Wednesday
Yesterday I mentioned a line from a poem that inspired Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. At this late stage of the election season, I don’t need to speak to all the ways that Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s “Protest” speaks to our present moment. Written in 1914 to support the labor and suffragette movements (including the end of child labor), it applies equally well to environmentalism and democracy renewal.
If you don’t vote against “injustice, ignorance, and lust,” you are sinning by silence. We are a land of freedom only if we truly live up to that ideal.
Protest
To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticize oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.
The few who dare must speak and speak again to right the wrongs of many? Amen!
Further note on the poet: Even if you haven’t heard of Wheelcox (I hadn’t), you may recognize the first line of her poem “Solitude.” Here’s the first stanza:
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.