DAY OF ACTION.

This from 325:

From ABC LEEDS:

Day of Action in Support of John Bowden

Monday 11th June

       John Bowden is a militant prisoner who has been inside since 1980 (and in fact for most of his life before then). He is serving time for a murder which happened 32 years ago, but John’s two co-defendants have been free for 20 years. John has been writing about, and fighting against, injustice throughout his time behind bars, building up a huge and impressive portfolio of articles about every aspect of the prison struggle. He has paid a heavy price for speaking out though, spending years in the most brutal segregation units, and being targeted for repression time and time again. We do not define John, a good comrade, by the crime he committed 32 years ago, and neither do the State. He is not in jail for what he did then, but for what he has done since. If he did not have anti-authoritarian politics, if he was not a man of integrity who always comes to the defence of his fellow cons, John Bowden would have been out years ago.

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GLASGOW CRANE ANTI-NUCLEAR BANNER.

         For 30 years the Faslane Peace Camp has kept up a steady and relentless campaign against Britain's nuclear weapons of mass destruction and June being the camp's thirtieth birthday they are having a series of celebrations. It started to day with a massive banner being hung from the large crane at Finnieston Glasgow. The crane has stood there rather sad as one of the last remnants of the Clyde's shipbuilding era. Well now it has sprung to life and joined the anti-nuclear movement. The large banner reads, "Nuclear Disarmament. If Not Now, When?"!

        It is typical of the type of society we live in, a millionaire cabinet slashing at the living standards of the ordinary people, shouting "AUSTERITY, AUSTERITY" while at the same time pouring billions of pounds into keeping, developing and upgrading nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Let's all join in the Faslane Peace Camp's thirtieth birthday celebrations by raising our voices against these illegal horrendous weapons and join and support them in any way we can. 

This release from the Faslane peaceCamp:

        A Peace Camp banner drop is currently underway at Clydebank landmark gantry crane in Glasgow

 

 

      In a public display to commence our 30 Days of Direct Action Campaign, three Faslane Peace Campers are currently dropping banners from the Clydebank landmark gantry crane in Glasgow. The banner reads, "Nuclear Disarmament. If Not Now, When?"!
       Planning to make a day of it, they have taken a lovely packed lunch and some literature. However, quite a few police vans were on scene almost immediately and are making efforts to remove them. This is the first of many anti-nuclear actions planned to mark the 30th anniversary of the Camp. In this run up to a Scottish Independence Referendum coupled with the Westminster vote on Trident replacement in waiting, we have a very real chance to affect the shape of the future UK nuclear defence policies. Scotland could hold the key to UK nuclear disarmament.
      Now is the time for a renewed anti-nuclear insurgency. Come to the camp and join in our 30 Days of Direct Action.

Faslane Flossie
e-mail:faslane30@riseup.net

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DEATH OF THE BEAST.

Taken From Anarchist News dot org.

          “On the daily 8 o’clock newscasts, the voice of the regime’s spokesmen has lost all confidence it used to have in the past. The state representatives attend fiestas, parades, restaurants and public streets only as long as they have assured an escape route, just in case they will have to run. Supermarkets are full of commodities and empty of consumers. The government’s people are trying on khaki clothes, military jackets and quotients and make their voice sound squeaky and metallic, just like the one of Michaloliakos¹or of Papadopoulos². The numbers of suicides are dashed. Some other farfetched guys pretend to be political messiahs, create parties and climb on TV crates to talk about the salvation of the people. The streets of the Metropolis are filled with cops and homeless people, cops and laid-off people, cops and protesters.

        The Beast, which all these years had swallowed us, is now ill and at the same time pregnant. Corpulent and aged, it slowly dies out with the threat either to take us with it or to offer us to its newborn child as its legacy. Some have already loved the beast and refuse to face its upcoming end; some, having been trapped in its stomach for so long, cannot imagine any possibility of living without it; some others felt quite comfortable all these years with the safety it provided them and suddenly got terrified. Nobody knows what is there, outside the Beast’s stomach. Yet, the Beast is either going to die, or give birth, or both, and it’s getting ready for all cases. Now it’s our turn to start getting ready. In order to have the upper hand, we have to catch to kill it. At the same time, we must learn to live without it.”

