

Abelardo Avelleneda-Delgado.

Jesus Molina-Veya.

Johnny Noviello.

Isidro Perez. 

Tien Xuzn Phan. 

Chaofeng Ge. 

Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas. 

Oscar Rascon Duarte. 

Ismael Ayala Uribe.

Santos Reyes-Banegas.

Norlan Guzman-Fuentes. 

Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez.

Huabing Xie

And Leo Cruz-Silva…

I’ve read lists of names like this before, by my city’s Civic Centre:

The victims of a genocide you’ve revelled in abroad,

An act that you applauded (and the watching world abhorred)

And which you sought to imitate at home, from sea to shining sea

With your American SS, your pampered paramilitary

Who panic if they think they hear a car alarm or whistle,

Their mascot your sham Superman who couldn’t pass the physical

(I queued to see you once, Dean Cain, at Gateshead Metro Centre;

If I ever see your face again I swear I’ll fucking end ya);

Who cry unfair at protesters in blow-up frog costumes,

Who fifty motivated Angelenos forced back into their HQ,

And who are being beaten back in Minneapolis and Maine

By a people who have woke up and who know ‘never again’

Is more than just a formula of pious, empty words

And that a riot isn’t violence but the cry of the unheard

Who will remain unheard no longer as we make some fucking noise

In Minnesota, Philly, California, Illinois,

Virginia, Texas, Venezuela, Greenland, Palestine,

And everywhere around the world where people choose to rise,

Refuse to bend the knee and make it known we’ve had enough

Of your clan of child molesters and your camo-suited thugs.

The cheque that bounced in ’26 is not the one King tried

To cash back in the sixties, the promise, long denied,

Of life and happiness and liberty to be enjoyed by all,

No: your bouncing cheque’s your undertaking that you’d make us crawl.

You can’t. We won’t. We never will. No matter what you do

All people of good will will never kneel for men like you. 

And now your cheque is bouncing, Donald, as we always knew it would,

Because when, Mr President, was your credit ever good?

Yes, the allusion to Wilhelm Reich is intentional. I've been thinking a lot about his work on the psychology of fascists, and particularly his own angry direct address to them and their ilk, Listen, Little Man!, a lot lately. 

The YouTuber Shaun is doing a fundraiser for the Women's Foundation of Minnesota's Immigrant Rapid Response Fund, which seems like a good thing to donate to, if any of the above has moved you to do so.