[Newspoetry] Some NewsPoems, from The Bronx, NY (and re Philly and LA) - hope ya like 'em

Thu Aug 24 12:37:06 CDT 2000

Matthew,

Consider yourself bookmarked. I am deeply pleased to see your site and to read
about your work blocking Wells Fargo's acquisition of First Security Corp. That
your site includes poetry and reporting side by side is wonderful. These
newspoems are great. They show a range of techniques and that wonderful blend of
poetic and journalistic turns of phrase. The fact that they are each about a
specific incident, but do not treat those incidents as isolated ocurrences, is
also appreciated. I am stammering for the appropriate critical vocabulary to
explain the phenomenon of one's hair standing on end. There are innumerable great
lines and an intoxicating tension between the disjointedness of some of the line
breaks and abrupt transitions versus the smoothness of the syntax.

This year Newspoetry is being edited by Joe Futrelle <futrelle at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
(last year I did it, this year I see my role as somewhere between poet, clown,
and cheerleader) and he's the one who deals with the actual posting of poems.

I encourage you to keep sending news and poems.

Thanks!
William Gillespie

Innercity1 at aol.com wrote:

> Dear NewsPoets (William Gillespie et al.) --
>
>     Below are two "NewsPoems," both about the recent anti-corporate protests
> (Philly/RNC August 1-4; L.A./DNC August 14-17).  Philly I attended; L.A. I
> had to observe from afar, being based in The Bronx, New York, and without
> travel money.  I work with a non-profit community organization here (I'll
> paste a recent non-poetic news piece below the poems).  Our Web site, beyond
> weekly Community Reinvestment, environmental justice and other news, has a
> number of News (type) Poems, at
>
> <www.innercitypress.org/poems499.html>;
>
> <www.innercitypress.org/pobronx.html>; and
>
> <www.innercitypress.org/wildcard.html>.
>
>     I like NewsPoetry.com very much -- esp. the indexing, and the
> multiplicity of forms / "genres."  As I get more acquainted with the ins and
> outs of HTML, I hope to submit some other-than-regular-text poems.  But here
> are these; hope you like them.
>
> --Matthew Lee, Esq.
> Executive Director
> Inner City Press/Community on the Move
>  & Inner City Public Interest Law Center
> 1919 Washington Avenue
> Bronx, NY 10457
> Tel: 718-716-3540
> Fax: 718-716-3161
> Web: <www.innercitypress.org>
>
> Poem 1:
>
> "The World According to Citigroup" -- Philadelphia, August 2, 2000
>
> By Matthew Lee
> InnerCityPress.org
>
> We closed down Market
> Street in Philly, with only a bull
> Horn, a banner, and sets of sunglasses
> Green like a dollar bill: this is how
> Citigroup sees the world, seeking to suck
> Profit out of civil wars, bankrolling
> Slave labor in pre-fab prisons
> Like over the river in Camden
> Across the seas on U'wa land
> It might have been Chase
> Calling for counter-insurgency
> In the name of investor confidence
> But the new kid in town
> Was formed in Ninety-Eight
> When Greenspan blessed the wet dream
> Of Sanford I. Weill, he of the hospital wings
> The superstar of penny stocks
> Hard-selling funeral insurance over kitchen tables
> Squeezing what's there, from oil to whatever an old
> Woman's paid on her mortgage
> See how the markets can make your head
> Spin as riot cops move in
> Seizing houses, fencing off the fund-
> Raising barbecue, where pimply Senators
> Are treated like Archangels, fully served
> By the pimps of the Fortune Five Hundred
> Bankrolling the shameful tastes
> Of  venereal lawmakers, pot smoking
> Puritans, all driven in air-conditioned
> Digital busses to the virtual summit
> Where compassion is lip-synched
> Milli Vanilli's invested in emerging markets
> Judges arrive in Black Hawk copters
> Of course the drug war's spread to here
> Didn't you hear? Ecuador's merged
> With a Caymans-based hedge fund
> Greenspan approved the whole thing -
> Didn't you here? Or are not the salmon
> Colored pages of Financial Times
> Your Bible and bedtime meditation
> Outmoded, you are, reading the Gospel in hard
> Copy while stock tips scuttle the Internet
> Like the porno of greed, believe,
> Why don't you, that commerce's
> Not ascendant, that Cendant
> Conglomerates unknown
> Don't matter more that Buddha
> And Mohamed combined, arbitraging even
> The call to prayer, selling burgers in Burma
> >From seeds that refuse to reproduce
