You Must Have Thought You Knew Us!
POEM by Ronald Douglas Bascombe

You must have thought you knew us, huh?

Must have thought your terror could

Smash our resolve,

Set our strength ablaze,

Crumble our spirits,

And bury our faith in the rubble of fear.

You must have thought you knew us.

You must have confused our struggles as individuals and groups

As a sign of our disharmony

And evidence of our weakness.

You must have thought you knew us.

You should have read our history more closely.

Our lands entered into global history through journeys across treacherous seas,

Pilgrims dared the dark wilderness to worship freely,

Peasants stood against the greatest power in the world,

Farmers faced down the hard journey West across the vast frontier,

All that we might know new opportunities in this land.

And while not all of us came here freely,

And many lost their lands and their lives in unjust expansion,

And others continue to struggle against inequality and oppression,

We are still Americans.

Despite economic disparities,

Political differences, cultural diversity,

Racial tensions, class distinctions

And all the “isms”,

For which we have the right

To debate, address and resolve,

When we are confronted by a common foe,

We put away our personal agendas,

And stand shoulder to shoulder

Against those dark forces that

Would press us down.

We are free,

Free to struggle, free to speak out and free to disagree.

We continue to claim and celebrate that heritage

And will continue to fight against anyone who would deny it.

You must have thought you knew us.

You should have listened to our songs.

You would have heard every voice sing of the harmonies of liberty,

Knowing that we would march on till victory was won.

You would have heard our confidence that God is our champion,

“Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

You would have known that this is the land that we love,

Land where our fathers died, the land of which we sing.

And you would have known that we believe that we shall overcome.

You should have listened.

You should have learned.

You should have known us.

And now that you have made us stumble momentarily,

Falling over the terror that you thought would be our end,

See who we are and

WATCH US RISE!

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