Month: February 2013

Getting the Story Out — Terry Messman and the Power of Activist Journalism

Opinion
Reporting from “the shelters, back alleys, soup kitchen lines and slum hotels where mainstream reporters rarely or never visit,” Street Spirit runs stories on economic inequality and the daily grind of human rights violations that poor people face. It also chronicles the movement that is dramatically working for human rights.

Mental Health, Inc.

Poetry
Drug companies market their super-profitable, addictive and dangerous psych-meds to children. One of the most heinous crimes of the 21st Century will be the massive over-medication of children. Physicians' willingness to uncritically follow pharmaceutical companies' profit-driven recommendations to prescribe dangerous drugs to children will one day be recognized as criminal negligence.

Which Road Do We Take

Poetry
In two weeks/ the amount the world spends/ on weapons to kill/ every man woman and child/ in just two short weeks/ that money would feed/ every soul upon the earth/ no one would ever be/ hungry or in need again/ just two short weeks folks

Unwanted and Under Attack in Their Own Country

Poetry
Re-fancying our neighborhoods,/ we liquidate the poor./ They are not an asset to refinance for./ We cannot see the living assets/ beyond our “perfect garbage cans”/ collecting waste of the lifeless lives we lead,/ full of all the things we think we need.

Corporate Misconduct: Dangerous to All Living Things

Poetry
Drug companies market their super-profitable, addictive and dangerous psych-meds to children. One of the most heinous crimes of the 21st Century will be the massive over-medication of children. Physicians' willingness to uncritically follow pharmaceutical companies' profit-driven recommendations to prescribe dangerous drugs to children will one day be recognized as criminal negligence.

Blues for the Homeless

Poetry
I am amazed at some homeless elders’ carts,/ blankets and clothes in neat folds,/ layers of grace in intricate space,/ Crimes of legalized hate,/ may take the carts of the homeless away/ but cannot separate them from God/ whose home is in their heart/ with or without a shopping cart.

Strong and Unbound Wings

Poetry
We think of you/ long on the streets/ a titanium brace in your bad leg,/ sighing at pain, yet uncomplaining/ like a statue of marble or bronze./ One day, Mike, may you glide/ from your sidewalk perch/ as if you were always a bird,/ and now at last your wings/ are strong, unbound.

The Comfortable and the Cold

Poetry
We still have the highest/ percentage of homeless/ people per population/of any city in the nation/ It's 2013 and still / the drained and pained/ unhoused battalions/ of brokenhearted shopping cart/ soldiers come and go

The Shelter of Love

Poetry
What about street dogs,/ the soft undersides of paws/ laid at night/ upon face or arm/ warding off cold & harm./ Dogs with hungry sorrowful/ eyes will gaze into our own./ If we have zero food/ to offer, not even a bone,/ a dog still claims us,/ downtrodden as we are,/ as his home.

The Flower Girl

Poetry
Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshkin believed/ “Beauty will save the world.”/ By taking beauty to the shelter,/your flowers saved one part of it./ You smile in the spirit of Don Quixote:/ Free flowers for the poor/ could subvert the whole economy,/ beauty could ruin the banking system,/ kindness could wreck capitalism.