Open Mic for Our Lives

More than a dozen spoken word artists performed pieces inspired by gun violence at local restaurant Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C. the night before the March for Our Lives.

Busboys and Poets, established in 2005, is a community gathering place named after the American poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in the 1920s before gaining recognition as a poet.

According to their tribal statement: “Busboys and Poets is a community where racial and cultural connections are consciously uplifted… a place to take deliberate pause and feed your mind, body and soul… a space for art, culture and politics to intentionally collide… we believe that by creating such a space we can inspire social change and begin to transform our community and the world.”

Busboys and Poets on 14^thand V street, The D.C. Youth Poetry Slam, Sixdegrees.org, Once Common Unity and Split this Rock cosponsored an event called Louder Than A Gun – Open Mic for Our Lives. More than a dozen young activists performed spoken word pieces inspired by gun violence, school shootings, racism, sexism and more.

“When I say something like ‘make some noise’ or I introduce someone to this stage, we need to make noise like we’re saving lives tomorrow,” Split This Rock Director of Youth Programs and event host Joseph Green said. “We need to make noise like we’re sending a message to the people who have been making decisions that have cost us our lives for years.”

Similar to Busboys and Poets, Split This Rock is named after a line in “Big Buddy,” a poem by Langston Hughes. The organization encourages poets to accept a greater role in public life by teaching and celebrating work that calls out injustice and invokes social change. Joseph Green, dressed in a t-shirt printed with the face of Martin Luther King Jr. wearing a gold crown, brought his organization’s energy and encouragement to the event when performing a piece about his son and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I am overwhelmed by the irrational rankings of a society too busy arguing about whether or not black lives are important enough to fight for, to actually fight for black lives,” Green said.

One Common Unity, another co-sponsor of the event, is an organization that works to break cycles of violence by building healthy communities through music, arts, and peace education.

Rodney Johnson, a volunteer with Split This Rock and One Common Unity, is a lanky young poet and rapper, who is known on SoundCloud as “one great bastard.” As the crowd roared for the first performer, he took the stage with a huge smile on his face. Audience members showed support and appreciation by snapping their fingers and clapping their hands or shouting things like “word” and “shezus.”

“We don’t even talk to our youth about weapons ya’ll, turn the TV on and Call of Duty gives the lesson,” Johnson said.

Actor, musician and philanthropist Kevin Bacon sat quietly in the audience next to his wife, Kyra Sedgwick. Bacon attended the event in support of his charity SixDegrees.org, which allows ordinary people to become “celebrities for their own causes” by donating or raising money for local charities across the nation.

Dani Miller, a high school student from Winston Churchill High School in Maryland, spoke about oppression and standing up for the lives of others:

“And I’m tired of writing poems about oppression, probably just as tired as you are of hearing them,” Miller said. “But we both aren’t as tired as the women who are forced to let politicians make decisions about their bodies, as 10 year-old girls who take skinny as a compliment, and as children who have to hide under desks and text their mom’s they think they are going to die, as people who can’t afford health insurance, as anyone who has had to fight for their lives and their own humanity as a means of survival. I’m tired of writing poems about oppression, and that is why I keep writing them.”

Washington D.C. native Tony Keith is in his last year of a PhD education program focused on student engagement with spoken word poetry. In 1999 his friend, Gary Hopkins, was killed by police. He wrote his poem after the shooting of Michael Brown.

“There’s a correlation between the way we treat money and the way we treat people,” Keith said. “Cash, coin, bills and bodies all commodities meant to be traded in exchange for products, goods and services. The denomination depends on our purpose, but a lot of us don’t know what our purpose is, so all we do is consume. Rarely do we create, and the result is that our wealth has become low with a really high interest rate, and somehow, we’ve defaulted. We’ve been told that some of our payments arrived a little bit too late, and granted we have our checks and balances, but let’s be honest, none of my checkbooks are really balanced. We need to check our balance. Check to determine the status of what our account is because the last time I checked we were deeply in the red, and we used to be in the black. Now, blood covered brown men, hands up, holes in their backs, racism is making withdrawals ya’ll.”

Several students from Parkland, Florida spoke at the event. Diego Pfeiffer, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, said that poetry and music hold the power to heal.

“I came to talk, to push and tug at heartstrings for change, but voices caught against the wind can never really be the same. My voice is caught in lives I never thought I’d touch, and those whose touch I will never feel again. My eyes can’t focus on a future because they are so focused on the dark and horrid past. A darkness that protrudes each and pore, that fills my head with sorrow and guilt, guilt that right now I’m standing where others have fallen before me.”

The venue vibrated with cheers after the eloquent performances of each artist and women could be seen wiping tears away from their eyes. The young activists spoke with passion and conviction, inspiring each and every member of the audience for much longer than the duration of the event.

“Have a wonderful evening,” Green said. “Please go out and support in whatever way you are able to support tomorrow and in the future.”