Translator: Jess Billingham Reviewer: Denise RQ
If you can hear the sound of my voice, clap one time;
if you can hear the sound of my voice, clap two times.
Ladies, gentlemen, all genders in between, non-gender, binary,
on the count of three, I need you all to release a big woo!
all the way from the bottom of your feet to the top of your fingertips.
Pages Matam: One, two, three! (Audience) Woo!
Alright, keep your hands up for me.
Growing up as a child in Cameroon, Central Africa,
my teachers would always tell me, "When you make an exciting discovery,
when you're really excited about something, you'll go, 'Woo!'"
So put your hands down now.
It's interesting how this is also the same universal symbol for surrendering.
I always think about the many ways that we surrender to our vices,
our stereotypes, our prejudices, our fears, our traumas, our pains,
and all of the things that hinder us from being able to protect or change
the world that we have around and the world that is within us.
Now fast forward: I'm an educator,
I teach creative writing, performance, and theater
as a form of social justice and activism
to mostly young black and brown people of color.
Most of my students'd become
more accustomed to surrendering than making exciting discoveries.
I remember one time in class
we were studying a poet by the name of Ross Gay,
and his new book, The Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude.
it's a whole book where he uses metaphors
and imagery of nature and gardening
as a way of talking about taking care of the environment,
but mostly, taking care of the environment within ourselves.
So of course, a conversation ensues about going green and saving the environment,
and one of my students goes and says,
"Why is it so important to save the environment?
It's not like it's going to get clean anyway."
I tell him, "Well, it's important to take care of the place
that we borrow our home or food from,
or else, we will end up going extinct right with it."
One of my students replies - word for word, I'll never forget this -
he says to me, "Well, Mr. Pages,
as a black boy in this country, I already feel like I am going extinct.
And for the first time, I was blooming with silence, thinking, "Now what?"
What if the Black Lives Matter movement was an environmental movement?
Because when you hear that tigers are endangered
due to climate change, loss of habitat, human-wildlife conflicts, and hunters
you do not hear the World Wildlife Fund say,
"What about the rest of the animals?
They're all also violent.
Look at all of this tiger-on-tiger crime they're committing anyway."
When you hear of the rafflesia flower or the Venus flytrap
under the threat of deforestation and global warming,
you do not hear an advocacy for roses
to no longer be used for Valentine's Day #allflowersmatter
(Laughter)
(Applause)
You do not hear giant pandas being told,
"Hey! Maybe if you weren't from China
and didn't have bi-racial fur like the rest of the regular bears,
then there might still be more of you alive."
But when you hear that another black life has been taken
for just being a pulse with sun-kissed flesh,
whose human rights are in conflict when you look at all of the hunters,
often with badges, dressed in blue,
who see a prey before a sleeping baby girl,
who see a tiger before a boy, or a mountain top,
or an upside-down rainbow stitched onto a brown sky?
How the trees reap a song of their names
and the church still gives purpose to all of the ghosts,
because even with our hands up, don't we still look like we are praising?
Aren't we always worth praising?
A celebration for the ones we still have, the ones we want to protect,
so their breaths will not be recycled into ours.
So many, like my students, want oxygen,
because they're so often treated like carbon dioxide.
So it's no wonder they do not care about saving the environment
when they are still trying to learn how to save themselves
from being branded pollution before population.
You hear climate change;
we see gentrification, a disposed culture,
how easily a zip code can become a skeleton key to no access.
You hear deforestation,
we see all of the books grazed under school policies
because they don't want you to know of your history with trees,
because if a black body falls, and everyone is around to hear it,
this world has a tendency to mute responsibility into a cold, dead whisper.
You hear global warming;
we say our streets have been on fire.
So when you hear black lives matter,
this does not mean that other lives do not.
All that it is, is an echo of brilliance,
so coarse that a thick forest grows in its name.
It's got a light so loud that it could photosynthesize any heart.
And even if we fall, and everyone is around to hear it,
we will still be thunder,
we will still be a hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah
and praise to all of the ones that are still here.
Praise all of the breaths that are still below me.
Thank you.