Twenty-five years later,
It’s illegal to carry breast milk onto an airplane.  

They’ve never caught a lactating hijacker,
But neither has the Patriot Act tapped into a terror cell,
State-mandated testing increased our nation’s Rhodes Scholars,
Or a corporation followed a gut feeling toward human morality
Over rape and pillage profits.  

The Department of Homeland Security,
Despite power’s promise to relinquish control once a crisis passes,
Morphed into a beloved institution.
Operation Stellar Wind paved the way for Blackwater and Palantir 
To divert the world water supply to AI data centers
That don’t play therapist or show users videos of cats eating pancakes,
But emulate Total Recall and bad 80s sci-fi by criminalizing dissent. 

Mountains of proof point to the perpetrators:
Not a handful of immigrants who couldn’t fly,
But Special Ops teams with explosives, operating under top-secret directives
To increase Halliburton stock options and fill Dick Cheney’s pockets,
While burying evidence of corporate espionage under the debris of Building Seven.  

No charges have ever been filed.
SEAL Team 6 murdered a brown man on Hollywood’s silver screen
And dumped his body into the ocean—
Not Osama Bin Laden, of course; 
Diabetes killed him in some hidden cave (if he ever existed at all)—
But by then, any brown man would’ve satisfied America’s blood lust. 

Epstein Island did not rise from the floor of the Caribbean overnight.
It grew from a quarter-century without the emollients clause, 
Of PACs buying elections for corporate interests,
And a nation celebrating named war criminals as heroes. 

And it will not go down without another explosion. 

Their only hope is distraction tactics.
Lawmakers manipulate the threat level to instill terror nationwide
And pass specious restrictions that lengthen boarding lines, lower educational outcomes,
And protect corporate profits at the expense of the planet’s biosphere,
Ensuring no one notices liberties melting faster than the ice caps. 

Our only hope is to band together,
The marginalized, disenfranchised, subjugated, genocided communities—
All 99% of us—
And tear their whole system down with whatever pitchforks we can find. 

So, if breastmilk is scary and evil,
Can someone please tell us who we have to squirt in the eye
To get some rights around here? 

Editor: Erynn Crittenden