For the Los Angeles Janitor’s Strike, April 2000
Beneath steel and concrete,
Beneath night’s wandering shadow,
Come the eyes, voices and arms—elbows and knees—
That make buildings shine, magnifying the sun into all our faces.
The nameless, the scorned, the ignored—yet
They are the humanity that makes human things work.
Mothers and children, fathers and uncles, family and family—
They come to make this city dance, the rhythm of what’s just,
What is secure—the dance of strike and protest, demand and dignity.
They toil inside these glass temples—they clean them—
The truly human who now step into the streets, into our tomorrows,
And declare: ¡Basta! Enough! What we clean, we also make sacred.