Therese Rodriguez, CEO of APICHA CHC
GUEST BLOG - I've been struggling to find the right words to describe how I've been feeling and to comment on Charlottesville and everything since then. A colleague of mine, Therese Rodriguez the CEO of APICHA CHC wrote this poem. As a lesbian woman of color, immigrant, and executive leader of a major organization in our community. her voice gave me so much inspiration. -Glenn
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Charlottesville, unnerving as it is brazen
With torches and guns, wearing no hoods
Emboldened believing they put a man in the White House.
A Dodge Charger weaponized
Killing one, injuring many more
Not unlike the use of trucks by ISIS
In Nice, France
Simmering and given voice
During the 2016 presidential campaign…
Gathering of fury
Unrehearsed
On prime time
Vivid white heat
Screaming of demagoguery
Wink, wink
Whistle, whistle --imperceptible to humans
Heard only by lynch mobs
And salivating, hungry hounds
Stadiums reeking of the bizarre
They remind me of internment camps
I hate stadiums
Taliban stoning women
Hark back to fascism in Chile and Argentina
Voices rising to a crescendo
A lieutenant general chanting
“Lock her up, lock her up”
I wake up to my Samsung
Faaah…ox News
Rubber objects hurled at you.
There!
I am sad, aggravated and stunned all at the same time
A whole nation under the gun
Will institutions of sanity hold?
Trapped in a time capsule
Will life as we know it still be there?
In 2020?
Will the Blueprint End the AIDS Epidemic?
Will Healthy People 2020 close health disparities?
So many dreams – fueled by the sun and the wind
Clean air and clean water,
Bullet trains and a commute to planet Mars
November 8, 2016
The undoing of a lot of stuff
A palace coup catapulted
From the fringe
Shackled to alternate reality
Palace guards insist
Chaos, a gift
Wrapped in law and order.
Beware
If we swallow, we choke
Alas …
Mortgage the right to breathe free
The writer is Therese Rodriguez, Chief Executive Officer of APICHA CHC. Learn more about the APICHA Community Health Center at apicha.org.