Hello.
"There's something I want to tell you.
You are like the moon, a reflection of the sun,
the eternal fire of spirit matter.
Acknowledge your presence as a manifestation
of the greater spirit.
You are sacred.
Like waves in the ocean, we are differentiated as individuals
only by superficial form.
Take a moment to think about our interconnectedness.
Breathe in deeply and center your presence.
As you turn your gaze inward, remember
that you are pure, raw, a part of nature,
an animal, a community member, an autonomous being,
a consciousness.
All those dysfunctional, toxic, harmful, violent,
individualist, egoist, and consumerist actions
are only a perpetuation of the forces which divide us.
They are not you.
These forces are spells cast by oppressors of all kinds.
By recognizing this and by recognizing our solar unity,
we can allow ourselves to heal, to disrupt and absolve
the hexes enacted by our government
and corporate masters and all their systems of control.
By recognizing yourself as a reflection of the holy,
we can collectively liberate ourselves
from the binds of worldly limitations.
By recognizing that the constructs which keep us
at perpetual distance from one another are illusions,
we can transcend past the dominant order
and manifest collective truth.
We are Ojalá, and we are here to break barriers."
Hello.
Good afternoon.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(RAPPING) Finally free.
Took me so long to gain the power for you and me.
I wish you could see how your hoping deserves peace.
We strive to end disease.
No revenge has been released.
I just need to hold onto my sanity.
Risking it all for so little, I guess
that's just the man in me.
A king I never plan to be.
You must understand.
Uh.
I can't believe that I'm finally free.
Fucking so long to gain the power for you and me.
I wish you could see how your hoping deserves peace.
We strive to end disease.
No revenge has been released.
I just need to hold onto my sanity.
Risking it all for so little, I guess
that's just the man in me.
A king I never plan to be.
You must understand to reach this point
in a life means a whole lot of tragedy around me.
I'm bouncing, looking for something
deeper in life than all of these drugs around me.
Around me, schizophrenic, the message, monumental.
Our message is to give a taste of what's astounding.
If there's a crown then watch your head bleed.
Yeah, no holes in my head stones bruise and beat my feet
and I can't be what you believed in.
Have faith let Lucifer receive them.
And I'm finally free.
Fucking so long to gain the power for you and me.
I wish you could see how your hoping deserves peace.
We strive to end disease.
No revenge has been released.
I just need to hold onto my sanity.
Risking it all for so little, I guess
that's just the man in me.
A king I never plan to be.
You must understand to reach.
"In 2009, you were deported.
I write to you, asking you of your demons,
asking you of your fears, asking if I will end up being you.
Hijo de Guadalupe, junkie Diego, seer of chaos,
Gemini son, a man with one face looking upward
and one face shaking uncontrollably.
In Guadalajara, I sing a lovely song
for the ghosts of my bloodline.
I sing a quiet song for you, tío.
And now I go atop a mountain, facing the ocean of stars
overhead in rituals of psilocybin and sage, my body
convulsing, and the stars in their light pierce
through the night sea.
I am so little.
I am nothing but a machine wired with nerves,
a pulsating miracle, an animal aware of the strangeness.
Tío Pepe, mi santo.
The patron of good kids in the hood, of intelligent junkies,
of prodigal sons, of loneliness and coping.
This country upheaves tombs and builds commerce.
This country kills the poor for not being worthy enough.
This country views us as disposable, as replaceable,
as cogs in the machine.
Tío Pepe, fallen angel, cachorro perdido, lost lamb.
Where's my turning point?
Am I the one to interrupt this cycle?
Ciclo de pobreza.
Ciclo de angustia, buscando paz, and the bodies of lovers,
and the names of newborns, and the memories unearthed
by solitude and sobriety, and the drugs of ancestors,
and the ceremonies of death.
I didn't ask to be alive, and neither did you.
Yet it's a choice.
We've chosen to be here still.
We've chosen to wait, to learn, to love,
to hurt, to breathe, to see, to taste, to indulge still.
And I've chosen not to speak to you.
And you've chosen to sober up again.
May you find peace when you look up and see
ancestors crying for you.
May you find peace when you look into the mirror
and see your mother's eyes loving you tenderly.
May you find peace on the other side of the border.
May you find peace.
Tío Pepe."
[APPLAUSE]
"Ask me why I don't drink anymore.
