Paulina O’Kieffe-Anthony

Paulina O’Kieffe-Anthony is an award-winning artist, curator, arts educator and creative consultant.  Her accomplishments include being featured in When Sisters Speak, co-curating Scarborough: The Backbone as part of Toronto’s Year of Public Art, co-producing the Spoken Soul Festival and representing Toronto as a two-time national team finalist in the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. In 2019 she was a TEDx speaker and in 2020 an excerpt of her play How Jab Jab Saved the Pretty Mas was featured as part of Piece of Mine’s Black Women in Theatre Festival.   

Her work and leadership in the community sector was recognized as she was the recipient of the Toronto Community Foundation Vital People Award and again when she was recognized as one of 150 Black Women Making Herstory (as featured on CBC) for her contribution to building the arts scene in Toronto. 

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It all starts with a seed planted
Fertilized and watered
By unnecessary bloodshed
Brutalized bodies
Living in brutal conditions
When there is nothing left to lose
But everything to gain

When the system squeezes everything out of you
Day in and day out
Takes from you all that you work for
Takes from you all that you love
For no reason other than to satisfy its own lust for power
It is in that last drop of all you have to give
That the spark will ignite everything
And then it all burns down to the ground

When the people are no longer living in a life
In which they are subdued with subtle comforts
When they are pushed too far
Stretched too thin
Persecuted to no ends
Tormented with scenes of injustice that suddenly
Haunts their every dream
And shadows their every waking move

When the land of their forefathers is under threat
Where their memories lay buried
Where their ancestors lay buried
Where the human sacrifice to remain in existence
For the sake of generations to come is stronger
Than the fear of dying

It will all start with a call
First subtle and quiet
Whispered in between walls of clandestine meetings
Where thoughts and ideas will permeate conversations
The seed has now started to sprout
Fertilized and watered
By the yearning for change

We are after all creatures of evolution
Never staying stagnant
Never staying silent

The message will spread like wildfire
Change is coming
It’s just there on the horizon
If you are willing to fight
And take hold of a future bright enough to
Dispel the darkness of the present day
They will ride at dawn
Or dusk
Whichever to catch the enemy surprised

They will be surprised regardless
Not knowing where this determined spirit
Has come from
Little do they know the seed that sprouted
Has now grown roots
And they are spreading
Across the lands
Our cries for freedom,
For justice
Are connected
And for a moment
When the majority stops fighting each other 
We become a united force

Until what was once a seed planted
Grows to become a jungle
Hiding guerilla fighters
And clandestine meetings become more than just
Places to whisper ideas
But rather a space where strangers become synchronized in strategy

Something is coming
And it is bigger than all of us
It shifts the tectonic plates of our realities
Until we can no longer stand still in our subjugation
The tremors of change are too strong
And they call us with conviction
Convince us that another life is calling

And so we go to war
Against a system set up to crush us
But the masses are too strong
The gains are greater than the losses
The promises of what is on the other side
Are too compelling for us to stay stuck in the mud
And so we march on
With banners
With posters
With weapons
With our bodies
With our voices
With our spirits yearning for freedom

The fire is no longer containable
The seed has grown into forest
The ideas are far beyond our wildest imaginations
And they may not even manifest within our life times
But they will manifest

And when the oppressors finally fall
Be that in 1, 100, or a thousand years
Those of us who have been stripped from our land
Stripped of our dignity
Stripped of a reason worth living
Will be vindicated
Even if we are ancestors
We will smile down on our future generations
Living our wildest dreams

Because we decided not to revel in the status quo
But to shift it all together
And with the strength of thousands
We marched
We fought
We shouted
Viva La Revolution!
Long Live the Revolution

But who’s revolution is more worthy
Who’s life is more important
to document, to remember
Entrenched in our memories
Written in the history books we are allowed to study
What colour are the revolutions you have been allowed to learn about

When the winds of change come
Who are the changes for
Which way do they blow
Which stories get swept up in the wind tunnels
Get lost in the hurricanes
Which stories do we cheer for
And which stories do the rest of us work hard to dig up
just to find a piece of ourselves in history’s textbooks

When does change move from revolution
To rioting and looting
When does the definition shift
Is it when the colour of bodies melanate into darker hues?

When are our struggles reflected in the art splashed across large institutions
Curated by the descendants of those who wish to erase us
Erase our stories of struggle
To minimize them as footnotes on pages
When it is our fights that have made huge dents
That have shifted history

When is it a time for change?
Who decides?
And when do the change makers demand complacency
To stay in their newly fought for comforts
Afforded to them on the backs of unrecognized, un-legitimized struggles
As some revolutions are deemed noble
While others are savage
We look for our heroes to be etched in stone
For those whose bravery began the conquest for freedom
For change
Only to be met by statues of those who are hero to some
Oppressors to the rest of us

We tell stories of injustices
With no closure
With no support for the PTSD being passed down from generation to generation
Just pictures
Just stories
Just vivid imagination playing on memory we wish to push back
But bring up over and over again
It burns our throats but we continue to retell them,
To remind us that we too sacrificed for the greater good
For the change we sought to see in the world
For the freedom of people
In every colour 

Revolutions are the dreams of artists
Painting new worlds of possibilities
Springing forth from those who dare to dream until the impossible becomes reality

Revolutions give voice to the voiceless
Hope to the hopeless
Future to the ones who weren’t sure there was even a future worth living for
Let alone worth fighting for
Worth dying for

Revolution occupies the space that shifts power balances
that shifts mindsets
That shifts the energies in this world
To ensure that oppressive systems cannot crush the people into oblivion
Into a world not worth living

And within revolution
Within that new energy
So many things are created
So much art
So much life

What is the spark?
What is the catalyst for change?
Is it in an assassination?
Is it in the veins of those who have had enough?
The weight of a whip feeling to heavy for the last time
The cloud of injustice hanging over one’s head darkening the path
The cries of children unjustly murdered
To end of tyranny that causes agony in the lives of the many
To retain the power of a few

Revolution screams
Equality Liberty Fraternity
But what if you do not see me as your brother or sister?
Is my freedom requiring of you seeing me as worthy
Are you of the enlightened
Who know what is best for me
And present me with an offer that only you stand to gain from
Am I even really included in your thoughts of
Equality
Liberty
Freedom

Life
Liberty
And the Dream

What if our dreams collide
Clash
What if me giving up my dream is the requirement for you to live yours
What if you didn’t want to risk it
What if your revolution doesn’t even consider me in the first place
Is it still an upset of power
Or just a changing of the hands of power
Between bodies that are not coloured
into submission
Into savage
into unworthiness of another thought
And so what was once a call for freedom becomes
A call for treason

Viva La Revolution!
Long Live the Revolution!

But who’s revolution is more worthy
Who’s life is more important
to document, to remember
Entrenched in our memories
Written in the history books we are allowed to study
What colour are the revolutions you have been allowed to learn about

When the winds of change come
Who are the changes for
Which way do they blow
Which stories get swept up in the wind tunnels
Get lost in the hurricanes
Which stories do we cheer for
And which stories do the rest of us work hard to dig up just to find a piece of ourselves in history’s textbooks