A memorial for Felice Yeskel will be held this Sunday 10/23 at 1:30 at the Jewish Community of Amherst. Felice’s long-time colleague Chuck Collins wrote this poem in honor of this occasion memorializing Class Action’s kick-ass co-founder.
Your Class War (For Felice Yeskel)
Class war!
You would laugh
at the absurd idea
of the poor inconveniencing the rich.
You who walked the battlefield,
listened to people’s stories
lives snuffed short from
poverty shredded families,
boils turned inward: bottles, needles, sleepless nights,
hands pummeling bodies of those they loved.
Don’t talk to me about class warfare, you would say.
Working class lower east side
well loved only child of Phyllis
and Harry who drove his truck to collect the flour sacks
while you rode the subway to Hunter elementary
gifted (what bullshit, you would say) child program
confused and ashamed
at your playmate’s Fifth Avenue dwelling
where your whole apartment
could have fit in her foyer
so you didn’t invite
your new friends home
for six years.
Nonviolent class warrior
who didn’t hate the rich
or want to take an eye for an eye.
It was absurdly simple,
your program:
You wanted to love those with riches
so deeply and convincingly
that they would loosen the grip
on the treasures of the commons
and let them flow into the parched valleys of
poverty and deprivation
of insecurity, indignity and want
until there was enough for all.
Enough
to you
was not too much
to ask.
Just enough moisture
to let the alders
sprout from dormant seed banks.
Enough that no child would ever
be hungry
or doubt they were loved
or forget that the world
was abundant
good and sufficient.
The poet Hafiz said
“Even after all this time
The sun never says to earth:
‘You owe me’
Look what happens
with a love like that
It lights the whole sky”
Your class war was to beam the sky
into the darkest corners of economic pain,
blasting away the lifeless roots
of greed and isolation
reminding us that
today, now, here, look, behold
there is enough.
By Chuck Collins, October 19, 2011
Thank you, Chuck. Seeing Felice again through your stirring poem helps me stay strong for the struggle and reminds me of how I want to see.
Chuck, you’ve done her justice. HOw grateful I am to have known her, to know you and the many other fine people who flowed through MNS.
Thank you, Chuck. Your witness of her spirit is beautiful. The last two lines are the spiritual heart of her message.
No one who reads Chuck’s tribute to Felice can fail to see the line that both have drawn to where we are today. Love and resolve, dignity and humility, boldness and reflection – these and other values made the occupy! movement possible. On Sunday many wonderful memories of and tributes to Felice will be shared by those touched profoundly by her life. I hope also to be at an occupy! encampment when the community there names those on whose shoulders they stood to get to this exciting and hopeful place. Felice Yeskel, Presente!
This is beautiful. I never had the privilege of meeting Felice, but participating in Class Action (and hearing Betsy’s stories about her) gives me some idea of how wonderful a person she was, and how greatly she is missed.
“It was absurdly simple
your program:
You wanted to love those with riches
so deeply and convincingly
that they would loosen the grip
on the treasures of the commons
an let them flow into the parched valleys of
poverty and deprivation
of insecurity, indignity and want
until there was enough for all.”
Beautifully put!
Wonderful poem, Chuck. It made me cry. We can be grateful we had Felice for the time we did – to educate and inspire people, creating an organization that lives on.
Joan
Bless.
Beautiful, powerful, stirring…thanks, Chuck.