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TORTURERS IN TOWN.

 

              Athletes a part, we all know that the Olympics will be the gathering of all the pompous, arrogant, parasites, such as heads of state, dictators, monarchs, princes, etc. from all shades of the authoritarian spectrum, some worse than others. Though on the whole, the entire ratbag should be classed the same, but it does no harm to single out one who might stink a bit more than the others.

This appeal from AVAAZ

Dear friends across the UK and the Middle East,

         The British government is about to reward a torturer with a luxury hotel and chauffeur-driven BMW at the London Olympics -- unless we demand they stop this outrage.
        Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al-Khalifa is a chief architect of Bahrain’s brutal suppression of the Arab Spring, accused of personally torturing protesters, and persecuting athletes who have stood up against his father’s dictatorship. Gifted the presidency of the Bahrain Olympic Committee, Nasser now stands to receive VIP treatment at the London games. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has said that Nasser will be “closely assessed”, but hasn’t yet committed to keep out this human rights abuser. If enough of us raise our voices, we can ensure Nasser is kept away from the London games.
         Avaaz members in the UK and Bahrain have come together to start a campaign to force Secretary Hague to keep this torturer away from the Olympics, but they need our support. Sign the petition now -- when we reach 30,000 signatures, we’ll work with Bahraini activists to deliver the message to Secretary Hague and PM David Cameron in London:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_torturers_at_the_olympics/?vl

          Nasser is the son of Bahrain’s ruling King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, one of the Arab World’s most brutal dictators. Intimately involved in the crackdown on the Arab Spring pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain, Nasser has used his platform as head of the country’s Olympic Committee to ensure that athletes in particular have been punished if they dissent.
        He installed himself as head of a committee that targeted 150 athletes and sports officials for their democratic views, including a disabled athlete, personally ensuring that two of Bahrain's national football team star players were also arrested and imprisoned. When Mohammed, capped 52 times for Bahrain, was sentenced to 2 years in prison, Nasser tweeted, “If it was up to me, I’d give them all life.” Several of the protesters have also claimed that they were personally tortured by Nasser after their arrests for peaceful demonstrations.
        Foreign Secretary Hague and PM Cameron have the power to block Nasser’s entry into the UK, but right now, they stand set to reward him with publicly-funded VIP treatment for the duration of the London games. Let’s stand with Bahraini athletes and protesters to demand that Hague and Cameron prevent Nasser’s attendance at the games. Sign the petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_torturers_at_the_olympics/?vl

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SPIRIT OF REVOLT.

               I don't know the poet, but I pay homage to him/her, and I can't remember where I got the poem, but I like it very much, it captures the spirit of revolt and the determination of the ordinary people. The title is my own idea as it didn't have a title when I copied it away back. 

WE ARE THE PEOPLE.

If You Beat Us, We Will Revive ourselves.

If You Suppress us, We Will Arise Again.

If You Defeat Our occupation, Of Streets We built,

We Will Occupy Our Jobs, And Our Communities.

You Cannot Destroy Us, For We Are,

Manifest, The IDEA That You Created.

You

Created Us With Your Arrogance.

You

Created Us With Your Exploitation.

You

Created Us With Your Prejudice And Your Greed.

You Created us with Your destruction

Of The World We love.

Your

Ill-considered Occupations

Begat And Inspired Our Occupations.

You

Have Sown The Seeds Of Dissent.

We Grow Like Wildfire,

And We Bring Forth The Whirlwind.

Look To Your Barricades, Your Badged Lackeys,

Your Fawning Courts, Your Corrupt Officials,

Your Long held Illusions Of Divine Right.

None Of These Matter, You’ve Earned Defeat,

And You Will Take The Fall.

We are The people, Newly Awakened.

