Toutes les Villes Souterraines or How to Build a Movement Offline and Underground

By Layla Razek, Green 2.0 Digital Media and Communications Fellow

Layla Razek, Green 2.0’s Digital Media and Communications Fellow, explores how artistic expression can be used to disrupt dominant modes of thought. Retracing her own family history of resistance, her poem unfolds into a journey to find her place in a global movement for social and environmental justice.

A couple of months ago, I visited my grandparents and discovered a library collection I had never seen before. Leafing through the piles of books, I felt like I was unearthing a portal through time, connecting me with stories and wisdom when I needed it most.

I was reminded that resistance does not always need to live online or be carried onto the street to merit its name. The ability to think and learn in ways that are private and hidden can be a valuable tool. Just as many of us have been made to feel invisible, we can use this cloak to practice critical thought and collective agency. These everyday acts of resistance are important, not just to stay sane, but so we can continue to build the environmental futures we dream of.

To dream without self-censorship and beyond imposed narratives, I am learning to turn to art. In this poem (and comic), I explore the responsibility of preserving histories of resistance and the fear of living in comfortable complicity. I also illustrate the legacies we are connected to – represented by underground libraries – that are waiting to be discovered.

What if I traced a legacy of resistance and it ended with me. 

Bloodline soaked in recessive gene longing, 

Always skips and skips and 

Scratches at skin never could sew it complete, 

So it all ends with me. 

Unsteady steps and familiar shame made

One room in my grandparent’s home 

Devoid of nostalgia: 

I never knew it.

Buried beyond a place any of us could reach, 

His hand extended, repairing the wound of internal defeat. 

A basement library overflowing with titles that betrayed 

A revolutionary kind of rage.

Kwame, Che, Claude, Madagascar, Mozambique, 

Because we were taught to never know and

The biggest threat is a tongue that can roll 

Stories of the oppressed that rise up 

Overseas and at home.

But I can’t cross borders with books.

We store them underground 

Low tones remind me how 

We know how to

We have been:

Invisible in meetings, anonymous in thought,

Erased out of textbooks, unofficial onslaught.

Generational haunting catches up with me.

I’ve wondered how to carry a name that means night,

Maybe those comfortable with darkness

Can shape the curvature of changing moons.

Tidal waves flooding every basement library,

Before they are burned.

You could go a lifetime without seeing a city underwater.