The birth of a nation in flames
United States founded upon racism
Slavery, Jim Crow and mass incarceration
The 45th president of America
Is the fascist Donald J Trump
Inciting division and injustice
The Ku Klux Klan became modern day white militias
Slave masters became police officers
The Confederate flag still burns hate
Today in America one in three black men are imprisoned
Ghettoised with systemic and institutionalised discrimination
Fear is instilled with the full weight of the law
It feels like nothing has changed
Birmingham in 1963 or Ferguson in 2014
Police sirens and tear gas poison the air
Dogs and firehoses of oppression
In the words of Angela Davis
‘If they come for me in the morning they will come for you in the night’

Say their names Mike Brown, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Philando Castille, and George Floyd

How many worlds will you shatter
Until you see black lives matter

White privilege has its knee on the neck of black America
The everyday reality of profiling and harassment
Beatings in the name of the law
Miles Davis in 1959 or Rodney King in 1991
Fresh blood on nightstick batons
Protect and serve, murder and maim
Deaths in custody with license to kill
Hands up don’t shoot
Officer please I beg you
Handcuffed with eyes popping out
I cannot breathe you are killing me
Tortured to death for eight minutes and forty six seconds
Pulling the wings of a butterfly
Between 2009 and 2018 10,000 people killed by the police in America
Murdered with no prison time for the killers
Say their names Oscar Grant, Jeremy Mcdole, Terence Crutcher, Jamar Clarke and Walter Scott
How many worlds will you shatter
Until you see black lives matter
Slave ships bull whips crack flesh
Salt into open wounds
Cotton field songs and street corner verses
Billie Holiday singing strange fruit about KKK lynchings
Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin
The pure racist evil of the 16th street Baptist bombing in 1963
Like the Charlestown Church massacre in 2015
Has nothing changed?
From Charlottesville to Watts
From Dallas to Minnesota
State sanctioned violence
Assassinations with impunity
Black people are three times more likely to be killed than white people by the police
Between 2013-19 99% of police killings have resulted in no charges for the police

Say their names Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Christian Cooper and Gabriella Nevarez

How many worlds will you shatter
Until you see black lives matter

All those who take a stand are hunted down by white America
Muhammed Ali won’t fight Charlie; banned for three years
John Carlos and Tommie Smith fists raised; banned from athletics
Colin Kaepernick takes the knee; banned from American football
History is written through the eyes of the conqueror
White privilege enforced through centuries of oppression
Black Panthers killed and imprisoned
Freedom rides and civil rights beaten and murdered
White terrorism executed Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton
As a white person I can call the police and they will always take my side
As a white person I will not be killed because of the colour of my skin
As a white person I can go about my day and not be executed
As a white person I can relax in safety of my home
As a white person I can wait for a bus
As a white person I can walk away from a corner store
As a white person I can breathe
As a comrade I can breathe no more

How many worlds will you shatter
Before you realise black lives matter