Wednesday
After seeing my post where I cited William Drennan’s “Wake of William Orr” to honor Renee Good and Alex Petti, a reader shared a poem by International Workers of the World organizer Ralph Chaplin. Most famous for the socialist anthem “Solidarity Forever,” Chaplin was arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917 for opposing America’s entry into World War I. He may have written “Mourn Not the Dead” in Chicago’s Cook County Jail in 1917.
Chaplin was radicalized as a child when he saw a man shot dead during the Pullman strike of 1894, leading us to wonder how many of our young people will be similarly radicalized by the actions of Trump’s goons. Chaplin would go on to work with Mother Jones during the bloody 1912-13 coal miners’ strike in Kanawha County, West Virginia in 1912-13. He must have felt horribly alone when war fever swept through the United States in 1917, when the public was willing to countenance the suspension of various civil liberties.
Fortunately, his poem about “the apathetic throng” applies to fewer people today than it would have a year ago as increasing numbers of Americans are turning out to protest the ICE raids and other Trump assaults on democracy. For instance, Rachel Maddow reported Monday on how even people in red states are managing to block the construction of immigrant concentration camps.
Unfortunately, we have many “cowed and meek” members of Congress that continue to allow Trump to have his way in all things. Having witnessed his ability to unleash his supporters on anyone who disagrees with him, they “dare not speak.”
Mourn Not the Dead
By Ralph Chaplin
Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie —
Dust unto dust —
The calm sweet earth that mothers all who die
As all men must;
Mourn not your captured comrades who must dwell —
Too strong to strive —
Each in his steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;
But rather mourn the apathetic throng —
The cowed and the meek —
Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak!
For what it’s worth, history is watching and taking names. And providing a spur to action.
