[Newspoetry] Newspoetry for social change

[Nick Berveiler]

hey everyone,

After attending a truly historical Campus Greens rally in Chicago, I have 
been inspired to write poetry that is more aggressive than usual. The 
reason for this is Ralph Nader's opening speech. This is the first rally I 
have ever heard of in which Ralph Nader was the first major speaker of the 
evening. When I was listening to the rally, at the time it seemed as though 
Ralph Nader sounded nervous, later in the rally I heard more and more 
shouts. I thought to myself, maybe Ralph just sounds tired after speaking 
at so many rallies. This rally was quite disorienting for me because after 
many parts of the speech, loud cheering would be roared from the crowd.

After listening to a copy of Ralph Nader's speech, through a mini disk 
player gratefully borrowed from the Urbana-Champaign independent media 
center, I noticed that throughout his speech there was a very significant 
amount of yelling. My copy of the speech came from the soundboard I was 
fortunate enough to patch into.

I can easily understand why it was difficult for me to understand that 
Ralph Nader was yelling at hundreds of students from across the country who 
had paid money to hear him speak. The issues were the same, and the jokes 
were the same, the crowd was cheering as most people do at political rallies.

I had expected this rally to be the most political rally Ralph Nader will 
be speaking at because the ticket itself, represented a new direction for 
the Green Party in terms of organization. This was the first time I have 
heard someone, representing a political party, yell at me. Another speaker, 
a college organizer, earlier in the night said that the difference between 
the Green Party and politics as usual is that greens take politics 
personally. I have found it incredibly important to listen to people who 
represent authority not given by corporations. I am taking it personally 
that Ralph Nader yelled at me tonight, telling me it is time for a 
progressive movement organized by students.

I will be working on converting the campus greens rally into mp3's this 
Sunday at the Urbana - Champaign imc. If anyone who has experience doing 
this could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it. Last night was my 
first chance to use a mini disk recorder. There is a lot of the rally that 
I want to listen to over again and I haven't gotten the chance to because 
this was an amazing rally. The acoustics in the theatre were not as 
powerful as the audience, and I hope that by releasing the audio to 
everyone interested in hearing the rally, more of what happened at the 
rally will be realized than something the New York Times could ever 
publish. The time is now to use independent media to the extent that 
corporate america can't.

Here is my newspoem.

Nick
-------

super-market becomes hyper-market overnight

Imagine being in a hyper-market
and you saw someone realize
the food you are buying is poisonous.

This person you don't know,
didn't just ignore the problems that exist.
Instead, by yelling and screaming,
“here is poison in small doses”,
everyone in wal-mart was terrorized.

Imagine if you knew that every time you went to the supermarket
This person was yelling at everyone,
“You are consuming poison!”

I cannot imagine a single person who would return to that supermarket.
Good lord, what if someone was blind.

What if the blind man went back to the supermarket,
to find the stranger yelling like before


“As blind as Americans are,
without knowing or understanding what products might be poisonous,
How can you shop for food?”


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