Mel Packer: Hots and a Cot
Payphone only cost a dime
in 1963 Wickenburg Arizona
where I had bedded down
courtesy of the local police
Mel Packer: The Bend on the River Road from Homestead
A falling down, bullet-pocked sheet metal wall
Once erected to mark the edges of the
South Side Jones and Laughlin steel mill
Mel Packer: Angie’s Place
Where back in the corner, there’s always some guy in a Pirates ballcap with skin like an old leather shoe who’s nursing the cheapest beer on tap….
Mel Packer: A History of Deadly Meddling
In this essay, we hear a first-hand account from Mel Packer who was one of the Americans who visited Iran during the hostage crisis of 1980.
Michael Simms: Here are the most popular Vox Populi posts of 2019
In 2019 Vox Populi published 751 posts, usually two per day, resulting in over 8 million views. Here is a list of our most popular posts in 2019 listed by category: poetry, personal essays, political articles, and art/music/cinema.
Mel Packer: Big Rock Vacation
We drank cold homemade limoncello In the swirling water of the hot tub on the porch And we didn’t worry about anyone seeing us Naked. Later, we made … Continue reading
Mel Packer: Divestment from Fossil Fuels
Feb. 13 and 14 were “Global Divestment Days” devoted to the international movement calling for governments, universities and financial and religious institutions to divest from fossil fuels. In Pittsburgh, college students … Continue reading
Mel Packer: Expendable Workers
The number of people seen as “expendable” by those in charge of our world is growing dramatically. Once, in an industrial era, the wealthy needed two-legged mules (read human laborers) … Continue reading
Mel Packer: Yes, my nation is guilty of torture…
Yes, my nation is guilty of torture, of murder, of discrimination, guilty of waging wars to make campaign donors even richer, guilty of many crimes that I was told in … Continue reading
Mel Packer: Fighting the Frackers
On Nov 4, 2014, the town of Denton, TX, with 123,000 residents, situated in the middle of the Barnett Shale formation and one of the most heavily fracked areas of … Continue reading
Mel Packer: We Seek Justice
Welcoming remarks to the Great Climate March in Butler, PA October 11, 2014, and Pittsburgh, PA October 14, 2014. We are gathered here to welcome the marchers to Pittsburgh, which … Continue reading
Mel Packer: Is It Time To Be Outlaws Again?
Only large-scale civil disobedience will make our leaders address economic injustice. In 1989, Bob Dylan recorded a song titled “Everything Is Broken”. That song seemed to go largely ignored, perhaps … Continue reading
Mel Packer: Why Bombing Iraq Again is a Terrible Idea
If I see a wounded animal by the side of the road with vultures cautiously approaching it and others circling overhead, should I swerve onto the shoulder and deliberately run … Continue reading
Vox Populi 
Mel Packer: Martin Luther King’s Radical Legacy
Now, some might say, “Radical?, King was no radical!” And, in fact, the image all too often projected in our children’s classrooms and in the mass media on MLK Day … Continue reading →