Spring Editorial
As this season of new life winds to a close, we are grateful for the life-giving support of our readers to be able to publish another issue. Your support makes continuing this project possible in hard times. We are far from financially secure and your tax-deductable support of our press is always needed.
We hands that push brooms, buffers and shovels, that drive cabs and trucks, that tend the sick; We extensions of machinery; We office slaves, counter clerks, builders, plumbers and programers -- We are expected to show up to work on time, work hard, be loyal team players, buy ourselves into debt, pay our bills on time and die quietly when we are no longer of use. We are not supposed to have our own opinions, think, or speak when not spoken to, and we are not supposed to write.
They do their best to keep tabs on us. They drug test us and monitor our conversations at work. They tap our phones and our computers at home. But still we speak the forbidden. We talk about the boss. We agitate against their wars and global destruction. We organize to demand better conditions and basic rights and we dare, in spite of the risks and the barriers of cultural elitism, to write poetry that matters.
Poetry publication on a large scale is reserved for the literati, where an academic poetry devoid of content is preferred and politics, avoided and condemned. This magazine is an exception. We have seen a few sprouts of progressive literature. But, with very few exceptions, they lack the vital working class connection. This issue, like many others, is an example of the strength of poetry as an authentic expression rooted in the nitty-gritty working class experience: a reality that includes nationality, gender and race. In communicating our common experience what is revealed is the transcendancy of class.
As our world tumbles toward environmental catastrophe, spreading war and the tyrannies of fundamentalism and corporate dictatorship, our only hope for the future is in the unified class-consciousness of our international working class. Without our participation they are powerless.
At a time when our corporate ruling class is promoting nationalist xenophobia and scapegoating immigrant workers forced here by NAFTA's destruction of their country's economy, our class unity is even more vital. We believe that a literature that inspires that unity is a must and we are dedicated to publishing and promoting it.
We hands that push brooms, buffers and shovels, that drive cabs and trucks, that tend the sick; We extensions of machinery; We office slaves, counter clerks, builders, plumbers and programers -- We are expected to show up to work on time, work hard, be loyal team players, buy ourselves into debt, pay our bills on time and die quietly when we are no longer of use. We are not supposed to have our own opinions, think, or speak when not spoken to, and we are not supposed to write.
They do their best to keep tabs on us. They drug test us and monitor our conversations at work. They tap our phones and our computers at home. But still we speak the forbidden. We talk about the boss. We agitate against their wars and global destruction. We organize to demand better conditions and basic rights and we dare, in spite of the risks and the barriers of cultural elitism, to write poetry that matters.
Poetry publication on a large scale is reserved for the literati, where an academic poetry devoid of content is preferred and politics, avoided and condemned. This magazine is an exception. We have seen a few sprouts of progressive literature. But, with very few exceptions, they lack the vital working class connection. This issue, like many others, is an example of the strength of poetry as an authentic expression rooted in the nitty-gritty working class experience: a reality that includes nationality, gender and race. In communicating our common experience what is revealed is the transcendancy of class.
As our world tumbles toward environmental catastrophe, spreading war and the tyrannies of fundamentalism and corporate dictatorship, our only hope for the future is in the unified class-consciousness of our international working class. Without our participation they are powerless.
At a time when our corporate ruling class is promoting nationalist xenophobia and scapegoating immigrant workers forced here by NAFTA's destruction of their country's economy, our class unity is even more vital. We believe that a literature that inspires that unity is a must and we are dedicated to publishing and promoting it.
posted by Jaded Prole at 2:20 PM
1 Comments:
looking forward to the new one PP. you said it baby. this is our revolution, and it is a quiet one, one of words and ideas, one of honesty and kindness, one of art and beauty. one that refutes the status quo of murder, lies, torture, mayhem, madness and inhumanity.
BCR is a bright light in the steaming midnight air.
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