Stuck in quicksand someone helping out for free#
Stuck in quicksand someone helping out how to#
Stuck in quicksand someone helping out Patch#

To describe, out loud, just how heavy my heart is. So my third response upon stumbling, by chance, upon a man, neck deep in quicksand is, obviously, to recite a poem. And again, being an open-minded, progressive individual, I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least for now. I mean, what was this guy doing out here in the jungle all alone? Did he step into that quicksand on purpose? Was he asking for it? Does he have a criminal record? Maybe I should wait until all the facts come in.

My second response upon stumbling, by chance, upon a man, chest deep in quicksand is, before I actually do anything, to make sure that I have the whole picture. So being an open-minded, progressive individual, I reevaluate. So are you sure you’re sinking in quicksand? In real life, yeah, I mean, you can get caught in some mud, but it’s not really that hard to get out.

Stuck in quicksand someone helping out Patch#

Hey, um, I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere that quicksand isn’t actually dangerous, that this idea of a patch of sandy water sucking a person down into oblivion is just a tall tale, a trope to build tension in early 1960s westerns. So my first response, naturally, is to tell him: After all, this is fiction made flesh it’s like a cartoon, like going to the zoo and seeing a mermaid. Upon stumbling, by chance, upon a man, waist-deep in quicksand, I need a second to process. Related: my post from right after the Zimmerman verdict, about a lot of the same issues. Related: my post from last week “This is Not a Think Piece: Turning Outrage into Action from Ferguson to the Twin Cities,” a collection of resources, interviews, links to organizations and more for anyone who wants to get involved in organizing against police brutality. All of those other responses and actions are necessary to support that organizing work, but the issue, as I see it, is that they’re not enough by themselves. Part of the reason I wrote this poem is that it’s a reminder to myself that signal-boosting is good and necessary, talking about privilege is good and necessary, writing poems is good and necessary– but we can’t lose sight of the central importance of organizing, working collaboratively to act on these problems. To be clear, I think there is a continuum of responses– some of the stuff highlighted in this poem is negative, some of it is fine, some of it is positive, a lot of it is connected– but it’s all about highlighting what I think of as “the urgency gap,” how we’re so quick to treat other people’s life-and-death struggles as an intellectual or emotional exercise.

Stuck in quicksand someone helping out how to#

How do white people respond to racial violence? How do men respond to sexual assault statistics? How to wealthy people respond to hunger and homelessness,? Etc. The work that they’ve done over the past two years has been really important, in ways that I don’t think a lot of us are recognizing in the present.Īs for this poem, I wrote it after #Ferguson, but it’s more broadly about how we respond to injustice, especially when we’re not directly affected by that injustice.

Stuck in quicksand someone helping out for free#

How to Escape From Quicksand, Just in Case Grandkids Who Came Through for Grandparents Want to See Rats in New York City? Book a Tour With the ‘Rat Daddy’ Friend of Dancer Who Died From Mislabeled Cookie Speaks Out Servers Who Got Extremely Generous Tips Finnish Woman Cleans Dirtiest Living Spaces in the World for Free Inside Deals on Stainless Steel Flatware Set, Charging Cables, Steamer and Iron - Up to 77% Off Trump Ordered to Pay $83.First of all, thanks once again to Button Poetry for the massive signal boost.