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Painting in progress by Leo Pickard

when everything is falling apart around you…

and you are trying to catch it all…

with a butterfly net that has a hole in it…

because the last butterfly you caught…

was traveling at the speed of light.

Let’s add to our world. Let’s create. Let’s get out of each others way. Let us help our friends and neighbors. Let’s fight and then make up. Let’s blame ourselves and then blame others. Let us march with our enemies and our friends. Let’s forget and then remember. Let’s grow. Let’s get sick and then heal. Let’s die and then mourn.

Let us welcome life into the world.

Nobody ever told P.E. to just play music and lay off politics. Taking a stance and positioning themselves at the center of the conversation has always been the P.E. way.

I took the title from a quote by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, “My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” For decades the hip hop community have been chronicling the double standards of race in the American experience. Public Enemy has been cast as protest rap, but I believe they are like baseball umpires with a microphone calling out the balls and strikes of the players, in this case, the executive branch of The United States. The State of the Union may be down right now, but we have many people across the country flagging abuses of power, calling for change, calling balls and strikes. More power to them.