Raise The Roof

Back then, there was no hypocrisy about the system being stacked against anyone

With a smidgen of melanin staining the history of their skin

Fifty years later we must continue to raise our resources

To protest the blatant lies littering Black people's experiences with the law

We are not protected by it

This is not what we voted for when we voted for our first Black president

This is not what freedom fighters hoped for

When they marched against segregation in Selma, in Chicago

This is not the dream Dr. Martin Luther King spoke about in Washington, D.C.

Almost a decade and a half into the 21st century

Race relations in America is still a fucking cauldron bubbling angry

Under the ugly swirl of Black despair and a lack of white accountability

Parading as a penal system, in which forty percent of those incarcerated

Come from a group which only consists of twelve percent of the entire fucking population

With numbers like that, what good does it do me to comply with those in uniform?

I am shot at twelve years old for waving a toy gun you sell to me every Christmas

Wrestled to the ground for breaking up a fight because

You suspect me of selling loose cigarettes

Put in an illegal chokehold because I dare to ask why

The whole incident filmed for my family to watch my death played out

On primetime TV, the public angle assuaged by the assumption

That justice has to eventually come

My death must mean something more than a footnote in media frenzy of our time

I am owed something for having been violated by a system sworn to protct me

My name is Trayvon Martin, my name is Tamir Rice

My daughter is Michael Brown, your mother is Sean Bell

Your father Yvette Smith

Eleanor Bumpus could have been any one of us

I am Amadou Diallo and Eric Garner is all of us

This phenomenon is an invisible epidemic where

The victims are forever silenced by state-sanctioned executions

We have to find the courage to speak for them

We must find the voice of resistance for ourselves

For our children, for our children's children

It is time to raise more than our eyebrows in protest

It is time to put our bodies where our hopes lie

This is not a moment to invoke the sweet by and by

Now is a moment for action

If there's any humanity left in you get up, stand up

Join a fucking protest, pick up a fucking pen

Write, scream, wail, march, meet, gather

Plan, strategize, it is time to find a way to make them listen

It is time to make the powers that be hear

They need to see we are no longer complicit

It's time to raise the roof on these motherfuckers

It is time, it is time we raise the roof on these motherfuckers

So they know we are never, ever going away