By David Betteridge
A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little.
– BERNIE SANDERS.
Yes, I am my brother’s keeper.
– EUGENE DEBS
What is this trail of tears that links
so many sites of social murder
and marauding?
It is the spoor that Destiny lays down,
as some miscall it: a minority rides high,
while the rest are pushed to the margins,
or the grave.
This dire movement, laying false claim
to continents and marked by a history
of wrong, is followed by an eager pack.
See how its frontman trumpets brazenly
the role and rule of owner over worker,
and of master over slave; hear in his voice
the gun’s report and the whip’s crack!
Over decades he has chased his goal
of dominance: nothing too big
to daunt him, nothing too trivial or small.
Roughshod, he enters every race to win.
How he hates losers; winners take all!
Populist, he parades himself as patriot,
but his lode-star, Capital, is trumps.
He is a tyrant-in-the-making,
a villain with access to state power;
an inciter to riot and grand larceny;
he is contemptuous of law.
To this compendium of vice
and to his cohorts and successors,
we, his victims and his foes, declare:
Like a hurricane or plague or prairie-fire,
you imperil us: everywhere your furious evil
spreads at pace, and further spreads, out
from your badlands of the Right.
We, who serve Peace, abhor you.
We, for whom Justice matters, resist you.
Our millions aim to outmanoeuvre
and outwear you, and so annul you
in the testing times to come,
in our nation’s long-unfinished,
self-defining fight.
Hard questions form: how long
must the nation wait, and how long
can we ourselves hold on,
before this fight is lost or won?
Rooted in the People’s will, our cause
stands strong; and when imbued
with the virtues that are native there
and most ring true, our cause grows
stronger still, and so we learn to dare.
Deeper than rivers, our springs
of self-renewing are themselves renewed.
