SCRIPT:

This is an alarm call.

This is a song of survival.

This is a call to action.

This is a bird song.

My dearest friends, compatriots, strangers, lovers, exes, adversaries, family, chosen family, neighbors of all species, all unknowns and yet to be cherished. This broadcast is an attempt at communication, language and care. This is for you, those who are not addressed, those who some willfully chose not to address. This is for my noise makers, those who rally the call, those who answer it, those who make the meaning and the songs, those who are in my heart and don’t know it, and for those who know it, whether they have the courage and strength to accept the power of my love or not.

Do you hear me?

We are in this country together after hundreds of years of injustice reckoning with histories of power, control, pain, and suffering.  Many of us are now hearing these cries for the very first time, and are waking up.

Mother, plant ecologist, writer and professor Robin Wall Kimmerer said “It takes humility to learn from other species.” There are many teachers in our lives. Sometimes these teachers are challenges and difficult situations, often they are people, sometimes they are birds.  Today I want to share with you lessons I have learned from birds. For months I have been getting up not because of an alarm clock, but with the morning dawn chorus. The dawn chorus is something that ornithologists and researchers have questioned: What purpose does it serve?, why does it happen, and why at that time? There is now much reason to believe that it is a form of community building.It alerts other birds who is around, at a time of day safest from predators. , This is confirmed, in part, by the fact that when birds release a warning cry or alarm call that call is answered by many birds in the vicinity, not only their own species. 

Survival is a struggle. The dawn chorus also functions as a song of survival. The riotous choir of bird noises is our bird neighbors’ announcement that they have made it through another night. It is the sound of solidarity, letting other birds know who is with them and watching out for them. 

After the uprisings began, my friend told me that one morning she woke up and thought there was a demonstration on her street, but realized it was birds. We hear you, our song of survival sounds the same.

Spring is a season of renewal, promise and growth, though for many the spring of 2020 felt stunted, dark, and lacking  its beautiful spirit of light. To counter what for many reasons -- both deeply personal and epically global -- felt like the darkest and loneliest period of my life, I purchased a parakeet. . I entered my neighborhood pet shop, with its floor to ceiling cages. When asked which one I wanted, I pointed towards a small one whose chest looked like the pattern of clouds moving through a blue sky, and a yellow halo on the back of its head that was like the sun peering out through the stripes of thin black feathers. The shopkeeper reached their hand in and grabbed it in their palm and put the bird in the cardboard carrier and into a black plastic bag that said, THANK YOU again and again.

This bird is considered by some to be a “throw away” pet because it is inexpensive, but I know your value is not defined by capitalism. It is a bird that like me and many others has experienced the violence of colonialism, and holds in its body inherited trauma and ancestral fear. The bird, like me, and many  like many of the people that make up the majority of this country- native, poc, queers, and women, are treated as valueless, as though the beauty and force of our lives are not to be held with care. That we are not to be talked sweetly to, if we are even worth addressing at all (I can admit after losing my partner why I wanted a bird was so I could have something in my home to speak sweetly to again). The English brought back parakeets from Australia in 1838, and soon after they became popular pets. Even though the birds have been bred for close to two centuries they are still anxious, and fearful of predators, including myself. My bird doesn’t know yet that I am part of the flock. The process of building a relationship and trust was and is ongoing. I had much higher goals and aspirations for bird training and bonding, but the fact that it will now sit on my hand feels like such a tender victory and a display that overcoming years of inherited pain is possible. Healing is possible.

One of the reasons I want a parakeet is to teach it to talk. I want to teach this bird language that mirrors the gentle future I want  for all of us. Like humans, parakeets  learn to speak  through imitation and repetition. I am on my own healing journey, unpacking not only my own experiences and pain, but also generational legacies and suffering both within my own family and passed down to people I have loved.  I had an idea that I would teach the bird slogans from one of the support groups, and that the repetition needed to impart language would also be helpful for me to hear again and again: 

Progress not perfection. 

Progress not perfection. 

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes. 

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes. 

I am not the sole educator in this relationship. There is so much I have learned from birds. That birds are good neighbors, often better than we are to one another. They have systems of community protection and order. In our work to abolish the prison industrial complex, and defund the police, for those who can’t imagine societies that could function without those structures, bird watching could take on a new meaning.

I wish I had sooner learned the lesson of shared leadership that birds teach us with their  flight formation. Many birds organize their flights by rotating who is at the head. For a period, the lead bird bears the most force, thus making it easier for the other birds to fly. This is a master class on shared leadership that we could benefit from in our community organizing and within our political systems. But ultimately this is not just about the lessons we can learn from flocks, this is about the lessons we can learn from each other. That none of our knowledge, wisdom and power should be overlooked. That our cries and calls should not go unanswered. These bird lessons remind us that we can build trust and heal our pain, that we can and should be there for one another, that we can share power and control. May we have the humility and courage to learn them together.

We need to keep going. And as we go we will continue to learn. We are not perfect. There will be moments that feel like failure. There will be times when  it feels like our past and our history want to destroy us. But we can change. You will change. This will change.

We are learning. We are trying. Say it again. Say it together. 

Progress not perfection. 

Progress not perfection. 

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes. 

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes.