Vox Populi
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Jose Padua: Reflections on a Lesson that Would Soon Be Made More Clear to Me by Gil Scott-Heron
In 1971 I’m
thirteen years old
watching a big
Vietnam war protest
on television when
the bearded guy
speaking to the
crowd starts chanting
Fuck Richard Nixon!
Fuck Richard Nixon!
and the instant
the TV station
cuts the sound
is when I
realize that if
I want to
witness the revolution
I will eventually
have to turn
the TV off.
—
Copyright 2016 Jose Padua
Photograph by Jose Padua
Vox Populi 
Somewhere about 1970 or ’71 at Kent State Clark Hall, I heard Gil Scott-Heron blasting from the dorm room next door, where two young Black Panthers from Cleveland resided. It was a new music in a language that I didn’t fully comprehend, but I could sense the power, anger, outrage. Those few times I saw their dorm door opening, a haze of smoke filled the hall and we politely said “hello.”
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We are fortunate to have the internet. I can’t remember how we got our information when I went to Mississippi. Thank you for your poem. It took me back.
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My memory is fading in many respects, mostly names, events, but I still recall my anger and, I think, screaming at the TV while watching the 68 Democratic convention and Mayor Daily(I remember his name!) being called out for the treatment of the protestors.Then Kent State…and my own personal protest. Fifty odd years later and things are eerily the same.
TV, again, incites me almost daily, but I’m a caregiver now( lovingly I like to think) . I can’t go to protest now but I want to think I would if circumstance were different. I write a poem occasionally….for myself. Poetry is a selfish pursuit!
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Thanks, Leo!
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Gil Scott-Heron was a treasure, as are your poems. Thank you.
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Thanks, Jose!
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