And What Will We Sing?

For the last 25 years, Buff Whitman-Bradley has gone to jail in rebellion to war, capitalism, climate chaos, and indignity. He has taught kindergarten. He has marched and hiked, and written poems.

These are "poems of protest, of outrage, of resistance," amidst Bay Area disobedience and mass action for survival and a better world-through his lens of how children everywhere are affected.

More than a few of these poems describe demonstrations I was part of, but somehow I had not witnessed the "wild geese descend through the icy drizzle" as we blockaded Chevron headquarters on the first day of the Copenhagen COP15 climate summit.

And What Shall We Sing? is a new book of 71 poems-prayers to be read out loud through a bullhorn and protests to be spoken calmly with arms locked together, while refusing police orders.

Arm yourself with this book of poems of protest, grief, murmurations, shooting star flowers, red-winged blackbirds in tall grass, pandemic, wildfire, rain, children, yellow socks, rebellion, and hope.

-David Solnit, arts organizer and author of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World