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It's terrorism, isn't it, when you're afraid to answer the door
for lack of a Green Card
afraid to look for work, walk into the hospital when yr child is sick,

and what else than terrorism cd you call those smallpox blankets
we gave the Indians
the trail of tears, the raids on Ghost Dancing tribes
It's terrorism when you're forbidden to speak yr language
paddled for it, made to run a hundred laps in the snow
in your thin & holey sneakers. What do you call it
when you're locked in yr high school classroom, armed policemen
manning the halls? Isn't it terrorism to force a young woman
to talk to her parents abt her clandestine love
the child she will or will not carry? Is it terrorism
to shoot striking onion workers (1934),
pick off AIM members one by one?

What happened to the Hampton family in Chicago his bed;
would you call that terrorism? Or the MOVE kids in Philadelphia
bombed in their home. Or all the stories we don't know
buried in throats stuffed w/socks, or pierced w/bullets.
Wd you call it terrorism, what happened at Wounded Knee
or the Drug Wars picking off
the youth of our cities twenty years ago now;
you know the names.
What was COINTELPRO if not terrorism?
What new initials are they calling it today?

Is Leonard Peltier a victim of terrorism?
Is Mumia Abu-Jamal?

Is it terrorism if you are terrified
of the INS, the IRS, the landlord, yr boss, the man
who might do yr job for less?
if you're scared of yr health insurance
no health insurance
scared of yr street, yr hallway, scared every month
you might not get to the 1st and the next measly check?

Is it terrorism to take food from hungry school-kids?
To threaten teenagers who still have hope enough
have joy enough to bring babies into this mess?

How has terrorism touched you, shaped your life?
Are you afraid to go out, to walk in yr city,
yr suburb, yr countryside?
To read, to speak yr own language, wear yr tribe's clothes?
Afraid of the thin-shelled birds w/twisted necks
poisoned by nitrates, by selenium?
Afraid that the dawn will be silent, the forests grey?

Is it terrorism to fill the Dnieper w/radiation?
or heat the ionosphere w/magnetism
"to see what will happen"?
A wonderful weapon, they say, it will perturb
the weather pattern, disrupt communications
Who are the terrorists in the lumber wars?
(the water wars are coming)
And we haven't even talked about AIDS and cancer.

Is the assault on native intelligence & good will
that we call the evening news
anything other than an act of terror?

What was the Gulf War but terrorism
wearing the death mask of order?
one big car bomb it was
the guys who drove it dying now
one by one
Is acid rain a form of terrorism? (Think for yourself.)
Is GATT or NAFTA anything but a pact
among brigands and their back-up men?
How long before they fight over the spoils?
Who'll do their fighting for them?

Is Alan Greenspan perhaps the biggest known & named
of our terrorist leaders, here, nurtured here,
trained here

the dark design of whose hearts makes
Hutu & Tutsi
Croat & Muslim & Serb
mere diversionary tactics before the onslaught

— Diane di Prima