Editor’s note: “We assume you have been following the news on ICE throughout the country, but this story broke my heart. It was about a 5 year old girl detained for a year who was part of a protest in the detention facility. According to her immigration attorney, Eric Lee, who is interviewed in the article, she asked him to share her drawing with the world. The words across the top read” I am five years old” and the words in the ballon above the stick figures behind the fence read “ Let Us Out” - Leopoldo

“A protest broke out Saturday at the South Texas family detention complex in Dilley, about 70 miles south of San Antonio, after guards abruptly ordered attorneys to leave while detainees — many of them children — poured into open areas of the facility chanting “Libertad,” or "Freedom," according to an immigration attorney who witnessed the event.” Excerpt from an article by Texas Public Radio (Click Here to read the full article)

Anniversary of Declaration
By Craig Kirchner

To conduct a democratic experiment required men,
men of vision and courage, there was comradery and grandeur.
We learned that any humanitarian cause does not include
slavery and we are learning now it does not include cowards.

We are a land of immigrants who were all running from ugly
but are now running ugly up the flagpole to get rid of immigrants.
The spirit that brought our forefathers here is the same spirit
that brings these victims, some of our best citizens now,
who are being attacked in the name of patriotism. 

Ugly and crass are embedded. Something disastrous is coming.
Everyone can feel it, everyone knows the fear
they are supposed to. As we prepare to celebrate the flag,
the Liberty Bell looks poised to ring in the unimaginable.

We no longer defend those in need of it, we fight each other
over petty principles with a backdrop of ideology
that caused histories of war in the recent past.
Before peace there is always conflict,
our conflict never seems to be over.

We invade our own neighborhoods now
like they were terrorist camps in third world countries,
killing mothers in the streets, our citizens, people
who would have been at the front of the line celebrating
in those same streets our birthday of freedom.

This ... this, is our celebration after 250 years of struggle.
Civil rights marches, assassinations, Kent State,
all our efforts to become a more perfect union, to become,
the shining city on the hill – this is it ... think again. 

Hate, fear, ignorance breed hopelessness, cynicism,
knows no unification. Cowards do not unify,
greed does not bring us together. A new unification
can only come from our better selves, it will take
desire stronger than that of those that would keep us
running on the treadmill in the name of their need for more.

Armies in the streets need to go home, this regime
will pass as did those before it, they are cheap veneers
that will crack, bullies that will fold, they will eat one another.
The derelict force trained to create violence as a theatre of fear,
with gear purchased with our taxes, needs to be abolished.

The rocks they came out from under need to be overturned.
The next time generals and admirals are brought together
and told of their duty to kill their fellow countrymen,
they need to get up and leave, in the names of their children.

The same children, a good piece of which will be traumatized
for life. Christ said, Let the little children come to me.
DHS sends them to Dilly, Texas - in Christ’s name, in our name.
All children living in America must be made to think they are safe,
protected by their government - no one is coming for them,
they can once again go to school, church, the corner store.

They and only they, can reset this experiment.
Then and only then will we know, be sure, this is once again
America, and that we respect ourselves and one another
enough to celebrate and invite the world to do the same.

A Call to Arms - as in an urgent appeal and rallying cry for all of us to take action

Alex Pretti

Craig Kirchner is retired and living in Jacksonville, because that’s where his granddaughters are. He loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels and has been nominated three times for Pushcart. He was recently published in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, The Wise Owl, Breathe, The Wilderness House and dozens of others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop, these words help keep him straight.

From Zach Charles, Co-editor

For some time now, I have been mulling over the idea of what the best use of my energy can be in this role. As Breathe starts to shift its artistic vision, I reconsidered that question. In a meeting Leopoldo and I had, he expressed his desire to do away with "grading" the art we received. I responded that while I agreed the "grading"-like structure of accepting some art and not others was counterproductive to our efforts as a venue for building social justice, I still felt it important to encourage our readers and contributors to refine their work. I feel we owe it to ourselves and to the world we live in to strip away our egos and biases, and create art that truly energizes the work of social justice. To that end, I thought that offering a series of exercises and ideas for poems and art would be a useful way I could make the energy I put through Breathe magnify its impact. I hope you will take what you find energetic and continue to engage in the necessary work of realizing art that creates a more just world. Here are four possible exercises:

1. Write a found poem from an article (or a few) with news you think needs to be discussed or noticed or remembered. Cut lines out from an article (or a few) with news you think needs to be discussed or noticed or remembered and paste them into a painting or use them in a collage.

2. Pick a location in your neighborhood that you think needs to be memorialized. Write a poem, make a painting, take a picture, etc... that juxtaposes the events you are memorializing with the native flora and fauna of the area.

3. Find/revisit a headline that made you react with a strong emotion - describe/draw where you were and how your body interacted with the space around you as you read the article.

4. Define "social justice" with particulars - not by assigning it a series of abstract ideas, but by assigning it powerful sensory details. Write a poem, make a painting, collage, take a photo, etc...