Cotton mills

1802

Those first cities found orphaned children

Kept them in poor houses of London

Only a little more than 2oo years ago

Those children were moved up stream to the cotton mills – fuel of industrialization.

Where I’m from

It was those boys

9 years old, younger

12 hour days

6 inches from the ground

Little fingers sorting

Tying - Trying to be human in

The laboring heart of an inhuman

Industrial way of being.

I wonder if Gandhi knew this

When he spoke of home spun

a century later.

non-cooperation

swadeshi boycott of foreign goods

Non-violence

Khadi – home spun thread

Home made clothe - the old way.

Despite the cost of time

in comparison to British clothe

Swadeshi

non-violence

non-cooperation

Did he know that

Where I’m from

It was the boys

9 years old, younger

the one’s who needed to be loved most

12 hour days

little fingers

tying

and for the first time

wearing clothes made by

strangers

Swadeshi

Non-cooperation

To make these clothes for my

Family, with my son playing at

My loom is

Swadeshi

Non-violence

“and like a slave

her feeble helpless pow’rs

are doom’d to work

at least for thirteen hours”

it was 1802 when

those doctors said

“wait”

it took them 17 years

To legislate a work day from

5am through 9pm with

1½  hours for meals

5am through 9pm

Except if

there was drought

or the mill broke –

And they had to catch up on

the orders.

By 1835 there was some

1 000 cotton mills in England

135 in Scotland

29 in Ireland

237 000 people they estimated

½ were women older than 13

13.2% were children younger than that

“and like a slave,

her feeble helpless pow’rs

are doom’d to work at least

for thirteen hours”

Did Africa know then

That bundles of used clothes

Would dress a continent

Out pricing those hand made

Fabrics

Hand died fabrics

Colors of home

Where I’m from

They used to work those kids

To the bone

“and like a slave,

her feeble helpless pow’rs

are doom’d to work at least

for thirteen hours”

No wonder my people bet their lives

By getting on those boats to

Reach a shore only to discover

People wearing royal buckskin clothes

Because where I’m from

The kings family owned the

Forest and the deer

1785

King George the third

“No man henceforth shall be in possession of …”

“Imprisoned a year and a day…”

“And after that expires

He shall abjure the realm of England”

While we worked 5 – 9

Fed tea

And fish and chips

From oceans already become

Thread bare.

Between 1755 and 1773

2 601 152 lbs of deerskin

were shipped to England from

savannah, Georgia

“and like a slave,

her feeble helpless pow’rs

are doom’d to work at least

for thirteen hours”

The children who needed love the most

Were trapped in the heart of an

Industrial machine

Abused by a society lost to

Itself –

And those boys became fathers

And those girls became mothers

Of generations of cultural orphans

Spiritually lost within

A machine driven world

Where god became an idea

Packaged by religion

And the machine keeps

Chugging along

…

Inform yourself from

A time when the most

In need were nurtured

Identify with a time

When your people

Acted from love

Towards each other

And the planet

Nov. 25^th, 2012

Fire broke out in a Bangladeshi factory killing 112 workers who couldn’t escape as there was no fire escapes.

The clothes we wear today are not much different than 200 years ago.

Speak to the silence in the weave of our clothes.

We may think that

200 years looks differently

but is it not just a wolf in sheep’s clothes?

Find the time when Your people Acted from love towards each other and the planet, own that history, we’ve been fighting all along.


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here's a rare color video of
1927 London england