By Debbie Allen, Cofounder, Poets Against Racism USA In the summer of 2020, following George Floyd’s murder and during the subsequent protests, I wrote a poem responding to current events and exploring the concept of lives mattering. The events of the times were touching communities everywhere, including in the rural region where I then lived. […]

Four years ago, on October 27, eleven people were murdered in the sacred space of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We remember them with sorrow, honor, and a renewed commitment to confront hate, bigotry, and racism. Here are two poems written in response to the massacre. October Twenty-SevenReflection on Tree of Life

By Patricia Thrushart, Cofounder, Poets Against Racism USA “You can take my body You can take my bones Take my blood but Not my soul …” —Rhiannon Giddens, “At the Purchaser’s Option” Singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens wrote these lyrics after reading an advertisement that had been placed in a Kingston, New York, newspaper