POEM: Money For Money: SNAP Food Assistance vs ICE Employment

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This poem/message was intended mainly for A Little Beacon Blog’s Facebook readers. Several of them tend to be against SNAP food assistance, shame others for using SNAP, and are highly suspicious of fraud existing in most SNAP beneficiaries. Those same people tend to fiercely defend ICE employment, ICE detention centers, and maintaining anonymity for ICE employees.

This poem was written in response to the lease being signed in Newburgh, that will use the warehouse at 800 Corporate Blvd. as a storage facility for humans. Several reactions came in to this post at ALBB’s Instagram and Facebook. As of this posting, this poem had 14,100 views, 224 Likes, 91 Comments and a few Shares.

You’re upset you’re paying for SNAP for people to eat from.
I’m upset you or your husband or wife is working for ICE.

Same money.
We’re both paying for it.

Find a new career.
I’m happy to fund your career elsewhere in the federal government.
Or private sector that is contracted to be paid by the federal government.
My money.

Find a job that I don’t have to pay for for you to kidnap people and enforce hostage situations.

************

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POEM: To Anyone Who Tells Me That I Support Terrorists; That I Don't Know What It's Like To Be Jewish

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Sometimes when someone says something to me about Palestine - either a stranger in Comments, or a regular Instagram person in Comments, or a regular Commenter here at the blog itself, or a person I know in real life - it can trigger a poem to process what they just said. In this case, someone who I know for years, and had just spent several hours with in one of the most pleasant and fun experiences, did an about face on a Monday evening. Unprovoked directly by me, resulted in them letting me know their thoughts in a random DM.

If it triggers a response in me that may help others, the response is put into words if possible, and then into a poem. Or word phrases. However you grammar dart enthusiasts want to target it to say what it isn’t. :) It’s words. And if they help someone, they are here.

To anyone who tells me that I support terrorists.
That I don’t know what it’s like to be Jewish.
You’re right.
I don’t know what it’s like to be Jewish.
Or to have your family be wherever they are from.

I also don’t know what it’s like to be Black.
Or to have my family stolen from me and my body sold.

I know what it’s like to study the Holocaust.
I know what it’s like to be challenged.
I know what it’s like to be asked:
“What would you do if this were happening again?”
I know what it’s like to be racist.

I know that telling me that I support terrorists and that I don’t know what it’s like to be Jewish is an extremely racist thing to say.
You are extremely racist.
Were before. And still are. Despite my hope.

You wish ill on me.
You wish I get what I deserve.
This is not what is breaking my soul today.
Something completely different and unrelated is breaking my soul today.
And making me stronger and more focused. Clarity.

Doing anti-Zionist, anti-occupation, liberation work is healing my soul today.

Free Palestine.