The question is: How do I render sound visible? For me, the answer is ethnopoetics, a mode of presenting performance, ritual, and cultural expression through the tools of poetry. In its possibilities for mirroring moments, and reflecting the spaciousness and impact of tone and silence and sound, the form seeks freedom from the strictures of prose. This is an ethnopoetic journey that invites rhythmic reading—listening with the eyes.

This article examines the first five years of the United Farm Workers' unionization of Minute Maid's workers in Florida. The UFW in Florida was a multiracial organization that reflected the "Nuevo South's" changing demographics in the 1970s. UFW organizers Mack and Diana Lyons, along with volunteer staff and rank-and-file members, cultivated a difficult but tenacious solidarity across racial lines through conscious, day-to-day activity in the union and in the community.

Reflecting on her induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, folk icon Joan Baez was underwhelmed by the resurgence of protest music. “There needs to be more. It’s terribly important, because that’s what keeps the spirit,” she told Rolling Stone. “Carping and shouting, as much as it gets stuff off your chest in front of 100,000, you really need something uplifting . . . The problem right now is we have no anthem.” Baez’s definition of useful music—something uplifting, preferably an anthem—summarizes her own canon of protest music and history with activist movements.