Tactic Poem
Sometimes “take the streets” means “hollow them out”: a few tires burn and the rest stay parked, a few intersections blocked and the rest unclogged. Motorcycles speed down empty highways, buses line the main square. For weeks I have felt unnerved by emergencies I cannot see; does this peripheral city mirror my disquiet, or propose response? I’d say vacancy but that’s not it. More like refusal. A strategic sitting still. They might draw the maps, but we fill them. We are the blood in our cities’ veins; we can wring them dry.
by Greta Lou (they/elle/ella), a poet-organizer from rural Vermont (unceded Abenaki land) who has also wandered through Minnesota (unceded Dakota and Ojibwe land). Currently you can find them in Guatemala, learning from Maya, Xinka, and Garífuna movements and artists, scheming to bring their strategies home.
Photographs of people killed in genocide and forcibly disappeared during Guatemala's internal armed conflict (1960-1996) hang outside the country's national palace. Photo by the author.