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PRISON LABOUR INCREASES UNEMPLOYMENT.

This information wasgained from The Independent

          This cry for austerity as a deficit reduction plan is a wonderful excuse for employers to squeeze wages. Unemployment rising and wage freezes/cuts, it's bonanza time for the corporate world as they tell the workers to like it or lump it. While they are forcing down wages and ripping up contracts on conditions, the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke is opening up new avenues of exploitation to help their profit margins. He has plans to increase to 20,000 the number of prisoners doing cheap labour in prisons. He wants to turn the prisons into profit making machines before handing them over to the private sector to be milked.

        Under this scheme prisoners wages are approximately £2 per hour, of course the prisoners don't get the full £2, as the prisons take variable amounts from that. It is obvious that companies will increasingly out-source their work to the prison service via a new company, One3One. One of the companies taking advantage of the captive slave labour facilities offered by One3One, is Speedy Hire a tool hiring company which in 2010 closed 75 of its repair depots, paying off 800 staff. The company increased its prison contract by approximately 10%, using almost 100 prisoners and handing, during the financial year 2010-2011, £114,012 to Pentoville, Garth and Erlestoke prisons. Approximately 800 more people looking for work in that area while the company rips-off approximately 100 prisoner who have little or no say in the matter. Another company that has grabbed at the cheap labour in prisons is Calpac, a food packaging firm. Its contract with Kirkham prison has increased from £34,321 in 2010 to £154,267. according to the company pay roll the highest paid job was office manager on £40 for a 40 hour week, while a manual packing operative would be paid 55p an hour. Many of the workers work overtime taking their working week to 60 hours. With pay and conditions like this we can expect to see many more firms pay-off hard working people on the outside to employ more cheap trapped labour on the inside. All with the governments blessing, this is how a capitalist government helps the economy.

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TRADE UNION RIGHTS.

An appeal from Labour Start.

       Every June, trade union leaders, employers and government officials meet in Geneva for the International Labour Conference. And every year since 1926, that conference has set aside some time to discuss the worst violations of trade union rights. But not this year - because this year employers have put down their foot and said "no". As I write these words, unions have issued some strong statements (here's one example) and we're monitoring the situation.

         To coincide with the conference, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has just issued its annual report on violations of trade union rights -- and it makes for chilling reading.

        "Colombia is once again the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists," says the ITUC. "Of the 76 people murdered for their trade union activities, not counting the workers killed during the Arab Spring, 29 lost their lives in Colombia. And in Guatemala yet again trade unionists paid a heavy price, with 10 assassinations committed with impunity. A further eight trade unionists were murdered in Asia."

You can read the report in full here.

As if to highlight those issues, two of the global union federations have launched major appeals in the last 24 hours.

1. One is in support of oil workers in Iraq - please make sure to add your name to the online campaign here.
2. The other supports nine trade union leaders in Algeria, five of them women, who have been on hunger strike since 6 May. They too need your urgent support - please click here.

The employers' representatives in Geneva may want us to stop talking about workers rights, and maybe they'll succeed in doing so at the ILO conference. But they can't stop us from campaigning -- as we will show them in the next few hours. We are going to fill the inboxes of political leaders in Iraq and Algeria with our messages of protest. And we're going to show the world once again what solidarity means.

I know that I can count on your support - thank you!

Eric Lee

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NO EXPNSE SPARED, - WE'RE RICH!!

           Well you have to admit, when it comes to spending money in a big way the Jubilee takes the biscuit. What a lavish pouring out of public money to titillate the egos of our lords and masters. No expense spared, heads of state from across the world, banquets, and luncheons fit for a queen, probably as many troops playing at pomp and circumstance, parading up and down central London as we have in Afghanistan. However at the other end, there's money to be made. It seems that a stewarding company called Close Protection UK had a contract to help steward this lavish event, but when it comes to the wages of the stewards, well it wasn't quite no expense spared. For the event this company took on 80 unemployed, under the governments apprentice scheme, 50 were under 25 and paid £2:60 an hour, the other 30 either accepted the same rate or refused payment as it would adversely affect their benefit money. Now that's a good deal if your a business. It was a 14 hour shift with no access to toilets during their shift, they were brought in by bus from Plymouth, Bath and Bristol, dumped in the middle of the night in London with no shelter.

