MY CLEVELAND CULTURE FOR THE WEEKEND: Hearing Daniel Thompson read a poem he wrote in a Parchman, Mississippi jail in 1961 -- and then two more -- to a cheering, SRO crowd of immigrant workers and their supporters at Sagrada Familia church Sunday evening.

The event was the Cleveland stop of the national Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. In the hall to greet the bus riders from Chicago and points west were over a hundred folks from the Dover, Ohio area -- Latin American workers in a poultry factory in Kidron who are campaigning for representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 880. Not to mention lots of people from Sagrada Familia parish, the West Side Hispanic community and the labor movement.

And... Afi-Odelia Scruggs, my favorite former Plain Dealer columnist, who sat down at the keyboard to belt out "Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Set On Freedom", followed by "Jesus Is On the Mainline" in English and Spanish.

Whoo-eee!

Here's Thompson's Parchman jail poem, reprinted from Art Crimes #3 courtesy of Agent of Chaos:

Freedom Rider Graffiti
by Daniel Thompson

Poem scraped with contraband
Fifty-cent piece on the prison wall
In Parchman, Mississippi
Summer, 1961

Know now
No hero here
No how
If ever
Hung
On tree
The way
They done
JC
I'd be
Cross
I guess
Hell
Yes