[Newspoetry] FACTS (news from Paul K. in Seattle)

[Michael Hollander]

1.

Two of our friends are in prison.
They cannot reveal their names.
They were repeatedly tear-gassed.
They acted non-violently.

These are facts.  It's Thursday (for example)--
As much a fact as that.

The author, myself, begs you to believe it,
To believe it is happening in the United States,
Today--Thursday--and urges something of you:

To sympathize.
To act.


2.

Someone's daughter--maybe not your own,
but maybe your neighbor's (for example)
stitched together the shoes
which the looters busted out the plate glass
at Sixth and Pike on Tuesday to steal.

The girl that stitched the shoes is thirteen years old.

She works 12-hour days, or 13-, or 14-.
She cannot petition for redress of grievances.
She cannot peaceably assemble.
She cannot feel secure in her home, her effects, her papers, her person.

She may any day be sexually assaulted by her employers or their agents.
She may be fired without recourse at any time--
for becoming (for example) pregnant.

She earns a few dollars a week.


Is the destruction of corporate property a valid form of non-violent
protest?



3.

On Fourth Avenue at 8 PM last night,
The hotel forcourt's plate glass doors were intact.

Police motorcycles outnumbered our automobile ten to one, or more.
Storm troopers in riot gear outnumbered pedestrians thirty to one, or
more.

The mars lights on the motorcycles.
The christmas lights on the trees along the avenue.

A prison-issue bus, matte grey, unmarked, windows tinted opaque,
Rolls past us, under escort, in the left-hand lane.


The show of force and fear of pain required to maintain this curfew zone

is that same power which imprisons my friends,

And is deployed on behalf of that same power
which keeps somebody's daughter stitching shoes (for example).


These are facts.  We are in Seattle (for example).
It is Friday, December 3rd, 1999.