by Comrade Ellis, Black Hammer Times Staff
As an African in the united snakkkes it is clear to me that the real villain is colonialism, not only capitalism.
When I hear amerikkka, I see a tree.
A tree planted on plymouth rock cultivated by the mayflower and european settlers.
A tree watered by the blood of the middle passage and trail of tears.
A tree nurtured through jim crow and boarding schools.
A tree grown and pruned through red lining and blood quantum.
A tree saved by mass incarceration, police brutality, and assassinations.
A tree fertilized by missing Indigenous women and detention centers for Indigenous children.
A tree protected by the state and its so-called politicians and billionaires.
I see strange fruit hanging from this tree.
I see the blood of African and Colonized people on the bark and leaves.
It’s simple to me, our current system is a tree of oppression and exploitation.
The roots are colonialism.
These roots have divided my neighborhood, the roots trip me in my neighborhood,
The roots force me to take routes I never wished to take,
The roots have killed those that look like me.
The roots have killed my ancestors, and the roots have cut me off from my own roots.
The strange fruits are our colonized bodies, our colonized minds, our imposed self-hatred, our horizontal violence, our depression, and our anxiety.
Its leaves are capitalism.
Capitalism being only a slight nuance to colonialism, to help the tree grow, it feeds and nurtures its colonial roots, through capital and profit.
The white left can’t see the roots.
The white left can’t understand why the leaves won’t stop growing or why these fruits still grow.
They can’t see that these leaves provide them shade.
That these strange fruits are food for their mouths and seeds for their privilege.
This tree is rotten.
White power has neglected its tree, throwing African and Colonized people in to the burn brush.
African and Colonized revolutionaries see it rotting
And know exactly what to do with this rotten, dying tree.
This dying tree must be burnt and as it crumbles to the ground, Hammers are formed in this fire.
And the ashes are used to grow a new tree— a well-kept sapling.
We, the true proletariat, are the only ones to see the leaves and the roots for what they are
The roots of colonialism will be burned to grow a new tree.
A tree that we may use to serve ourselves first, feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, heal ourselves, and defend ourselves.
Under this tree, we can be free.
Black Power!
Land Back!
Comrade Ellis represents and writes for the African people in the united states. If he’s not reading about the revolution, he’s probably on a run or listening to Sam Cooke.
