Resistance moon: All the great work of the world

For a good part of the last century, Carl Sandburg was American poetry. A son of the heartland—it don’t come any more heart than Illinois—he won several Pulitzer Prizes, including one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. I’ll never be able to think of Chicago without the epithet he gave it: “hog butcher for the world” and “City of the Big Shoulders”.

Sandburg’s “I am the People, the Mob” fits in with our theme this month of resistance against the kleptocracy. It’s robust, it’s defiant, it’s prophetic. The people will prevail, regardless of what is thrown at them. I love the use of the first person singular pronoun, implying that the great mass of people is a single entity, united in purpose.

It’s the kind of thing that would-be dictators ought to be reminded of. But of course, they don’t ever believe in the people, do they?

“I am the People, the Mob”

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done

   through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s

   food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come

   from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth

   more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much

   plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of

   me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but

   Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I

   have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for

   history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use

   the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me

   last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be

   no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,"

   with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of

   derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.