> For a thousand years - climactic millennium:
>
> Those who can pay
> Will fly off into space on day
> The sucked-dry stubble they'll leave
> To us to clean, or starve
> Under a sunless sky
> These airless days
> Of a trashed planetâ€¦
>
> ----
> Poem 2:
>
> Drowned by the Hype -- L.A., August 14-17, 2000
>
> By Matthew Lee
> InnerCityPress.org
>
> Routinized, motorized, tear gas sprayed in jaded eyes
> Inside, on the hard wood floor, back patting
> How they'll take on HMOs, tobacco, even
> Repeating their speeches on video screens
> This is the sound byte, not the gun fire outside
> In the protest pit, the white noise background
> Of directionless dissent, so it is portrayed
> By lap-topped journalists comfortable with room service
> Charging lap dances to corporate accounts
> They whose strings were pulled by Citigroup
> Now eat shrimp canapÃ©s with leather-faced stars
> "We're for the people," the robotic triangulor says
> Protest confined to a pit, voices in the wilderness
> Muffled by vinegar-soaked bandanas
> Driven back, in the shadow of Wells Fargo
> Under the logo of KPMG Peat Marwick
> Past the windows of skid row
> Staying at the Panama SRO, the Goldenwest,
> San Peeedro Street, detoured past Kosher burritos
> On the air-conditioned floor, the consummate insider's
> Portrayed as the vessel of minorities' dreams
> "If he can, you can" - but the dreams he carries
> Are those of Aetna, and other Hartford-based insurers
> "We're the party of the people," busted blood vessels
> The last nose of Camelot, Eleanor Holmes Norton
> Sent out to sell the unsellable, declaiming
> The greatest peacetime prosperity in history
> While the District she represents includes
> An unmoved ghetto, an Anacostia where empty buildings,
> Their plywooded windows painted black,
> Stand dusty, the proffered salvation
> No more than a new private prison
> Skid Row circumnavigated with crime scene tape
> Tapes looped again and again: "We are the party
> Of the people, if entrusted with this office,
> I'll fight for you."  With rubber bullets
> The sound bytes fly, like, "Free trade is fair trade."
> "I'll never compromise your right to choose."  Tear gas
> Kills brain cells.  Pico, Olive and the Fig,
> All smell of death, disruptions quickly erased
> Misreported, drowned by the hypeâ€¦
>
> ----
> [From earlier this summer -- no longer timely?]
>
> Ways of Dying in Manhattan
>
> by Matthew Lee, c. 7/29/00
>
> Method One: Box Crusher [New York Daily News, July 28, 2000, pg 2]
>
> He came from Tlaxcala into Washington Heights
> Working six days a week selling cheeses to yuppies
> At dayâ€™s end, time to crush boxes to bundles
> In a moment, the crusher had pulled in his torso--
>
> Raymundo Juarez, husband of Araceli, is dead
> The safety switch jammed so thereâ€™d be no delays
> He sent money by wire to his daughter Michelle
> While his father is crying, the shopping goes on...
>
> Method Two: Airless Vault [Fox 5 T.V. News, New York City, July 28, 2000]
>
> She worked in the vault at Depository Trust
> The marketâ€™s back-office, in lower Manhattan
> The door closed behind her, and then she smelled smoke
> Pushed a button for help, but it only got worse:
>
> Electronic trades still supported by paper
> Thereâ€™s no sprinkler with water in the vault at the bank
> It shoots carbon dioxide to safeguard the stocks
> But our lungs live on air -- in a moment she died.
>
>        Lack of Aftermath at the Stock Exchange
>
> Thereâ€™s no minute of silence, before trading begins
> Neither super model nor cow, no moment on the stage
> Generals? They can ring the opening bell
> Killers bring good luck. Losers cause the Dow to slide
>
> And fall it did, parallel to her death. A loss
> Of confidence in tech-stocks, the Reuters round-up said.
> No mention of Raymundo, martyred for convenience of gourmands
> Traders head to the Hamptons, their picnic baskets sanitized
>
> In Tlaxcala, and further South in Morazan
> The spread is sorghum bread. Up North
> We call it live stock food. Some vegans, too,
> Shopping around the news of Raymondâ€™s death.
> Everybody loves Raymond (well, the one who speaks English)
> She shouldnâ€™t have been in the vault (lawsuitâ€™s defense emerges)
> Raymond himself blocked the safety switch (we can revise everyone
> Into a piece worker). No oneâ€™s to blame
> Just isolated tragedies of the working poor
> Those who crush the boxes of our luxuries
> Those who file stock certs in the catacombs--
> The proof of purchase rules
