OCCUPATION CHANT

by Dee Allen

“Why don’t you be more like us & conform?
Why don’t you get a job & join the norm?”
Because you simply won’t let us exist
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
 
“Why won’t you let us do business? Let us be!
Why do you see us as the enemy?”
Because your coprorate decisions led us to this
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
 
“Why do you protest & make us grieve?
Why don’t you pack up your tents & leave?”
Because our lives are wrecked by you & your syst
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
 
“Do we have to fight & take issue?
Why don’t you stop &
take your sleeping bags with you?”
Because we’re houseless & broke!
Don’t you get the gist?
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
 
“What do you think your protest will bring?
How much longer do we have to hear you sing?
A long time — until you cease & desist
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
 
“If you’re gonna stay, you’ll be moved, of course.
Don’t make us call in the police force!”
That means war!  People raise your fists!
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
 
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
Stand together!  Resist!  Resist!
 
There’s only 1% of them
We must unify
Hold onto that piece of  ground
Hella occupy
 
In the city streets
At the city banks
This is our night
We are alive!
 

“God Hates Money” Occupy poster art by Marc Saviano

 

The Street Singer

by Mary Rudge

Oh they’ve foreclosed the home of the free.
They mortgaged and sold
for a little Wall Street gold
this land of equality.
 
Oh they’ve foreclosed the home
of the free.
Now we are the brave
to Occupy and save the country
that’s home to you and me
the country that’s our democracy.
 

Nothing Left But Magic

by Julia Vinograd

The Occupy tents spring up like mushrooms in an invisible forest.
Circles of mushrooms with sleeping-bag lovers inside
and winged fairies perching outside. The 99 percent excluded,
lost jobs, lost schools, nothing left but magic. Drummers, fiddlers,
costumes, tents set up in a building empty for 10 years.
The police empty them out again, tear gas, arrests.
A pink dinosaur made of papier-mache. The cops trash it,
it fills several garbage cans. Advertisements for real estate
that no one can afford on walls and benches now covered with graffiti.
Prophets versus profit. Once in the desert water came from a struck rock.
A miracle. In this desert the same rock goes thru a window.
A rock aimed like a grenade to go thru the sky.

“Spring Has Arrived” Occupy poster art created by Heather Kern. See more poster art from the Occupy movement at Occuprint: http://occuprint.org

 

An 11-Year-Old Occupy Revolutionary

with Purple Hair

 by Julia Vinograd

I was selling my poetry books at the crafts fair
and a lady came up to me with her daughter about 11
long purple hair, cute and shiny.
The lady said she wanted one of my books but would have to go
to the Bank of America to get money, she’d catch up with me.
I didn’t expect her to come back and didn’t see her
for an hour and a half.  She was laughing.
“You know what happened?” she said. “My daughter protested
‘But mommy, we can’t go to Bank of America, we have to go to
a credit union, that’s what all the Occupy people say.’
It took a while to find a credit union but here we are.”
I signed her book and smiled
at the 11-year-old revolutionary with purple hair.
 

RECUERDO [memory]

by Mary Rudge

It’s the same faces I saw in the demonstrations
against the Vietnam War still here —
Oh, wait, it’s  look-alikes,
these are their children.
Yet that seems the sign I carried
“A child in Iraq died for my car”
painted over with today’s slogan.
 
I thought I was still young, still in the
same march, still in the same sit-in, still in
front of the military fence
chanting with others “Illegal to Kill”
as they took us off to jail for our words,
Father Vitale praying all the way. I thought I was
again outside the prison calling  out
“Capital  punishment should be a crime.”
At the school saying “don’t cut the programs!”
At the college saying, “cut tuition.”
I have been here before,
I have never left the demonstration.
See where that sidewalk is crumbled and broken
from the weight of so many demonstrations.
See where my shadow stays permanently
like a tattoo where that cement is broken with age,
stained with the pain from the impress of
so many efforts to change things,
our faces forever here
occupying the spaces before your eyes.
 

shock of freedom

by Randy Fingland

long walk
in compassion’s shoes
 
mother theresa’s eyes
really saw
the need
that equality
of all born
be enforced
 
gandhi championed
the untouchables’ place
on humanity’s equality ladder
even against hindu precepts
 
mlk jr called for
elimination of poverty
no matter color
religion or neighborhood
 
the plight of the many
is blight upon
the governing few
whose pleasures
prevail to bring shame
if examined under
the principles this nation
was founded upon