Why do you clothe me with scarlet of shame? Why do you point with your finger of scorn? What is the crime that you hissingly name When you sneer in my ears, "Thou bastard born?" Am I not as the rest of you, With a hope to reach, and a dream to live? With a soul to suffer, a heart to know The pangs that the thrusts of the heartless give?" I am no monster! Look at me -- Straight in my eyes, that they do not shrink! Is there aught in them you can see To merit this hemlock you make me drink? This poison that scorches my soul like fire, That burns and burns until love is dry, And I shrivel with hate, as hot as a pyre, A corpse, while its smoke curls up to the sky? Will you touch my hand? It is flesh like yours; Perhaps a little more brown and gr... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Rose Pesotta Bread upon the Waters CHAPTER 19 Vulnerable Akron: The First Great Sit-Down AKRON÷rubber manufacturing capital of the world. A drab Mid-Western industrial city of 255,000. A city with a hum, a throb, an odor all its own. It made the front pages in February, 1936. A strike had closed the largest tire factory on the globe, which had 14,000 employes. On the 25th Frederick Umhey, our International's executive secretary, wired me from New York: "Goodyear rubber workers in Akron on strike. A woman organizer requested. Urgently needed. Please proceed to Akron at once and report to Adolph Germer Portage Hotel." Leaving Marianne Alfons, our Polish organizer, in charge of the Buffalo office, I took the first train, reaching my destination late that night. There I was hailed by Louis Stark, labor reporter for the New Yo...