I
didn't listen at all
to the pompous, empty oratory of Walter
Reuther;
inexperienced as I was, it revolted me nevertheless.
I
saw even then that it lacked
the depth and resonance to express
the lives
of the oppressed and turbulent people;
I didn't even
much like
the uniform, stale, detached slogans
on the unions'
perfect picket signs;
I sensed in them something bureaucratic,
not
poetic, and I demanded poetry
to express the feelings of the
people.
But I loved the faces of the workers,
warm, resolute,
lively, varied,
experiences of great depth evident
in the lines
on their faces, in their unevenly
developed muscles, and I
noticed
that the hundreds and hundreds of buses of workers
carried
the most vivid variety of people --
they, more than anyone else at
the March,
already trying to live out
our belief in equality.
I
was too naive to notice
a slight difference in tone
in the
speech of John Lewis,
the young SNCC field worker from the rural
South
who knuckled under to the big shots
and, moments before
he spoke,
hastily removed all militancy from his text
and lost
any chance
of presenting a radical alternative
to innocent but
questioning
characters like me.
I
was also too ignorant
to question the absence of Malcolm
who
would have scourged the union hacks
and official black
"leaders"
With a fiery exposure
and sent an
insurrectionary spirit
running among the gathered masses
like a
flame sweeping across
a spill of gasoline.
There
were many things I missed that day,
many a lesson that went past
me,
but that one fragrant blossom of hope
embodied in those
singing, marching youth
and in those hundred thousand united
workers' faces
changed my life for good.
Only Chiapas?
By Tamar Diana Wilson
(with homage to Allen Ginsberg)
I
have seen the best minds of five generations destroyed by
poverty
struggling naked moaning sobbing howling in
despair
fighting battles often lost infants dying before one
year
mothers fathers anemic shrunken crippled haggard hungering
Who
dragged themselves through dusty streets at dawn searched for a
way
to survive laborers for others who had more lands or capital
sellers
servants shiners of shoes bone pickers
great grandfathers who
rented clothes from roadside stands
they hadn't even rags or cloth
spare walked barefoot
queued up beside construction sites mines
railroad lines
begged for a day's employment at any wage
hawked
platanos and mangoes tomatoes and onions
while they did without or
did with less
offered woven blankets embroidered lengths of cloth
supplied by
middlemen work of wives and daughters straw hats and
mats and
cane backed chairs serapes rebozos silver rings and
broaches
carved statues of dogs cats burros children saints
madonnas to people passing by mostly
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