By Mary Ellen Talley

My book club at Phinney Neighborhood Association in Seattle met this fall to discuss and rave about Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. Her well-researched book makes a persuasive case that caste, not just racism, is the original ripped and frayed thread that runs through America’s social, political, and economic fabric. Another book club member said if you want to delve more thoroughly into these topics, read White Trash, The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in America, by historian Nancy Isenberg. I proceeded to read the books back-to-back. 

Wilkerson compares treatment of Blacks in America to treatment of the Dalit caste in India. When Martin Luther King, Jr. journeyed to a city in Kerala, India, he was shocked to be introduced by a high school principal, “Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.” Wilkerson reports that when the shock wore off, MLK recognized the truth of the introduction.

By Jawanza Phoenix

When they come brandishing fangs, sharp teeth and

long tails, threatening our sense of belonging,

we will stand our ground together, refusing to 

shrivel up or to become invisible 

Their words cannot shake us or shrink us

By James Croal Jackson

Wherever I walk is without 
consequence. Skid Row, 

alleyways, abandoned
lots of Walmarts. I was a kid

just wandering.
Believing I was in

the Mark Strand 
poem. I thought

By Russell Willis

Called to dream dreams

falling back on convenient dreams

or comfortable or comforting dreams

or those of the happy-ending sort

What of those exhausted dreams?

the ones demanding sacrifice

the ones we have tired of dreaming

the ones we have dreamed in vain

By Zachary Brett Charles

These statues are in the way

and ugly, frankly.

Limbs stick out

at odd angles, perpendicular

to crushed bodies, penalized.

Unable to bear the weight 

of the arcs on my shoulders-my name

is not Noah-that is my friend

who built bongs from gatorade bottles in high school.

My arcs are long and heavy,

Lyrics, Music, and Performance by Michael McNevin

Many years ago, on 4th of July in Sacramento, California, I heard a black man playing jazz trumpet on the Sacramento River Delta. The song I’ve written about that experience is titled Man on the Levee. It’s about celebrating life while playing on the delta breeze. In this song, the Sacramento breeze has now become the breeze of the Mississippi Delta. The trumpet takes on the tone of a civil war bugle. The fireworks, and the battlefield smoke, goes Blue and Grey, colors of the uniforms of the North and South. The song goes back further; centuries of fighting for freedom, repeating history, all the way back to Moses. The last verse is contemporary; peace time, folks in their lawn chairs enjoying fireworks in the Sacramento sky. It’s a patriotic song for soldiers of war (no matter which war), and it’s a song of being together as a country celebrating freedom.

The Bandcamp Link of Man on a Levee https://michaelmcnevin.bandcamp.com/track/the-man-on-the-levee