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Episode: Poems in a Time of Protest
Description: Protest poetry cries out against wrongs (of any kind) that ought to be set right, whether they are social, political, environmental, etc. It’s not always kind and polite. It speaks truth to power. Poets have used their verses to oppose slavery, the segregation, Vietnam War, environmental issues and racial oppression, the Iraq war, and more recently, discrimination and police violence against African-Americans. James Baldwin in 1979 wrote that "You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way peo...