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They Fear and They Kill

Marge Piercy MRzine
Official government statistics document that African American young men are killed by the police at a rate quadruple that of the whole population. In the period 1999 through 2011, police officers killed 4,531 people. Marge Piercy, in poem, captures that reality of being young, African American, Hispanic, Asian or Native American Indian, and a police victim.

Tidbits - July 31, 2014

Portside
Reader Comments - Gaza, Israel, Palestine and the Jewish Community; Water Privatization; Charlie Haden; McDonald's and Low-wage Workers; Portside Book Reviews; Koch Bros.; Universal Soldier; Argentina; HIV; NSA, spying and Saudi Arabia; Public Education; Market Basket Revolt; Immigration Reform Infographic; new poems by Tom Karlson and Alan Gilbert; Afro-American Artists to Present Works in Cuba; Sinéad O'Connor: 'I Won't Play in Israel'

Friday Nite Videos -- July 25, 2014

Portside
Quantum Entanglement: A Poem. Why Do We Sleep? Buffy Sainte-Marie - The Universal Soldier. Meet Jibo, a Social Robot for the Home. Immigrant America: The Worst Job In New York.

Auld Lang Syne

Auld Lang Syne was written by Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1788. It was later set to the music of a folk song, sung here by Dougie MacLean, with English translation of the lyrics.
 

The Original Terrorists

Amiri Baraka OBS - The Organization for Black Struggle
Amiri Baraka is one of the most respected and widely published African-American writers. We are happy to publish the poem he sent Portside, placing the recent shutdown events in the context of U.S. history, and the on-going struggle for equality and justice. We get clear enough to elect Obama the terrorists take off they Klan clothes put on some suits , they the t party, now. TEA The Evil Assholes

A 'new poetry' emerges from Syria's civil war

Leigh Cuen Aljazeera
"Today there is literature coming out of Syria that we could have never even dreamed of just a few years ago," Atrash says.Rather than relying on metaphors and allegorical images, these new poems rely on literal, visceral descriptions, with a newfound emphasis on a united Syrian identity instead of religious symbols.

Disturbing Pablo Neruda’s Rest

By Ilan Stavans New York Times
On its surface, a poem seems incapable of stopping a bullet. Yet Chile’s transition to democracy was facilitated by the poet’s survival in people’s minds, his lines repeated time and again, as a form of subversion. Life cannot be repressed, he whispered in everyone’s ears. It was a message for which he may have died, but that lives on in his verse.
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