To those they killed but who refuse to die

“Meanwhile, the federal government has spent more than a decade failing to contain mass mobilizations (the 2020 George Floyd Rebellion, Standing Rock, Occupy Wall Street, the student encampments, Stop Cop City, the crowds now blocking ICE’s vans) through either ordinary policing or legal repression. Prosecutors in St. Paul charged the RNC 8 under a state terrorism statute after a protest at the Republican National Convention, then dropped the terrorism counts; a Chicago jury acquitted the NATO 3, accused of plotting Molotov cocktails, of every terrorism charge; the great majority of the roughly 800 people charged at Standing Rock over a winter-long standoff saw their cases dismissed or won them outright (even after the federal government sent informants into the protests). After 200 people were kettled downtown at Trump’s 2017 inauguration and charged with felony rioting for simply being in a crowd, six were acquitted at trial; the government dropped the charges for the rest. The criminal conspiracy case against Stop Cop City protesters has almost completely collapsed, with the RICO charges against all 61 people dropped.”

Hannah Riley Fernandez, “The Chilling Trump Order Threatening all Americans: NSPM-7…”, The Nation, August 4th, 2026

I wrote this poem after realizing that a blacklist of forty three names that Included the name of George Floyd was removed from the first online iteration of chapter 7 of Marco Rubio’s Report on “Cuba the capital of 21st century communism.”
It would be comedic if it were not so tragic to note that the State Department could list a dead man as a terrorist to watch…
Even as the Rubio report tries to bully us into a state of collective fear, I believe that slip of their pen reveals the depth of their own fear and sense of defeat.
That being said the list could reappear updated …with other names of the living but also the dead they still fear …

they attack us
and instigate a climate of fear
to intimidate us
not so much because
they hate us
although they hate us
with a vengeance
too

they attack
and bully us
because
they fear us
and they cannot look
their fear in the eye

yes, we live with
the reality
that our mere presence
our superb skin
our breath
our ability to love
each victory
stirs a wind of panic
in their armored chest

derek chauvin
claimed
that
George Floyd
was too big
and
too excited
to be allowed to live

back on the plantation
a mere question
a mere quest for knowledge
a love of books
could lead
to tar and feathers –
it is no different now

little
Emmett Till
may have whistled
maybe not
but a mere Black boy
and his innocence
ruffled the prissy composure
of a white supremacist damsel
who weaponized her distress

the bullies they are
can face their own hatred
as a sign of wannabe superiority
but
they deny their fear
as it consumes them
like a terminal sickness

even an army
of robots as bodyguards
cannot prevent the panic and despair
that drives fascists
to hide in golden bunkers
their last chance lair

and
even the AI minions
the Epstein class thinks it owns
cannot prevent these cowards
from being haunted
by the spirits of our ancestors –
those they killed physically
but who refuse to die

Malcolm X
Martin Luther King
Fred Hampton Sr
Che Guevara
Mehdi Ben Barka
Patrice Lumumba
Felix Moumié
Amilcar Cabral
Thomas Sankara …
the story of their murders
would fill volumes –
the only real list of legions
of names
our living History retains

the names of
those the haunted look
under their beds
for
and find forever
alive

PATIENCE

to my ancestors, to my children and to those who are not yet born

behind their glass
between their frames
fading to tints of sepia
the gaze of my beloved dead
is fixed
unblinking
and timelessly patient
gently waiting
for nothing
i cannot give them

outside
in my garden
the mandevilla winding
around a pine branch
and flowering against the odd
of needles –
the lemon grass
the aloe vera
the echinacea
all know
that at twilight
i will unfailingly water them
and
their living wait is as patient and trusting
as the vigil of my dead

and
if the sour cherry tree
across the path
has not yet borne fruit
as this Summer comes to an end
so be it
my own patient eyes
silently
offer it
all the Summers in the world

SO MUCH TIME UNSEIZED

so many Black Augusts
passed

so many birthdays
forgotten

so many comrades
lost

so many candles
burned to the wick
and none relit

so many stones waiting
to be unturned

so much action gone to seed

so much time unseized

NO NEED FOR EGG TIMERS

I find myself reflecting on how the feeling of powerlessness drives us to police ourselves on matters of time – the essential time, the sacred time we spend on life’s most simple things. Simple but life-giving: like reading and writing and connecting with each other and remembering those we lost…

“Time is Long”
W.E.B. DuBois in Black Star Square in Accra, a few days before he died.

a green glow
takes its time
to filter
through leaves
the dew slowly left

waiting for
the drop by drop
elixir of
coffee
is my morning
ritual

a lit candle
takes its own soothing time
down to the wick

the loss of a comrade
cannot be compressed
into
an hour-glass

i will not be discouraged
from reading you
just because
your writing
i am informed
will take five minutes
of my life

the bass beat
of my heart
is my only tempo

this poem
is an unmeasured
mindful moment
from me to each one
of you

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

To those they killed but who refuse to die | Patience | So much time unseized | No need for egg timers

Poems by renowned Black leader and activist Julia Wright