Democratic Womanism

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.