It’s The Same Thing

Guest Post by Ayo Sekai

This war against Iraq
Under the false pretense of justice for the Iraqi people

This war
Where people are dying like worthless flies And their blood bring cries From mothers of every nation

It’s the same thing

Same as when they brought the Africans here on slave ships
The Amistad jammed packed like sardines
And our women disgraced, raped and no one hears their screams
Same as the stealing of our precious Ivory
And natural resources of Africa’s bosom
Using sword and knives and teaching us religion

It’s the same thing
And it goes way farther than that

Goes back to the Spaniards crossing the ocean
Goes back to the Cubans directing those murderers
Who committed mass genocide to the Caribbean
Same as them trying to tell us that Egypt and the river Nile
No longer belonged to Africans
That the people there are color of snow and not black like burnt coal in the sand.

It’s the same thing

Same as them telling us the black people couldn’t be smart enough to build the Pyramids
Because the very existence of it still baffles their mediocre minds
Same them stealing from us under the pretense of civilizing barbarians and industrializing third world lands
Same as them selling us in Shackles
And still they are riding on our back
Selling us crack
Killing us softly with biological warfare that they themselves implemented
And now they fear

It’s the same thing

Same as our children bellies being filled with worm
And our homeless shuffle in empty boxes on the cold concrete floor
Same as them giving us welfare cheese and rewarding us for sitting at home and having
Babies and punishing those of us, who work hard, follow their laws and believe in their democracy

This war
This lie
It’s the same thing

And we are not far removed
We are living in slavery and ignorance as this country only tells us what they think we should know
Still shackled by the media who want to keep our ears glued to blood and gore and not hear the truth

We are still slaves
And the sooner we realize that this war is not about terrorism
The better we will be
The sooner we realize that this war is not about saving the Iraqi people from lives of fear and hate
The better we will be

Because this war is about oil
It’s about power
And we are still buying into the crap they feed us that we are safe and we go about our everyday lives while they turn and enslave yet another nation
Another group of people just like they did to us
Just like they stole and infiltrated the native American Indians just for their land

This war
It’s the same thing
And we are still Slaves
Hands and bodied bounded by chains and lynched minds
Inside we are still adorned by the patches and leftover fabrics tailored to keep us ignorance

It’s the same thing
And we are not that far removed

It’s the same thing
And the Iraqi women are still women morning their loss and crying for peace

It’s the same thing
It’s the same thing
It’s the same thing

March 26, 2003

Ayo Sekai is the Chief Executive Officer at Universal Write Publications, LLC and a current Doctoral (Ph.D.) student at Howard University (Black Politics and International Affairs). Universal Write Publications (UWP) has a publishing purpose to produce social, anthological, and ethnographical scholarship that dignifies the rich histories of the culturally diverse peoples who make up our society. We want to strengthen the voices of the diaspora through pioneering works that blend the creativity through which Griots tell stories with the necessity of peer-reviewed publications. Be it pieces on cultural heritage, education, the environment, visual arts, or innovators, our books are well researched and richly illustrated, appealing to general readers as well as academic researchers.