Sep 11 2012

Guest Post: “We Are Not Alone” by David Nekimken

We Are Not Alone

Today, Prison Culture features another piece from “Now Is The Time To Respond: A Toolkit for Community Conversation and Creative Writing” created by Neighborhood Writing Alliance (NWA) and the Project on Civic Reflection. This toolkit was designed to support community conversations and written reflection with adults as part of Now Is The Time,  a Chicago initiative inspiring young people to make positive change in their communities and stop youth violence and intolerance. We invite you to download the full toolkit which will be released on the NWA Every Person is a Philosopher blog on September 27.

NWA is a community-based writing nonprofit in Chicago committed to creating and continuing conversation around neighborhood issues including violence, oppression, and social injustice. NWA exists to provoke dialogue, build community, and promote change by creating opportunities for adults in Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods to write, publish, and perform works about their lives. In neighborhoods throughout the city in public libraries and community centers, adults meet in weekly workshops to write and share stories about their lives. Today we share a piece by NWA writer David Nekimken who writes with the Hall Branch Library writing workshop in Hyde Park.

We hope you’ll join David and other NWA writers as they read their work from “The Open Gate: JOT Writers’ Visions of Freedom and Liberation,” the Spring 2012 issue of JOT on Thursday, September 27 at the Pritzker Auditorium in the Harold Washington Library Center (400 S. State St., Chicago, IL). Print copies of the “Now Is The Time To Respond” toolkit will also be available at this event.

We Are Not Alone
by David Nekimken

Originally published in the Fall 2011 Journal of Ordinary Thought, published by the Neighborhood Writing Alliance

I
Gunshots shatter the night
Bleeding youth
Wailing ambulances
Death by gang symbol
Death by street boundary
Death by mistaken identity
Death by stray bullet
Shards of life dreams
Sobbing mothers
Despairing fathers
Avenging siblings
Daily occurrences as
Dead-end everydays
Police intervention
(Often too little too late too insensitive)
Youth ERs and funerals
An all-too grisly picture
Chicago youth violence
Black and Latino youth violence
Splattered across the evening news
Splashed in Chicago newspaper headlines

II

Community leaders
Youth leaders
Saying “NO” to violence
Saying “YES” to
Self-empowerment
A voice for their stories
Acts of positive contributions
Becoming their own role models
Youth taking control of their lives
Their communities
Alternatives to gangs
Intervening to
Save lives
Build bridges
Start community enterprises
Transformation in the communities
Starting from one youth
One step forward
Banding together
To forge a powerful force for change
And youth living out their dreams

Questions for Community Conversation:

  • What do the scenes in the first half of the poem suggest about the various neighborhoods in Chicago? Are they familiar or unfamiliar to you?
  • Have you witnessed anything described in the first half of the poem in your own neighborhood? What about the second half of the poem?
  • Do you think it is possible to create “transformation in the communities?” What would this transformation look like? What kind of resources or changes would it require?

Creative Writing Prompts:

  • Write your own “now and future” about your neighborhood. In Part I., describe the scenes and details about what you think needs to change. In Part II., describe your vision for change, including details about events that might take place as part of the change. Talk about the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions associated with now and the future.
  • Write about a moment in your neighborhood when you felt most free. What was it about that event/ time/ activity that gave you such a sense of freedom? What were you free from, and what were you free to do?

categories Uncategorized | | 11 September 2012 |