sweepthesunshine: Rockstar Links&Things

…All this will lead to Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival which takes place in February and March. The winners and all teams will then go back to their schools and communities and in April perform and provide writing workshops in elementary schools, libraries, and park districts around the city. The city will be abuzz with language and records of now from people who are normally never heard from, the youth. Seen and now heard.

As for Obama, we invite him to be a judge at this year’s finals. He can sit and listen and hear what the grassroots around Hyde Park, and city wide, are going thru. How they want to be safe, how they want their peers to be safe, here and abroad. He can give the poems Olympic-style scores, ranging from 0 to 10. He can listen to the crowd scream, Listen to the Poem! Then he and his crew can stop playing, and say they did some work to bring the games to the city. Games that matter, hope, save, and are safe.

But we shouldn’t wait for politicians and celebrities to build a world and city that is just and equitable.

We do this work.

Teachers, students, rogue school administrators, artists whose work matters, parents. Regular folk who get up and work, who greet the sun. We are the ones who change culture and society.

[i think i’m kind of in love with this plan. -y]