Well
it is the last day of April, a Sunday no less. So this is the wind-up of our National Poetry Month posts which this
year shamelessly celebrated and promoted the poetry of resistance.
Tomorrow I will take a breather
from a killer pace of production and post my annual May Day entry. I will also
be hopping on a Metra train not long
after getting off from my overnight
shift at the gas station/convenience
store and heading for Chicago for
a major May Day march. And I couldn’t be more excited.
May
Day, or International Labor
Day, which has its roots in
Chicago and the aftermath of the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs, has been making
a strong comeback in the U.S. in recent years—reclaimed by labor unions which
had abandoned it for fear of being associated Commies and Ruskies, and
re-invigorated by immigrant rights activists. This a year a generation that discovered that democratic socialism was as comfortable
a fit as a well washed t-shirt with
a catchy slogan on it, and many
others radicalized by the ascendance of Cheeto fascism and it broad
attacks on minorities, immigrants,
women, the environment, and basic human and civil rights are joining in
actions across the country.
There
are still plenty of independent local
actions and commemorations put
on by labor unions, left sectarians, and others and small-in-numbers Black Block Anarchists and
Anti-fascists will be out looking for fights or staging mini-rampages, many participants
tomorrow will be attending events linked to Rise Up! in support of immigrants’ rights. Organizers are calling for what many are categorizing
as a General Strike:
From those who
cook the food we eat to those who build the businesses of the future, all are
affected by the Trump Administration’s attack on immigrants. America doesn’t
work without immigrants.
On May 1st, we
will not work, we will not go to school, we will not shop to show that our
country will not move forward without our immigrant neighbors.
While
the day will fall short of the kind of revolutionary
General Strike than can bring a nation to a standstill, significant
work stoppages are expected in some cities, and some immigrant dependent industries especially food service and agriculture
are expected to be hit hard. In addition
tens of thousands of individual
activists have pledged to skip work and
boycott shopping and scores of student strikes and walkouts
are planned at high schools and colleges.
More
than eighty labor unions, immigrants’ rights groups, civil rights organization, community
groups, religious organizations,
and new-found allies like those from
the Women’s and LBGT rights, and climate
justice groups have endorsed the
national call with more involved in individual local actions. Many have linked the May Day marches with more than a week of concerted resistance that began with
the March for Science and continued
through yesterday’s People’s Climate
Marches. That includes the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and
the Unitarian Universalist Service
Committee (UUSC) united in their new joint
initiative Love Resists.
 |
| May Day Chicago. |
So
on Monday I will be donning red and black and tapping my inner Wobbly to attend May Day—1 de Mayo: Chicago Fights Back—Chicago No Se Deja with a
few thousand of my closest friends:
1pm—Rally at Union
Park (Ashland and Lake)
Sponsored by Chicago May Day Coalition and
Arise Chicago
2pm—March from Union Park to Daley Plaza
4pm—Rally at Daley
Plaza Sponsored by the Chicago
Federation of Labor, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights,
and Sierra Club Illinois
Now
for some May Day poetry and poetry to remember why this is International
Working Peoples day and not a fey spring
romp among the flowers!
 |
| Robert Pinsky |
Robert Pinsky is one of America’s best known poets, a former Poet Laureate, an advocate of public poetry—the idea that verse should be a meaningful and integral part
of American life.
Shirt
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band
Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze
At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—
The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out
Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.
A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once
He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—
Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked
Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans
Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,
Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,
The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:
George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit
And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,
The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
—Robert Pinsky
 |
| Alfred Hayes, |
Alfred
Hayes was
a British-born screenwriter, television
writer, novelist, and poet, who
worked in Italy and the United States. He is known for his poem Joe
Hill—“I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night”—later set to music by Earl Robinson and sung by Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez. This was written
in 1934 at the height of the Depression and
during a wave of labor militancy in The
New Masses
Into the Street May 1st
Into the streets
May First!
Into the roaring
Square!
Shake the
midtown towers!
Shatter the
downtown air!
Come with a
storm of banners,
Come with an
earthquake tread,
Bells, hurl out
of your belfries,
Red flag, leap
out your red!
Out of the shops
and factories,
Up with the
sickle and hammer,
Comrades, these
are our tools,
A song and a
banner!
Roll song, from
the sea of our hearts,
Banner, leap and
be free;
Song and banner
together,
Down with the
bourgeoisie!
Sweep the big
city, march forward,
The day is a
barricade;
We hurl the
bright bomb of the sun,
The moon like a
hand grenade.
Pour forth like
a second flood!
Thunder the alps
of the air!
Subways are
roaring our millions—
Comrades, into
the square.
—Alfred Hayes
 |
| IWW singer/songwriter Anne Feeney in the garden of Joe Hill's home in Gavle, Sweeden, now a museum. |
Speaking
of Wobbly bard and martyr Joe Hill, David McIntire has penned
this moving reflection.
Joe Hill’s
Bedroom
In Joe Hill’s
Bedroom, Gavle, Sweden
the light is
kind in its diffusion
the window
holding cold
more than just
my breath
the air is fine
and glittering in my lungs
and i exhale
wordlessly
Joe, i have come
home
home to a secret
that nobody knows
home seeking
refuge from the dream/lie
you left this
place for
home…home to a
place i have never seen
except in my
lost dreams
except in the
lies that have bled the both of us, Joe
except in the
faces of every other who has bled
like us
like us
here the floor
the straight
lines of the runners
the straight
lines of the panes
oh, the panes,
Joe
how they have
always sung to us
how they have
always sirened us across the sea
to each other
how we have
always found our favorite rocks
upon which to
slam our broken dreams
and the lies
that bled us
here on the
floor of our lost seas
here in the home
we can never know
not us
not those who
have bled like us
the light is
kind, Joe, and cold
we are her
servants
just as we burn
you and i
just as we bleed
for the love and the anger
the light is
kind to us
for we seek to
burn with our own love
we seek to
exhale as unfettered as we love
this is our
simple dream
to love
unfettered as the clouds
as the ships in
the harbor
the docks where
we stand, Joe
the platforms we
build
in order to fly
Joe, i have come
home to the unknown
to the broken
dreams i have harbored
to my love for
you, Joe
to my love for
myself
my only
uncertainty
for which of us
do i now weep?
—David
McIntire
 | |
|
At
the Haymarket Memorial at the original site on May 1, 2005 after I delivered a
May Day sermon at a Chicago UU congregation.
|
And
finally a short new one from the Old Man.
It Ain’t May I Day
May 1, 2017
It ain’t May I
Day, Bub!
No, siree.
It’s get the
hell out of our way
May Day,
beg no damn
pardon
May Day,
get your paws
off of her
May Day,
leave those kids
alone
May Day,
all hands on
deck
May Day,
we and us and
ours
May Day,
five finger fist
May Day,
We win,
May Day
Venceremos,
May Day,
Get it now?
—Patrick Murfin