Ask me, and I'll show you bodies in broken bottles,
the reflection of every friend I've ever
lost to a 40-ounce bus, chains in one hand
and bullwhip in the other.
I will show you my cold tears and my fever dreams
and the fear and pain of waking up every day absolutely
believing that I must be dead, because no one can
live like this.
Because no one prays for death, dances with death,
inhales her white scent and lives
to wake up under the infinite stars and the blackness
in between them.
I will show you my mother and the way her eyes cried
and the silent, terrified nights of my father.
I will show you baggies and bindles of black and Black
and brown and white bodies and black in foil
and blackouts and razor blades and bad trips
and bloody and cracked crack pipe lips and coffins
and nosebleeds and pitted flesh and car
crashes and broken-down doors and broken bones and pigs
and plugs and bullets buried in pitted flesh.
The sea of death.
I will show you a sea of death.
Ask me, and I will show you a hollow and skeletal face, skin
sallow and barely alive, hollow, crying eyes the last time
I saw them before he died.
I will show you the silent tears on my face,
evaporating in the cold wind of one fall
seven years ago, and the same silent tears when
I slept in a bed again after weeks and months outside.
I will show you the way a family,
a sister, a mother posts on his Facebook wall after the wake,
telling him, I wish I could call you,
and I woke up wishing this was a dream.
I will show you a beautiful baby boy alone in his bassinet
in his mother's home, while she is in the other room,
stolen from him by China white powder or by black smack.
I will show you my homie Ochito, 13, killed by just two Vicodin.
He died when he was just barely beginning to be alive.
I lost my first friend to an overdose
when I was 12 years old.
I will show you bodies and bodies and broken bodies
and bloody bodies and bullet-holed bodies
and countless bodies in this drug war.
I will show you blood and bodies and bottles
that we step over in our streets, in their gutters.
These are blood.
This is bodies.
These are bottles.
This is a war on the poor.
Their military and death's army.
Their weapons and poisons in our streets, in our homes,
in our corner stores.
I will show you their battering rams.
Broken-down doors in Los Angeles, no-knock raids,
and broken ribs and broken wrists and broken dreams
and broken homes and broken fathers,
grandparents in prisons for dope dealing, for trying to survive,
and mothers running packs, and sons and daughters with futures
and hopes and blood beating in their hearts
imprisoned by broken homes.
I'll show you my broke homies and my broken homies.
I will show you countless rest in power and rest
in pieces, countless pieces of bodies, severed pieces
of human flesh, severed heads in Arizona and in Juarez
and in Oakland.
Graffiti pieces shall rest in peace.
And everywhere, straps and gas are held firmly
over hearts protecting cash and dope and dope,
and dope is death, and bullets are death.
I know bullets are death.
To drink is also death, and dope is death.
I will show you that dope is death.
I'll show you the chains they got around us,
chains in baggies and bottles and bindles
of Scotch paper and tape or rolled foil or zips.
I will show you the scars on my hands and on my arms
and how they match the open hands of death.
Ask me why I don't drink anymore,
why I can't get high anymore, and I will show you
countless dances with death, countless times I tried to die
and countless who did.
It's one more hand in our pockets,
one more way to pacify, to crucify,
to scarify our communities into submission to oppression
and fear and consent to domination.
Ask me, and I'll show you a sea of death."
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(RAPPING) Concerned, but they haven't said a word.
My family don't know where I'm at.
Grace taught me about the Earth.
And I can feel my nerves in a place where birds don't.
Pimp spirit, your 126 checks on my home.
Feds popped up at my crib, talking about a stolen phone.
We just need to print a logo, want some shirts,
and then we own.
Coliseum's in my dome, my cousin's on the heroin.
Late nights got pushed back when it was ready to drop.
Fell and fall was underrated, so grace ready to bop.
A face head out my walk, talking about he needed water.
Did a bid for 10 years now, he's on the streets
with his daughter.
I ain't know his name was Red, so walked out, got back
to burning.
He asked for forgiveness, my brother
gave him bottles for his hurting.
24 ounces of liquid eyes, minerals,
psychedelics the CEO of Lab Jackson.
I'm the general.
I love to watch the centerfold.
People are, hell is gone.
My strategy's extended, make a deal with tension.
Meguite, Sweet Miguel, Mike, Mickey
who love to the wrong light and you might get Biggie.
