Will the people ever wake up?

By Rudolph Lewis

These are the times of our surveillance

blue lights flashing 24-7, on corner poles

can we pull them down, do we dare?

camera men & cops search the people

$2 whores & baggy pants at Penn-North

“I got Newport, three for a dollar.”

—hear the insidious drama of that tune

Like the days of slavery—we work hard

uptown & downtown—all across town

But blue lights keep flashing, down on us

Can we pull them down, do we dare?

24-7, on corner poles, flashing, capturing

Can we pull them down, do we dare?

the living, on the street, walking, talking,

buying—in the System—drowning us in

reckless real estate, playing the numbers

women with tiny rocks in plastic, a dime

a pill, three. It’s a charade; we’re all nodding.

up against the wall, spreading them; pulling

them down to the ground. What if a head

cracks, or blind men in Central Booking

for two pills

cause 24-7, blue lights flashing, keep flashing,

can we pull them down, do we dare?

our bodies fixed by Mr. Smack McCaine,

Mr. Eight Ball, he’s called, or just “The Man”

We ain’t no secret for Mr. Know It All

We gangsters all in his cracked lens camera

We on the run—field to alley to street, to backyard

They keep chasing us—running us out of dreams

Five thousand churched for every rich man made

Will the people ever wake up, so we can shake it?

Can we pull them down, do we dare?

Oh, this is a terrible, powerful poem that truly captures the plight of the powerless poor, harassed by the police and hunted down like animals.  What are the blue lights?  The lights on top of the police cars?  The repetition of that image and the 24 / 7 captured the relentless pursuit of the helpless, the hopeless, caught like deer in the blinding lights of the hunters.  What are you planning to do with these poems?  Put them into a collection?  Have you ever thought of doing readings?  Can you dramatize them?  Perform them?  They need to be heard. Miriam

There is land speculation. But the cops have quotas. These black cops (usually) arrest the poor to show they are working. . .  . In such neighborhoods one sees where the rubber meets the road. A cop stops a woman already at the very periphery of society. She is old enough to be his mother. He went through all she had including her sandwich just bought in the store. 

There were five or six black men watching and they knew that the situation was funky and they know if they say anything about the injustice of police hassling they too would be up against the wall. Here's the situation that black men find themselves often. It is classic. It is what creates the repressed rage. It is one situation which makes black men be different from black women--this sense of not being able to be fully oneself, helplessness -- Rudy

That's horrible!  Such an invasion of privacy--of a whole neighborhood.  Big Brother has definitely arrived.  I hadn't heard of the blue lights and wonder if they exist in other inner cities.  How do the folk in the neighborhood feel about them?  Do the lights make them saver, more secure or do they feel spied upon.? Yes, that's a classic situation--Black men unable to protect their women, their children, their elders for fear of retaliation..  

I used to tell my son when he was a teenager not to go over to 14th St. or hang out on corners cause the cops would back him up against the patrol car just for being Black and male.  Did you see that movie that came out last May (can't remember the name of it) with Terence Howard, Thandie Newton, and a bunch of other people?  A cop pulled over this Black man (a t.v. exec), spread-eagled him over his SUV, and felt all up under his wife's dress..  Ida killed that Red Neck. -- Miriam

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For Tookie

posted 27 November 2005 /  updated 24 February 2008