At The Seams

[Verse 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: [Chorus] "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" [Verse 2] Sometimes it seams 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 till we're all in the ground Till 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: [Chorus] "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" [Verse 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 orchards poisoned roots not loose fruits in a box Once the soils 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 Instead 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 a threat Will they kill you and then smear you and cover it up and lie Will they call it "self defense", will they call it "suicide"? [Chorus] 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 [Verse 4] Decades of cultivation starts from tiny seeds that were once planted And we mustn't take the gardens that our elders grew for granted Though it is up to our youth how new rows sown are organized Because movements can't keep moving if old and unsharpened eyes Can't see the need to hear what those on the ground hafta say In Ferguson and Cleveland Staten Island The East Bay Charleston Phoenix Detroit Sanford Waller Seattle Chicago Los Angeles Baltimore Climbing flagpoles taking bridges locked together to the BART Speaking up about injustice in our music and our art Storming stages to ask candidates when they're gonna start Really directly addressing issues breaking our hearts [Chorus] 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 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 [Verse 5] And if the altars are torn down we'll just keep on placing flowers For the boy whose body was in the road for more than four hours We will honor the dead of every age and every gender 'Cause we can't just have it be the brothers' names that we remember Black boys with skateboards and black boys with hoodies And little black girls who are on the couch sleeping And all of the black trans women massacred Too many black folks killed and brutalized And there's no justice served After the lynchings of our people by the murderous police Who stand like hunters 'round their prey gasping helpless in the street Feet from the teen sisters they tackled and locked handcuffed in the car Feet from her twelve-year-old brother dying While no one did CPR [Bridge] And we'll keep on planting flowers and we'll fight until the day That we don't have to pick them all to put them all on graves Yeah we'll keep planting flowers and we'll fight until the day That we don't have to pick them all to put them all on graves [Chorus] 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