Dear Mr Governor by Athena Gabriella Guice
EDITORIAL NOTE BY MISS GUICE: “Dear Mr. Governor” is a spoken word op-ed. Written for Juneteenth 2024 and submitted to my Alma Mater: FIU's Nova Star Spoken Word Scholarship, in the aftermath of a legislative season that reshaped what Florida teachers could say, what Florida students could read, and what Florida bodies could decide. Published here in its original form. We have not softened it, and we have not updated it for what has happened since. It stands as a record of what it felt like to be a Black Floridian mother raising two daughters in that season — and, at the time it was written, to be substituting in the very classrooms the legislation was reshaping. This is poetry, not policy analysis. It uses the tools poems use: rhyme, exaggeration, irony, direct address, rage. Where it makes factual claims about legislation, those claims are documented in the public record. Where it makes claims about character and consequence, those are the author’s opinion, which she is entitled to hold and to say out loud. A NOTE ON WHO IS WRITING: If you found this page after finding Ms. Guice — the "viral, Broward, rapping sub" — welcome. Same person. The woman who was rapping in your classroom the last 12 years is a full spectrum doula, a reproductive and family justice organizer, a former legislative aide in the Florida House, a former national program coordinator at the Reproductive Health Access Project, a Flawda archivist, and a mother of two ( amazing girls) headed to law school. The rapping is not a bit. It is the same instinct as everything else here: say the true thing in the room that would rather you didn’t, and make it land. What you’re reading is where the bars come from.
BLOGGERS OF CIVILIZATIONS 2026
Dear Mr. Governor
by Athena Gabriella Guice (Ms. Guice)
AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER: This piece reflects the personal views of Athena Gabriella Guice. It does not represent the position of any school, district, client, partner organization, employer, coalition, or institution she is affiliated with, past or present. It was not written, produced, or published in any official capacity, and no public resources were used to create it.
Birthers of Civilization is a nonpartisan practice. We serve every family who comes to us — regardless of who they vote for, whether they vote, or what they believe. Our doula care, our ceremonies, our family planning work, our organizing, our training cohorts, and public service initiatives are open to all. Nothing in this piece changes that, and no family should ever read it and wonder whether they are welcome here. But we do not pretend to be neutral about the conditions families labor under. The conditions you labor under are inseparable from the labor itself. Book bans, abortion bans, curriculum restrictions, and voter suppression are not abstractions to a birth practice — they shape what our families can access, survive, and pass on. Naming that is part of the work, not a departure from it...
Accountable to community. Built for generations.
SACAJAWEA DISEASE: Athena Guice's Debut street poet mixtape. (2027)
They know me as Ms. Guice — the sub who raps.
Before that I was a doula. Before that I was a 20-year-old mama with nowhere to go.
Before all of it, I was a Flawda girl with a big ol’ fro who learned to make words do what fists can’t. Sacajawea Disease is what I’m calling the condition.
🌺 PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT: SACAJAWEA DISEASE
Athena Guice—widely recognized across social media as Ms. Guice, the sub who raps—is officially dropping her highly anticipated debut street poetry mixtape: SACAJAWEA DISEASE. Before navigating the halls of Florida’s education system, she was a dedicated community doula. Before that, she was a 20-year-old single mother navigating the trauma of homelessness. But before any of those titles, she was just a raw Flawda girl with a big ol’ fro who discovered that words could strike with a precision and power that fists never could. SACAJAWEA DISEASE is her official naming of a systemic condition we all recognize but rarely speak aloud... But what is "Sacajawea Disease"?
She guided the whole expedition. Carried a baby on her back the entire way. Translated, negotiated, kept them alive, kept them fed — and got a coin nobody spends." — Ms. Guice
Sacajawea Disease" is the cultural and psychological compulsion to guide everyone else's journey except your own. It is the exhausting reality of being entirely indispensable yet completely uncredited—of being the reliable anchor that everyone calls, but nobody ever checks on.
This street poetry mixtape project is a dedicated anthem and a radical truth-telling space for the women holding our communities together with their bare hands:
The Doulas protecting life at the margins.
The Advocates & Organizers fighting on the front lines.
The Teachers navigating institutional warfare.
The Aunties keeping families anchored through every storm.
Not a Rapper Playing Teacher. A Teacher Who Has Always Been a Poet. This mixtape represents a definitive shift in the narrative. Ms. Guice isn't an artist putting on an educational persona for clout—she is a lifelong educator, a policy analyst, and a street poet who is finally stepping up to the microphone to speak the unfiltered truth. Merging her Freedmen, Floridian, and Boricua roots with the sharpest political critique, SACAJAWEA DISEASE promises to be more than just a musical release—it is a textbook on survival, resistance, and reclamation set to heavy Southern 808s and raw boom-bap rhythms. Stay tuned. The syllabus is changing.