I'm not over dressed for this little do, am I?

         Compare this treatment of “Her Majesty's Loyal Subjects” with the treatment of all those millionaire/billionaire parasites being pampered at our expense. It was a glorious display of what this society is all about, wealth and power separated from the adoring poverty stricken hordes. It was displayed for all the world to see, Britain is still a wonderfully class divided society, a great place if your a millionaire and a place in the adoring crowd if your not.

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YOUR KIDS WILL BE NEXT.

         What awaits us as the Eurozone circles the drain, for some idea we can look at what has happened to the Greek people in just a couple of years. From a relatively comfortable lifestyle for most, to deprivation, from a comparatively low crime rate, to a rocketing crime rate, from mostly stable communities to massive increases in suicides, alcoholism and mental health problems, all the direct result of AUSTERITY, which is just a polite word for plundering the people and pushing them into deprivation. I should add that all these problems are for the ordinary people, our political masters and the financial Mafia are exempt from that deprivation they inflict on the rest of us. This from Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ.

      This picture was taken in the centre of Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. The young teen, no older than 13 or 14 was wheeling a shopping trolley full of scrap metal just metres away from the high end hotels and shopping malls that call this part of the town home.

      He, along with many even younger can be seen in the city rooting through the recycling bins for cans, scrap metal and paper.. For those who scavenge, beg, sell trinkets and wander the streets of this European city there is no school or perhaps even a future, except for more of the same.

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WHY ASK PERMISSION FOR A BETTER LIFE?

I found this a very thought provoking poster from The Black Door. A picture is worth a thousand words, what about a thousand pictures like this dotted around your neighbourhood?

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A PROUD MOMENT FOR SCOTLAND.

          Edinburgh celebrates the jubilee with the anarcho-syndicalist Red and Black flying at the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

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YES OR NO, THAT IS THE QUESTION?

YES or NO, where do you stand on Scottish Independence and why?

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THE BRUTALITY OF ATOS.

          The brutal stories still come out from the ATOS experience, each story is a case of human suffering. This from ATOS Victims Group News.

Hello

         About two years ago I started suffering from extreme anxiety due to the pressure of my work as a college tutor combined with my caring duties for my mum. This triggered a severe panic attack and also severe alopoecia. My doctor of 20 years and my counsellor both said I was unfit for work. My medication also means that I feel very tired and have poor concentration for large parts of the day. I was placed on ESA and had to attend an ATOS ‘assessment’. I wasn’t able to travel in on my own, on the bus or by foot, due to my fear of having another panic attack; my mum, who I was meant to be caring for, cared for me and brought me in by car, despite being in pain with her own condition and needing to rest several times on the short walk from the car to the assessment centre.

        The first impression I had of an ATOS centre was seeing the TV tuned to ‘The Jeremy Kyle‘ show at full volume in reception, watched by a bored security guard. This increased my levels of anxiety even further as I waited and my mum had to ask for it to be switched off. When I entered the interview room I answered all the questions as truthfully as possible whilst the ‘assessor’ ticked his little boxes on a PC.

My report said that I was able to work and that ‘I underestimated my ability to concentrate on work tasks’. This was despite the report saying that I was very subdued in the assessment and looked extremely anxious, despite me telling the ‘assessor’ that the very reason I was suffering from severe anxiety was because I was trying to combine a job with caring for my mum.

        After some excellent advice from my local CAB, I found I was able to claim Carer‘s Allowance and Income Support to help me look after my mum full-time. Obviously, at no time was I ever told this by anybody at ATOS or at Jobcentreplus; I was just another statistic, boosting ATOS’s performance profits and meeting government targets. I know this; I worked for Jobcentreplus Head Office as an Executive Officer for eight years.

