Kiara's Bio

Untitled (return to top)

We cannot act as if nothing is happening

while the powers that be try to turn us into robotic

conformities,

divide and conquer is the corporate profit slogan

seeing us as nothing more than commodities,

our culture is packaged and then sold back to us,

new gadgets manufactured to make our lives supposedly

easier, but they become faster: our free time

decreases and things like homelessness and poverty

increases,

and people are manipulated not to see it

TV distorting the fact that profit requires cheating

people out of an equal wage,

profit means controlling other countries' economies,

profit means exploiting our natural resources and buying

out media channels and then not reporting about it,

so we keep living in this bubble world

reading, seeing, hearing the world through the

perspective of the beast.

We live in the belly of the beast

while the beast lashes out at the next generation

to oppress us in new technological ways than they

oppressed our ancestors,

but still dividing and conquering

not teaching us about each others' cultures

about our shared struggles,

only emphasizing the dividing and conquering

the information age and profit making

supposed technological revolutions and economic booms

aka imperialism and exploitation,

mentality manipulation,

mass entertainment to discipline the consumer market

with crumbs of distraction and technology advancements

that make us more dependent on its blissful drug of

thinking that we are living in a capitalistic system

that is not destroying cultures and our environment,

BUT the system is abusing our water, polluting our

air, poisoning the earth,

using fire against us

dividing us and conquering us

when we should be using the fire of mother earth

to spread like wildfire and unite with our sparks of

demands for humanity and justice

fight with films, music and dance

uplift each other through mind, body and soul

because the air, water, earth and fire is our soul.

Kiara's Bio (return to top)

Age: 20
From: Daly City
Poem: Untitled

"Poetry is important to me because it helps me reflect. It is a thought process of my feelings and thoughts and experiences. Most of what I write is about issues that I see in society. I don't write when I am happy. Most of my good poems are when I am mad or sad or frustrated. I don't know why.

"My message to adults is to remember how it was to be a child and a growing young person. There are a lot of problems in the world right now, and the problems keep growing—look at how children grow up in poverty in the United States and in other places all around the world. Before adults say anything negative about young people, they should look at themselves and see what they are doing to solve the root cause of problems. All problems in society are reflected in the way that young people act."

Message for youth:

"To never lose our energy and to turn negative energy into positive energy. Use any form of expression to heal yourself and creatively adjust problems you can see in society that you can relate to.

"I'm program director for the Education in Media program of HOMEY (Homeys Organizing the Mission and Empowering Youth). 'Homeys' is just a word for 'friends' in youth and Latino culture. In this job I do workshops in high schools around media literacy and issues that young people are going through. Then I work with the students to put together a newspaper called Listen Up. Our core high school is International Studies Academy. I also work with REAL (Revitalizing Education and Learning) and work with teachers in high school and middle school to make classrooms more interactive. I co-facilitate a class once a week.

"I think it is absolutely crucial that young people understand and create their own media because otherwise they will just keep getting labeled and misunderstood and portrayed with a distorted reality.

"Young people in the San Francisco Bay Area should realize how unique this place is. The rest of the United States is not as diverse. People may think everything is OK, but if you look around the United States and the world—especially in terms of the environment—you see it is only getting worse. People should not think that it is impossible to make positive change, because all the good things around us are the result of people working to make good things happen."