Dear Friends,

I created a video message, to keep us company during the 2020 election cycle. Please enjoy!

Below is the text of the video:

I’m Susan Windle, a poet, activist, and long-time Philadelphian. I want to take a  moment to share what’s been moving me these days as I engage in local and national politics. Here in Philadelphia we have been riding high from a huge local victory in November. We’ve elected to City Council, an amazing public education activist and community organizer. Kendra Brooks is a local hero: she is a working class, single mother and grandmother who has been fighting for children, their parents and the people of this fair city for a long time. Electing someone of Kendra’s background, character and organizing skills, against all the forces of the political status quo, is really something to celebrate! 

So I want to offer a victory song. It’s a poem I wrote based on Psalm 18, which is a song that David, the poet-warrior, sang upon the vanquishing of King Saul. According to the story, Saul was a towering, but troubled and insecure King who stopped at nothing to hold on to the power he had amassed.

My Victory (companion to Psalm 18, David’s Victory Song)

My victory is your victory, is our
victory, is the one tale
that wants to be told
over and over in thousand tongues until
there is no need to tell it anymore
because we are all living the story
that wants to be lived.

There is a man of wavering ways
and violent urge,
of narrow will and stature large:
human, with a killing grip. We fight,
male and female, to be free,
delivered from his clutch.

Every triumph against him must be told,
each battle heralded, celebrated,
every wondrous birthing
seen and heard, counted, recounted.
Our power is magnified by our songs.
We make a pathway to freedom with our stories,
a highway for salvation with our sounds:
our rising voices, our God’s determined roar—
let it come through us, let it come. 

I hear that divine roar for justice. I feel it our national politics. I feel the fire inside me. With so many others, I am feelin’ the Bern.” I take in the campaign news as I might take in any really riveting story–I am rapt! And as I move through my daily life, this story moves within me. 

Now this is a tale of biblical proportions. This is “the story that wants to be lived.” It’s the tale of human beings and our heroic efforts to create a just way of living together, in harmony with the earth and with one another. And here’s the thing: We each have a hand in shaping the outcome of this story. That’s a wonderful thing, don’t you think? For me, it is pure joy to know that I am taking part in it. I’m here. I’m alive and in this story.

As I see him, Bernie Sanders, is a national treasure, a hero, true leader of a people’s movement. We live in a state of emergency, a climate crisis that shows us, calamity after calamity, how high the stakes are, how vital it is to act boldly–and to act now. We simply must turn this nation into a just nation, if we want our species to survive and our planet to be habitable for our children and our children’s children. I believe, with all my heart and soul, that electing Bernie Sanders President of the United States is the bold move, the great leap forward, we need to make in our time.  

I hope you will join me in the joy of creating this story.

Blessings of love and light,

Susan