Don’t Forget to Remember

Chants against forgetting during the pandemic

Don’t forget the farmworkers
Don’t forget the day laborers
Don’t forget the janitors and maintenance workers
Don’t forget the undocumented and documented workers everywhere 
Don’t forget the truck drivers, the delivery workers, the postal service workers
Don’t forget the workers in the food processing plants, the slaughterhouses, the meat packers, the poultry plant and fish processing workers
Don’t forget the unemployed and the never employed because of the color of their skin
Don’t forget the uninsured, the perennially sick, who go to work when there is work because there is no other choice
Don’t forget the nurses and doctors in the hospitals and ERs
Don’t forget the nursing home workers taking care of our elders
Don’t forget our elders and those isolated and suffering alone in hospitals and nursing homes
Don’t forget to remember those who make our stay at home possible
Don’t forget the prisoners piled on top of each other
Don’t forget Leonard Peltier.
Don’t forget migrant workers, migrant families, migrant children in immigration jails and in squalor right across the border separated from us and their loved ones
Don’t forget the children and their families who don’t speak English, don’t have access to the internet or the devices to do so
Who have to choose between food and a place to live
Don’t forget the dishwashers, waiters, cooks, all the restaurant workers
Don’t forget the street vendors, 
Don’t forget the farm workers and flower cutters and those who pot the plants you take home
When you smell the roses…
Don’t forget to remember and do something about it.
They were there before the pandemic and
They are there now as we sing from the rooftops and zoom everywhere.
Don’t forget to remember. . .

[April 26, 2020]