August 9, 2018

As part of our ongoing observance of Black August, we present a poem from revolutionary China which was written in solidarity with the black national liberation struggles in the USA.  

Your country is so broad and vast,
Yet it does not allow your footprints.
Beautiful is your native town,
But there you may not dwell.
What crime have you committed?
Only that your skin is black…
They tried to put the sun in jail.
You found refuge in Cuba, but your heart
Was with your nineteen million brothers…
Robert Williams,
I see you standing before a map of your land, thinking:
We must have a people’s America…
Robert Williams,
Look around at the whole world.
On the banks of the Yangtze where the sun is rising,
You have six hundred and fifty million brothers in arms.

Poem  by Zuo Zhongling