I received this poem from Jeanne Ross, a therapist and widow of Michael Nash, the late director of the Tamiment Library of NYU, the leading library of American Labor and the American left(where the CPUSA collections are now stored and available to all) in the U.S.  Michael and Jeanne were among my dearest friends for nearly four decades and Jeanne of course still is.  This poem is especially appropriate for Martin Luther King Day because it captures  perfectly the world that Dr. King and all of us fight against, the world the the labor and socialist movements came into existence to end in the 19th century and has made such an ugly "comeback" in the 21st.  Bushwick refers to the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, the slum of Jeanne's youth and today

Norman Markowitz

Bushwick,   International,

By Jeanne H. Ross

Squalid streets seething  

Cordoned off from the eyes of the privileged

The subway stops that hipsters fear.

Slums, favelas, barrios, shantytown

Filled with folk of all complexions

Even there stratified by hue.

Workers, shell shocked faces, disgorged from holes in the ground, buses, lorries

Wages, scarcely more than slavery ,

fought over by internal parasites

Sullen youths lounging on corners, stoops, doorways

Hucksters, swindlers, thugs

Vying for the leavings the rulers allow.

The spirit persists.

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