Redtree Times

Exiles: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , 1995

‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.’

—The Masque of Anarchy, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819)

I was planning on writing about something other than the current situation in this country but there were a couple of things I felt I needed to add to yesterday’s post. The first are the lines above from an 1819 poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is the final verse from The Masque of Anarchy which was written in response to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, England.

In August of 1819, a huge crowd of around 60,000 had gathered in Manchester to protest for parliamentary reforms which included manhood reform. At the time, only about 11% of adult British males were allowed to vote and that number was even much lower in Manchester and the rest of the industrial north. British forces were sent in to disperse the crowd and capture the protest leaders. The calvary, with sabres drawn, slammed into the crowd, in the process killing an estimated 18 protesters and injuring 400- 700 more.

Disturbed by the event, Shelley composed his poem. It has been called the first statement of the power of nonviolent resistance and has had huge influence over the past two centuries in rousing the oppressed many against the tyrannical few. Its final verse was recited by the students at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and by protesters during the Egyptian revolution of 2011. It has been the rallying cry for many union organizers.

These five lines are pretty powerful, then and now. The imagery of the masses of people who had sleepwalked their way into an intolerable situation suddenly awaking from that deep sleep with an emboldened defiant spirit and the realization that they are the many resonates in any time. 

Activist/ historian Howard Zinn has written of the power these lines as well as the power of music, art, poetry, and literature in rousing people to the fact there is power in their numbers. His words make me think of those things that have made America what it has represented for so many people around the world up to this point. It has been our freedom to think and create and openly express ourselves, which is rare in many parts of the world and something we have taken for granted here. Our greatest exports were not products or commodities, not cars or grain or oil.

No, our strength was built on those freedoms which the rest of the world witnessed in our music, our literature, our films, our art. It was our art that created the mythology of America, that ideal that spawned revolutions around the globe by daring others to follow our lead. It was our blues and jazz and rock and roll. It was the Technicolor dreams that came from Hollywood. It was the stories and myths of the Cowboy and the rugged individualists who forged the American West. 

Our greatest export was the idea of America.

To the rest of the world, especially those who lived under oppression and poverty, America represented a blank canvas on which anyone could paint their own picture.

And that is being taken away.

Fascists and authoritarian regimes have no tolerance for the inherent freedom of art except that which serves as propaganda. As I pointed out in an earlier post, art provides clarity. It helps us clearly see and understand despite the chaos of the situation at hand.

It is a light that cuts through the dark. 

Okay, I’ve had my say for a while.

The other thing I wanted to share was another Chumbawamba song that is very much pertinent to the moment. This is their 2005 version of Bella Ciao which is a song from the Italian Resistance who fought against the Nazis and Fascists in and before WWII. It was originally a folk song from the 19th century sung by workers in the rice paddies of Northern Italy as a protest against the harsh working conditions. 

Just keep this in mind: Ye are many – they are few…