PHOTO/MIKE FLESHMAN
SAN FRANCISCO — Upon hearing of the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin travesty of justice, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco decided to take a cultural step forward in behalf of the struggle for an end to racism through economic democracy.
It used Heartfire, its recent 385-page international and multilingual Anthology as
admission to a poetry reading in the Alley Cat Bookstore in the heart of San Francisco’s
mission and it raised $419 for the Trayvon Martin Foundation, founded by his parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin after the murder of their son.
Moreover the evening was charged with many poems to and about Trayvon by such distinguished
African-American poets as Maketa Smith-Groves, Dee Allen, Gary Hicks, the emeritus Poet Laureate of San Francisco, Devorah Major, as well as the current Poet Laureate, Alejandro Murguia, Adrian Arias, Sarah Menefee, Judith Ayn Bernhard, John Curl, and other members of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, including Martin Hickel, who curated the event, and the editors of Heartfire, Agneta Falk and Jack Hirschman, who also read.
The capitalist class would like nothing better than that poets go die. Not only will the Revolutionary Poets Brigade not die, but it has migrated to Los Angeles, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Burlington, Vermont; Paris, France and Rome, Italy.
We know the old cultural avant-guard today is the avant-dead, the acceptance of the hustler existence that Wall Street and the Corporate State has forced every creative soul into.
We know the real avant-guard is the current new-class generation of young people the world over whose future’s been blocked by today’s economic fascism and who will not stop fighting to overthrow the unjust system of which the Trayvon Martin tragedy is but a recent glaring example.
Poetry can be the greatest weapon in revolutionary struggle. Truth and Beauty are its strong pillars. So, poets, let’s organize, form Brigades and unite with the motion to end the monstrosity that the capitalist system has become.
