they will buy commemorative stamps. they will attend banquets in your selective memory.

your classmates in years to come will reminisce how they knew you way back when…… they really crossed the streets to avoid you while you still breathed.

and yet they were all at birmingham . they all marched in selma .

they who attacked you for being so nonviolent are now among those who were at the forefront among the disciples of satyagraha. mahatma must be howling with laughter between turns in the grave.

they who called you un- american now address high school assemblies and gospel concerts. they sit on the boards of foundations and scholarship funds named after you. they are making sure your coffin is nailed tight. they are politically smart enough to believe in ghosts.

they will buy commemorative stamps. they will attend banquets in your selective memory.

they will deprive you of your humanity even to the other side of the grave. you who were so human are now infallible. you who sought to change realities will now have your perspectives reduced to one speech about a dream. you will be denied that humanity that brings the gethsamane before the crucifixion. you will be denied that humanity that invites the last temptation to withdraw while you still live.

all those years of entombment of another kind!

they will buy commemorative stamps. they will attend banquets in your selective memory.

but we have not forgotten who we are: we are the untalented ninety percent . we the assembled between the tablet of our parents and the altar of those who would keep god in the coffin of complacency sanctifying injustice. we are here once again to tell old caiphas that we are not leaving town and we are in that place where the prophets come to die or to win. we will not be turned away empty handed.

boston MA 1996….. berkeley CA 4.4.2011

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