Who Is RootFolksWritersPoetsArtists?
RFWPA is an opt-in political Association of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist Writers, Poets, and Artists1 designed to challenge capitalist economic assumptions and social formations, as a platform for hueman2 engagement and development. As a community of writers and poets and artists, we intend to use our words and actions to project individual and collective visions of life as it is and as it can be;3 to develop the language of a culture alternative to the now dominant one degrading hueman relations to the cash nexus.
RFWPA will emphasize the voice of incarcerated felons, probationers parolees, their families, providing them a platform to circulate their work.
RFWPA Purpose Statement
We act4 to Abolish Capitalism as the Principal means of Economic Relationship defining society.
We act to Challenge and Erase white supremacy and racism as the Principal Language of social political engagement in the Public Square.5
We act to uphold a Woman’s Right to Abortion; and every Hueman’s Right to their Sexual Identity.
We act to defend the Planet against the effects of Climate Change and Global Warming.
We act to restore every Huemans’ Right to toxic free Water and unpolluted Air.
We act to support every Huemans’ Right to Nutrition.
We act to support every Huemans’ Right to Housing.
We act to support every Huemans’ Right to Health Care.
We act to support every Huemans’ Right to Education.
We act to support every Huemans’ Right to Work with Dignity.
We act to support every Huemans’ Right to Equality.6
We act to Abolish Mass Incarceration and the Death Penalty.
We act to end U.S. Imperialism and U.S. Support of Racist and Apartheid Governments.
We act to find a Democratic Praxis that works for all huemans’ Based on their Culture Collective Communal Consensus.7
‘Be moderate,’ the trimmers cry, / Who dread the tyrants’ thunder. / ‘You ask too much people fly / From you aghast in wonder.’ / ‘Tis passing strange, for I declare / Such statements give me mirth, / For our demands most moderate are, / We only want the earth. James Connolly, Songs of Freedom, We Only Want The Earth
Hue is defined as a color or shade. All huemans are endowed with color. The racialization of color is political and has no place in hueman classification. As used in its white supremacist American context, human is hierarchical, and in its usage at the nation’s founding, included people of Afrikan descent only as property. Hueman flips both context and content, writing People of Afrikan Descent into the hueman family, removing the historical property reference. Kétu Oladuwa
Art is not a mirror held up to society but a hammer with which to shape it. Bertolt Brecht
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
. . . where tradespeople philosophers, poets politicians rubbed shoulders where, too, the public complained demonstrated, at times, were met, dispersed, even slaughtered by forces of the regimes they tried to take to task. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20141203-blood-on-the-streets
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. Karl Marx, 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program
RootFolkz Poetz Press, Collective Purpose Statement of Why We Write.
“If a work of art could commit a sin, it would be that of leaving those who encounter it indifferent. And perhaps the royal road to indifference is the possession of answers, answers cut-and-dried, prefabricated answers that spare someone the necessity of knowing even the questions. For to have an answer is to possess certainty, and to possess certainty is to cease growing is to cease existing.” -Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf
