Bending it, like Beckham.

But what we fought for is a crucial part of the overall story; the terrain was often cultural, centering on identity, dignity, and fun.

--Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels

This issue of ColorLines is about creativity, comedy, drama--the ways that we make sense of our struggles and sustain ourselves through them.

Certainly, these are crazy, critical times. While the level of state-sanctioned violence has only become more surreal (Saddam's sons and slain U.S. soldiers in the headlines every day lately, while rape, looting, and chaos continue to terrorize the citizens of Iraq), within U.S. borders, hypocrisy and cynicism permeate government affairs. June 17 brought the announcement that Bush was ordering across-the-board guidelines against the use of racial profiling by federal law enforcement--except that it can still be used to identify terror threats, i.e. to register immigrants from Middle Eastern countries. More divide-and-conquer.

In this issue, our coverage of the policies and politics of the "homeland" continues with Rinku Sen's report on the dangers of police surveillance (p. 16), signified by such changes as New York City's repeal of the Handschu agreement and similar attempts in Chicago to loosen protections against political policing. Gabrielle Banks contextualizes the politics of a militarized border (p. 29)--which, according to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights testimony, has created "the most acute and the most systematic violation of human rights occurring on U.S. soil today." From the days of blacks riding the rails looking for work during the Jim Crow era, to today's Latino migrant deaths in overheated semi-trailers and cargo train compartments, racism has a history. Renee Willette's chart (p. 13) is another attempt to remember history, in comparing the policies of the Palmer Raids, Japanese internment, and the "war on terror."

Yet we also want to shift gears and look sideways, to get inspired by artistic work that amuses, engages, and captures people of color in all their irrepressible wholeness--not just as the targets of this or that oppression. As folks around here are fond of saying, we want to "bend it like Beckham," take a breath, and laugh.

One of Sarah Jones' characters, the Pakistani accountant Mohammed Ali, says of himself and his fellow immigrant spoken word performers, "I am a poet, too." In an interview with Anmol Chaddha (p. 2), Jones describes the importance of capturing voice, inflection, humor, and humanity in her representations. Poetry and storytelling are political acts, because, as June Jordan once told us, they "produce a dialogue between people who are not only unknown, but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders."

Like the concept of an otherwise unheard-of poetry slam for new immigrants (Russell Simmons, are you listening?), it's the everyday subversions and the unpredictable creativity of people's lives that constitute what Robin Kelley calls the "hidden transcript" of political culture and resistance. Whether it's a collection of long-lost linoleum cuts depicting the story of the Scottsboro case and of legal lynching in the South (p. 32), or the rich traditions of medicine and healing within our cultures (p. 37), these forms of protest and art are testaments to the ability of oppressed people to define ourselves, to think and dream big.