🌺 SACAJAWEA DISEASE: A STREET POET MIXTAPE BY MS. GUICE— 2027.
(All Moves, Views, & Spirit Expressed Are My Own.)
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Dear Mr . Governor
by Athena Gabriella Guice
Juneteenth Nova Star Spoken Word Scholarship Application - 2024
Dear Mr. Governor,
I write to you, Governor, with tears in my eyes…
#46, I know that don’t mean much since you don’t care for The People’s cries,
but it’s imperative I illustrate our rage with the injustice, despotism and lies
You see… I was just a lil’ Florida girl (from Broward) with a big ol’ fro when the teacher said something wise...
Before our education system crumbled, the teachers said it was “We the People” that never dies
Right hand over my heart, per Statute 1003.44- don’t worry, Guvna’- I was sure to rise
I was sure to uphold my patriotic duty and pledge allegiance to a flag I’ve grown to despise
This may come as a shock, Guvna’ but patriotism is earned- not owed, despite our military ties
I speak frankly- to declare you’ve failed to serve millions as you fixate on ‘the prize’…
The White House, that is… Not our ‘free state,’ but the Oval Office that’s ‘just the right size’
for a man with a small, di…storted interpretation of what Freedom is and all it implies
They love ya for now, but you know more than I, that it's a man’s legacy that lives when he dies
But what of The People (save political affiliations) denied their civil liberties surmise?
That ‘Honorable’ #46: soldier, teacher, servant, prosecutor, lives behind a Constitutional guise
that emboldens him to use a sacred text that has both lynched and liberated Angels in the skies
and then destroys any semblance of democracy and hope as he says his goodbyes
while he tell not just the nation, but the world, that he just signed SB 7050 (to run for president?) much to our surprise
You see, Mr. Guvna,’ my rebellious spirit is zealous, much like my hair with the gravity it defies
and even my Floridian spirit knows that there are things that money never buys
Like: the respect of the youth, to be ‘woke’(?), the freedom to exist, amidst your tries
Like: we tired of ya refusal to acknowledge that you, Guvna,’ (or mr. president?) owe us replies
Like: why words like ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ bring about an Academic’s demise?
Like: any idea what it means to be a teacher on which the future of this “Free” Florida relies
Like: how you gon’ say that it's “education ova’ indoctrination” - Do you just improvise?
Like: Do you look at what your speechwriters, campaign, and offices draft and expect our sighs?
Like: Mr. Guvna, does every conflicting legislative opinion draw any desire to sit and analyze?
Like: We should just tell the kids when they see Dr. Angela Davis in the community she ain’t
welcome ‘cause of her former communist ties?
Like- when the books of and on: Assata, Malcolm, Angelou, Lolita Lebrón, Albizu Campos,
Morrison, Tupac, Black healing, Black Seminoles, The Panthers, Palestine, Black Flawda
History, sundown towns, Liberation, Reparations, Juneteenth or even our Constitution (whateva
we desire), are on our bookshelves and in our Dirty South curriculums- they are now somehow
unsafe for my two Black-American, Caribbean girls, and on a list of ‘unsafe’ school supplies?
Like: I know y’all bannin' books, language, enforcing clear backpack policies, stifling
perspective as well as our Ancestors’ experiences despite addressing what underlies….
Like: We can’t get an abortion if we need one, nor say LGBTQ in class, and it's only a matter of
time until 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 aren’t fictional but truly applies
Dear Mr. Governor, we are disheartened that The People gave you your seat but somehow you’d
rather corporations and billionaires be your allies…
Dear. Mr. Governor, you call hardworking organizers ‘terrorists’ and leave them in your office to
be arrested and treat those who disagree with you like spies…
Mr. Guvna’- I know your expectations for this state and country are the highest of highs,
but you’re not alone and honestly, I was with you on vaccine freedom, better teacher pay, and death penalty (for pedophiles and rapists...allegedly), but consider our civil liberties before the River of Republican Supermajority dries…
Dear. Mr. Governor, we want you to remember the oath you took and that it was you who said,
Guvnas’ ain’t “dictators with unlimited authority and people DO have rights” when you see how
resiliently that formidable Flawda flag flies.
Yours in Service & Solidarity,
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By Miss Athena Guice (Athena La Floricüa or Ms. Guice)