Poetry About Injustice

Injustice poetry refuses to look away from what is wrong in the world. These verses bear witness to inequality, oppression, and systemic wrongs - giving voice to the marginalized, documenting what history tries to erase, and demanding that we see what power would prefer we ignore. They explore the rage of watching injustice unfold, the exhaustion of fighting systems designed to break you, and the courage required to keep hoping for change.

But poetry about injustice is not just documentation of pain - it's also a call to action, a preservation of truth, and a reminder that every justice we now take for granted was once considered impossible. These poems honor those who fought before us, strengthen those fighting now, and inspire those who will continue the work tomorrow.

Featured Poems

The Invisible Labor

For those who clean, care, and serve - and are never seen.

She cleans the offices after everyone goes home, emptying trash bins of people who earn in an hour what she makes in a week.

They walk past her like furniture, never learning her name, never noticing when she's absent, sick and unable to afford the doctor.

This is the invisible architecture of inequality: systems designed so well that privilege feels like the natural order, and those who maintain it remain unseen.

But she is here, her labor matters, and one day they will have to see what they've been built upon.

- Carmen Rodriguez

The Talk

A father prepares his son for a world that sees him as a threat.

At twelve, my son asks why he can't wear his hoodie up, why I get nervous when he plays with toy guns, why the rules are different for him.

I want to lie, to tell him the world is fair, that his skin is just skin, that he'll be judged by his character alone.

Instead, I teach him how to survive: keep your hands visible, speak clearly, don't run, don't reach, remember that your youth won't protect you the way it protects others.

This is the theft injustice commits: it steals innocence, forces children to navigate dangers they didn't create, turns childhood into survival training.

- Malcolm Williams

Minimum Wage Math

When working full-time still means poverty.

I do the math every month: forty hours times four weeks times minimum wage minus taxes minus rent minus utilities minus food -

The equation never balances. I work full-time and still can't afford to get sick, to fix my car, to dream beyond survival.

They call us essential workers, then pay us like we're disposable. They tell us to work harder, as if effort, not structure, is what determines who eats and who starves.

This is not a personal failure. This is a system working exactly as designed - to extract our labor while denying us dignity.

- Sarah Chen

Classic Voices

I, Too

by Langston Hughes (1926)

Hughes's powerful assertion of Black Americans' rightful place in American society, written during the Harlem Renaissance as a response to Walt Whitman's 'I Hear America Singing.'

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong.

Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then.

Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed - I, too, am America.

The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus (1883)

Written to raise money for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal, this poem envisions America as a refuge for the persecuted and poor - an ideal often forgotten in immigration debates.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Micro Verses

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

- Theodore Parker

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is free when others are oppressed.

- Liberation wisdom

Deeper Explorations

Injustice & Resistance

The courage to stand up, speak out, and fight back against oppression.

The Protestor

My feet hurt, my voice is raw, I've been tear-gassed twice - but I'm still here.

Because silence is complicity, and comfort is not worth the cost of my soul.

- Marcus Stone

Passing the Torch

I marched in the '60s, and here I am again, seventy-three years old, still fighting for the justice I thought we'd won.

But I see young faces taking up the cause, and I know the work continues - each generation carrying the torch a little further toward the light.

- Ruby Washington

Injustice & Hope

Finding reasons to keep fighting even when change feels impossible.

Small Victories

We didn't change the system, but we got that one person released from detention.

We didn't end poverty, but we fed fifty families this week.

Justice work is built on these moments - small victories that add up to movements, to changes, to a world slightly closer to fair.

- Elena Vasquez

Poetry About