Please know that they shot first, when they tried to outlaw our entire culture and our way of being, when they threw us off our land.
Please understand that our only weapons were our eyes and our collective voices and when they marched on us, when they raised their clubs in rude salutes to the sun, we held up our camera phones and said over and over and over again:
The whole world is watching.
The whole world is watching.
The whole world is watching.
And when they were so ashamed of who they were, they wanted, needed us to close our eyes, they pepper-sprayed our faces, as we held each other close, as they revealed their true nature, to the tune of 1000, 1000 jackboots marching and we sat there and cried.
Please know that they did their best to divide us, to tell us that where the water met the dirt we were born on was somehow sacred, that the strips of colour on the flap of fabric waving above our heads were holy, that the way the light refracted off our skins defined our character.
They drove their cars through us in Tahir Square and they took our pensions on Wall Street and then they told us we were going to jail because we shared songs with each other.
I know that you do not have fat, bloated middlemen, I know the dictators have fallen, I know that the gatekeepers have all faded out and you live as earthlings, undivided by imaginary borders and differences.
Because I know I was born here on the blue electric fields, in the democracy of ideas, in the new country.
And this is a place worth dying for.
