CHICAGO, IL — There are places and times that linger, producing an aching humanness that outlives those who populated those spaces. The ghost towns of the cities of the US were once so infused with yearning people from the South that they changed the culture of the world. The Uptown neighborhood of Chicago in the 1950’s through early 1970’s was such a place.
Blues, R&B, Country (Chicago once competed with Nashville as the Capitol of Country). The “good stuff” was birthed in these hot spots, North and South, places where those who left the hopelessness of rural poverty took their chances in the city. The brokenness they tried to escape often remained, but the expressions of their hearts shook the world.
In Uptown in the late 1960’s the young also began to organize in opposition to the poverty and oppression they faced daily. One of their tools was to publish the poetry and voices of the people. The poetry and documents found in the pages of Against the Picture Window—A TIME OF THE PHOENIX COMPENDIUM, are of an honesty that is hard and unblinking. These are the voices of the poor. Many of the pieces written 40 years ago still go straight through and make no mistakes or diversions. These are universal and timeless poems and contemplations, thankfully preserved and not lost. Many of the authors have passed on.
As Hy Thurman, one of the leaders of the Young Patriot Organization, instructs, “A Time of the Phoenix should not be read for entertainment or literary value. Instead it should be read with the understanding that within its covers are real life stories of people who witnessed unimaginable hardship and horrors.”
Jobs are gone and today the electronic technologies, which if collectively controlled could free us, are in the hands of rulers who want us to disappear. Our uselessness to them made clear daily. We, on the other hand, have to deepen and strengthen the unity that threatens the rulers. This is the unity of the dispossessed that the original Rainbow Coalition tried to forge long ago. Forty plus years ago, the coalition of Black, Brown and poor White workers so terrified the FBI and Mayor Daley that they spared no effort to destroy it in its infancy. This effort included the murder of Fred Hampton in 1969. Now we know that unity is our only hope to get from here to another place, another time. This book is the stuff of a living dream.
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The Storm
As they look down from their mighty throne
Out onto the land that they ruled
All they saw were people
People fighting
People dying
And the people were crying
We are not going to stay down here anymore.
As they scream the sky grew dark and the rain began to fall,
And the people began to push from the back, people from all
Places and they spread over the throne and over the land.
And then the sun came out behind the clouds and then you
Saw the water so calm and so clear and an inch higher
—Bobby Joe Wright
196? Time of the Phoenix
