Protest Conductor's Score

A setting of the poem “Protest” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, this chamber piece for String Quartet, SATB choir, and percussion addresses issues concerning exploitation of labor and wealth inequality. 
 
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Protest
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1914)
Edited by Mary Simmons Walsh
 
To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. 
The few who dare, must speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No power 
Can gag or throttle. 
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.
 
I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.