A Dream Named Freedom is a fictional “monopoem” (monologue/poem) about dreams, freedom, and Fred Hampton.
There’s this dream I once had named Freedom
But I did not know that dreams sketched on composition books and etched into diaries would take on their own lives
That I could not secure them around my subtle body or mold their path with my cries
They live by their own rules. Rules that I did not approve
They evaporate off sheets of college rule paper
Transcend archaic laws of physics
Zip through the cosmos carving tragedy into its fabric
There’s this dream I named freedom
It makes me dig holes with questions
Like. . . what is freedom? How do we create it? What does it look like?
Are there different kinds of freedom?
Mind freedom? Body freedom? Soul freedom?
Is it even possible to be fully free?
Maybe freedom is like a spectrum.
Maybe there are trade offs.
Maybe we must negotiate.
So I’m digging digging learning digging
Till I begin to question myself
Maybe I’m not strong enough
Maybe I’m not smart enough
Maybe I’m not capable of finding these answers
There’s this dream I once had named Freedom
It burns black holes into the universe and folds time onto itself–merging 5, 16, and 21 year old me into a fusion too complex for me to understand
Setting traps on trails of questions that lure me into chaos
Existential crisis after existential crisis
Who am I? Where am I? What is the point?
I am not the only one who has dreamt of freedom
21 year old Fred Hampton had a dream
He dreamt of equality
He asked the hard questions
He committed himself to change
He inspired people to mobilize
He rallied, and organized, and labored for his dream
The 6am political education classes for the community
The Black Panther Party Free Breakfast Program
Getting powerful street gangs to trade weapons for consciousness–to fight poverty through community instead of war
None of it was enough
He awakened too many people.
The powerful preferred them divided.
They ordered the movements destroyed.
The word they used is “neutralize”
J Edgar Hoover said we must quote destroy what the movement stands for and quote eradicate its ‘serve the people’ programs.
So a black brother was paid to infiltrate
To disguise himself as an organizer and body guard
To agonize the community through fake letters and phone calls
False news reports and confrontations
Carving artificial problems out of thin air
Pitting friends against friends. . .
The most brutal kind of destruction
But this wasn’t enough
They slipped barbiturates into Hampton’s drink
And then the FBI raided his home
December 4th, 1969 4:45 am. . .
14 heavily armed police officers storm a Monroe Street Apartment
Pop! Mark Clark sitting in the front room on security duty is dead
Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop! Fred Hampton drugged out on his bed next to his 8 month pregnant wife is wounded
Pop Pop! two gunshots to the back of the head “He’s good and dead now” says an officer
On to the next room pop pop pop pop 4 others wounded
Then beaten up, dragged into the streets, and arrested
For what? Aggravated assault and attempted murder Of who? The 14 police officers who raided a home and killed two friends.
These powerful people made us think that the Soviets were the enemies. That communism and socialism would spread like a disease ruining democracy and taking away our freedoms.
But I see no democracy.
It’s all a lie. When we think we’ve won when we think we’ve been heard its because they let us have a victory. They’ve created the illusion of choice. They make us believe we have a voice but when your voice threatens their power over you, they infiltrate your movements. They threaten your family. They create artificial problems to distract your people, disrupt the cohesion, the progress. They lie. They steal. They murder. They torture. They invade. They bomb. They occupy. They hold you hostage and enslave your leaders. They publish fake news stories and construct events to make you think the threat is elsewhere. They deprive you of resources like education to keep you from learning and knowing and awakening to who they really are.
They are not here to create a just world or to endow all people with rights to food, and water, and education, and safety, and justice. They are not here to encourage love or prosperity or collaboration or spiritual growth. No! . . their purpose is to keep us all trapped in their apparatus of oppression, of confusion, of misery. . . held up by constructs of race, gender, beauty, politics, and economics that torment us.
I am not the only one who has dreamt of freedom
Yet I see no one who is unrestrained
The power-obsessed cop is not free of the ego
The FBI director is not free from his crimes
The imperialist is not free of sickness
The President is not free from his lies
The white supremacist is not free of hate
The Black Woman is not free of pain
People are not free from each other
I see no one who is free
And plenty who have bled for me
Freedom agonizes the stars because they know there are no answers
They know this world is fiction–a novel with no ending, no satisfying finale
So when freedom woke me up last night to ask me why I have forsaken it.
I said, “Why should I dream in a world where dreams whether left on coffee tables or spoken on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial WILL strip you naked and spill your secrets to your enemies?”
When I was a child this dream I call blue eyes looked at me and said, “I dare you to chase me.”
It was then that I should have known that dreams are not for the living.
Freedom is not for the living.
Not in this land.
You take what you get and wait for someone else’s tragedy, someone else’s undisciplined, uncaring, mischievous dream to carry you on its wings.
Written by Iris Nevins
