Wildflowers in a time of rage ep2: poppies & systems of punishment and violence

I’ve been wanting to tell this story for so long, having felt the light of the poppies growing inside of me. I didn’t want to mispeak or leave anything out. These issues are deeply complex, and I am one person, with only their perspective. Writing this felt slow and intentional, but recording it was a bit more sloppy- so is the byproduct of anger and grief. But I’m honored to share California Poppy, as a resister, as a liberator

When i think of how wildflowers are connected to rage, an image comes to mind- driving through the high desert, the whole western part of the mojave, from joshua tree to rural northeast los angeles county- the nearly six hour round trip I take each spring to see the poppies bloom in the antelope valley. Long drives through the desert make me think about the vastness of our understanding of the earth, the world around us, the functions of our own human brain. But the Mojave- a mass of biodiverse high desert, is often described as desolate or dead- even before I knew it well I sometimes saw it that way. 

The government sees it that way too, treats it as trash, a grounds for building military bases with bomb testing areas, and in the last few decades, a place for prisons and ice detention centers.

To get to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, I drive north from Yucca Valley past Landers and Flamingo Heights, into the wide expanse of mountains and dusty creosote fields, including the 11700 year old king clone creosote, all the way to Victorville and Apple Valley, nestled alone the Mojave River. The mojave river runs backwards, from Lake Arrowhead, trailing through the desert mostly underground, and emptying into dry Soda Lake. A sacred place for the Vanyume, who lived their lives along this river and were considered rich in trade. Now the river, or what little there is left of it most drought ridden years, runs between Victorville and Apple Valley, lined with signs of old industry and dotted with cottonwood trees. 

It’s when you turn west towards Adelanto when the weight sets in- several state prisons, and a privately funded for-profit ICE detention center lay in the empty, open spaces between the Mojave River and the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve.

The long drive gives me a lot to consider. How it was that ancient lands were used in deep relation to the earth, and after colonization, certainly a long and violent process of removal of people and practices, an integration of new plant life to harm what was native. Then- beginning in the 1980s, the Reagan era, began a culture of incarceration. Words like rehabilitation are used as tools of collective gaslighting to mask the reality of what it means to toss people out of the public eye, to throw them away, to punish them in ways that permanently harm their lives and the lives of their communities. 

Since the early 80s, there has been a 150% increase in incarceration, even though crime rates have not lowered. That’s because private companies like Geo Group, who manage the Ice Detention Center and private prison in Adelanto, are making billions creating these systems of punishment. Their legal team, along with the support of Joe Biden, even fought against AB32, a law signed by Gavin Newsom in 2019 which would phase private prisons out of California by 2028. So Geo Group is here to stay. 

I remember at the end of 2020, when American Indian Movement organized a prayer walk on Christmas Day to send love to the people locked inside of the Adelanto Ice Processing Center. Myself and a couple of friends made the trip out to join them- just months before in summer, there was footage of Sheriffs beating protestors outside of the detention center during a protest, dragging them between cars, twisting their arms back to restrain them so forcefully I gasped, thinking their arms might have been pulled out of the socket. Just for jay walking. The protest leaders instructed us to stay in a straight line, don’t make eye contact, this was a prayer walk, not a protest, and to be sure not to jay walk as these cops had no qualms about using any type of violence to control the resisters. 

We walked all day, in circles around the facility, the whole way cops following us, in vehicles and motorcycles. The feeling of violence so thick in the air, a deep feeling of grief that this gathering could be so peaceful and the state could be so violent. 

What were they protecting, and why? The answer is of course, money. Geo group are publicly traded stock holders, making billions off of incarcerating, abusing and mistreating folks in the name of rehabilitation.

We know that systemic racism and the prison industrial complex go hand in hand, and the disproportionate amount of black & latinx people incarcerated makes us understand why this is the new Jim Crow. Of the prison inmates in California, 44% are considered hispanic on the census, a whitewashed word indicating that these people have blood indigenous to the so-called Americas, but learned to speak the native language of their oppressors- the Spanish. And within ICE Detention centers, the population of detainees from so-called Latin America is nearly 90%. So much like the occupation that Israel has over Palestine, The so-called United States continues to occupy the lands of those indigenous to Turtle Island, by taking away their rights and autonomy, forcing them to live in brutal conditions where they are forced to work to line the pockets of the 1%. 

At some point it became obligatory to answer the question, whose last am I on, at least in radical or leftist spaces. It’s not hard to make a land ackwnoeldgement, to speak allowed the history left under shadows in a whitewashed world. But it is another thing to dream into the unknown of history, actually wonder what it was like for the many different tribes each with their own practices and lineage, to lose the battle again european colonizers. When I say the name of the people whose land I am on, the serrano, i say just one word that symbolizes this historic event- but do I know what the word means?

