7.9r Police & Militias Beat & Kill Protesters

by Eric Chaet

Talking heads
well-intentioned
or cynical
someone chose—
who won’t disrupt
the sweet deal
of those
who chose—
complacent
dressed to impress us
role models of success
& the kind of so-called
common sense
that keeps the ball rolling
over those not chosen
the willfully ignorant
& also those who refuse to give up
learning & knowing for themselves—
tell us again & again how terrible
that in Iran & China
police & militias beat & kill protesters.

Even remembering
how police & militias beat & killed protesters
in Chicago, at Kent State, at the Pennsylvania steels mills,
& Colorado mines—
requires great devotion to truth & to justice
no matter how often the word justice is invoked by hypocrites
& by the confused—
often as an excuse—
& stamina
& is an act of subversion
against a comfortable tyranny
in the midst of mass hypnosis constantly reinforced
by the threat of force, prison, homelessness,
humiliation, starvation
& by billions of bribes
addictive
& with fatal hidden side-effects.

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Picture: Chicago, 1968, via jimsbikeblog