Inspiration and Ideas
Poems Opinion Quotes Videos
Poems
Calling on All Silent Minorities
HEY
C’MON
COME OUT
WHEREVER YOU ARE
WE NEED TO HAVE THIS MEETING
AT THIS TREE
AIN’ EVEN BEEN
PLANTED
YET
To Be of Use
—Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Civic Symphony
—Hakim Bellamy
I, Too, Sing America
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Frederick Douglass
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
Old South Meeting House
—January Gill O’Neil
We draw breath from brick
step on stones, weather-worn,
cobbled and carved
with the story of this church,
this meeting house,
where Ben Franklin was baptized
and Phillis Wheatley prayed—a mouth-house
where colonists gathered
to plot against the crown.
This structure, with elegant curves
and round-topped windows, was the heart
of Boston, the body of the people,
survived occupation for preservation,
foregoing decoration
for conversation.
Let us gather in the box pews
once numbered and rented
by generations of families
held together like ribs
in the body politic. Let us gaze upon
the upper galleries to the free seats
where the poor and the town slaves
listened and waited and pondered
and prayed
for revolution.
Let us testify to the plight
of the well-meaning at the pulpit
with its sounding board high above,
congregations raising heads and hands to the sky.
We, the people—the tourists
and townies—one nation under
this vaulted roof, exalted voices
speaking poetry out loud,
in praise and dissent.
We draw breath from brick. Ignite the fire in us.
Speak to us:
the language is hope.
Quotes
“I've heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are. Make sure you're ready to use them in our elections this year!" —Taylor Swift
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” —Plato
“We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.” —Thomas Jefferson
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men and women are created equal.” —Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1848, speech at the Seneca Falls Convention
“We're starting to recognize our power, and power is responsibility.” —Sean Combs (P. Diddy)
“Not voting is not a protest. It is a surrender.” —Keith Ellison, former Congressional Representative, and Attorney General of Minnesota
“Did you ever know that the Indian women were among the first suffragists, and that they exercised the right of recall?” —Marie Bottineau Baldwin, interview, The Washington Times, 1914
“I will vote.” —Mary J. Blige
“A a vote is a kind of prayer, for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children.” —Reverend Raphael Warnock
“I want women to have their rights.” —Sojourner Truth, Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association, 1867
“Someone struggled for your right to vote. Use it.” —Susan B. Anthony
Videos
Opinions
We are writing our thoughts down as quickly as we can. We’ll get them up soon.