Kopkind Colony

“Something is afoot,” our friends Peter Linebaugh (past Kopkind mentor) and David Roediger write today in CounterPunch. Let us “grasp the spirit of the time.” As workers continue to wildcat throughout the country and the world against systems of death and disposability, from meatpacking houses to hospitals, grocery stores to digital services, construction sites to warehouses, herewith: posters from our friend Alessandra Moctezuma in San Diego, and verse from the great Jamaican poet Claude McKay (1889-1948).

If We Must Die

If we must die—let it not be like hogs,
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed 
In vain; then even the monsters we defy 
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like [wo]/men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
                                                                         Claude McKay