> Over the cellars or the sold. Mold makes cheese
> More valuable. It appreciates, managed by mysterious
> Ethnics. Our schools should be run by a hedge fund--
> Theyâ€™re already run by Citibank. And now that Coca Cola
> Runs Mexico, Raymundoâ€™s companions
> Wonâ€™t have to come, to be crushed
> With the boxes. Progress is incremental,
> Like the ripening of cheese, the appreciation
> Of the tech-stock fund, the distinctive tang
> Of sheepâ€™s milk from a little town, where looters
> Scatter the condiments of Burger King
> And pundits cream on the irony of it all
> The simultaneity, their hearts-playing grandmothers
> Learning Russian from cassettes--
> Some get pace makers
> And some a cardboard grave
> Western Union rules Tlaxcala
> United Fruit owns the Cincinnati Reds
> No insurrection, where three rivers meet
> Worshipping Andrew Mellon, growing seedless brains
> The history of rancor confined to a theme park
> Only the Luddites oppose vaccination
> Come! Hollywoodâ€™s the yeast of apocalypse
> The strategists of control profitably note
> That those in designer jeans rarely rebel
> So ship them already, in metal tombs
> Of immigrants, hungry for the risk
> Of box-crushing portfolios, glad, they were, to know
> The smooth technology protecting their future
> The legal plumbing thatâ€™ll ensure their legacy
> Even if the crushing machine shall claim
> Even if all air shall be sucked for the common good
> We will continue, infinitely informed, a replaceable army
> Short-selling cheese, ignored those harbingers
> Of our own decline: humans reduced to cardboard
> Killed for the primacy of paper proofs
> The person may die, but the system remains - for this
> We suck air, out of vaults, itâ€™s too bad
> She was resting there, that he worked
> Beyond his tolerance, to meet Sanitationâ€™s demands
> To jam the landfills -- he himself will be recycled
> Resurrected in the cyclical cries of the poor
> The body and the head must re-join one day
> We memorialize by forgetting, consuming death each day
> In the face of oracular newsprint, hard wired to the false promises
> Of the appearance of saviors on contested terrain
> All pacified now, under a heavy syrup of Coca
> Cola as the drug war proceeds: these deaths
> Form the indictment, for the Last Supper
> The last fetid locality will be sampled
> Wrapped in a prospectus, endlessly
> Scrutinized like genetic code, the mindâ€™s own mark-
> Up language linking itself to previous invasions
> Of termites and arrogance -- let Raymundo
> Ring with stiffened hands the last bell
> Of the sessionâ€™s subservient trade
> You who believed, now see that lifeâ€™s a disease
> The disparate martyrs of Wall Street, baptized in C.O2
> Investing in secrets while theyâ€™re unlocked
> Fission leaves us blind...
>
> ----
> [last paste: non-poetic news of InnerCityPress.org's work]
>
> Las Vegas (Nev.) Sun, August 15, 2000
>
> Wells Fargo merger target of Las Vegas, N.Y. critics
>
> By Richard N. Velotta
>
> A New York civil rights organization is asking the Federal Reserve to block
> Wells Fargo & Co.'s acquisition of First Security Corp., based on Wells
> Fargo's lending record to minorities in Las Vegas and other areas.
>
> Matthew Lee, executive director of Inner City Press/Community on the Move,
> Bronx, N.Y., says Wells Fargo has engaged in predatory lending and has not
> complied with community reinvestment laws.
>
> A Wells Fargo spokeswoman in Phoenix said the company is compliant with all
> statutes and it files reports with and is monitored by federal regulators.
>
> "We're confident that the merger will be successful," said Marilyn Taylor of
> Wells Fargo. "Wells Fargo is excited about our future association with First
> Security."
>
> The merger is expected to close Oct. 2.
>
> But Lee says Wells Fargo's lending record should be carefully scrutinized by
> regulators who are considering the merger.
>
> Gail Burks, president and chief executive officer of the Nevada Fair Housing
> Center and a member of the Southern Nevada Reinvestment and Accountable
> Banking Committee, said she serves on a national board with Lee and has
> brought his research to the attention of housing advocates in the West.
>
> In addition to the points raised by Lee, Burks also said she is concerned
> about the company's community reinvestment plan and small business lending in
> the Las Vegas area.
>
> "Their (merger) filing (with regulators) doesn't say what they are doing on
