Thread by @sashasimic

The poem that @MichaelRosenYes read at the @uaf @AntiRacismDay vigil against #Antisemitism yesterday:
Mother Father Cable Street

You Connie Ruby Isakofsky
From Globe Road in Bethnal Green
You Harold Rosen
From Nelson street, Whitechapel

You Connie with your mother and father

From Romania and Poland

You Harold with your family from Poland

You Connie

You Harold

your families working in the rag trade

Hats, caps, jackets and gowns

Hats, caps, jackets and gowns

You both saw Hitler on the Pathe News

You both saw Hitler Blaming the Jews

You both collected for Spain, 

collecting for Spain

When Franco came

When round the tenements,

the whisper came

Mosley wants to march

Here, through the East End
So what should it be?
To Trafalgar Square to support Spain:

No pasaran?

Or to Gardiners Corner to support Whitechapel

They shall not pass.

Round the tenements

The whisper came

Fight here in Whitechapel

The whisper came:

Winning here 

We  support 

Spain there.

These are the streets where we live

These are the streets where we go to school

These are the streets where we work

They shall not pass.

You Connie

You Harold

Went to Gardiner’s Corner

You went to Cable Street

You piled chairs on the barricades

The mounted police charged you

A stranger took you indoors 

To escape a beating

And thousands

Hundreds of thousands came here

Fighting Mosley

Supporting Spain

Thinking of Germany

And

Mosley did not pass.

You Connie

You Harold

Said, today the bombs on Guernica in Spain

Tomorrow the bombs on London here.

And you were bombed

the same planes, the same bombs

landing in the same streets

where you had said

they shall not pass

And the bodies

piled up across the world

Million after million after million after million

You Connie, your cousins in Poland
Taken to camps

Wiped out

But you Connie, my mother

You Harold, my father

You survived

You lived

We were born

We grew 

You mother

You father

told us these things

I write these things

And today,

I tell you these things

We remember here together

Thanks to you

And we say:
They shall not Pass