Democratic Womanism
By Alice Walker
You
ask me why I smile when you tell me
you
intend in coming national elections
to
hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
There
are more than two evils out there, is one reason I smile
Another,
is that our old buddy Nostradamus comes to mind
With
his fearful 400 yr old prophecy that our world
And
theirs too, our enemies, lots of kids included there
Will
end by nuclear Nachbah?, by holocaust, in our life time
Which
makes the idea of elections
and
the billions of dollars wasted on them somewhat fatuous
A
southerner of color, my people held the vote very dear
While
others for centuries merely appeared to play with it
One
thing I can assure you of, is this,
I
will never betray such pure hearts by voting for evil,
even
if it were microscopic,
which
as you can see in any newscast, no matter the slant, it is not.
I
want something else – a different system entirely
One
not seen on this earth for thousands of years, if ever
Democratic Womanism
Notice
how this word has “man” right in the middle of it
That’s
one reason I like it.
He
is right there front and center, but he is surrounded.
I
want to vote and work for a way of life that honors the feminine
A
way that acknowledges the theft of the wisdom female and dark mother leadership
may have provided our spaceship all along
I
am not thinking of a talking-head kind of gal—
happy
to be mixing it up with the badest bad boys on the planet
Her
eyes a slit; her mouth a zipper
No,
I am speaking of true regime change
Where
women rise to take their place unmasked
At
the helm of earth’s frail and failing ship
Where
each thousand years of our silence is examined with regret
And
the cruel manner in which our values of compassion and kindness
Have
been ridiculed and suppressed, brought to bear on the disaster of the present
time
The
past must be examined closely, I believe, before we can leave it there.
I
am thinking of Democratic, and
perhaps socialist, Womanism.
For
who else knows so deeply how to share but mothers and grandmothers,
big
sisters and aunts, to love and adore both female and male,
not
to mention those in between
To
work at keeping the entire community educated, fed, and safe
Democratic Womanism, Democratic Socialist
Womanism
Would
have as its icons such fierce warriors for good as
Vandana
Shiva, Aung San Suu Kyi,Wangari Maathai, Harriett Tubman, Yoko Ono, Frida Kahlo,
Angela Davis and Barbara Lee
With
new ones rising wherever you look
You
are also on this list,
but
it is so long, Isis would appear midway, that I must stop or be unable to
finish the poem
So
just know that I stood you in a circle
that
includes Marian Wright Edelman, Amy Goodman, Sojourner Truth, Gloria Steinem,
and Mary McCleod Bethune,
John
Brown, Frederick Douglass, John Lennon, and Howard Zinn
are
there, happy to be surrounded.
There
is no system now in place that can change the disastrous course the Earth is
on.
Who
can doubt this
The
male leaders of Earth appear to have abandoned their very senses
Though
most appear to live now entirely in their heads
They
murder humans and other animals, forests and rivers and mountains everyday they
are in office and never seem to notice it.
They
eat and drink devastation.
Women
of the world, women of the world, is this devastation us?
Would
we kill whole continents for oil or anything else rather than limit the number
of consumer offspring we produce and learn how to make our own fire?
Democratic womanism, democratic
socialist womanism
A
system of governance we can dream and imagine and build together
One
that recognizes at least six thousand years of brutally forced complicity
And
the assassination of Mother Earth but foresees six thousand years
Ahead
of us when we will not submit
What
will we need? – a hundred years, at least, to plan
Five
hundred will be handed us gladly, when the planet is scared enough
In
which circles of women meet, organize ourselves, and elide with men brave
enough to stand with women.
Nurture
our planet to a degree of health, and without apology, impossible to make a
bigger mess than has been made already,
Devote
ourselves heedless of opposition to tirelessly serving and resuscitating our
mother ship
And
with gratitude for her care of us worshipfully commit to rehabilitating it.