> community reinvestment," Burks said. "They say they are going to continue it,
> but there are no specifics. There should at least be some kind of plan."
>
> The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 obligates banks to fulfill credit
> needs of the local community in which they are chartered, particularly for
> low-income neighborhoods. Specifically, banks are required to make affordable
> loans for residential and commercial areas and in enterprise zones identified
> as low-income census tracts.
>
> Lee said his organization is concerned that Wells' practices would be
> extended through First Security's 330 bank branches and to the company's
> CrossLand Mortgage subsidiary.
>
> Lee says his organization has documented that Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, a
> lending subsidiary, disproportionately denies minorities access to normal
> interest rate loans. He says Wells pushes applicants denied loans to
> subsidiaries that offer loans at higher interest rates.
>
> "Wells Fargo redlines communities of color across the United States with
> normal interest rate loans," Lee said.
>
> "Redlining" is the practice of limiting lending activity in certain
> neighborhoods.
>
> "Wells targets these communities with high interest rates and subprime
> loans," Lee said. "We call this predatory lending. Given Chairman (Alan)
> Greenspan's speech on March 22 of this year on predatory lending, expressing
> the Fed's concern, it is imperative that the Fed finally scrutinize Wells'
> subprime lending in this proceeding."
>
> Lee's group analyzed newly released 1999 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data
> from communities across the United States to reach its conclusion on Wells
> Fargo's lending practices. Lee said data from the Las Vegas Metropolitan
> Statistical Area bolster his organization's point.
>
> Lee said that in Las Vegas in 1999, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage denied 28.7
> percent of the conventional home purchase mortgage applications submitted by
> blacks while denying 7.2 percent of those submitted by whites. He compared
> that data with the denial rate of applications from low-income people vs.
> high-income people in Las Vegas.
>
> While the denial rate of loans to blacks was about four times greater than
> those to whites, the denial rate of people with low incomes is only 1.9 times
> greater than to people with high incomes.
>
> "Low income" is defined as those with incomes below 50 percent of the Las
> Vegas area's median level, while "high income" is defined as those at more
> than 120 percent of the area's median.
>
> Lee says the analysis shows that Wells Fargo's decisions on loans are reached
> along racial lines and not income levels.
>
> What's worse, Lee said, is that Wells then turns loan applicants that have
> been turned down to subsidiaries that loan money to higher-risk clients that
> must pay higher interest rates.
>
> "While Wells Fargo disproportionately denies people of color access to
> conventional home purchase loans through Wells Fargo Home Mortgage," Lee
> said, "Wells Fargo's high-interest-rate, subprime lending affiliate, Norwest
> Home Improvement Inc., targets people of color."
>
> Wells Fargo declined comment on Lee's statistics about the Las Vegas market.
>
> Lee's lending complaints come at a time when Wells Fargo is on the verge of
> divesting branches in Nevada and three other states to comply with antitrust
> law.
>
> A memorandum of competitive considerations issued to the Federal Reserve by
> Wells Fargo indicates that in the Las Vegas market, Wells believes it would
> divest seven First Security branches with deposits totalling $392.5 million.
> In the four states affected by the merger -- New Mexico, Idaho, Utah and
> Nevada -- the company is expected to divest 37 branches and $1.4 billion in
> deposits.
>
> Burks said her organization will ask the Fed for an extension of the comment
> period on the bank's acquisition of First Security until after it is
> disclosed which bank branches would be divested.
>
> Wells Fargo's Taylor said the decision on how many and which branches would
> be divested is up to the Federal Reserve. A decision is expected to be
> reached by the end of the month and Taylor said the public would be notified
> after employees of the affected branches are told.
>
> <http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2000/aug/15/510637348.html>
>
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