"When I am angry, I can pray well and preach well." -Martin Luther
From Robert Hass, a professor of poetry at the University of California, Berkeley:
"Once the cordon formed, the deputy sheriffs pointed their truncheons toward the crowd. It looked like the oldest of military maneuvers, a phalanx out of the Trojan War, but with billy clubs instead of spears. The students were wearing scarves for the first time that year, their cheeks rosy with the first bite of real cold after the long Californian Indian summer. The billy clubs were about the size of a boy’s Little League baseball bat. My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down."
At Occupy Berkeley, Beat Poets Has New Meaning
I think they are hitting so hard now, across the country- metaphorically and literally- because Occupy has forced the country's attention onto economic issues, and away from the circusy distractions of the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the War on Christmas, and the hand-wringing morality plays of the far-Right. It has forced public attention onto the chasm between rich and poor that now characterizes our democracy. And that cannot be allowed- we cannot allow hungry people, jobless people, young people, homeless people, to lead national discourse. We must pepper-spray them until they go back to dorm rooms, back under bridges, back into a cubicle or back behind a fast-food counter. We must beat them and spray them until they vanish again, until we no longer have to look at them.
I think we should look at them every day. I think as a nation we should feel shame and sadness, and as people we should feel anger on their behalf, and on our own; and then we should feel urgency. And then hope. And then we should join them.
"Once the cordon formed, the deputy sheriffs pointed their truncheons toward the crowd. It looked like the oldest of military maneuvers, a phalanx out of the Trojan War, but with billy clubs instead of spears. The students were wearing scarves for the first time that year, their cheeks rosy with the first bite of real cold after the long Californian Indian summer. The billy clubs were about the size of a boy’s Little League baseball bat. My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down."
At Occupy Berkeley, Beat Poets Has New Meaning
I think they are hitting so hard now, across the country- metaphorically and literally- because Occupy has forced the country's attention onto economic issues, and away from the circusy distractions of the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the War on Christmas, and the hand-wringing morality plays of the far-Right. It has forced public attention onto the chasm between rich and poor that now characterizes our democracy. And that cannot be allowed- we cannot allow hungry people, jobless people, young people, homeless people, to lead national discourse. We must pepper-spray them until they go back to dorm rooms, back under bridges, back into a cubicle or back behind a fast-food counter. We must beat them and spray them until they vanish again, until we no longer have to look at them.
I think we should look at them every day. I think as a nation we should feel shame and sadness, and as people we should feel anger on their behalf, and on our own; and then we should feel urgency. And then hope. And then we should join them.