re: it’s not either/or – it’s both/and

“Proud boys and a Nazi tried to in­ter­rupt a Drag Queen Sto­ry Time event, but were pushed out by over 75+ com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who showed up to cre­ate a bar­ri­er and es­cort­ed at­ten­dees to and from the event. The Sto­ry Time event was un­in­ter­rupt­ed; how­ev­er, Sacra­men­to City Po­lice did vi­o­lent­ly ar­rest a young com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber while pro­tect­ing and es­cort­ing the Nazi. Sacra­men­to Po­lice also de­tained and let go 3 oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who showed up to pro­tect the Sto­ry Time event. Sacra­men­to Po­lice did not ar­rest or de­tain the Nazi or the Proud boys / girls who showed up in full tac­ti­cal gear to try to in­ter­rupt the event. | 4.16.2023”
—Black Ze­bra, Sacramento
 

Start­ed to­day off by stop­ping by Pop­py and Pot to sup­port the drag queen sto­ry­time and tell the Proud Boys to go back to wher­ev­er their weird tes­ti­cle-shaped tree­house is. 

 

Watched one of them eat a right cross for break­fast, and I will say, it hit a spot my bur­ri­to hadn’t.

While I work to­ward non-vi­o­lence in my dai­ly life, I also hold a be­lief that the world would be a bet­ter place if every­one was punched in the face at least once in their life (it made me a more thought­ful and con­sid­er­ate per­son) and the un­der­stand­ing that rev­o­lu­tions don’t come with­out bloodshed. 

The Proud Boys were out­num­bered at least 70 to 7 (but the en­er­gy felt like 100 to 3) by the time I left to set up for the First Church of Po­et­ry.

I don’t think it end­ed well for the Gavin McI­ness groupies to­day. Should’ve just let those peo­ple in the pret­ty cos­tumes read sto­ries to the kids and stayed home whit­tling Toby Kei­th fig­urines or what­ev­er they do when they’re not get­ting their faces ex­plod­ed like wa­ter bal­loons full of ketchup.

Then at FCOP to­day we talked about de­fend­ing our joy rather than per­pet­u­at­ing our anger. 

It was one of the most heal­ing spaces i’ve ever been a part of and did ex­act­ly what the event was meant to do when we start­ed it. Af­ter Mack’s mes­sage about the in­ter­sec­tions of love and so­cial jus­tice move­ment work, per­son af­ter per­son ap­proached the mic with some ver­sion of “I’m not a poet but .…”, pulling out things they had writ­ten to share with an in­tense­ly at­ten­tive and sup­port­ive crowd. 

We start­ed at noon and I didn’t leave the park un­til 4pm. We met an EMT that vol­un­teered to pro­vide com­mu­ni­ty train­ings and talked about procur­ing some fen­tanyl test­ing kits to distribute. 

We met an el­der with a rev­o­lu­tion­ary po­et­ry pub­li­ca­tion who said she had nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced an event like this and of­fered some of our young life in at­ten­dance their very first pub­lish­ing. We heard from trans and non-bi­na­ry folks and the peo­ple who love them about what this tu­mul­tuous time in US his­to­ry is like and watched their shoul­ders drop a lit­tle as they let go of some of the pain and frus­tra­tion they’ve been holding. 

I’m re­al­ly, eh em, proud of my com­mu­ni­ty and how they showed up today. 

Whether you were on the ex­pose and punch the in­cels in the Great Val­ue tac­ti­cal vests side or the help cre­ate a safe, heal­ing space side. Both/and are necessary. 

I love you and you can’t do $%!? about it.

 

—an­dru defeye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Guer­ril­la Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2023 An­dru De­f­eye. Screen cap­tures via Black Ze­bra.

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