        This experience is one of the many reasons I am now fighting the government’s cuts; their desire to move genuinely disabled and incapacitated people into a workfare style scheme that takes no account of their condition is merely a way for the government to make an easy target, people who did not cause our social and economic crisis, pay for it.

         Don’t let them make the people of this country an easy target. Don’t let them forget the effects of their atrocious policies on real flesh, blood and minds. On real people who refuse to be treated like crap.

Show them that we have the guts to fight back.
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IT'S TIME TO LEAVE!!

A debating point worth a little thought from Infoshop:

Conflict, safe spaces and removing people.

by Scott Crow
May 30, 2012

         To all of us engaged in groups in general. If you will allow me for a minute. I haven't paid attention to all of the chatter and conflict etc . of your particular group, but I bet it is similar as to most places. I wanted to take a moment to address anarchism and open groups in brief. I believe our spaces have value to them and we have all learned and shared things over their existence. Flame wars have happened since the dawn of the interwebz and personal conflict has happened at least since we could open our mouths. But sometimes we have to say Ya Basta!(Enough!)

          I have been an anarchist in the real world for a long time and I do not believe in large open groups for much more than short term organizing. They always fall into trouble over the long haul due to not having enough cohesion ,collective input and shared power . I actually mostly only work in small closed collectives with people I can develop intimate shared ideals, principles and actions.

Our Spaces , Our Places.

          Anarchism is not about all of us getting into one big boat and heading towards the horizon--and all getting along singing Kumbaya. This is the mess we are in now. This 'boat' is filled with the lowest common denominator of ideal/principles of all the participants. The way I see it is that the horizon is the goal (follow me on this for a minute). And instead of all getting into one big stupid boat, we call get into our own boats, rafts, ships or whatever and head towards the horizon without sinking each others boats. Some will get there faster, and some will not make it, some will go in armadas. But the key is we get there individually or collectively how we can--without sinking each others boats.

          I also believe and practice protecting the spaces we have carved out within groups, workplaces, meetings, housing etc. I am not a liberal who believes we have to , or can accept everyone. It's why I am an anarchist. We need multiple small accountable groups that can federate , network--or not. If we can't get along then we form other groups and don't try to sink the others boat. We don't have the capacity to deal with everyone's personal issues--whether its drugs, alcohol, mental health or they are just assholes looking for a fight. There is plenty of pie to go around for all of us, plenty of problems to solve and lots of disagreements to be had with people we like or love without the added stress . Find the place that fits and work in it.

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THE END OF THE BANKERS' PONZI SCHEME?

         Predictions for the global economy and banking system grow more dismal by the day. One financial commentator, Business Insider, puts it thus; “The problem is not Government Debt per se. The real problem is that the $70trillion in G10 debt is collateral for $700 trillion in derivatives--- Yes, that equates to 1200% of global GDP and it rests on very, very weak foundations.”

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       Here in Europe the financial Mafia and their action men, the national governments, waffle with all sorts of ideological theories, from bleak brutal austerity, to austerity with grow, but nothing is actually being done, meetings and discussions keep them busy, sort of fiddling while Rome burns. Of course we shouldn't blame them too much, as in actual fact there is nothing they can do, the ship has a large hole well below the water line, it is called “magic money made from nothing”. What this means to the ordinary people caught up in this the biggest ponzi scheme of all times is dire poverty and deprivation on a scale not witnessed before. At this stage of their game unemployment across Europe is now at 11% for the second month in a row. Spain, has the highest unemployment rate in Europe at 24.3%, about the same as the US during the “Great Depression”. Greece at present has 21.7% unemployment, with Italy and Portugal both having 15.2%. France, one of the supposedly economically strong nations of Europe has unemployment running at 10.2%. Even that saviour of the western capitalist system, the US, unemployment has risen again and is now at 8.2%. These figures equate to 17.4 million people out of work across Europe, of that total 3.5 million are 25 years old or younger, up 214,000 on the previous month. What future does that predict for those young people of today and those still at school? In the face of all this “economic gloom” companies across the globe are shedding jobs like trees shed leaves as winter approaches.

