NEW
BIRTH, WHEN WE HAVE WON
(after Lewis
Allen’s ‘Beloved Comrade’)
For Fidel and the
Fallen Among Us
The fight
The fight has
The fight has just begun
Just begun
Just begun
The fight for change, for justice,
The fight against fascism has just begun---
Anew.
To you, to you, to you beloved comrades who sang the
people’s song, fought and fell in the people’s war
The people’s war. Jarama is here.
Jarama is now. Jarama was always.
The List. The 10. Phone-taps and
Black-bag jobs, and spying eyes,
The Blacklist, revived.
Unions reviled.
Jarama is now.
Where you stood, we now stand,
Underground, rise-up planned.
Where you bled the pains of all,
Where you’re remembered, we recall.
The fight goes on.
Fidel said: a
revolution is a struggle to the death----between the future and the past.
Our present tense, our present, our present-now.
The past goes on….
Code Noir, minstrel show
Sambo, old Jim Crow,
All come out for the lynching show!
The fight, still. The fight. Still.
Ghetto slum-lords and imports of the CIA.
Timeless today.
Broken mirrors splinter, tearing
Humiliation and
Segregation, the
Evisceration and deportation.
The Dreamers awoken, the Dreamers awoken! But it’s the
same dream, the same Dream.
Night raids and night
Terrors and
Nightscapes for those who look different and
Pray different and
Speak different. From us.
Them.
The cold of side-glances of glancing blows,
Powdered frost over those forgotten, those apart,
those
Forgotten. The old. The ill.
The
OTHER.
The fight was then, the fight
Renewed. The fight
Renewed.
Would-be Brownshirts’ detention camps
Official, devised. Surmised. White pride. White
national. White supremacy. White Hate.
The Alpha. The Decider. The Breadwinner. Mr. Mister.
The Man.
Male supremacy. Male
Domination. The little woman, the bitch, ball-and-chain,
the fairer sex, T and A.
Madonna/whore/Madonna/whore…
They’ll
let you do anything when you’re a celebrity.
RESERVATIONS: Lock-up for our Nations
Native lands’ desecration.
Winter water cannons snarl and bite, claiming the land and
Tradition.
Detention.
Camps for the Japanese citizen,
J. Edgar HUAC in secret drag
Deporting Reds, the scare is back.
CO-INTEL, Liberte
,
Hollywood 10, Chicago 7, Central Park 5
Free Bobby Seale and Angela Davis.
Still, the Prison Industrial Complex
Marches on. Marches on.
The
fight will still go on.
Drug sweep and profile,
Muslim ban, No
Irish Need Apply.
Joe Hill, Kevin Barry, Tom Mooney,
Scottsboro, Sacco, Vanzetti.
The Wobs, the Party.
Emma Goldman. And Paul Robeson.
Trumbo. The Rosenbergs. Herndon. Peltier. Mumia, Amiri.
Panthers, Lords, Weathermen. NOW, Guerilla Girls and Rad Womyn and Teamsters and Turtles Stopping the gears.
Silencing
the silencing.
Now, here comes the Highway Patrol
Beating farmers up from the Dustbowl.
Pinkerton thugs kill workers with
Fire and gun and stone.
When we all were hungry. And freezing and
Alone.
But we still blame the poor for their lack of Home.
Money-changers, then and now, stealing Lives, owning
families, breaking pride
And Elections.
Reagan Youth bottle-fed on Wall Street,
Noshing on livelihoods
Now stand in tall buildings with gold letters and
Shiny silver buttons,
Feeding on promise.
Today’s refugee from war and poverty fights
For hope,
She needs to believe. Needs to believe.
But the Swastika, back in style,
Hate crimes all the rage.
Confederate flag bewitches, beguiles,
The cold grows colder by the day.
Divide, disrupt,
Repeal, corrupt.
And the fight must still go on.
The fight must still go on.
New birth, new birth
When we have won, when we have won.
When we have won...
Broken mirror splinters 10,000 shards of
Constitution
and Declaration over
Un-American perseveration.
…Goddamn the corporation.
--John Pietaro, Brooklyn NY
December 9, 2016
The Red Microphone performing "New Birth, When We Have Won", Better World Awards 2016