I fall into this well of thoughts sometimes, remembering that each place has a history, and in the so-called United States, each history contains violence. I think of how long the trees have been there, if their roots are getting enough water. It’s this connection to earth that puts us in pain, and for those of us who descended from colonizers and settlers, awards us with a sense of accountability, a window into our collective shadow and how we need to heal it.

So this is what goes on in my head on that day trip to see the poppies. Poppy fields which paint whole hillsides a bright orange, but on years of drought barely even appear. In climate change, wildflowers, gifts from the earth, are the first to disappear. But on a year of a super bloom, thousands flock to the poppies to photography them. Despite the requests of conservationalists and indigenous communities alike, visitors regularly pick the poppies, lay in fields of poppies for their instagram photos, trample the poppies and generally have a sense of disregard for what they had claimed to love. A feeling of attractiveness, that what we see as beautiful we must possess. However to love something is not to try to own or possess it, but to admire it for what it is, to let it be. 

It’s well known that the California Poppy is the state flower in California. That it’s brightness can paint hils in more arid climates after a good season of rain. In Chumash legend, the lizard told the coyote that when you spotted the poppy, you knew that sun could grow on the earth. While California Poppy is native to so-called California, the settlers in the time of the gold rush collected the seeds and brought them back to england, so now these flowers grow all over the world, causing problems in many areas where they poison and drown out native plants. 

Flowers are healing and revolutionary, but flowers can cause harm too, when their seeds are spread in places where their existence can cause weakening and death to native plants. For this I spend a lot of time thinking of invasive plants, and how they are similar to the construct of whiteness. How whiteness, an invention of colonialization, causes destruction in it’s wake, even to those it claims to award privilege too. 

California Poppy

“Poppies will put them to sleep,” says the wicked witch of the west, as she casts a spell on Dorothy and her new found friends. This childhood story carries many dark themes invoking the shadow of humanity, the fields of poppies, the man behind the curtain. We know that Dorothy almost falling asleep in a field of poppies may seem like a sweet dream to our childhood selves, a sweet escapism to the harsh realities of life, the grief of loss, the tenderness of rage. But it also invokes the archetypes related Neptune, the depths of the sea, losing oneself in it’s storm, earthquakes and mystery. In times when the leading cause of death for people 15-49 is fentanyl overdose, the ancient god Neptune asks us, what are we hiding from. What do we want to escape. 

I’m willing to bet it’s the disconnection of the modern world. That these privileges bestowed on many via colonization have left a wound of emptiness. All torn from our origins, both the colonized and the colonizers. Many have said that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but connection. Running through a field of poppies, the desire for sleep, surrendering to the earth, seems inviting. That there could be a doorway below, allowing us to let go, and finally rest. Flowers can feel like invitations to connection, with the earth and with ourselves. Flowers as offerings to the dead. Flowers as greetings for lovers and friends. 

The fields that the Wicked Witch of the West placed for Dorothy were likely opium poppies, which do not grow wild in the so-called United States. Here in California, the bright orange poppies we see on our drives through rolling hillsides and flat plains are California Poppy, eschscholzia californica. A sister plant of the variety of poppies that when processed creates heroin, an extraction of California Poppy can gently elevate the mind and the body to a place of soft relaxation and even euphoria. A flower which can slow the heart rate and ease anxiety or panic, reduce inflammation, and help with sleep. 

But what about the energetic properties of this flower? As a flower essence, California Poppy is as bright as the sun. An ally for fighting depression (in both it’s energetic and physical dosage) and remembering your light that comes from within. To help break harmful patterns and addictions. It is also said to help one ground down while accessing higher frequencies. 

While California poppy is native to our own colonized and stolen lands, standing up bright amongst landscapes dotted with industry and prisons, half way across the ocean, between the river and the sea, the Semitic Poppy is native to Palestine. These ancient flower beings were prolific in Mesopotania, emerging in the graves of Eygpt. It’s said that these poppies were sacred flowers to those indigenous to the land, which is now being stolen from them with the support of this so-called nation, using the tax dollars of the working and middle classes. The poppies were used as a symbol of times of bloodshed during wars, and now a resistance against colonial Israel. So may we see poppies of different species and lineages remembered for the fact that they bloom- despite. They bloom in spite of, in resistance of, colonial systems of violence and oppression. Settler colonialism and one of it’s most violent byproducts, a for-profit prison system. 

So I see poppies, and all of the other wildflowers cascading across fields and desert landscapes in spring, as a sign of joy, a hop in what’s to come.