I invited Jefferson Thomas* to speak / at our school. Jefferson Thomas told his stomach, / “Be ready to eat bullets.” Jefferson Thomas / walked on concrete sidewalks like water. / Jefferson Thomas spoke and cured seventy six cases  / of ADHD for forty six minutes.

A woman read / my coffee cup / told me I’d find you / stubble of the Arab man / 

I grew up in the farm labor camps of Monterey County in California, picking fruits and vegetables along with my parents and eleven brothers and sisters. Neither parent was able to attend school growing up, and we relied on each other to survive the hardships of being poor and working in the fields.

My art and social activism stems from my strong conviction that art is needed to make social change a possibility, to help heal the injustice’s faced by people of color around the world. I have the historical experience of the Civil Rights Movement and the Chicano, Black Power Movement, Native American and Anti- War Movements of the 1960s and 70s for my inspiration.

In a 90’s TV special, Chris Rock smirks at us, paces the stage in his leather / jacket, and declares he’d never hit a woman—but he’d shake the shit out of her!