Conspiracy theories once confined to the original woke, now manifesting through our phones…
Technology turned traitor at the hands of those who pay for it the most…
Our babies’ most precious thoughts sold and copied for the price of rent and school clothes…
We foretold stories of these days, Octavia, Jill, Tawana, Grace…
We warned us of how much they wanted to see and needed to control,
We warned us of the eyes on our data and our souls,
We screamed the value of our faces before we placated the devices
and our vices for convenience and feeling new.
So we grew our own resistance and shielded our sacred with our kinship.
Now, when we feel the eyes burning holes in us,
we rub our hands together and blow the dust from our roots,
spray the cameras with communal glue,
and learn to read and sue about the terms and conditions.
The intentions unfurl as the policies do, and we get freer as we learn not to be seen through.
Our growth will break the chains,
and until then, we wave the flags of what refuses to be enslaved…
Our African, our Indigenous, and our Black outs offer maps and tracks to a world
unsurveilled and protected.
Eyes and hands off our Mecca
Dr. Chanel Beebe is a Detroit-born interdisciplinary artist, poet, educator, and researcher whose work blends painting, poetry, design, and participatory research to explore memory, identity, care, and liberation. She holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Michigan, an M.S. in Industrial Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. In 2016, she founded Beebe Arts LLC, a design firm focused on social and educational equity. Her practice encompasses exhibitions of her own work (Soulful Symbolism, Brush & Focus), curating exhibitions for other artists, spoken word performances across the Midwest, six poetry collections, including Proof (2019) and Fractal (2017), as well as community initiatives such as the Cultural Design Marathon, Bitten Magazine, the CREATE Arts Festival, The Plug Party and leading the Detroit Student Leadership Team for the CS4Detroit initaitve. More about her can be found at chanelbeebe.com, more about her artwork can be found at BeebeArts.com and more about her community work can be found BeebeArtsLLC.com
