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