MAYOR AHIMSA

By San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman
(Reprinted with permission and thanks).

Because memory serves an African American

the story of such monstrous injustices,

such lashes and blowtorches and ropes,

such cruelty and hatred and blight of body and soul,

and because an African American woman

has been the vessel most scuttled yet most enduring,

most swarmed and throttled yet ever emerging

as the open fist of the living community,

and because I remember the fighting words

of struggle and compassion that young poet Ahimsa

sounded in the days that are no different than today

with respect to the plight of the poor, the fight

against displacement at the hands of those

landlawless bootlickers of corporate greed,

happily I cast my vote for Ahimsa Sumchai

for Mayor of San Francisco

whose race is the one of Reason

whose color is all the People of this town.