A song of solidarity for all those who went to Miami in November to protest the FTAA.
Note: Play in hi-fi. Low-fi sounds terrible!
anarchist music radical m
riotfolk
political folk
Story behind the song
This is a song that I wrote about the FTAA protest in Miami. I was arrested on felony charges there and spent a few days in jail. On the second day, there was a jail solidarity protest outside. I don’t think any of us that were in the Miami Dade County Jail that day will ever forget how amazing it felt when we could see all those people out there screaming, “Let Them Go!!!” at the top of their lungs.
Lyrics
“The Fence” by Evan Greer
[Creative Commons License: distribute it as much as you want, just don’t sell it!]
In an old abandoned factory, near a dying fire.
Three lovers lie, their tears have dried, but they don’t know what to do.
They hitchhiked to Miami, and they hopped a couple trains,
But they never made it to the fence that day,
The new world never seemed so far away.
Their spirits dead, they shake their heads, scrub the teargas from their eyes,
Nurse the broken bones sustained while fighting for their lives,
The stun grenades the barricades the rubber bullet’s sting,
The three take hands, they understand, one lover starts to sing:
(chorus)
We knew that the world could never be
Anything more than what we could dream
With the teargas all around we could not see
But we never fought blindly,
We always knew that the new world was there waiting,
Just beyond the fence.
A couple miles away, in the county jail
16 new friends pass the time learning each other’s tales,
Let’s sing a song for solidarity, a song against their lies.
And so through the bars 16 voices rise: (singing)
(chorus)
Outside the helicopter searchlights sweep down empty streets,
All over town the people frown and sigh in disbelief,
They know the way it happened and they know that it was wrong,
So one by one each voice joins in the song:
(chorus)
Back in cellblock C5, they begin to hear a sound,
Through a tiny grated window they see people on the ground,
Just beyond the wall the silence falls 500 voices drown,
Singing, “They can lock us up but they can never keep us down!”
(chorus)