Occupy Wall Street x R.A.W. Poets

Remember these guys?! I do! They really made the poetry readings in Zuccotti Park happen. Enjoy.

This Weekend: Reading @Jefferson Market Library and ACT UP + OCCUPY!

For the month of April, the Jefferson Market Library is hosting an exhibition of poems from the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology in the spiral staircase leading library goers from the ground floor to the main room. April is POETRY MONTH! And the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology is open to all poems: famous poets sit next to obscure poets, experimental poems are next to traditional ones, there are many languages, and poems both for and against the the Occupy Movement. The anthology consists of 721 poems, 4 poetic introductions, 448 poets (140 women, 275 men, 34 androgynous) and poems in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Urdu, German, Japanese, Chinese and Dutch.

Tomorrow, April 14th, the Jefferson Market Library has opened its doors to OWS Poetry Anthology to host a reading so all the poets and the community at large can come out and engage with each other. This is a great opportunity for the Occupy Movement to educate and converse with the West Village Community. And they have two weeks to engage with the poems on the walls and think about what is being said…. So come prepared! I’ve even invited all the poets in the Anthology to read a poem as well, so expect to be challenged and expect to be loved!

Poets will get 3-5minutes to read their work, depending on the size of the crowd…. The event will be held in a similar fashion to the Poetry Assemblies: readers will add their name to a “hat” and be called at random. The event will kick off with a short “lecture” on the significance of MAY DAY and the GENERAL STRIKE, which is currently a major focus of the Occupy Movement…. if you don’t know much about it, or have questions or wanna hear about it from an expert, be sure to be there at 2pm. If you have serious ethical, moral, or safety concerns about the poems on the walls, be sure to tell a librarian! They’ll take your concerns, print and laminate them, and post them on the wall so everyone can consider what you got to say…. Also email them to me, so I can add it to the anthology ;) stephenjboyerATgmailDOTcom

Also, to mark the occasion, we will be presenting the NYPL with two copies of the anthology. One will go to central archives and the other will stay in the Jefferson Market branch

And if you haven’t heard, the anthology is currently running a campaign to raise money so it can be printed and sent to occupations, special collections, and major library systems around the world. The Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology is an anthology made by and for the people…. Please spread the word: if we are going to be able to do this, we will need for this to go viral and be supported by everyone. The link for the campaign is here, at indiegogo.

SUNDAY:::

To commemorate its 25th anniversary, the AIDS activist group ACT UP will return to its roots and stage a massive demonstration and march on Wall Street — on Wednesday, April 25 — starting at 11 am at City Hall and ending on Wall Street.

Hundreds of protestors are expected to converge for a daylong siege in Lower Manhattan.

ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) will be joined by Occupy Wall Street (OWS), the organization making history this year and last with its public encampments and series of protests against the global financial community. The groups are joining forces to pump up the
volume on a growing nationwide outcry for a “Financial Speculation Tax” (Fi.S.T.) on Wall Street.

The groups are calling on local, state, and federal legislators to “give Wall Street the FiST,” which is needed to fill AIDS funding gaps and — once and for all — provide universal healthcare in the US. It’s time for effective healthcare to be made available to everyone — to the 99%, not just the 1%.

The Fi.S.T. does not target individual investors, and would not affect regular bank transactions. Instead, it would place a small tax — a mere fraction of one percent — on speculative trading by Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and other large financial institutions.

HIV treatment saves lives — by preventing new infections and keeping those already infected from reaching end-stage AIDS. However, of all people worldwide in need of access to HIV treatment, only 44% have it. More than 8 million people do not. In the United States today, 3,840 people who qualify for federal assistance to pay for HIV treatment are on waiting lists — or in other words, are at risk of dying from AIDS.

“The AIDS crisis is not over,” says veteran ACT UP New York member Ann Northrop. “But, we know it could be,” she adds.

AIDS treatment — when combined with simple prevention interventions — is the key to breaking the back of the epidemic worldwide. In addition to saving lives, early HIV/AIDS treatment reduces the risk of transmission of HIV by 96%. And so, with sufficient funding for
treatment and prevention, we can turn the tide on AIDS. Globally, HIV/AIDS has claimed over 30 million lives.

Both ACT UP and OWS suggest the revenue from a Financial Speculation Tax would be significant — potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The revenue from this tax should be used to fund the end of the AIDS pandemic, i.e. to fill in US budget gaps in the fight against
HIV/AIDS at home and abroad. It should be used to provide treatment, services and prevention to thousands of Americans and millions around the world. The groups also say the tax could help pay for universal healthcare in the US.

“We are organizing this historic united front to bring our message to governments and to Wall Street financiers who are sitting on the key to ending the AIDS epidemic,” according to Eric Sawyer, a founding member of ACT UP New York. “There is no excuse. We have the know how to end AIDS. It is lack of funding and political will that keeps us from reaching universal access to HIV treatment worldwide.”

