In this pandemic every stranger is a threat
Whether or not they look like trouble
Best to step out of their way to let them pass
Sizing them up as potential danger approaches.
There will be no end to the need for vigilance
Because the coronavirus will become endemic
Even if a vaccine is developed in the future
Many people will not be vaccinated.
After weeks and then months of shutdown restrictions
The desire to be liberated to be able to live free from fear
The frustration of ordinary pleasures taken away
Something like the lifetime experience of the oppressed.
Think about living your whole life always under tension
Knowing you may be beaten and locked up or killed
For some minor or imagined transgression
Because of the color of your skin.
Exposed at low pay work to the deadly pandemic virus
Or facing eviction going hungry thrown out of work
Having lives sacrificed forced to live in close quarters
This is the racial and class divide crying out for justice.
Endemic racism circulating as a virulent disease
Infecting white people but killing people of color
Brutal when blue lives murder with impunity
No less insidious when hiding behind white enclaves.
There will be no vaccine to stop the hatred
Though it would be good to make racists afraid again
There will be no full embrace of equal rights and opportunity
Until those who benefit from division are dispossessed.
The power structure set up during centuries of slavery
Maintained through terrorism during Jim Crow KKK lynching
Present today in mass incarceration and disenfranchisement
Police brutality continues a long history of oppression.
At bottom it is about protecting the property of the few
Against the poor and working people who create the wealth
In this land that was stolen from the natives in the first place
Tilled and planted in soil soaked in the blood of slaves.
To liberate ourselves we must liberate their property
Taking collective ownership in the name of all the people
Dedicating our work to the common good over profits
That will create the conditions to be free at last.
