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This system has got to die
So you stood and Occupied
Fingers clinched
Shirts in tow, describing the violence,
Supporting the overthrow
Our arms were linked
By struggle and descent
You denounced the bullshit about non-violence
While others chanted to peacefully resist
You saw the police, masked, and did not just sit
You did not just sit
When they told you no
You were down to break shit and keep it on the down low
But you kept it too low
Much too low
Cuz they took you out quietly and slow
Gave you the gun to extinguish your glow
The way of Billie Holiday
With a voice to shout for masses
Slowly overwhelming, dripping brown molasses
The strange fruit harvested for working classes
Masking the sorrows too big see
With a genuine smile
And pointy goatee
Like the GIs in the 60s tossing grenades at officers
Cuz they knew the war was to fatten the aristocrats coffers
Those privates would shoot down their own officers
Heroin subdued their justified anger
Encouraged the forget to rebel for sons and daughters
You know the CIA didn’t just do it with crack
Jazz and heroin, smacked the fight out of attack
They did it with Charlie Parker, Bradley and they tried with Ray C
kept the tracks bloody
bc the music industry said it improved their
natural ability
… to make them money
from worries and misery
Saturated in oppression
they gave you drugs readily
the system knows you saw with clarity
their prosperity off our poverty
but when you sat in that room, solitary
it shut out that exploitative reality
concealed the pain from loved ones and family
Silence and stigma quiet weapons of treachery
Alex, they put you in a system so HUGE in the fight back
They used demoralization and un-employment another monkey on the backs
Of the working class
These Tactics
To eliminate the righteous drastic
Epithets to call the realistic- fanatic
1400 cops to destroy the fantastic
telling us equality belongs in straight jackets
City liasons keeping the movement plastic
And even though you saw through all that whack shit
The weight of oppression couldn’t keep you from
State sponsored
old habits
But we see you more than what took you down
We continue to resist amidst tears and frowns
Laughing, clowning, calling out the fake shit
It was more than us calling for political independence
From the capitalists
I can’t speak for you, Alex
Only what I saw
Glistening eyes, telling truth raw
We won’t be ashamed to speak the entire truth
They killed him with silent violence that comes with oppression and drug abuse
And we will tell it all
Those of us who know
The real about your fight
And the way they stole your glow
Rivers will run ‘round rocks
Making streams
Breaking dams
Learning about the father who cheerfully fought “the man”
And maybe he will stand with us someday
With a fist in the air
Ready to fight and play
Because your story is not over Alex
It’s only just begun
You were one of the voices who reminded me
It’s not over until we’ve won.