Get Big Al, got the rock, bump for Big Al.
Sacred souls don't tell.
Suspects as usual.
They want to put me in a cell.
I'm saying, Yes, we were sending stuff down my body when bells.
Embassy's concerned, but they haven't said a word.
My family don't know where I'm at.
Grace taught me about the Earth.
And I can feel my nerves in a place where birds don't chirp.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
Listen.
Small noise like drops of sweet rain, the orange blossoms
fall from the tree in my front yard tonight.
I hold still, and in the distance
two sharp sounds, deadened by air, thick with light,
rising from small bulbs on porches, napped in yellow glow
like pools of butter.
Sometimes, the pop of brass shells
is too far to echolocate.
Tonight, my ears are sharp, and I
am sure of which block they ring from.
It is still sometimes cold here in my spring,
where from somewhere bubbling in me comes this hot blood--
warm, but with no burn, like the whiskey way
my last heartbeat in cold parks at 13
and clutching an 8-ball on the East Side.
No, this warm is like Oma's room--
at 4 and clutching oatmeal raisin,
or like a stranger's little house at 15,
gulping breaths of hot tobacco or the quiet almost
imperceptible sound of burning mugwort.
Warm, like the soft color of my lover
curled up under freeway overpasses on concrete.
And in the sun, like little lizards
we rest where we can and make do with what little we have.
I hold still, lest my time becomes something
less permanent or my memory, which is already failing me,
lapse again into delusion.
So counting my years like heartbeats
and trying to catch falling hairs
and watching my dope scars disappear,
I try to remember my reflection, and listen.
When I was a little kid, I wore a wizard hat
until I learned the spells to turn my empty receptors
into fountains of vision.
And then at 13, that cup ran over.
And itchy and dopesick, this mage woke up in a cold place.
Dark and turned necromancer, I tried
so hard to rub my skin off to itch my way to heaven because I
am sure this world must be hell, or to fill my gaps
with pharmaceutical cocktails.
And then in January, the lunar eclipse
pulled me from my tent at 3:00 AM,
and in their scruffy creosote and Juniper
spell, sorcery contorted my body,
ripping off the rotted pieces.
And lest I ever forget that sound of my flesh
tearing and my bones breaking, I hold still, and I listen.
[APPLAUSE]
"After Ariana Brown."
Praise the morning Sun.
Praise the gentle hands.
Praise the lips mouthing love and surrender.
Praise the body and its unique way
of finding comfort in collapsing.
Praise the flesh and the bone and the light and the warmth
and the pulse and the soul and the mesquite and the cholla
and the nopales and the bedrock.
Praise the glory of an ending day.
Praise the love unbound to this body
but tethered to infinity, to paradise,
to the ordinance of unholy and holy things.
Praise the bodies of migrants.
Praise the bodies of incarcerated people.
Praise the bodies of gang bangers.
Praise the bodies of the pious and the heathens.
Praise the barrios still breathing
and the barrios buried beneath commerce.
Praise the brown of my skin.
Praise the unrelenting revolution
in the circle of my lover's hand.
Praise ancestors and roadside memorials and cuentos
olvidados and the concrete and the color
of blood on the concrete and the unfulfilled wish
still happening.
Praise the ghost.
The dance is all around us.
Praise the homies' devil horn and cross bearing.
Praise the child watching the sky burn blue.
Praise the child that wields a gun and aims it at the Moon.
Praise the child that dares to dream.
Praise this love for it is a temple.
And you've got to learn to worship in this temple
quietly and tenderly.
Praise this love.
Praise it quietly and tenderly.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you for joining us for that.
I want to share with you a little bit of information
about the war on drugs.
So hopefully, all of you had a little leaflet on your seat
when you came in.
We printed these leaflets with information
from American Friends Service Committee, their Arizona
division.
So they essentially summarize a little bit of the reason
that we're so angry about this war, right.
It's the longest running domestic war,
the most talked about, and also the most invisible, right.
It's also speaks a little bit to why we call it a war, right.
War has to be fought against somebody, right.
So I want to share with you some statistics,
and then I want to share with you
a quote that I think is really illuminating
about why we're engaged in this warfare as a nation,
as a society.
So currently, the amount of drugs, even residue--
I'm sorry, any amount of drugs even residue
can result in a possession charge.
Conviction for sales of drugs, regardless of the amount,
is an automatic class 2 felony.
