All Of The Women (remix)

Artistically and personally I try to live by the 5 Cs and HR: Cross-Pollination, Collaboration, Coalition, Creative Communion, and Harm Reduction. This Remix embodies all seven. Dim Star introduced me to the music on Sa-Roc in 2021. Her latest album “The Sharecropper’s Daughter” has been on heavy rotation in my heart ever since. Sa-Roc is more than an artist, more than a poet, more than an “American Rapper.” Assata Perkins — the creator known as Sa-Roc — is a sage, a seer, a channeler of mystery and hidden truths. Her rhymes cut through illusions, they inflame, they illuminate. They stay with you. She’s an Earth grounded fierce Goddess. She’s a Thinker, Goddess Gang. She has become one of my favourite living writers. She inspires me endlessly. I knew that I wanted to form a larger circle of love and protection and sisterhood around the message and mission of “All of The Women.” I knew that the song needed Sa-Roc, but I didn’t realize how much.

We did not know each other before this, but she said yes when I asked her. I believe I’ve found a new chosen sister. It’s all the things you don’t have to explain, you know? She met the song where it was and then lifted it up into the Ancestral Astral plane, to float on the healing waters of the Eternal Ocean of Yemaya. I cannot get through her verses without crying. Dim Star shaped the remix with deep empathy, intuition and urgent propulsion. It was mixed with soulful precision by the brilliant producer and Renaissance Woman, Ebonie Smith. The Rainbow Coalition of the Loving cannot be stopped.
“Who writes the poems for these spirits we mourn?” Sa-Roc opens her verse thus…
We do. We lift each other up. This song isn’t mine anymore, it’s ours: AR, Sa-Roc, Dim Star.
It’s yours.
We mourn the daughters gone. We tend the blooms. We sing the past. We write the future.

“Truth told for every daughter gone there’s a mother left with a bleeding vine.
Cold-blooded try to bury our seeds but a bloom emerge every spring time. Let’s go.”— Sa-Roc

All of The Women
I had a day job when I lived out West. I was a front-line mental health worker for almost 7 years in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver (aka DTES, the poorest postal code, heart of the homelessness crisis and fentanyl/opioid crisis in Canada), from 19 until I was 26. I worked for two harm reduction initiatives- the PHS – a low threshold housing society, and Insite – the first ever safe injection site in North America. Most of our residents/participants were dual diagnosis- addiction, and mental health. Many of the women in our community had histories and stories akin to mine. I was constantly afraid for the women working in the sex trade especially- I moved to Vancouver amidst the ongoing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Crisis- now understood to be on the level of Genocide – that was belatedly only semi-addressed by law-enforcement. It is more perilous to be a woman in every culture and society. We are seeing the devastating overlap between #blacklivesmatter, #blacktranslivesmatter and #mmiwg today. BIPOC women are leading the way out of bigotry and into true equality. Shirley was luminous and so kind to me as I got to know the parameters of my caregiving jobs, and the complex and close-knit community that I served and came to love and identify with deeply. She was indomitable and I miss her

-A

She’s been a fixture as long as I’ve lived here
On the corner most every night for the last six years
When she’s not there
When she’s not there
When she’s not there
I worry about her
worry about her
I think of all of the women
All of the women
All of the women
Who disappear
Who disappear

We’ve made friendly acquaintance, sometimes we talk, she likes the way that I smile
and sing as I walk
I like her fabulous outfits, the proud way she moves, she says
“I used to be a dancer… some grace you don’t lose
Some grace you don’t lose

I made some choices, some were made for me
For the way I survive – I make no apology
Everybody and somebody don’t always meet up, I’m the salvation for those left without
For those left without, those living small lies, what I provide can’t be measured in nickels and dimes, in nickels and dimes”

I ask what about the bad dates, don’t you ever get scared?
“Well I’ve had my share honey, but it’s fear I can bear, it’s fear I can bear
Cause I’m stronger than eggshells, I’m tougher than luck, I’ve never been despised so much or hit so hard, or hit so hard
I couldn’t get back up
I couldn’t get back up
I couldn’t get back up.”

Sa-Roc’s lyrics:

Who writes the poems for these spirits we mourn?
Shadow women long remembered donned ephemeral form.
The backbone of great nations, ancient kingdoms reborn.
Made to sacrifice too often crown of splintery thorns.
Lay on this heavy head. Skin tough like boulders of Gibraltar.
Same ones that oppose her magic come and worship at the altar.
The salt of the earth you walk over, gold lining your coffers.
What you think? You can’t erase the ink outlining your culture-of your anthology,
substance to your Iliad.
The heartbeat pulse just like a percussion within the temples of my familiar.
Mary Magdalene and Yemayah the path to your deliverance.
Sacred gospel drowned and deafened by these charlatans and demagogues.
We gonna ride for em, start a fire in the meantime.
They keep discarding the light workers and the sight deprived keep leading the blind.
Truth told for every daughter gone there’s a mother left with a bleeding vine.
Cold-blooded try to bury our seeds but a bloom emerge every spring time. Let’s go.

She’s been a fixture as long as I’ve lived here
On the corner most every night for the last six year s
When she’s not there
When she’s not there
When she’s not there
I worry about her
I worry about her
Think of all of the women
All of the women
All of the women
All of the women
All of the women
All of the women
Who disappear
Who disappear
Who disappear
Who disappear