Poetry (scroll down for new submissions)
4 Year Journey
By Leroy Moore

Happy birthday to Disability Advocates of Minorities
Organization
Happy birthday to you

I want you to close your eyes
Sit back and let your mind fly
Through four years of fighting to survive

Once upon a time
In the year of 1995
Leroy traveled from the US to the UK

After 24 years being on the outside
He found home in a foreign land
Black disabled brothers and sisters organizing and
speaking their minds

Oh yeah I could understand
Their rage, beauty and talents
Set a fire from the inside

A year flew by
Traveled back and forth
US to the UK UK to the US

I was a changed man
Could not go back working for the man
Everybody was shocked

“What happen to Leroy in London!”
Like James Baldwin
I’ve been to the mountaintop

Started to lecture on race and disability
My two communities did not know what to do with me
“He is too radical and way too angry!”

1996, London still flipping in my mind
Pockets full of lent
Had to put London aside

1997, worked on my final solution
To be independent from racist and disabilist
organizations
Breaking the silence through poetry and personal
stories

One is a lonely number
I remembered the organizing of my brothers and sisters
across the sea
That’s when the seed was planted and DAMO was placed
on paper

1998, DAMO’s first meeting
Me and the wall
My dream was shattered and I was about to fall

Then people started to call
Mixed emotions
Fear of the unknown

1999, DAMO growing like a grapevine
Breaking ground in Oaktown
Media wanted to know what was going down

Jumping from place to place
Shared an office downtown
Trying to be all around the Bay

Poetry, Talkshow, organizing and family events
People started to burn out
No money, no support and no office

The year 2000 came back to San Francisco
Many founding members were gone
But the struggle to survive keeps going on

The rebirth of DAMO
New faces, new fiscal sponsor and a grant
Now it’s time to spread our wings and fly

Laying down the foundation
For future generations
But we still live in a capitalist nation so we need
your donations

Now open your eyes
Leave the four years behind
And lets party tonight

Cause tomorrow we will all be back on the front line!


Home<
By Leroy Moore

A place called home
Disabled brothers and sisters of color
Looking for each other

Clicking our heals together
Shouting, “there’s no place we can call home!”
Confused cause some have our skin color

Walking from door to door
Sailing from shore to shore
On our knees on the church floor

Alone in a crowd
“Where is home!”
We cried out loud

Over fifty million of us
Lost but searching like Columbus
We haven’t discovered each other

Home is where you make it
Brick by brick
Building a community that looks like us

DAMO’S doors are open
With a mate out front that reads welcome
So my brothers and sisters come on in

And make yourself at home!


You Can’t Stop What is Right
By Leroy Moore

It’s not surprising
It’s not shocking
It’s not even amazing
It’s right and nothing will stop it.

Fourteen years
Studying and writing
Organizing and now forming a community
>From South Africa to the Bay Area

You can’t stop what is right
Advocates, artists, poets, youth and the elderly
finally coming together
Celebrating, educating and empowering each other

You can’t stop what is right!
Oppress people can’t stay oppress forever
Disabled people of color are rising with the sun
Good morning! It’s a new day!

Regaining our voice, cultural and history
Teaching our youth about Frida Kahlo, Horace Pippin,
and Wilma Mankiller etc..
Writing about our experiences
Speaking what is on our minds

Do you hear me?
You can’t stop what is right!
It’s all good
Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization and
New Voices
Welcome home

Many, many, many and many
try to stop it
but many are realizing
you can’t stop what is right


In Here, Out There
By Leroy Moore

In here, slouched in my oversized wheelchair
Locked down in this infested black cell
God! I'm not doing so well
Bleeding from my POW, POW daily beating
Out there, living on the hard, cold streets
No cot, no heat and nothing to eat
Living on the dirty, trashy streets or
In this tiny, smelly cell damn both is hell
In here inmates are family
Out there there's no community
Understand my reality
No rehabilitation in here
Force medication out there
No wonder I live in fear
Community leaders marching out there
My family walking on death row in here
Our savior is waiting for all of us up there
Out of my wheelchair,
Zzzzzz frying in the electric chair
Out on the mean streets, bang, bang shot by police
In here, out there, tell me what's the difference


Prisons wearing masks
by Jessica Dawn Lorenz

My people lie shackled to beds, attached to machines, drugged out of their minds
Discerning through blankets pulled up over their heads
The world doesn't want them.
Can you smell them weeping?
Piss, vomit blood and tears suffocate those trapped in walls of do goodism
What they need is A home, someone who gives a shit.
Those people belong there.
Spirits have been stretched to the breaking point some snapping some shake at skilled hands
Gagging on government regulated standards.
Autonomy must hide.
Can you hear them screaming?
My people shriek cause they're unable to speak death living with dignity
Society shouts, "I'd rather be dead than be you."
Again waiting for lunch.
Bathe at six bed at eight.
A ward of thirty beds holds people slowly molding behind curtain walls.
They live their lives in the land of projected fears.
Counterfeit safety.
Broken people get care I'm done with my civic responsibility
These lies like a tower of blocks they will tumble
This is where you will die

Send Your Poems and Prose to DAMO for DAMO's website.
Help DAMO create an anthology of disabled artists &
advocates of color.