That's the same as manslaughter, aggravated assault,
armed robbery, and kidnapping.
Drug crimes comprise the largest category of offense.
21.8% of offenders are for drug crimes,
for which people are incarcerated in the Arizona
State prison system.
For women, that percentage is even higher at 32%.
There are significant racial disparities
in the drug sentencing and incarceration in Arizona.
This system is directly in support of white supremacy.
Arizona is spending a staggering $588,655 per day
to incarcerate people whose most serious charge is a drug
offense.
It's a pretty enormous number.
So the quote that I want to share with you
is from a person named John Ehrlichman, who
was Nixon's advisor.
So the Nixon White House kind of crafted the war
on drugs and Ehrlichman, as Nixon's advisor,
was responsible for its architecture.
I think this is really illuminating
about why it exists and what it's here
to do so this is the quote
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House
after that, had two enemies--
the anti-war left and Black people.
We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either
against the war or Black, but by getting the public
to associate hippies with marijuana
and Black folks with heroin, and then criminalizing both
heavily, we could disrupt those communities.
We could arrest their leaders and raid their homes,
break up their meetings, and vilify them night
after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs?
Of course, we did."
So I'm going to let you sit with that for a second
because I think that's really important to understand
the context of this war that we're talking about fighting.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Before I continue, I want to add on
that it was Mr. Max here who is responsible for these leaflets.
He's a genius.
I want everyone else to know that.
[APPLAUSE]
Because every time I'm rubbing up,
there's not enough in my blood.
Corruption caught on camera, and the cops still won.
Got to walk away, wake up, give a hug to his son.
Living with another Brown body under his gun.
Every time I'm rubbing up, there's not enough in my blood.
Corruption caught on camera, and the cop still won.
Got to walk away, wake up, give a hug to his son.
Living with another Black body under his gun.
Every time I watch the tube, it puts me in a bad mood.
Another bomb threat of a celebrity
that came out the wrong fucking movie
promotion, that next screening when poverty keeps screaming.
All the way from the Himalayas to Phoenix, people, fetuses,
caffeine, and drunks drowning and dreaming.
Seduction leaves you with semen.
Got beef?
Then redeem it.
I got the bong, I'm a drippy.
You've got a gun slop, you clip it.
Lead offers for dippy.
No sweat, just putting up a whippy.
Because every time I'm rubbing up,
there's not enough in my blood.
Corruption caught on camera, and the cops still won.
Got to walk away, wake up, give a hug to his son.
Living with another Brown body under his gun.
Every time I'm rubbing up, there's not enough in my blood.
Corruption caught on camera, and the cops still won.
Got to walk away, wake up, give a hug to his son.
Living with another Black body under his gun.
[APPLAUSE]
Again, I want to thank you for being here with us,
for sharing this moment with us.
We are Ojalá.
We are a group of young artists, creators,
and criminals working to secure liberatory and radical
empowerment for young people in Tucson, Arizona.
We reject the formalities of high art spaces in academia
because we recognize their colonial
and capitalist implications as well
as their role in the perpetuation of violence.
These institutions inflict trauma
upon us, our peers, and our communities.
Ojalá is a necessary entity which has been manifested
to enact creation as a response to the oppression and suffering
that we face.
Our rejection of these systems is
actualized through disruption of conventional and colonial
structures such as racism, classism, misogyny,
transmisogyny, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism.
We have taken our future as radical artists
into our own hands by hosting workshops, open mics, dance
parties, and showcases, in queer-friendly, alcohol-free,
and safe environments, we hope to reclaim and decolonize space
for our peers and for the future generations of our hoods.
We want to take a moment to remind ourselves
that on a day-to-day basis, our communities are facing
state-sanctioned violence.
Since January 1, 2018, nearly 1,000 people
have been killed by the police in the United States.
Since January 1, 2010, that number
totals up to over 10,000 people killed by police in the United
States alone.
There are innumerable uncounted deaths
at the hands of the US-Mexico border and the border patrol.
Our communities have been repeatedly assaulted, harassed,
and terrorized by state terror organizations which
are components of what I like to call the injustice system.
Our work is a direct response to this
and the innumerable other violences in our community.
Abolish the government, abolish the police,
abolish the border patrol, and abolish the law.
We are Ojalá.
[APPLAUSE]
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]