Canto XLVIII
Michael Ceraolo
Americans!
Look deeply
into your background,
into your town's history:
You probably have a Socialist in the closet,
for
there is a rich history of Socialism in this country,
(Surprise!)
largely untaught,
largely unscknowledged
(and therefore largely unknown)
Come out
into the open:
more than a thousand officials elected all over the country
in more than a hundred cities;
state legislators
from Massachusetts to Minnesota to Montana
all the way to California on the west coast,
and many states in between;
municipal officials
from Berkeley to Butte to Buffalo to Brimingham,
from Coeur d'Alene to Cleveland to Cedar City (Utah),
from Martins Ferry to Milwaukee to Missoula,
from Schenectady to Sheboygan to Star City (West Virginia)
And,
all of you diehards who actually argue about
the dime's worth of difference between the two 'major' parties,
take note:
when faced with an actual alternative
the 'two parties' managed to put aside their 'differences'
and formed fusion parties to defeat the Socialists
And they came up with other alleged 'reforms'
to keep control of the status quo:
'non-partisan' elections,
election of officials in an at-large manner
rather than by districts,
commision and other moves
to purportedly professionalize government,
trap for the workingman,
hid under the guise of virtue
And
when even all that didn't work
and Socialists were elected anyway,
there was no compunction about
denying legitimately-elected officials their seats,
or
expelling them without cause once they were seated
And
from City Council in Cleveland
to the state legislature in New York
to the U.S. Congress in Washington,
such mission (not impossible) was acomplished
And the lesson to be learned
was that it was
useless to elect a working class minority
if the chamber of commerce majority
can at any time oust them from office
And
maybe that's why
all of this remains untaught
