Remembering Alex Pretti
A poem by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman.
We wake with no words,
just woe & wound.
Our own country shooting us in the back
is not just brutality; it’s jarring betrayal;
not enforcement, but execution.
A message: Love your people & you will die.
Yet our greatest threat isn’t the outsiders among us,
but those among us who never look within.
Fear not those without papers,
but those without conscience.
Know that to care intensively, united,
is to carry both pain-dark horror for today
& a profound, daring hope for tomorrow.
We can feel we have nothing to give,
& still believe this world waiting,
trembling to change.
If we cannot find words, may we find the will;
if we ever lose hope,
may we never lose our humanity.
The only undying thing is mercy,
the courage to open ourselves like doors,
hug our neighbor, & save one more bright, impossible life.
This poem brings tears to my eyes.
The execution of an American citizen legally carrying and disarmed before he was shot 10 times in the back while being restrained without resisting should be enough for any American, Christian Nationalist or Goth Tattooed Barber, to say enough is enough. The President of the United States is a bigoted, narcissistic, megalomaniac. If you follow him, you need to ask yourself, is this really the teaching Jesus would have me follow? (Or, if you don’t believe in Jesus, how about any decent human being?)