Mary Rudge

Occupy Poetry

Poetry
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/ Occupy and save the country/ that’s home to you and me/ the country that’s our democracy.

The Voices of the Occupy Movement

Poetry
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, according to English poet Percy Shelley. Alameda poet Mary Rudge created profiles in poetry of the Occupy movement’s dedicated young organizers, pepper-sprayed university students, tent dwellers, longtime 1960s-era activists, jobless artists, inconvenienced bus riders, homeless squatters, and passive TV news watchers.

February Poetry of the Streets

Poetry
The wizards in old tales/ used to bury their hearts in secret places./ And unless you dug up the heart and / destroyed it,/ they were invulnerable and heartless./ Part of my heart is buried in People’s Park.

September Poetry of the Street

Poetry
With more foreclosures/ than in Great Depression/ with no solution to unbearable/ homeless lives and the/ massive redistribution of wealth/ diminishing collective mental health/ with a President who plays it safe/ at every decisive moment for change/ keeps the generals and/ Wall Street happy/ there's going to be more and more/ homeless children and huddled masses

"I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY!"

Poetry
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York was a disaster of legendary horror that killed 146 people, mostly young immigrant women, and helped galvanize the labor movement.