2004 - March

There is a movement going on, a movement of young people who are realizing the oppressive nature of their society and are dedicating their lives to creating new realities for themselves and their communities. Poetry, in its many forms, is at the heart of this movement, speaking out against oppressive systems and speaking up for self-determination, self-identification and bold visions of alternate realities...

The Silent Giants, Argonath of Greed,
Stand holding back the flow of comfort Wealth,
A stagnant dam collecting, drowning Need...

Humility has taken me to the epitome of my beginning
Where I grasped my soul
Searching for a cause
There were many faces
But in the end...

I Read the other day
That Four Hundred and Fifty Seven members
Of the United States armed forces
Have died since the beginning…

Hunger…
I’m hungry for letting that tongue
Weave paths down my
Spine...

Lenin walks around the world.
Frontiers cannot bar him.
Neither barracks nor barricades impede.
Nor does barbed wire scar him...

Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you...

Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet and revolutionary activist who became one of the most influential voices in the continent during the great upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. Born in 1932, Roque Dalton became involved in literary work and activism while attending the University of San Salvador...

In the last 25 years Linton Kwesi Johnson (LKJ) has had a huge impact on poetry and politics in the UK and internationally. His commitment to the rights of Black British people has been paired with a deep appreciation of history and his Jamaican musical and cultural roots...

Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez once called Pablo Neruda “the greatest poet of the twentieth century—in any language.� This July 12th, festivities around the world will mark the 100th anniversary of the Chilean poet’s birth. In the U.S., the Neruda centennial will be celebrated with the publication of a volume of eighty new English translations of his poems, and a documentary about his life and his words narrated by author Isabel Allende...

Over the past ten years, poetry has become an increasingly popular and powerful form of protest in the US, particularly among young people. In the post-Reagan era, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the passage of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) and Gulf War I, the Left was in disarray....

The United States is a nation built by working people from coast to coast. Every city and town, every road and dam was built by our multiracial, multinational working class. May Day, International Workers Day, commerates an American tradegedy that took place in 1886...

On November 13, 2003 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia two worlds converged in the form of competing summits: the official Iberoamerican Presidential Summit and an alternative social forum organized by Bolivia’s farmers unions. A month after Bolivians overthrew US-backed President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, in massive street protests, Latin America’s Presidents arrived for their annual meetings...

Reem Hazzan is a twenty-year-old student at Haifa University in Haifa, Israel. She is the International Secretary of the Students’ Department of the Young Communist League of Israel, and a member of the YCLI’s Executive Bureau...

At a New York Jobs With Justice MOVE (Mobilizing and Organizing Voices for Equality) meeting in New York City we were fortunate to come upon the spoken word of Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman, the self-described "heartbeat-soul-sister-warrior-artist-duo" that makes up Climbing Poetree...

LDP: What is the Student Labor Action Project? When was it founded?

AR: In 1999, Jobs with Justice and the United States Students Association (USSA) joined together to create the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) to support, advise, and solidify the student/labor work that is energizing campuses and communities across the country...

It’s late January in Mumbai, India and I’m walking across the street to enter the fair grounds where the 4th World Social Forum is to be held. I get there a day early to register, orient myself to the location and check out the program. As I’m crossing the street, I pass a family who live alongside a stagnant sewage trough that divides two sections of a major highway...

Are we going to allow George Bush to rule our country for another four years?� asked Jarvis Tyner, executive vice-chair of Communist Party USA.

“No!� the crowd roared back...

The week of November 17-21, the city of Miami held meetings on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, with ministers from 32 countries in attendance. Miami is one of several cities under consideration to serve as the FTAA's base of operations. In response, a broad range of groups and individuals attended events throughout the week to voice their opposition to the policies outlined in the FTAA...