El Rio, Workshop 2

Tell me how the 5:48 am train leaves the station at 5:45… grimey. I know because Lau and I ran after it this morning. Yup, just like the movies running for the train as it pulls out of the station. Except we didn’t catch it. We caught the next one and showed up ten minutes late. But the good news is that if we weren’t sure whether the kids were feeling us, we got to enter the classroom today to a booming applause. I was humbled. Laura and I went through a quick check in and then I spit: La Cadena Mas Immensa, a poem that becomes a promise to speak out against the inhumanity and horrors of violence against women. Reaction positive. You never know how spoken word is gonna go over for thirteen year olds, let alone in a place where spoken word is as foreign as fufu (west African food made out of plantains and yucca-madd delicious). But it went well and we transitioned into a conversation about different kinds of violence like insults and social exclusion. The mission of the association we are working with is to eradicate violence in schools and so Laura and I are combining their methods with those of the Peace Poets and Artered (artered.org). So far the collaboration is flowing naturally and powerfully. The workshop then gave birth to one enormous group poem that cited different moments in the young people’s lives when they have seen instances of violence. They cited friends murdered, stabbings on their blocks, getting beat up at school, cousins being raped and many more painful moments. The lyrics hit hard but their voices are extremely timid so they struggled to even hear each other. Little by little we will develop the lion in their voice. It is there. We closed by saying all the things we deserve. All up in the axe circle, talking bout we deserve respect, we deserve freedom, we deserve a day off from school… it was good. One- Family, One- Family.

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