St Martin of Tours Church
Bushwick’s churches are world renowned, especially St. Barbara’s Church. But St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church on Hancock and Knickerbocker ain’t nothing to sneeze at. The church originally named Our Lady of Lourdes and was founded in 1876, and its parishioners were made up of Irish Catholics that had emigrated to the neighborhood. In the 1970s, like much of Bushwick, the church burned to the ground. To rebuild, the parish merged with another called St Martin of Tours, which was founded in 1906. The namesake of the church, Martin of Tours, is most famous for using his military sword to cut his cloak in two, to give half to a beggar clad only in rags in the depth of winter. He is the patron saint of beggars (because of sharing his cloak), wool-weavers and tailors. The church serves the predominantly Spanish-speaking through mass and other religious resources. Don’t be afraid to pop in and light a prayer candle, the groundskeeper is very friendly.
We Write to Remember
by Shy Richardson, Max Desir and Elvis Valdez
We write to remember
Those Young Lords who waved swords
To clear paths for Kings with rusted crowns
Who tended to the soil of battle grounds
To grow something
To reap something.
For humans deemed alien
But your mother’s womb is a border, too.
We write to mend the wounds of people
Who were once told their language was “illegal” (s.c.)
We write because you cannot handcuff a tongue
For those who allowed their voices to be rung
From the grape fields, sun glaring in their optics
To the barrios underneath the skies of the tropics
We spit for those who fought for freedoms
For the Lolita’s, fearless in her pursuit of a free people
For the Eugenio Hostos’, the Pedro Albizu’s…
We write in remembrance, in resistance,
Signed yours, truly…
El Grito de Lares
Through their first walks to war
Mothers kissed the heads of sons in blessing, protecting from what they already knew
Brown skin threatened by bullets, pierced in ways their hearts couldn’t be.
These were no longer little boys afraid of the dark,
But young men in search of light.
No longer afraid to be brave
In the face of freedom’s extermination.
Taking orders to proceed ahead with the mission
To let the sound of their own voices bellow
Un Grito!
as they hold on to their last kiss
Un Grito!
Sounding the alarm of their dreams
Un Grito!
Out of hunger for freedom
They were born for a reason
Lived with questions
And died with purpose
And we write for them
To remember them
to make sure
the sound of their voices
never lies dormant again.
We walk up and down these streets hearing about history
Empty lots where our friends played stick ball
Tar streets where tired feet trekked home
Pondering the factories where our fathers worked
to bless a table with sustenance
How much is your time worth?
20 cents an hour…
In the hot fields our mother’s brung food from
as their bent necks soaked sun
How much is your blood worth?
They found justice in unity
& strawberries growing unkempt
Vines rising wild, prompted by the dirt & sun
No justice, no orange juice!
No rest for the bends in their spines
No grapes
Feel the wrath of hunger
Like Cesar did
He swallowed their truth
And unveiled his bones
His body was a museum for our struggle
trying to get out to find a better way to live.