Category: protest

by numbers

four . . . .
dimensions
radicals
truths
questions
aims
books
freedoms
types
states
forces
squares around intersection
eight short of riot
or just manageable extermination
for supply of demand

clothing factory at sunrise
(in 1932 schoenemans was granted an injunction to limit amalgamated clothing workers striking against abusive working conditions to four picketers at a time—city police attempted to enforce the injunction at the schoenemans factory at redwood and paca streets)

eyes in the sky

after the parade with torches and horses
fireflies everywhere
a tug of war on the steep hill
shouting pulling as father inched up
the tower light shining down behind him
“hands off!”
we heaped into the dirt just like that

mill tower at sunrise
(in 1923 after the owners of the mount vernon mills, at the end of chestnut street, failed to negotiate for several months on working hours and pay, workers ended the unsuccessful strike)

styleplus

war to knife to hilt
fraying
flaying pinking shearing
brawling
rolling
pistol shotting
hacking
out into streets
spreading cutting stickering fusing sorting stitching
eddies of fists and flailing
slowly unoppose
fuse
swirl together in a rising flood of flashing steel
to wash against
great floating capitals of mislaid granite

clothing factory at sunrise
(struggles between united garment workers and amalgamated clothing workers unions erupted into a melee in the sonneborn clothing factory on pratt and paca streets in 1916)

proud dialects in rough house

smiling grace and beauty heads not bent
shoved and clubbed
promenading tall in spring streets not green
grabbed and herded
swinging winds into dresses not billowed
corralled and branded
festival of fields and earth
sunlove unpaid

clothing at sunrise
(in 1916 amalgamated clothing workers struck l. greif and brothers, operating on milton and ashland avenues)

home sweating

just
laws made
taxes paid
more humane
more effective
wages salaries earned
votes cast
more informed
more moral
public served
children raised
influence made
knowledge gained
corruption reduced
influence weighed
work respected
viciousness wounded
because

lyceum at sunrise
(in 1913 female garment workers marched from the labor lyceum at 1203 east baltimore street, and boarded a train to washington dc to participate in the woman’s suffrage procession)

steel bubbles

privilege
corruption
panic
depression
outrage
revolt
fascism
organization
change
privilege

camden station at sunrise
(in 1877 baltimore citizens sympathetic to striking railroad workers protested mustering the militia to break the strike and attempted to prevent militia from leaving camden station to break strikers in west virginia and western maryland)

not my maryland

despots filled the streets
cobbled with ignorance born from greed
bastard sons and daughters of mother hell
will snuggle in parlors with empty words and moldy swords
thirty thousand new suns could not wrest the nightmare of your torture
your hurled bricks pieces of iron and coal epithets a lunatic babble
as you writhe in self-forged chains beneath your hell bitch mother
puss oozing from your blistering flecked faces mountains streams
murderous premeditated with no soul to yield or defend
distant thunder soundless in the void
that could have been hearts beating with the earth

pratt over jones falls at sunrise
(in 1861 baltimore citizens started the killing in the civil war by attacking massachusetts soldiers who were on their way to washington and travelling west on pratt street making a railway transfer—a maryland native living in louisiana who was sympathetic to the murderers wrote a silly poem that is now the maryland state song http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/lyrics.html)

going to see sam

order of the star-spangled banner america
america bred degradation
tubs of blood ripped plug butts rattling america
america shall rule with secret pig blood
the america rhetor tweets himself unparanoid unthreatened unpatriotic unsecret unprotesting
america great again america
the brave wannabe all thumbs combs the drama constantly

lexington market at sunrise
(lexington market was one of several locations where deadly, premeditated political gang violence was waged in 1856)