Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem

Who said free.  Not me.

RMJ's POST from yesterday on the reaction to the lionization of the man who shot the insurance CEO reminds me of what I've increasingly been thinking about the prospect of the United States at the deathbed of liberal democracy,  that for those other than the white and prosperous and, especially, the affluent, liberal democracy was never an especially good deal.  Thinking about it early this morning, I think that dear old Black Gay poet said it very, very well and, as a radical of his  time (the poem was first published by The International Workers Order), he was inclusive in a way that the white, college-credentialed "new left" of my time seldom was.  By that time old Langston Hughes was considered out of fashion.

 
Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Langston Hughes
1901 –1967

The rhetoric may be a bit old fashioned, most poetry ages a bit, especially through insincere and second rate copying of its rhetoric.  A lot won't get the irony of the idea of "freedom" in the poem.  I dare say for the superficial his period-appropriate use of the word "negro" might be enough to stop them from hearing what he said which is just what might save us by his point that the fakery of liberal democracy is bound to rot because it isn't equal.   I said the day after the disaster of last month that listening to People of Color would get you a lot farther than listening to those telling us we need to make nice to the white supremacists.   We have to appeal to the margin who can understand that equality is their best chance and the only chance to win against the goddamned billionaires who are lining up to fleece the federal and state treasuries, the Musks and Thiels and and Bezoses and all of the rest of them.   

Equality is the real foundation of real democracy, the only safe foundation of freedom that won't turn into poison as America's has.