Additional organizations are expected to join the demonstration in New York City, including Housing Works, Health GAP, National Nurses United, OWS Healthcare for the 99% Working Group, Visual AIDS, MIX NYC, Le Petit Versailles, Queerocracy, Queering OWS and others. The action will be in New York on April 25th — but the need is global. And, the time is now.

AIDS is now. END AIDS NOW!

ACT UP & Occupy!
Tax Wall Street!
End AIDS!

The AIDS crisis is not over — but it could be! Tax Wall St. to End #AIDS #ACTUP #OWS #OccupyAIDS #OccupyWallSt #TaxWallSt #EndAIDS #April25 #ActUp25 #A25

Poetry Anthology Update + Writing Prompt!

As I recently posted, we’re going to be putting on an OWS Poetry Anthology reading at the Jefferson Market Library on April 14th, from 2-5pm. As part of the reading, we’re going to be giving the library a copy of the OWS Poetry Anthology for them to keep as part of their special collections. If you’d like to be in the anthology that will be available at the New York Public Library, be sure to send me your poem by the evening of April 8th, a Sunday. As you probably know, the anthology is ever growing, but we’re going to give them an edition of it, so whatever has been sent to me by April 8th will go into the version of the anthology they’ll have on file. I hope to include your poem in it! Send work to stephenjboyer(AT)gmail.com. Also, if you want to help with some “fixing up” work on the anthology, get in touch with me! As I am trying to clean it up, fix formatting and typo’s. But no changes to any poems will be made! And only want help from people, that will respect all the differing work that has been sent into the anthology.

For those of you that need a prompt or some sort of push toward a poetic starting place… I suggest you go to Occupy Union Square and show solidarity with all the beautiful people currently living and occupying there… DISCOURSE DISCOURSE DISCOURSE and then go home and weave the conversations into an epic poem! For the more adventurous… I’ve been thinking it might be interesting to have people watch the documentary “Dark Secrets: Inside Bohemian Grove” by Alex Jones and then write a poem from the eyes of the owl god Moloch. Shoot forth from the eyes Moloch and unleash verse upon the robed men gathered to worship you!

Remember reality: PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER. ALL PEOPLE. HAVE THE POWER. The people gathered in the documentary may have accumulated “wealth” but it’s actually THE PEOPLE, you know, EVERYBODY that has THE POWER. I don’t mean to get all Star Wars on you, but it’s true… The elites NEED us. We do not need them. Spring forth, GOD/DESS, (the elites worship you) and fill their souls with verse! Moloch! You are the center of a weird, bizarre ancient Canaanite, Lucifarian, Babylonian ceremony, please make sure I get a spot on the guest list…

“What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!”

–Allen Ginsberg
excerpt from HOWL

Allen Ginsberg collection at the People’s Library

We now have an Allen Ginsberg collection in the People’s Library.
Thanks so much, Simon & Peter for the generous donations!

All Languages are Needed for the Poetry Anthology

The Occupy Wall St. Poetry Anthology is blossoming!

Yesterday Patti Smith came to the People’s Library. She dropped off about ten copies of Just Kids and signed them and I showed her the poetry anthology and she liked it and we talked about Allen Ginsberg and the occupations in Spain and she told me she has been recovering from bronchitis but wants to get better and do more and I couldn’t stop glowing!! And then Patti left to walk around the park and some woman came up to me and was like, “HEY, CAN I TAKE A PICTURE OF YOU, YOU HAVE THE BIGGEST SMILE!” And I was like, “SURE, PATTI SMITH WAS JUST HERE! SHE’S ONE OF MY GREATEST LOVES!!” And then Patti came back! I was stocking books and noticed Patti had taken off her boots and gave her wool socks to an elderly woman sleeping in the park. It was so incredibly real and so incredibly altruistic/humble and I ran back up to her and we talked some more about her recent trip to Madrid, the marches she’s been going and the incredible spirit sweeping the globe. I told her I gave her poems after her performance/reading celebrating her anniversary of her first reading at St. Marks and she said she still has them. Then we exchanged info so we can try to set up a time for her to read/talk at the peoples library, so hopefully she’ll come down to the library! And hopefully she’ll send poems for the anthology!

Today the Wall St. Journal published an article on the anthology! And the anthology seems to continually get better! And it’s imperative we get someone that is a master of many languages to join the anthology so that the anthology isn’t English-centric. We need someone that can wrangle in poets from many languages so the poetic spirit of the anthology transcends language barriers. I feel the poems shouldn’t be translated as that would create a hierarchy of language. Instead, poets from all languages should contribute their poems and it’s up to the readership to evolve so they can appreciate the vastness of language! So please, please help me spread the word so the many poetic voices of all the languages of the world can contribute to this massive text of dissidence, a testament to the infinite beauty of the human spirit.

And if your language is an oral language then by all means come to the library, grab a copy of the anthology and repeat your poems continuously!!