Still I Rise. Maya Angelou. 1978.
Maya's message for the oppressed.
Outspoken anti genocide, anti apartheid, anti Nazi American voice, Maya Angelou, who rose above the racist discrimination that might have crushed a different person, would never side with the oppressor over the oppressed. Not the way so many Americans who profess to admire her have done in the wave of Blue MAGA support for apartheid Nazi genocide. Maya wrote ‘Still I rise’ in the late seventies.
Still I Rise, the mantra to all oppressed, including those Palestinians who survived the terrorist invasion of Palestine in 1948. Still they rise. This time against the racist apartheid Nazi cosh of Bidenism.
When I read words like this I am reminded of what makes America great.
It is never more than this example of articulate humanity that American freedom allows for. Those Americans, like Maya, who are free to represent the very opposite values to Biden and Trumps MAGA Christian Nazi Nationalism that normalizes genocide and endless Nazi hate-for-profit, in the ‘God told me to do it’ Presidential gaslight narrative of a Two Party Christian Corruptocrisy.
Still I rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.