Sweet Land of Liberty

By Kenny Zulu Whitmore

86468 – Cypress 3, LA State Penitentiary, Angola, LA 70712

With Lady Liberty standing out in the harbor with her flaming torch held high for all to see near and far, she asks for your “tired, poor, poverty stricken humble sould yearning to breathe free in the land of liberty,” well Lady Liberty must be crying her eyes out while Donald Duck sits on his mighty throne from the Big House insisting that congress not Mexico give him 5.7 billion dollars to build a wall around the Southern border to keep our Southern, Central American and West Indies brothers and sisters, Mexicans, Hundurans, Guatemalan and Haitian and other so-called minorities who Duck’s wall is really meant to keep out of the liberty.

So I join with my Mexican Brother Emundo Cerda Anima, in calling for our communities to come together and build THAT BRIDGE and defeat Donald Duck’s call for a wall that he said the Mexican Government would pay for, instead BUILD THAT BRIDGE and stop the weeping of Lady Liberty by giving her your tired, poor, poverty-stricken, war-worried humble masses. What if the Native American had built that wall? So let’s build that culture bridge, build that culture bridge, build that culture bridge.

America Beautiful Land

By Emundo Cerda Anima

594309-Cypress 3, LA State Penitentiary, Angola, LA 70712

Now tired of so much seeing and so much hearing. How in this land our people is offended, insulted, humiliated, and discriminated non-stop.

From Angola prison today, the Hispanics would like to talk a little about history and freedom. ‘Wet-backs,’ ‘aliens,’ ‘foreigners’ we are called, and even by many other names. In appealing our case, it is necessary to return to history, for history itself by its facts will clarify once and for all that in America there have always been some Hispanics, and will always be. This is the land our Creator one day was pleased to give to us.

Others were the intruders, who in search for refuge and freedom dared one day arrive to our land. We know everybody forgot that already; therefore, today we remind them of that. It was a people from Great Britain who sailed that day. Their reasons for leaving were poverty and the oppression under which they lived. Yearning for freedom, to arrive in America they longed.

For all over the world it was heard that this beautiful land filled our people with blessings. With help from their King, they crossed the seas and suddenly awoke on these lands. America, you cannot deny to us that on that day you saw a dejected and oppressed people, for that you embraced them with love on your land. Then shared with them what you offered to our people. And to that you added sweet peaceful days, sincere love, and the blessed freedom, which those peoples came to seek from you.

That was the reason why Great Britain, on that day return of his demanded from you. I learned that on March 5, 1770, British soldiers violently patrolled your streets demanding from those foreigners loyalty to their king and country. However, as we have already said, America, your blessings have always been sweet and abundant, and that was sucfficient reason for that people to refuse to abandon you. Preferring to renounce their country forever, on a 4th of July, 1776, in Philadelphia, 56 men faced the British government. They strongly argued, it is better for us to die than to abandon America, this beautiful land and his blessed freedom. That’s how on that afternoon, America, those foreigners were added to you. Without thinking that as time went on, one day those peoples would also betray you, for little by little with intrigues they began to take this land. But that was not enough for them.

In enslaving the people they thought, so laws and regulations they prepared. With cunning and malice, Article XIII [13th Amendment] one day they formulated, for they saw that was the way in which they could become owners of the people and of the land that one day it adopted them.

Forgetting the brave ones like Lincoln, Luther King and many more, and the history spoken hereof, today in America they preach freedom. Blessed it be, we have said! For after such victorious fighting there should be no more slaves. Thereby, Article XIII [‘s exception clause] should be erased, for in inspires betrayal and horror. Or could it be, beautiful America land, that your freedom is just a lie?

Even here in Angola prison, the Hispanics through history we clarify that we are the Americans, and that even though straightforward the land was taken from us, make clear that they cannot and would not have been able to take from us or erase from this land our name, our history, our culture and language.