dedicated to 100 million souls held captive
by the valley of the shadow of utility shutoffs1
Take to heart these five words: Energy is a human right.
Impress these words upon your colleagues,
Recite them at the office and in the classroom,
Inscribe them upon the beating walls of your heart.2
~~~
Energy is the cornerstone that a shutoff grinds to dust.3
A human right has a face. A technician who dismounts his truck, strides past the tricycle and the daffodils, wrenches the valve shut. Feels a wrench tighten in his chest. Watches tears well and chokes back his own. He knows the math: two shifts worth of bullshit wages don’t cover the electric bill.
A human right refuses to rip the cord of a family’s refrigerator, the asthmatic’s nebulizer, the A/C that keeps elders from roasting to a crisp.
To deprive one of energy is a knee upon the neck: Mama, help us breathe.4
~~~
Enter the faceless messiah: All hail A.I.! Shutoffs rain likes stones thrown blindly from an overpass,5 like drones that annihilate hospitals and schools teaming with innocents.6 No wrench required, nor a brain. Just ask Gemini for a final solution: 6 million shutoffs since Covid and counting. 7
A few musketeers pilfer paychecks from beneath millions of mattresses. They buy islands, aim rockets at Mars. Stop feeding rats before people! A human right overturns the tables of the money lenders.8
Who will live and who will die? Who by fire and who by ice? Who by the dearth of power and who by the drug of it?9 Enough with the body counts and resolving to do justice in the afterlife.10
~~~
Do not wait for backup: escalate your own conscience. These words are your wrench to straighten twisted spokes.
Grind the plank in your eye back to tinder,11 melt the shackles of shutoffs back to ore.
Stitch these words on the throbbing canvas of your heart, tattoo them on the pulse of your wrists:12
Energy is a human right.
We are the long arc that bends.13
Original translations:
1 Psalm 23:4 2 Deuteronomy 6:6-9; “V’ahavta” (and poem of same name by Aurora Levins Morales) 3 Matthew 21:44 4 Modern reels of Floyd, Garner 5 Rev 16:21 6 Scroll of Gaza 7 Shoah 8 Matthew 21:12 9 Rabbi Amnon (and Leonard Cohen) 10 Micah 6:8 11 Matthew 7:3-5 12 Deut 6:6, 6:8 13 Book of Martin