falling out of the sky into our hands

i have been trying to write about this for days, but the words wont come.

this morning my daughter is sick with a slight fever.  i held her against my chest until she fell asleep.

birds are falling out of the sky.  thousands of birds.  thousands of fish are dead washed up on the shoreline.

Brazil
Mysterious killing of fish in coastal

Canada
Update 1 – 10,000s of Birds found dead in Manitoba
Update 1 – Dead Birds and Fish reported in St. Clair River, Ontario
Update 1 – Goldstream River, at Goldstream Provincial Park, Victoria mysteriously turns bright green

Chile
Thousands of Birds fall from the sky in South America

China
Eagles and Birds are falling from the sky in China

Italy
Thousands of Doves are Dying

Japan
Japan on alert after finding dead birds

New Zealand
Hundreds of snapper dead on beaches
Update 2 – Penguins, petrels and other seabirds, mass deaths

Philippines
Update 2 – Residents gather, eat dead fish floating in barangay Ibo

South Korea
Dead Teal Ducks With Bird Flu Strain Found In South Korea

South Africa
Mystery of dead birds on Cape roads

Sweden
50 birds were found dead
Hundreds of dead birds found in the middle of the road in Sweden

United Kingdom
Dead fish discovered in canal marina near Abergavenny
Update 1 – 40,000 ‘devil’ crabs found dead on the beach

Vietnam
Update 2 – Tonnes of farm fish found dead

United States of America
Arkansas
Nearly 3000 Dead Birds Fall From Arkansas Sky
First Birds Fall, Now 100000 Fish Dead in Arkansas

Florida
Thousands Of Fish Dead In Spruce Creek

Illinois
Dead Birds Reported by Residents in Southern Illinois

Kentucky
Update 1 – Dead birds found in Kentucky, Sweden, as crabs wash up on U.K. shores in latest mass animal deaths

Louisiana
Dead Birds Fall From Sky AGAIN In Louisiana, 300 Miles From Arkansas Incident Days Earlier

Maryland
2 Million fish die in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland

Michigan
Update 1 – Hundreds of Dead Fish Appear In Lincoln Park

North Carolina
Dead pelican count escalates in Topsail Beach
Update 1: Reward offered for information on what’s causing dead pelicans at Topsail Beach

Texas
Update 1 – Now East Texas also reports hundreds of dead birds
Update 1 – Experts in Texas are weighing in after large amounts of dead birds were reportedly found across the Country and around the World

lex and i talk about the spaces created by the shoreline and the frontline.  its how we begin the call for submissions to this bridge called my baby: legacies of radical mothering.

All mothers have the potential to be revolutionary. Some mothers stand on the shoreline, are born and reborn here, inside the flux of time and space, overcoming the traumatic repetition of oppression. Our very existence is disobedience to the powers that be.
At times, in moments, we as mothers choose to stand in a zone of claimed risk and fierce transformation, the frontline. In infinite ways, both practiced and yet to be imagined,  we put our bodies between the violent repetition of the norm and the future we already deserve, exactly because our children deserve it too.  We make this choice for many reasons and in different contexts, but at the core we have this in common: we refuse to obey. We refuse to give into fear. We insist on joy no matter what and by every means necessary and possible.

i see these birds and fish strewn across the shorelines and i ask who will stand on the frontlines as sky and water crumbles in front of us.  what is our response to this?  this? this what?  this mass suicide?  this mass murder?  this chemical intoxication?  this poisoning of life?

i read somewhere in response to this massive deaths of fish and fowl that we should not be come ‘too alarmist’.  because if we take this too seriously, people will start to lose hope and feel helpless and thus wont get involved.

lose hope dear friends.  abandon all hope of fruition. abandon all despair.  and then lets walk.

we know what we must do.  we must stop this civilization.  we must stop this culture that eats its young.

i hear talk of the apocalypse.  and frankly, im feeling yall.  the only twirk that gets me is…a lot of folks on this planet are already living the apocalypse that we fear is coming.  this is why the world powers that be are building fences to keep the majority of people away from the minority of people who own the majority of the resources.

when i was in the congo, the elders said that the seasons/cycles were changing.  weather was too extreme and people didnt know when to plant and when to harvest like they used to.  people had followed the patterns of birth and decay in this rift valley, the cradle of humankind, for millions and millions of years.  and they had survived by knowing these patterns.  and now they watched the cycles crash into each other, disintegrating.  collapsing.

i close my eyes and exhale and listen to the birds and fish falling and flailing…what do you want?  i ask.  what do you want from us?

there is a way out of feelings of impotence and despair.

we can pay attention, even though the truth hurts.  we can listen carefully and listen some more to the victims.  listen and wait for the answer.

and then we can step onto the frontline armed with truth of the dead and dying, and fight to stop the culture killing all of us.  birds, fish, human babies living on the margins of our societies, mamas holding up the sky,  our dreams, our ancestral lands, our spirits, our stories, our languages.  this earth.  this sky.

i said before we need a movement.  but now i think it is not just any movement that we need, but a coordinated group of people willing to stand on the frontlines, refuse to turn their heads from the decaying flesh, and insist on asking the question again and again.

how do we stop this?

there may not be an easy answer to this question.

how do we stop the murder of our world?

each or our answers will probably look different.  because we come from difft places, perspectives, cultures.  we must listen closely to ourselves and the dying and the living.  and we must be willing to act when necessary.

be ready.  for the time is nigh upon us.

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