Wokers United Will Never Be Defeated Obreros Unidos Jamás Serán Vencidos

52 WORKERS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED OBREROS UNIDOS JAMÁS SERÁN VENCIDOS A militant unarmed march to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The usual signs, banners. Usual chants. Wave after wave the same Suddenly held up: at the tinkle of glass. Distant, tiny, shocking like the death of a toy Frosted panes broken a fist emerged, a forearm a face, another... In gloom 5 storeys deep a hand started 53 waving from the bottom of its life, as a sea fan rust streaming ships have passed over Now short thick leggy fingers hook through the window grates: undocumented workers, illegal aliens from South America Africa the Caribbean: shouting French, Spanish, tilted and musical English It is the human rainbow arrested, detained. It had been Bolivian with Indian cheekbones It had saved, waited to cross the Rio Grande packed in vans and car trunks to be shot at, raped in the moonless dust 54 It was Haitians on rafts pushing out to sea landing in these marine gray block buildings, Crosshatch fences raked with barbed wire, and around these a field of black Brooklyn ghetto, a prison in a vast crumbling prison, becoming this protest against this. Above all it would be the voice from a broken window, trailing down at the end thonk yooo thonk yooo it blew a hole through everything ...