by Joel “Yoel” Davis, Director of Curriculum & Training at Illinois Alliance for Reentry and Justice (ILARJ) . Released from incarceration of February 1, 2024 after serving 34 years. Yoel read this original spoken word piece at AOUON’s goodbye dinner on our last day of the convening.
The heat is different in San Antonio.
This city pulses like a lion’s heart.
Y’all got heart.
So y’all go hard.
We all got heart!
And we’re off to a good start because our hearts are beating for Justice.
Our hearts are beating for freedom, hope, and all the formerly incarcerated having the right to vote.
I’m talking about “All of Us or None.”
We formerly incarcerated,
so when do our wrongs end, and our rights begin?
We’re more than arrest records and those numbers we were assigned.
Time after time
they tried to break us,
but we’re unbreakable.
We have Henrietta Lacks cells, so we survived their cells.
Now we have 10, 20, 30 years of stories to tell.
We’ve moved “Beyond The Bars”
now we’re flowing through the mainstream like mighty water and we seeping through a few cracks
and building bridges
that lead back to our communities
We “for community, by community, in community.”
They tried to disrupt our unity by building walls to keep us separated,
but here we stand… All of Us.
That’s the rallying cry that cuts through the land.
ALL OF US OR NONE!
ALL OF US OR NONE!
ALL OF US OR NONE!
Can you hear that?
ALL OF US OR NONE.
ALL OF US OR NONE.
ALL OF US OR NONE.
Hundreds of voices
thrumming in the streets.
And what makes this unique
is that we’re the architects
of our own salvation.
A clear indication that we’ve taken our destiny into our own hands.
Now we can use our hands to reach back, and pull our brothers and sisters from the back.
We dance… we sing…
We’re the tapestry—threaded with struggle, resilience, abolition and dreams.
All of us or none.
All of us or none.
All of us or none.
That has to be our theme.
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