Kimya Dawson not only nailed the essence of protests for #BlackLivesMatter. She knew in which direction the protest marches needed to push. Toward our system's seams. If you are having trouble finding the lyrics of her song about HANDS UP DON'T SHOOT I CAN'T BREATH, it's because it's called At the Seams. I've taken the liberty to reformat Dawson's brilliant lyrics to unpack her references and simulate her cadence. AT THE SEAMS by Kimya Dawson 1. Left hands hold the leashes and the right hands hold the torches, And Grandpas holding shotguns swing on porch swings hung on porches, And the Grandmas in their gardens plant more seeds to cut their losses, And the poachers, with the pooches and the nooses, preheat crosses. And the pooches see the Grandpas and they bare their teeth and growl, While their owners turn their noses up like they smell something foul, And they fumble with their crosses and they start to mumble curses, And they plot ways to get Grandpas off of porches into hearses. But the Grandpas on the porches are just scarecrows holding toys, And the Grandmas in the gardens are papier-mâché decoys, While the real Grandmas and Grandpas are with all the girls and boys Marching downtown to the City Hall to make a lot of noise, Saying: Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe. BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace. I know that we can overcome because I had a dream- A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams. 2. Sometimes it seems like we’ve reached the end of the road We’ve seen cops and judges sleep together wearing long white robes. And they put their white hoods up, Try to take the black hoods down, And they don’t plan on stopping til we’re all in the ground. Til we’re dead in the ground or we’re incarcerated ‘Cause prison’s a big business form of enslavement Plantations that profit on black folks in cages They’ll break our backs and keep the wages. It’s outrageous that there’s no place we can feel safe in this nation Not in our cars, Not at the park, Not in subway stations, Not at church, The pool, The store, Not asking for help, Not walking down the street, So we’ve gotta scream and yell: Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe. BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace. I know that we can overcome because I had a dream- A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams. 3. You tweet me my own lyrics, Tell me to stop Letting a few bad apples ruin the bunch. Don’t minimize the fight comparing apples to cops This is about the orchard's poisoned roots, not loose fruits in a box. Once the soil's been spoiled, the whole crop’s corrupt. That’s why we need the grassroots working from the ground up. And we look to Black Twitter, to stay woke and get some truth, 'Stead of smiling cops and black mugshots from biased corporate news. 'Cause if you steal cigarillos, or you sell loose cigarettes, Or you forget your turn signal, will they see your skin as
Tag: Black Lives Matter
American christianity is a cargo cult
Haha I sympathize with this meme. But it applies to the colonized as well as the colonizers. I do tend to fault impoverished people for shackling themselves to church dogma. Religion rationalizes and preserves inequity. Of course this ignores that African American congregations are community centers above everything else. To cast off religion would deprive believers of their whole social fabric. But isn’t that like arguing that slave plantations were more than places of involuntary employment? Obviously tobacco and cotton plantations were the centers of slave communities. To end slavery threatened a slave’s source of everything: sustenance, shelter, family and community. Small wonder most slaves resisted those agitating for abolition. Slave rebellions were always betrayed by fearful slaves. No churches advocated for abolition. Even the civil rights movement a century later, was resisted by African American churches, except for a tiny few associated with MLK. Everyone today pretends to have marched with MLK, even as they admonish their followers to stay in their pews! Ferguson ignited the Black Lives Matter movement despite local preachers incessantly calling for the protests to cease.
So Freddie Gray lynched himself
Well that's embarassing. Last year I carried around signs which read FREDDIE GRAY DIDN'T LYNCH HIMSELF and it turns out I was wrong. Today a third police officer was acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray. The goon who drove the paddy wagon and gave Freddie a rough ride, who stopped six times to check on him and never noticed Freddie's spine had become severed at the neck. Freddie was mortally injured in the custody of Baltimore police, but individualy no officers are being found to have been responsible. Like lynch mobs, no one in particular did it. What a crock. Who needs assault rifles? Freddie Gray could have used one.