As
we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing,
"Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses."
As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies:
Give us Bread, but give us Roses.
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for Roses, too.
As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days
The rising of the women means the rising of the race
No more the drudge and idler,
ten that toil where one reposes
But a sharing of life's glories:
Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.
Thought to have been inspired by the famous 1912
strike by the textile workers of Lawrence Massachusetts, James Oppenheim's poem
"Bread and Roses" was actually published a month before the strike and he attributed the slogan to other workers. For more on the background
of the poem, see
Bread
and Roses: The Lost Histories of a Slogan and a Poem.
You're
Supposed to Come Home
You're supposed to come home,
You only went to work.
People closing doors,
Towels on the floor,
Bills not paid.
You're supposed to come home.
Asbestos – long term,
Overtime – long hours,
It won't kill you, not now.
You're supposed to come home.
Fire, explosion,
Low moans escape blackened skin.
You're supposed to come home.
Families now together
But missing.
Years now changed.
Retirements not taken.
You're supposed to come home.
Beverley Van Epps - UAW Local 600
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Our Lady Dignity
Amanda Hart Cravotta
From
Blue Collar Review
Up at dawn
She presses tortillas fresh daily.
Gray hair dyed blonde
Clean chiffon dress of pink flowers
She sprays wipes two concrete bench seats
Outside the Speedy Taco Stand.
Brightly she greets
Commuters
At the drive through
With breakfast burrito strong coffee
Tacos at noon
Dinner for the kids.
Asphalt exhales beneath their wheels
They on their way home pause for the stop sign
She stands on swollen ankles in high heels
Three more hours to closing time.
Two Mottos
Jon
Andersen, an award winning poet whose book,
Stomp and Sing, will be released in April by Curbstone Press.
For the CEO, the boy
who grew muscles riding rambunctious horses
over Litchfield Hills and became the man
to fill his Daddy’s shoes:
I got mine
and I got yours too
For the student, the injured
worker who reads in the flickering light
of the community college lobby and hears
the security guard tell him “Time to go home, buddy”
just as he used to hear bartenders announce last call:
Wherever something is illuminated
something also burns
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Temporary Agency
We huddle around the coffee urn
in the low-ceilinged basement, nursing
the free refills, listening to top forty,
the ragged masculine optimism
of Monday morning at Helpers, Inc.
warming us like a small red winter sun
rising over a construction site.
Every time an upstairs phone rings,
our hearts beat a little faster
as if God were a subcontractor
with a non-performance clause
and a deadline so impossibly close
he was willing to hire every last man
to unload the concrete blocks.
For those who wait
in the temporary agency,
day labor isn't a question of choice.
If we still dreamed of heaven,
we'd dream ourselves a ride
in the bed of a rusty pickup,
swerving down the highway
on the way to someplace warmer,
the entire work-hungry crew
hanging on for sweet life.
Michael Colonnese
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I
HEAR AMERICA SINGING
Walt Whitman
I hear America
singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and
strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he
stands,
The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at
noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of
the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day-at night the party of young fellows,
robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
The Slaughter of the
Innocents
By Rose Trumbull
The Independent, rpt. The Public 15 (Nov. 1, 1912).
"O Mother, see the mill lights in the
darkness glow!"
"I see but candles for my dead
At foot and head."
"Nay, see how wrought by childish hands, world-fabrics grow!"
"I see my babes, decrepit, bowed --
They weave a shroud."
"Yet see their golden wage: the purse of wealth is deep."
"The tide of barter at its flood
Gives bread for blood."
"O Mother, with thy visions dark, dost thou not weep?"
"For slaughtered babes upon such biers
There are no tears."
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¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes, We Can!
a poem by Luis J. Rodríguez
Beneath steel and concrete,
Beneath night’s wandering shadow,
Come the eyes, voices and arms—elbows and knees—
That make buildings shine,
magnifying the sun into all our faces.
The nameless, the scorned, the ignored—yet
They are the humanity who make human things work.
Mothers and children, fathers and uncles, family
and family—
They come to make this city dance, the rhythm of
what is just,
What is secure—the dance of strike and protest,
demand and dignity.
They toil inside these glass temples—they clean
them—
The truly human who now step into the streets,
into our tomorrows,
And declare: Basta! Enough!
What we clean, we also make scared.
(To my father, Alfonso—a janitor)
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