        To any informed observer of the capitalist chaos that is at the present time, destroying millions of lives across the planet, it becomes obvious that the system cannot work for the benefit of the ordinary people, it cannot be transformed into some fair, just and compassionate system that will see to the needs of all our people. It is and has always been an unfair, unjust elitist system and at present it is the the throes of its biggest crisis since its inception, and its only chance of survival is to plunder all public resources and assets and in the process destroy the lives of millions of innocent people. This chaos in the capitalist ponzi scheme is also an opportunity for the ordinary people to organise outside the system and take control of their own lives, control of their communities and their work places. To start to build a system that will produce for the needs of all our people freed from the greed for profit, a system that is built on co-operation and sustain ability. Now is probably the best opportunity we have had in years to bring down a system that has exploited our parents and our forefathers, generation after generation. In the words of the song, “From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success”, however it is up to us, the ordinary people, but we have to do it without, Leaders, Presidents, Monarchs and others of that ilk. Their record is one of greed, disaster, exploitation, war and deprivation.

An attempt to rescue the bankers and their friends.

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ASSEMBLIES, THEN WHAT?

This from Info Exchange:

Occupy to Self Manage
By Michael Albert

         I have yet to see my nearest large occupation, Boston, or the precursor of all U.S. occupations, Wall Street. Instead, I have been on the road for the past six weeks in Thesselonika and Athens Greece; Istanbul and Diyarbikar Turkey; Lexington, Kentucky; London, England; Dublin, Ireland; and in Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia Spain.

        In all these places, I talked with diverse individuals at many meetings and popular assemblies. I met people involved in occupations, as well as audiences assembled by my hosts to hear about participatory economics. Beyond addressing assigned topics, my own priority was to learn about local movements. I repeatedly asked what folks struggling for many months wished to say to other folks first embarking on similar paths.

Boredom, Disempowerment, and Consensus Obstruct Growth
       In Greece and Spain, a single message predominated. It had nothing to do with analyses of capitalism or other analytic focuses. Instead, Greek and Spanish activists reported that they had massive assemblies in widespread cities and their occupations grew, grew, grew, so that assemblies were up to 12,000, 15,000 - and then they shrunk, shrunk, shrunk, so that assemblies are now not meeting, or are meeting in the hundreds, or less. ---

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ENTRAPMENT.

From Crimethinc:

           Over the past month, the FBI has initiated a spateof entrapment operations designed to frame anarchists as “terrorists.” Significantly, they have not targeted longtime organizers, but rather people who are relatively peripheral to anarchist communities. In response, we’ve prepared a pamphlet suitable for a wide readership explaining how this entrapment strategy works, and an analysis exploring why the FBI has adopted it. Please circulate these widely.

Reading PDF [550kb]
Imposed PDF for Printing [550kb]

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I'M PROUD.

I’M PROUD.

I’m proud of my people, proud to be one of them,

that great mass on society’s bottom rung.

Those who, with coal-dust under their nails

in their eyes, in their lungs

claw at the earths entrails.

Their brothers,

cement in their hair

in their mouth, in their ears,

oil ingrained in their fingers,

on their face.

Sisters, glistening with sweat

midst the ceaseless noise of machines

that throw out shirts, shoes, toys, carpets

for other people.

Those with soil and sweat stuck to their skin

smelling of the earth, feeding the multitude,

grinding out their lives in a harsh pitiless system

weighted down

with a sack load of half-dead dreams,

sometimes brought to their knees

by a tidal wave of despair,

never defeated,

groping in the dark to find tomorrow,

keeping hope alive;

they amaze me.

Somehow, from somewhere

in this cold, cruel

unforgiving scheme of things

they find love for their children.

Not a teaspoonful, not a cupful,

but buckets full, to bathe them in,

to pour over them.

They seem to know

that one day this world will be ours

and to take care of it

we will need those who have been loved.

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