Poetic Stickup: Put the Financial Aid in the Bag

At TEDYouth 2011, Performance artist Carvens Lissaint shows how to use language, metaphor and imagery to express a powerful idea -- as in this spoken word performance, a stirring plea to make college education more accessible.

(Music)

I want everyone to put their hands on top of their head.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put your hands on top of your head.

Just relax. Just stay calm. Everything will be nice

and smooth if you just participate and just relax, okay?

Yeah. All right, now put your hands down.

Don't be no hero. Put your hands down. Okay?

All right. Now. Cool. Good.

I want you to run all that financial aid.

Yeah, sucka, put the scholarships in the bag, yeah, yeah.

Put the scholarships in the bag. Yeah, you too, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you. Yeah, yeah. You over there, go put the Pell Grants in the bag.

Put the Pell Grants in there too. Yeah, you. Go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You, go over to that booth and get me some of them subsidized, some of them subsidized loans.

It ain't a game no more. I know you're hiding the money somewhere here.

With all this tuition you got me and my homies payin' --

Woo! -- I'm about to get gangster-scholar up in here.

Up in here. I'm about to go N.W.A. meets Beastie Boys

if I don't see the cash, man.

Cause we're not gonna take it. ♪ Oh ...

Oh, you thought I was playing.

Oh, you thought this was a game. Back up, back up. Mind your business, that's all.

What do you, think this is a game? What?

Huh? You don't even know me.

I'll say something else. Don't call me crazy.

Do not call me -- Rives, tell 'em don't call me crazy before I go crazy.

I'm telling you, now I'm about to go crazy. I'm about to go Tupac Thug Life in here.

Like, "I ain't a killer but don't push me. Revenge is like the sweetest joy --" Woo!

I'm about to go Biggie Smalls Brooklyn type, like,

"Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis. When I was dead broke --"

Woo! I'm about to go KRS-One

cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs-type wild.

Like, "Wa da da dang, wa da da da dang,

listen to my nine millimeter go bang." You know what?

You are dumb. You are really dumb.

Hide your kids, hide your wife, 'cause we gettin' financial aid

all up and in and around here. You think this is a game?

You think I want to be out here doing this?

Do you know how hard it was to find these guns?

All right, I'm sorry. You understand?

I'm just trying to get my education. You know what I mean?

I'm just trying to fight for the opportunity that my great-great-great-grandfather died for, you know what I'm saying?

You know how my ancestors did sit-ins,

just so I can sit in a classroom.

And all these years, all y'all been doing

is strangling the life out of my bank statement,

leaving my pockets as vacant as parking lots.

Professor Willie Lynch taught you well, huh?

Keep the body, take the money.

Force feed my people deception and failure.

Condition our brains to malfunction at the sight

of success. Just keep the cycle going.

Make us pay for an education that will end up failing us.

Put us in debt so we're giving back

the money we earned from our back-breaking work.

This seems all too familiar.

Sounds like the rust of shackles locking their way onto my degree.

Sounds like the Thirteenth Amendment in reverse.

Lecture halls shouldn't feel like cotton fields,

shouldn't sound like muffled freedom songs trapped

in the jaws of a generation's dreams. Oho! Oh, it all makes sense.

Give us enough to get by but not enough to provide for ourselves.

Keep us psychologically feeble so we lose our purpose in the process.

Stop thieving our aspirations out of our sleep.

Don't call it financial aid

if you're not helping anyone with it.

We have fought.

We have fought way too hard

to let green paper build a barricade in front of our futures.

I will not let you potentially rob food out of my children's stomach.

Best believe I'm going out blasting.

I ain't no killer, but don't push me.

I wish it didn't come to this, but I have to for my cousins

in Haiti who don't even know what a college looks like,

for my best friend Raymond sitting in cell block nine

instead of a university,

for the nooses hanging my GPA by its neck.

There is no other option.

There is no other way.

Just, please, put the money in the bag.

Put the money in the bag. I just want to go to school, man.

I just want to get my education. I just want to learn. I just want to grow.

Put the money in the bag, please.

Just put the money in the bag.