Tag Archives: legal precedent

START YOUR DAY THIS WAY

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Start each day with something to say

that cheers the heart and paves the way

for kindness unbound by fear of loss

of reputation and a safe situation,

threatened by retribution for your contribution

to truth and justice hour-by-hour, day-by-day.

We are on a common journey lifted higher

by a deep yearning for freedom and equality 

to which every American and immigrant aspires;

tied down with words in our Constitution

and protected by laws, enforced by courts

which pledge apolitical, neutral decisions

rendered with stated grace and precision.

But, when law is ignored, or twisted by greed or hate;

when SCOTUS corrupts its mission and states

precedent no longer controls politicians

who are free to break laws and showcase their flaws

without any constraints, our laws carry such taint

that constitutional words become blurred on the page.

Crying over each turn of the page by a party of miscreants

takes too much energy and lessens our pace.

We are still here. We are still to be feared 

by those who would take our freedoms away.

We are not going back. That is not the progressive way.

We only go forward to claim a new day

where America’s promise wins over the fray

created to disrupt and corrupt election day.

Stop whining. Stop crying. Get out and register voters.

Drive them to the polls. Guard their way.

There are more more than enough of us to hold sway

and create a better country, one we can take pride in every day.

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Filed under POETRY, POLITICS

REVERBERATION

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The persistence of slavery,

Jim Crow, and voter suppression

is not a reflection.

It is a reverberation,

the persistence of dehumanization,

after it has been stopped by legislation.

It  bounces in a steady beat

from the surface of sexist, racists in defeat

within the closed surface of a court

reflecting the beliefs of the sort

of persons who know better but insist

that white male supremacy must persist.

This is not a new phenomenon.

It is the echo of a time long gone.

And yet its power is amplified

within the power structure which has denied

the rights of people to be free

of such discriminatory ignominy.

We cannot dance to this tune of hate.

Such evil we must abate

by refusing to allow the many incidents

of courts refusing to follow precedent,

which bend the arc of justice so low

we begin to ask them all to go

back to the rock they crawled out from under

before they tear the nation asunder.

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Filed under POETRY